Forest Gump: Process

l THE PROCESS l

After going through the brief, various thoughts and ideas came to my head. However, I was not sure of how exactly I wanted to come up with and portray my compositions.

I immediately started off by going through quotes that are closely related to life and human feelings. I drowned myself in a sea of emotions and feelings from movies that I closely relate to or have been inspired by.

4MOVIES
Chungking Express (1994)
Artist Impression of Chungking Express (1994)
Chungking Express Scene (1994)
Boyhood (2014)
Boyhood (2014)
Boyhood Scene (2014)
Her (2013)
Her (2013)
Her Scene (2013)
The Imitation Game (2014)
The Imitation Game (2014)
The Imitation Game Scene (2014)

4MOVIE QUOTES

I settled on these 4 quotes as I felt that they spoke to me in a certain way and had the potential to explore various compositions.

l THE APPROACH l

“think about the quote in a different perspective” / “dig out a different meaning” / “link quote to various objects in life” / “be unconventional, don’t be literal”

These thoughts replayed in my head as I tried to come up with a concept/overarching idea for my compositions. I took to staring at objects around me and tried to create a connection between them and the movie quotes.

Deeply inspired by surrealism, I wanted to make use of everyday objects to tell a story about my quotes, almost as if the compositions/interpretations of these quotes are from a different world of its own, where everything works differently.

— S Y M B O L I S M —
the art or practice of using symbols especially by investing things with a symbolic meaning or by expressing the invisible or intangible by means of visible or sensuous representations: such as
a :artistic imitation or invention that is a method of revealing or suggesting immaterial, ideal, or otherwise intangible truth or states
b :the use of conventional or traditional signs in the representation of divine beings and spirits

There were certain similar elements in the quotes that were chosen.

  • Personal/Life
  • Repeating words
  • Moments/Feelings

Thus, by using everyday objects it better symbolises life and feelings of a human rather than any random object.

INSPIRATION

I came across various artworks and was inspired to create compelling compositions of my own.

KEY WORD SEARCH:

ILLUSTRATION, EVERYDAY, HUMAN, MOMENTS, GALAXY

RESULTS:

Night Passage from the Desert, 2013
@Ginakielillustration, 9 May 2017
Read all about you, Henn Kim
Sleepy Head, @Mattblease, 19 November 2015
ARTIST REFERENCE

In addition to the initial research done on Dadaism and Surrealism artists, I also narrowed down the artist references for my compositions.

SURREALISM

1. Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali
The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904–1989)

Dali’s works are compelling, making one want to stare at it longer to uncover what different meanings each element in the painting portrays. In this piece, Dali portrayed the theme of time with an objective of discarding the world of reality. He did this by distorting (melting) the clocks and creatures with a perfectly normal background. It is clear this art piece was a result of his interpretation and imagination.

2. Vladimir Kush

A surrealist artist greatly inspired by Salvador Dali. His works portrays fascinating stories and imagination with the use of everyday objects such as food, and shoes.

Butterfly Apple, 1978
Treasure Island

3. Henn Kim  l  @henn_kim

Henn Kim is an illustrator from South Korea who evokes theme of, “beautiful dark twisted fantasy” in her art works. Her works are compelling and are always in black & white. Her art style and work were my main form of inspiration for my 4 compositions.

Drenched through my mind
Sleep Forever
IDEAS & SKETCHES
Chungking Express first sketch
Boyhood first sketch
Her first sketch
The Imitation Game first sketch

These sketches received generally okay feedback on the first round of consultation but were given feedback for improvements. Since the use of the hand motif is strong, I decided to use that as a common element in my compositions to make them look more consistent. It was also suggested to maybe also use cups across all my compositions to suggest the same meaning of life in each of them.

REVISED SKETCHES

– Included use of hands and cups in all 4 compositions –

digital drafts

Chungking Express

Chungking Express Draft 1

Feedback: Cup and sardine seem to be clashing, girl looks like she is about to crash into cup, fish fin can be tilted slightly upwards to have a better direction flow.

Boyhood

Boyhood Draft 1

Feedback: Looks alot more messy and complicated compared to Chungking Express composition, there is no focal point, not sure where to look at, maybe you can have one thing that is prominent, similar to Chungking Express one where the cup and the sardine sort os stands out the most, play with more halftones in the composition

Her

Her Draft 1

Feedback: Interesting use of toilet paper roll (at least some thought so), humans on the composition are a little disconnected/doesn’t make a lot of sense, can flow better, replace with something similar to other compositions.

The Imitation Game

The Imitation Game Draft 1

Feedback: Looks abit more plain compared to rest of compositions, can make cup tilt little so that the cup looks unstable almost like the rest of the cups in other compositions, add more water droplets, traffic light currently doesn’t look like a stirrer, tilt traffic light a little to show that it is in motion.


Read more about the ideas and meanings behind each composition in my final Forest Gump post!
NEXT: FINAL WORK FOR SUBMISSION