Category Archives: Project 2 Forrest Gump – Research

Assignment 2: Forrest Gump Research and Quotes

Watching movies often gives me great joy as I am always able to immerse myself in the world which it creates. I prefer movies with deeper meaning to them, rather than ones with mindless action.

These are some of the quotes I got from my favourite movies:

Get busy living or get busy dying. – Shawshank Redemption (1994)

This quote inspired me to make full use of my life as we only have so much time left on this world. I actually made a piece of artwork from this piece several years back.

However, this would be too literal for my assignment. The inspiration I had for this piece was from Banksy. A popular street artist that often creates work based on pop culture. This will be touched on later in my research.

 

It is not music if you can’t dance to it. – The intouchables (2011)

There is only one word to describe this movie, and the word is Beautiful. It is an inspiring movie of the journey between a caretaker and a disabled man, both from extremely different backgrounds. However, they influence each other in various aspects, driving them to do things they would have never imagined.

Are you not entertained? – Gladiator (2000)

This movie is about an army General which was betrayed and sold as a slave as he uncovered a dirty truth. The movie follows journey back to his family as well as exposing the truth.

Classrooms dull your mind, destroy the potential for authentic creativity. – A Beautiful Mind (2001) 

This is an amazing quote as I feel it is a good representation of most classes I’ve had growing up. Our society is so afraid of failure that we tend to do things which are the ‘safest’ or comfortable with which in turn, limits creativity.

 

Research

Banksy

http://www.tavernmagazine.com/bansky-the-enigma-2/
http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/showbiz-tv/who-banksy-real-name-identity-13224924

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-story-behind-banksy-4310304/

Banksy is a renowned street artist which often portrays pop culture and societal issues masterfully in his art. His use of simplified tones and voids to create such works is amazing and very relevant to the assignment on hand.

The use of minimal elements also enable the message to be understood quickly, which is important for street art as the audience may be on a form of transport and would not be able to capture the essence of the design quickly.

Banksy uses colour to give contrast to the composition, drawing the attention of the audience to the crux of the message. However, as we will not be able to use colour, I have to use of hyperbole and semiotics to convey our message across.

 

Eugenia Loli

Eugena Loli is an American digital artist who juxtaposes retro pictures of advertisements as well as film photos for her compositions. This gives her work a nostalgic feeling as well as a sense of surrealism. The use of space as a backdrop gives it a magical and mysterious tone to the composition.

In the middle image, she makes use of space through what seems to be thin steams of clouds to create implied lines, drawing the audience to the centre of the image.

Mario Wagner

This artist has more uses of lines in his composition. These are to bring about the limitations we face at our current knowledge of mathematics, with the lines to represent a cage. However, I felt that the lines were too distracting and hurt the composition as it made it too complex.

Julien Pacaud

The use of semiotics is prevalent in this artist’s work as he is able to convey messages through his work. My interpretation of the first object would be that the female individual is overcoming the wage gap between females and males. The usage of scales shows it tipping to her favour. All these little details play a part in being able to send a message.

Marco Battaglini –

As one of the movies I picked had a setting in the roman era, I wanted to have a renaissance twist to my composition to keep it in context. I started searching for modern interpretations of renaissance works and I came across this artist.

The composition is filled to the brim with objects which makes it difficult to focus on any one subject at a time. This is is not what I would like for my design, however, I enjoyed the use of a more modern setting to show a contrast between styles.

Techniques 

I researched into methods of getting a more textured looks for my composition. I like how US money had the threshold look, as well as a texture to it. Because of that, I wanted to replicate the effect.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-comeback-of-the-us-dollar-2013-3/?IR=T

I don’t know if I would get into trouble for searching for something like this but I felt that this texture would really stylize my images. However, as started to develop my ideas and compositions, I felt that this effects would not look nice for my quotes.