Research

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Illustration for Designers: Varoom & Artist Research (Week 5)

Activity 1: Varoom Articles

About Varoom Magazine:

The Varoom magazine is a biannual publication by the Association of Illustrators. The magazine features insight and analysis of the illustration, design and animation industry, with content such as interviews, recommendations as well as commentary. Each magazine’s illustrated content come from a variety of artists and revolves around a singular theme.

Varoom’s latest Fantasy issue

What type of information is in the magazine?

As an example, the latest issue Fantasy features articles on games, graphic novels, the TV series Game of Thrones, Ram Han and all that is related to the fantasy genre or fantastical in nature.

What do I find inspiring?

The variety and freedom in stylistic choices employed by the artists who have contributed to Varoom is amazing!

Who’s the target audience?

Art enthusiasts, educators and practitioners

 

Selected Articles:

(1) Hail Herman Inclusus

The article is about Herman Inclusus (Stuart Kolakovic) and the inspiration for his style – traditional Christian manuscripts, icons or Islamic miniatures. The content explores his rebirth and discusses what he derives and gleans from these traditional works.

It also announces how Lichen, his graphic novel, marks the end of his past aesthetic choices and also his shift into his identity as Herman Inclusus, as well as what that means for him.

The article shows a complicated bond between one artist’s identity and their influences – how their influences and growth would show in their choice of aesthetic style and subject matter. The content is great for people who are interested in his personal influences and where his motifs are derived from.

(2) Cloak of Fantasy

The article excerpt is an interview with Victo Ngai on her art creation process.

It provides insight to her personal journey and steps to art-making – such as how she goes about conceptualizing for the image and her thought process and influences (stage play).

The article is wonderful for those seeking to go into a similar field of work or to achieve a similar art direction or struggling in the same format that Victo Ngai works in. Alternatively, it is also good for people looking to change certain aspects of their production to organize their personal working processes.

For enthusiasts, it promotes Victo Ngai’s work as the article features a work that the network of Game of Thrones commissioned her to illustrate. Those who have watched Game of Thrones, in turn, would be drawn in to know more about Victo Ngai.

Activity 2: 3 Artist Research

(1) Victo Ngai

What do you find inspiring?

Her works are intricate, colorful and gorgeous. The way she seamlessly integrates traditional and digital mediums to make use of the strengths of both mediums (the raw intricacies of traditional, and vibrant colors and clean look of digital) is extremely inspiring for myself as I love working traditionally but struggle to find a way to reconcile it with digital programs after scanning it in.

What mediums do they use?

Traditional, Digital

How do they creatively interpret the text for the article?

The article The Burden of Beasts discusses the surging population of donkeys and how they are being relocated. The illustration by Victo Ngai represents this as huge human hands picking up the donkeys and their fences, signifying human intervention.

Victo Ngai’s way of depicting the literal in a serene but intricately illustrated scene makes the content look like a tale out of a storybook and creates intrigue with how ridiculous, but elegant it looks.

(2) Tess Stone

Hanna Is Not A Boy’s Name, a webcomic by Tess Stone.

Comic panel from Not Drunk Enough

What do you find inspiring?

Tess Stone has gorgeous comic layouts, harsh colors and and hand lettering that makes every page and panel exciting to read. There’s no wasted element, and the characters and text complement each other extremely well as both their designs carry a similar intensity in the types of lines used (generally with thicker/harsher shadows on characters and good line weight distribution between what’s focused/not in focus).

What mediums do they use?

Digital

How do they creatively interpret the text for the article?

Tess Stone is a comic artist and writer with very cool character designs, hand lettering and color design for his comic pages. In terms of interpreting text, Tess Stone is amazing at delivering the speech of characters and sound effects that gives text just as much animations as the story’s characters do.

Other than the text, the panels (dividers) add so much value to the delivery of the story as well with how they are designed in each page!

(3) Tatsuyuki Tanaka

What do you find inspiring?

Tatsuyuki Tanaka is an illustrator, concept art designer and animator. He known for many things – some of them being key animator of the Japanese animated movie Akira and being part of an animation team called Genius Party responsible for a series of extremely interesting and exploratory animations.

Genius Party: Dimension Bomb

I find that his works are incredibly detailed and he’s able to deliver subtle commentary about the current state of the world through his works. His personal works are interesting because they don’t seem to deliver the message directly, rather, his image builds up an environment that allows you to establish your own set of expectations (dystopian, post-apocalyptic) and your imagination/speculation provokes you to make something out of the images he provides.

What mediums do they use?

Digital, Traditional

How do they creatively interpret the text for the article?

He has done quite a covers of short novels. A running theme in his art are clutter, the mechanical and a universe that seems almost dystopian/post-apocalyptic. His palette is also muted to highlight the excessive detail in the linework (backgrounds, subject matter).

From these three covers, two of them feature the world of the novel and one cover is more character-centric. Personally, I find that the interpretation of a scene with the setting featured as ‘the character’ (the main subject) quite creative as it provokes alot of speculation and work from the reader’s end through creating many points of interest (since there is no living subject to instantly create a bond with).

Link to Assignment 2 (Final Artwork + Process): https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/laum0005/illustration-for-designers-assignment-2-final-varoom/

Illustration for Designers: Week 2 (Activity 1 and 2)

Activity 1

Week 2’s class activity was doing an exercise on shapes (Bauhaus drawing exercise?) and a 15-min portrait of a classmate!

Not sure what is going on with all the shapes.

We both drew Nisa!

And Nisa’s portrait of me-

She’s so good and fast it’s crazy (;u;)

Activity 2: Research on Self-Portraits and Artists!

Here are three artists whom I think are really inspirational and their insane self-portraits:

  1. Hirohiko Araki
  2. Jamie Hewlett
  3. Salvador Dali

1) Artist: Hirohiko Araki

Hirohiko Araki’s self portrait on his book “Hirohiko Araki’s Manga Techniques”

Famous for: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (Manga series running from 1987-present)

I started reading and watching Hirohiko Araki’s Jojo series recently at a friend’s recommendation. Hirohiko Araki’s work draws alot of inspiration from Sherlock Holmes, Renaissance sculptures, paintings and western music (such as Pink Floyd, Styx, Queen).

His self portrait features himself and a character in his series named Rohan. Hirohiko Araki drew many parallels between himself and this character – in interviews.

Compared to his usual works, his self-portrait on the book cover was surprisingly tame – just an image of himself embracing a character who’s most similar to himself.

Hirohiko Araki’s illustrations and a panel excerpt from his comic

Medium:

Traditional. (Nib pens and markers)

Color, Line, Texture:

In his works, he accentuates the facial features and is fond of designing complicated, impractical clothing. He’s not afraid to distort proportions and challenging constructs – frequently forgoing realistic colour choices for strong colours with more emotive qualities. In one of his books, he notes Paul Gauguin as one of his influences in his colour choice – one of the Fauvism influences.

The lines he uses are meticulous and he uses hatching techniques in emphasizing the strength of shadows and imply different tones in black-and-white pages, such as the features on the characters’ faces and in drapery. He casts more realistic shadows than stylized ones – making characters resemble Renaissance sculptures.

His mastery of line weight allows him to create a plethora of textures within the design of characters. The following is one example of different textures in the characters’ hairstyles:

What’s inspiring:

What I really took away from his work is the spirit of challenging perceptions with his art and it was very interesting to look into how he does research on the things he likes in order to work on comics, guidebooks and illustrations – and how these inspiration translates into elements within his art and turned into a distinctive visual style.

References:

Celebrating The Art and Fashion of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2019-07-31/celebrating-the-art-and-fashion-of-jojo-bizarre-adventure/.149560

Jojo’s Araki Creates Manga for France’s Louvre Museum:
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-01-22/jojo-araki-creates-manga-for-france-louvre-museum

Gucci Windows Come To Life With Exclusive Manga: https://www.herworld.com/fashion/gucci-windows-come-life-exclusive-manga/

Vizmedia – Message from Hirohiko Araki – JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Fashion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2FHRUjBI6Q

 

2) Artist: Jamie Hewlett

From Jamie Hewlett’s instagram – self portrait in 2018

Famous for: Tank Girl, Gorillaz

Medium: Traditional (ink, paints) and digital

Color, Line, Texture:

Jamie Hewlett’s self portrait consists of only two colors (blue and red) on a canvas and a giant smile. Blue is used for indicating skin tones and some features, while red is used to block out the background of the self portrait and used to indicate his spectacles and clothes (the inanimate items). The spaces left blank are left to indicate a light source coming from the left side.

The lines, compared to his usual works that feature a cleaner finish, are loose and messy. The lines are also marked in with the paints and creates alot of broken lines.

What’s inspiring:

From Hewlett’s portrait, it is reassuring to know that sometimes artists may take a completely different (or opposite) approach when it comes to their self-portraits! While it’s not as polished and as impressive as his usual works, Hewlett’s portrait reflects his frame of mind, insinuating that he’s having a good time and he’s being casual and experimental with his own portrait.

Reference: 

Jamie Hewlett’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hewll/

 

3) Artist: Salvador Dali

Soft Self-Portrait With Grilled Bacon (1941)

Famous for: Surrealist paintings, The Persistence of Memory

Medium: Traditional, oil on canvas

Color, Line, Texture: 

The painting is a brown monochromatic colour scheme. There are no distinct strokes, favouring a more painterly style. The face is painted to be soft and almost gooey, as if melting, and the fork-like crutches are trying their best to hold up all the features (even the chin!) on the face so that they would stay as a recognizable face.

What’s inspiring: The self-portrait introduces an extra dimension of smell to go with the viewing experience! Most people have eaten grilled beacon and from the captioning of the self-portrait, we are able to recall the smell while viewing the image. This makes viewing the self-portrait extra interesting since we can not only experience what’s drawn but also what’s ‘not there’.

His painting also features multiple seemingly unrelated objects and elements in them to convey meaning and utilizes trompe-l’oeil (art technique to deceive the eye). There’s always alot to take apart in his works.

Reference: 

Soft Self-Portrait with Grilled Bacon: https://www.salvador-dali.org/en/museums/dali-theatre-museum-in-figueres/the-collection/138/soft-self-portrait-with-grilled-bacon