Yay! Super excited to do this project because of my passionate love for one particular movie, X-Men: First Class!
So in case you haven’t watched the movie, there are 2 main characters- Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto), who controls metal, & Charles Xavier (Professor X), who is a telepath.
This movie investigates their pasts, how they met and how they became well-established rivals in the other X-Men movies.
You can kind of skip this part if you have watched the movie, aha!
Character Background:
Erik has a dark past of being a holocaust survivor.
The antagonist of this show, Sebestian Shaw, witnessed Erik’s ability to control metal when his parents were captured into the concentration camps and Erik used his powers to bend the metal gates.
Since then, Shaw have taken an interest in him. As Shaw is also a Nazi, he orders Erik to use his powers to move a coin, and when he is unable to do so, Shaw kills his mother.
Erik’s power then manifests from anger and grief. Since then, Shaw has been experimenting on him, shaping him into his personal ‘weapon’. Erik probably escaped sometime later and was filmed tracking down Shaw to seek his revenge.
Charles has a slighty less tragic past, growing up in a mansion alone. In the comics, Charles’ father passed away in an accident, his mother remarried and got drunk often while he was abused by his stepfather and stepbrother. In the film, it is hinted that he is neglected by his mother and there are no mentions of his father. One day, he meets a stranger impersonating his mother in his kitchen stealing food, but since she is a fellow mutant, kindhearted Charles decides to ‘adopt’ her as his younger sister.
Years later, Charles became a professor in genetics, curious towards the science behind mutants.
Chosen quotes:
You are not alone. – Charles Xavier
This quote is found when Charles first rescued Erik, which is how they met.
Basically, Erik finally found Shaw on a cruise and was controlling anchors to wreck havoc.
So Shaw, with his gang, escaped through a submarine, making Erik go after them but attempting to stop the submarine with his powers, although to no avail.
Charles sensed Erik’s mind through his telepathy, probably having read Erik’s thoughts against Shaw, jumped about 100ft to save him from drowning himself.
He communicates through telepathy with Erik and convinces him to not kill himself in his futile act of vengeance.
Erik was shocked to find another fellow mutant for the first time.
After that, Charles recruits Erik into the CIA’s pursuit for Shaw, since they are both after him. On their mission, Charles and Erik struck up an amiable friendship as equals, seeing the rest were still very young. Charles have tried to dissuade Erik from seeking vengeance during their frequent chess games.
Charles also believed in the good of Erik, tapping on his happiest memories to optimize his power, allowing him to shift a giant satellite dish.
So I tried to depict the difference in the two’s background stories by reflecting them diagonally against each other, as if they were from 2 parallel worlds. Both of them experienced tragedy in one way of another, and are trying to reach out for help, especially for Erik.
Erik’s hand has the tattoo of any holocaust survivor, reflecting on his past. Charles’ has the all-seeing eye to represent his telepathy. The coin in between them represent’s Erik’s vengeance, in which Charles is trying to persuade Erik to let go of by ‘taking’ it from him.
The reaching out of Charles’ hand also demonstrates his rescue of Erik when they first met.
My previous work seemed too stable, so I decided to revamp the whole composition to have a stronger density on one area.
I wanted to show the helplessness of Erik through the triangular ‘funnel’ towards his smaller hand(with the tattoo).
There several hands above are those reaching out to him to create rhythm, the most prominent one being Charles’ (indicated by the ‘all-seeing’ eye to symbolise his telepathy). The vertical lines of his hand is to emphasise on the longing to reach out.
The barbed wires and rain add textures to the background, to recreate the depressing atmosphere at the concentration camps where Erik was at.
Upon realising gray scale is possible, I darkened the extra hands and made Charles’ hand white in order to make it stand out more obviously.
The rain in the background is also more clear.
I’ve been at the mercy of men just following orders. Never again. – Erik Lehnsherr
Erik said this in retaliation to Charles’ justification of saving the lives of innocent men ‘just following orders’, who are ordered to fire missiles at them.
Erik then stops the metal missiles mid-air and turns them around, sending them back to where they came from.
I put a soldier(men just following orders) in the palm of which belongs to Erik(tattoo) with missiles surrounding him to show to that the fate of the soldier is literally in his hands. The palm’s silhouette is hinted by the negative spaces from the missiles, making use of the Law of Closure. The variety in the scale of missiles makes it look like they are honing in on the solider, making the print more dynamic.
UPDATE:
Replaced the soldier with roman helmet instead, to foreshadow Shaw’s helmet which embodies Magneto today, as well as symbolise the fate of the soldier with the skull.
Added half tone shadow for tonal value and more dynamic effect.
I can’t feel my legs – Charles Xavier
The most heartbreaking scene at the end of the film where Erik accidentally reflects a bullet into Charles’ spine, dropped control of all the missile in shock and goes to cradle his friend.
However, when they have established that they have opposing ideals, Erik gathers others(including Raven) to follow his way, leaving Charles on the beach.
Since chess is a recurring theme throughout the movie(and even other movies) between Charles and Erik, I depicted them using the knight pieces.
Charles believes in the good side of people, even though they are trying to kill him, and hence is the White Knight, which represents light.
Erik has witnessed and experienced the worst of humanity, and is hence the Black Knight.
The melting(bleeding) of the White Knight’s torso shows the loss of his legs through the bullet wound(black hole).
Especially after feeling a coin go through his brain in his attempt to keep Shaw still and prevent him from killing Erik, Charles is definitely at the lowest point of his life, which is conveyed by the tear from his eye.
On the horizon however, Erik leaves with Raven, changing colour, and sides, eventually fighting against Charles instead of being by his side.
The sunset and palm trees serve to depict the Cuban beach where the turning point happens.
UPDATE:
Charles is larger in scale in contrast to the sub dominant Erik and Raven, to capture the viewer’s attention first(Law of Figure/Ground). Strong diagonal lines then leads the viewer’s eyes from Charles to them.
I also cropped the land at an angle to get rid of the straight horizon line. Background now resembles a cliff, as accentuated by the shadow, and Erik and Raven are about to walk off a point of no return(changing colour to show them turning to the dark side).
A dripping, cold stone texture is applied to emphasise on Charles’ sadness. Cliff in the background is made bigger in order to achieve an ideal 30% white area for breathing space and colour asymmetry.
Mutants are the next stage of human evolution.- Erik Lehnsherr
This happens in the discussion which shows the difference in their ideals while playing chess.
Professor Charles Xavier: Shaw’s declared war on mankind on all of us, he has to be stopped.
Erik Lehnsherr: I am not gonna stop Shaw, I am gonna kill him. Do you have it in you to allow that?
[Erik pauses while Charles shifts in his chair uneasy]
Erik Lehnsherr: You known all along why I was here Charles, but things have changed. What started as a covert of mission, tomorrow mankind will know mutants exist. Shaw, us, they won’t differentiate. They’ll fear us. And that fear will turn to hatred.
Professor Charles Xavier: Not if we stop a war, not if we can prevent Shaw, not if we risk our lives doing so.
Erik Lehnsherr: Would they do the same for us?
Professor Charles Xavier: We have it in us to be the better man.
Erik Lehnsherr: We already are! We are the next stage of human evolution, you said it yourself…
Professor Charles Xavier: [cuts in] No, no…
Erik Lehnsherr: Are you really so naive as to think that they won’t battle their own extinction? Or is it arrogance?
Professor Charles Xavier: [looks at Erik in disagreement] I am sorry.
Erik Lehnsherr: After tomorrow, they are gonna turn on us. But you are blinded because you believe they are all like Moira.
Professor Charles Xavier: And you believe they are all like Shaw.
At first I wanted to put men replicated diagonally upwards to show the ‘stepping up’ effect of evolution, but then I figured out that its pretty sexist, so I used skeletons to distinguish humankind. Towards the right, humans ‘evolve’ into mutants, having extra features.
Then, I explore putting the skeletons in a queue to show the forward motion of evolution. Half of the skeleton is in contrasting tones to highlight the change aka mutation(Law of Symmetry & Order). The left side is in negative to show the ‘extinction’ of humankind when mutants become more and more pervasive.
UPDATE:
Decided to break the linear queue of skeletons by skewing them and arranging them in a curve instead. The viewer’s eyes are first directed to the largest skeleton on the right, also contributed by the large white foreground. The Law of Continuation allows the viewer to follow the queue from the right to the left. The distance between each of them decreases towards the right to show the acceleration in evolution which allowed mutations to exist now.
Lightning in the background to denote action and happening, before mutations appear.
SILKSCREEN PRINTING PROCESS:
At first, we had to coat the emulsion on the silkscreen. I didn’t really get a chance to do it because our work study, Jia Hui, was still figuring out how to get an even coat. Eventually she figured out we were suppose to scrape it upwards instead of downwards, but I got my coat decently even already so. Then, we bake it in the oven for 20 minutes, then stick our transparency on the outer screen using tape.
Then, we throw it into the exposure machine!
We had to wait awhile for the fabric to completely compress the screen, then..
ZINGGGG! The emulsion is exposed to bright light for 18s. To be honest, it really feels like some dimensional travelling was going on there. Well, one can dream.
Anyway! Then we had to jet spray away the emulsion that was not sticking to the screen. For a long, loud period with a heavy, tiny jet spray. Good thing I was one of the first few though, so I didn’t have to come back after lessons to do it! But actually after that, I heard from Tong Chen that scrubbing it with a sponge can help quicken the process. Oh well.
Next, we had to let it dry and screen print with ink during the next lesson! First, we stick 4 similar coins at the corner with tape to block out any excess areas of ink from getting printed onto the tote bag.
Then, we slather some ink onto the top, and scrape it downwards using a squeegee. My first practise on paper was tragic.
Too much ink probably. So I put much lesser ink on the second try, but patches of area did not get inked, and upon second scraping, it ended up somewhat the same – the halftone cannot be seen.
Eventually, after much more attempts than I would like to have, I concluded using less ink, coupled with sufficient force(silkscreen must touch paper when scraping) has the best results.
Actually, Jia hui came to supervise our process and offered the longer squeegee for my use, since my design is barely smaller than the squeegee I used. However, I find that the new squeegee, being longer, requires us to hold it with our two hands further apart from each other, which spreads the pressure and some of the middle parts of the design doesn’t get printed. Ultimately, we switched back to the shorter squeegee.
Since my partner, Jie Lyn, did her print first but design was unfortunately thwarted by a fold in the back of the tote bag, we had to bust out the iron and iron our bags!
Then, I crossed my fingers and screen printed on my personal tote bag first.
Heh, some areas were touched up afterwards.
Fortunately, the halftones showed up, as well as all the texts! Hooray!
On the other hand, the one I did on the school tote bag did not turned out as well in the text area. Aye, sometimes, perfection cannot be repeated.
All in all, it is a really new experience for me to do something so hands-on and it really helped me understand the process better rather from watching videos(which made it seemed so easy). I am so glad I practised on paper before doing on the actual bag! Also, much thanks to Jie Lyn and Jia hui for their help and advise!
OVERVIEW:
I’ve learnt to not be afraid of change, or redoing the entire composition if necessary, as sometimes by breaking out of our own notion of normalcy and comfort allows us to make more dynamic and interesting compositions.
I’ve also noticed that density difference, repetition, colour imbalance and asymmetry all contributes to a lively design that engages with the viewer, no matter how fitting something seems when it is placed in the middle.
Last but not least, I have been reacquainted with my old Photoshop skills, as well as learnt some new ones, which will certainly help me later in my journey in design.
