Quantam Poster Reserch, Process and Final

Initial Brainstorm:

At first, I wanted to explore the theme of duality which I feel exemplifies both Quamtam physics and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In quantam physics, if one electron spins in clockwise direction, another spins in the anti-clockwise direction hence there is a sort of opposition and duality in play here. For Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, that duality is even more obvious as Mr. Hyde is a reflection of and the evil parallel of the noble Dr. Jekyll.

Some words that I branched out to that I feel tells the story of Jekyll and Hyde were: Conflict, Intrusion, Trapped & Freed, Instincts, Human Nature, Murder and Agony, Entangled

Hence I wanted to portray them in the posters below:

First sketches:

Initially, when I first thought of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, because it is a literary story on its own, it was very easy to conceptualise posters that are more like movie posters and are more representative.

Poster 1 & 2: Dr. Jekyll trapped behind claws that are like prison bars (Keywords: Trapped and Freed: Jekyll is trapped while Hyde is freed)

Posters 3,4, and 7 all feature an icon of either Jekyll and Hyde or both and an assaulting of surface by splashing black ink onto a linocut of rigid patterns. (Keywords: Murder, Blood, Disruption, Conflict)

Posters 5 and 8 deal with wavy lines and the idea of ‘wavelengths’ to communicate the coming together and separation of Jekyll and Hyde. (Keywords: Conflict, Human Nature, Entangled, Intrusion, Trapped & Freed)

Poster 6 is like a move poster featuring diagonals and contrasting both men with the things they hold: Jekyll holding a test tube and Hyde holding a murder weapon. (Keywords: Contrast, Conflict, Murder)

After consultation however, Ina suggests that I use more of patterns and linocut to bring out the idea of Jekyll and Hyde and that I do not have to be super in-your-face about the story or the plot. I decided to focus on assaulting the surface and to use that to represent the sudden presence of Hyde and the disruption he brings to Jekyll’s otherwise peaceful life.

Some forms of assualting the surface that we came up with were:

-Ink Splashes

-Paper tears

-Lino cutter slashes

-Multiple inking

etc.

I went back to the keywords and realised that I have some action words that may aid in my assaulting of the poster surface and categorised them according to how I might utilise them:

For ink: stain, smear, dirty, blood->to represent murder 

For ink staining/ruining a pattern/sudden lino cut slashes: outburst, disruption, rupture, pressure 

Pattern: Trapped/freed (with ruining of it)->to show restraint, suffocation, repression, oppression, conflict

I was afraid of going too abstract and Ina suggested that my words simply be the title “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and the patterns be suggestive of their natures and the story.

Moodboard references: 

Initially, my moodboard leaned towards linocuts and more graphic representations.

After consultation however,  I decided to focus more on mark makings and focused on posters that are more geared towards assaulting the surface/disrupting a pattern particularly with marks or inks etc.

 Process of first drafts:

  1. Stencil and linocut the title

2. Printing

3. Ink splashing

4. Writing ‘Dr. Jekyll’ with my right hand and ‘Mr. Hyde’ with my left

5. Scanning and digitising of marks and writing

 

First Digitised Drafts:

Layout #1a

For this layout, I tried using the techniques Overlapping, assaulting the surface then overwhelming the eye. 

I overlapped the ink splashes with the words then traced out the outlines of the ink splashes, duplicated them and scattered them to get a glitchy effect.

I duplicated the words then shifted them and lowered the opacity to get a shadowy effect that also represents the split personas of Jekyll and Hyde and one being more domineering than the other. I added the splashes to assault the clean surface alike to how Hyde’s murder and violence causes disruption in Jekyll’s otherwise calm and peaceful life. The splashes were meant to look like blood stains and I covered the words ‘Mr. Hyde’ more with the splashes to show that it is Hyde’s sin but the glitching lines overlapping the words ‘Dr. Jekyll’ shows that Jekyll is inexplicably implicated and affected by Hyde’s sin.

Layout #1b

I then realised that i should have framed it with the golden ratio and so here’s 1b!

Layout 2

For this layout, I tried using the techniques Overlapping, Activating the diagonal, and assaulting the surface. 

Because in some stage play versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the actor differentiates both personas by Dr. Jekyll using his right hand and Mr. Hyde using his left, I decided to write the words Dr. Jekyll with my right hand and mimicked victorian handwriting (cursive) while I used my left hand to write Mr. Hyde.

Some references of Victorian handwriting:

http://www.thisvictorianlife.com/handwriting.html
http://history.powys.org.uk/school1/llanwrtyd/examine.shtml

I duplicated the Dr. Jekyll words and the Mr. Hyde words and overlapped them  to visually represent the entanglement between the both of them and the chaos that ensued because of it (as it looks very messy). Then, I added the ink splashes (rotated them so that they are diagonal) and duplicated them, lowered the opacity to get a more inky effect. The ink splashes were meant to mimic blood splashes, pointing to traces of Hyde’s violence and murder.

I also blanked out some ink splashes to get more variation and to represent the lack of intentions on Jekyll’s part to be a murderer. I also framed the composition using the golden ratio.

Layout 3

For this layout, I tried using the techniques Activating the diagonal and overlapping. 

I cropped an enlarged splash mark from the scans that I had:

and adding the words Dr. Jekyll in white on the black part as Dr. Jekyll is the noble character surrounded by darkness (the black part). I added Mr. Hyde in black to show the contrast between him and Jekyll and let the splash marks intersect with it to show the disruption and chaos the character Hyde brings.

Some other drafts and layouts:

     

After consultation, Ina suggested that I put the title “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” into the top right hole of Layout #2

and that I utilise the full rawness of the linocut print itself:

as the first layouts feel too digitised and have lost the rawness of the linocut print. For the first linocut, I thought I should just use the words but Ina made me realise that I should fully utilise the whole lino pad, even the places where I cut uglily or wrongly to produce a print that is raw and more natural.

Second Drafts:

Refining Layout 1:  Digitisation

These are iterations from the plain lino cuts:

  1. Plain lino cut
  2. Full black bloodstains/ink splashes and outlines of splashes with plain lino cut
  3. Green outlines of bloodstains/ink splashes with plain lino cut
  4. Red outlines of bloodstains/ink splashes with plain lino cut
  5. Plain lino cut with Jekyll/Hyde handwriting
  6. Plain lino cut with Jekyll/Hyde handwriting & red outlines of bloodstains/ink splashes

Refining Layout 1:  Analogue (by splashing ink directly onto linocut print) 

Refining layout 2:

  1.  All Black, Handwriting with 2 layer of Dr. Jekyll and 2 layers of Mr. Hyde
  2.  All Black, Handwriting with 2 layers of Dr. Jekyll and 3 layers of Mr. Hyde,
  3.  All Black, Handwriting with 2 layers of Dr. Jekyll and 3 layers of Mr. Hyde, differing opacity
  4. Title red, splashes black, Handwriting with 3 layers of Dr. Jekyll and 2 layers of Mr. Hyde, differing opacity
  5.  All red, Handwriting with 2 layers of Dr. Jekyll and 3 layers of Mr. Hyde, differing opacity
  6.  All red, Handwriting with 1 layers of Dr. Jekyll and 2 layers of Mr. Hyde,

After final consultation, it was between these three:

and the class chose the one with the red lines only (option 2)

but i felt that its too simple and doesn’t convey the idea strongly enough.

Hence, I duplicated the red lines and coloured them green, inverted them and toggled with the scattering to get this:

Ina mentioned that the green parts at the bottom right looks too stamped and deliberate so I stretched them further apart vertically and horizontally.

and I feel like this conveyed the chaos that I was looking for with the inversion and intersection of green and red lines showing the difference between Hyde and Jekyll (that they are opposites of each other) but entangled with each other and cannot be separated.

Final poster in high res:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IY38scqV_acVNb5kPuRvWli6Wfhkji_a/view?usp=sharing