I’m excited for this project woo! I’ve always wanted to try silkscreening and I’m pumped to finally get the chance to.

RESEARCH

AH yes research of course.

To get things rolling, I dove into trusty google and pinterest for some inspiration!

Since we’re focusing on depicting movie quotes, whereas to get ideas than from movie posters and illustrations!

Here are some that I personally like and felt that their portrayal of the movie was effective and interesting!

Instead of purely searching for specific screentone/silkscreen artists, I wanted to find inspiration for how I’m going to plan out my compositions.

VANIA ZOURAVLIOV
A russian-born artist, he specialises in black and white (or sepia) illustrations, usually portraying female figures with eerie, dark surroundings with intricate details. His usage of blacks is mesmerising, being able
to create the unmistaken feeling of depth and tangibility with just black.

Sometimes he utilises circles for his art and it’s interesting to me as it’s such a simple shape but by incorporating it into a piece, it’s possible to guide attention and also make things more ‘clean’ and appealing.

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PROCESS

First we had to find 4 movie quotes we liked so here are the ones I’ve decided on:
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‘Get your head in the game.’ – High School Musical, 2006

GAME: Television, a screen, visual effects, ‘otherworldly’
YOUR HEAD: A head, specifically the iconic Michaelangelo David’s head

High School Musical was my jam and still remains my jam, the songs are all ingrained deeply into my soul, I’m not even exaggerating. Obviously I had to choose something from it and I decided on this quote as not only is it iconic, it’s pretty funny if you think of it literally instead of how it’s supposed to be perceived a.k.a. in a figurative way.

So I took it literally. 

I wanted to somehow show game so I used a retro TV, partly for the aesthetic (I’ll be honest) and also well High School Musical is a nostalgic movie for us millennial kids, choosing an older, more vintage TV fits that sentimental charm. 

Naturally, next I put David’s worrying head peering out of the TV, creating this bizarre but amusing look.

The circle behind the TV relates to the ‘world’ in the ‘game’, and I added clouds to make it seem like an alternate universe from the negative white space which portrays the plain blank space of a world. Though after looking at it for a while, the clouds didn’t really look united with the entire idea, probably because the other elements are realistic images. Hence I swapped the clouds to real clouds and yay it fit better! By removing the gradient halftone from the circle and using a solid black tone, it enhances the clouds more.

Lastly I added some finishing touches around the circle, creating this glitchy effect, the sudden distorted circle silhouette building more visual interest in the piece. Just to add more humorous fun, clipart-ish pointing hands were tossed in at the bottom corner at the head, suggesting ‘Get inside! the TV!’

And there we have it!

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‘We survived, but we’re dead!’ – The Incredibles, 2004

SURVIVED: Life, nature, rising, hands outstretched, lifeline
DEAD: Skulls, bones, spider lily, black negative space

Another memorable quote from childhood movie that I endearingly love. The sequel’s coming next year, can’t wait!! Okay back to topic, I personally like this quote by Dash a lot, it’s a paradox in just 5 words and with proper context it makes sense. Taking the darker and edgier route (being a fan of those, I’ll admit), I turned this children animated film’s quote into something more serious and pragmatic. Here are 2 designs that I liked.

A human heart to symbolise a ‘life’ but it was too simple and just having a singular limp heart makes it look lifeless, so by adding plants sprouting from it, it simulates growth and in turn being alive.

The flowers that lay on the end of the dead leafless branches may look like they show ‘Life’ as well however those aren’t just any kind of flora. They’re spider lilies, well known as being the ‘Flower of Death’, a subtle hidden contradiction! There are goat skulls faded into the background for added grim effect.

Overall the negative space is mostly dark with a hint of gradient, and there’re are varying degrees of density, creating depth. The focus being the heart, followed by the flowers which are indicated naturally through the whiteness.

So the next design:

I attempted a humorous approach for this alternate design, while retaining some form of ‘dark’ aesthetics so it doesn’t become too light hearted.

First of all, I wanted to contrast ‘survival’ and ‘dead’ with the use of hands, but one’s skeletal and the other’s a pair of hands that are very much alive. The ‘alive’ hands are stretched upwards to show the will to survive, which goes against the skeletal ‘dead’ hands that are just spread around in the background as a subtler undertone.

This was an earlier draft that I worked away from as I felt like there should be a more impactful way to portray ‘alive’ but ‘dead’.

The added wolf skull personifies death, but the added human eyes gives it the opposite feeling, as they say ‘eyes are the windows to your soul’. It also adds a slightly comical effect. The additional heartbeat was placed behind the skull to show ‘survival’, as the line isn’t flat and the heart is still keeping it alive.

Here’s the finished composition! I played around with other alignments and positions but figured the central focus works the best as the circle really brings visual interest immediately as the viewer’s eyes land on it. The upwards flow enhances that through the guidance of the dense skeletal hands stretching to the human hands holding the skull. I’m pretty satisfied with how it turned out, as it looks abstract but not too overly abstract so you can vaguely guess its context. It didn’t end up too serious or ’emo’ either, it has its own subtle sense of humour.

This ended up being my chosen final composition to be silkscreen printed!

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‘I’ve got red in my ledger.’ – The Avengers, 2012

RED: Rose, Blood, Human, Hand
LEDGER: List, Book
WIPE IT OUT: Fire, Death, Cut/Separation

This quote was interesting to me as Black Widow did not mean the literal red colour staining her supposed ledger. Being an assassin, she’s committed countless heartless and brutal acts in her life, and that’s what the red actually refers to – the blood on her hands. She wishes to have a clean slate in life, discarding that part of her, to cut it off.

Considering the way Black Widow works as an assassin, which is charming and seductive, I felt that using roses to represent the red (a.k.a. blood) suits it. At first it was placed just along a side but it ended up being too stiff. By splitting the rose into two halves: flower and stalk + leaf, and positioning them on opposite ends also shows the ‘separation’ the quote suggests. I tried the positions out with both the rose and skeletal hands reaching at the ledger.

I decided to combine both together for the final, while adding details to touch up.

The background gradient consists of even more hands fading through to look like fire burning the ledger, but also the dead souls that haunt Black Widow.

In the end I felt that it was too cluttered and there’s a lack of focus, which defeats the point.

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‘Your only limit is your – Ratatouille, 2007

LIMIT: Thorns, Cage, Rope, Locks
SOUL: Flowers, Wings, Galaxy, Stars

An inspirational quote by another of my favourite childhood movies! Thinking about the quote, I broke it into keywords again. Limits makes me think of being caged, unable to get freedom but able to see what lies outside of the cage. Whereas for soul, it is something intangible but supposedly beautiful and spirited – something that is meant to be free to wander.

The bird cage conveys the meaning of being stuck and trapped, limiting one from doing as it pleases. The additional rope wrapped around just strengthens the feeling of being bound to one spot.

Soaring, flying, being free is all depicted by the idea of wings so by positioning the wings ‘escaping’ the cage it shows that by reaching out you are able to attain so much, like the galaxy that’s in the shape of the wing. The flowers are meant to be stars but these are amaryllis flowers, which are also the flower of free-spirit, adding to the expression. The eyes in the cage are piled up, personifying oneself looking outside your own limits.

By combining both of these ideas, I have my final composition for this quote! I left negative white space on the left to balance out the activity on the right. What strikes first would be the galaxy-wing since it’s well contrasted by the white space, which is good as that shows the ‘soul’ part of the quote.

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SILKSCREENING PROCESS
That’s all for development, now onto actually making the silkscreen and prints! I’ve never done it before so it was pretty exciting but also low key nerve-wracking.

Firstly, we had to print out our selected design onto 2 pieces of transparency, in case 1 piece isn’t enough for the design to print clearly. This was the easiest part…:’)

We were given screens to use but before we could do anything, it had to be thoroughly cleaned to prevent any leftover old residue affecting our process. After washing and ensuring the screen was completely dry, emulsion had to be applied onto both sides. Okay. Things are getting a little tougher and messier. This is why I prefer digital mediums…

It was really tricky to apply even pressure to fully and neatly coat the surfaces, any excess emulsion in the tray tends to drip all over and then you will have to scoop it away quickly and if you mess that up, you just end up being stuck in that cycle. Firsthand experience, wasn’t fun, nope. When the emulsion coating is done, it’s placed in the drying rack machine to dry. More waiting! I realised silkscreening has a lot of waiting.

You then have to stick your transparency onto the screen and put in inside the UV machine that transfers the design onto the emulsion.

Sadly, for some unknown reason my batch of people had to redo as our designs did not manage to transfer. So redo we did.

Anyway! When that’s done, we had to clean off the emulsion with either washing with barehands or the jet gun – the jet gun was the more efficient option, though using it too much causes details to wear off.

Voila!
Now’s ink printing time! It looks easy but man, it’s a lie. After numerous test prints on newsprint paper, I had a rough idea of how much pressure and control to do for my design to be printed decently. The tests on newsprint turned out good.

At least that’s what I thought. I knew printing on the tote material required more pressure as it was a thicker material, but I kept applying either too much or too little pressure. The prints were mostly too dark and details were lost, which was disappointing. But out of all the printed totes, this turned out the best, being clean and it’s not as dark as the rest.

And that’s the end of Forrest Gump project! This was a long one and I learnt quite a lot! I’m glad I had the chance to give silkscreening a go, even thought it was a slightly rocky process for me. I’ve definitely learnt that having a slightly more complex or intricate design, it’s way tougher to print it practically as you will usually end up losing details. It might look nice digitally, but without experienced hands it isn’t easy to replicate the exact look onto paper or a tote.

Would give silkscreen another try for sure!