28th October Tutorial

Alex had a few suggestions to take my work further:

Print some of the photos from the foil cave A3 size perhaps and print on top of them

Could use pigment through a clear screen with clear medium to create the cloud - like backgrounds which I could print more graphic or linear images on top of

Could use white to mix pigment with to keep the bright colour

Foil should be fine on top of or under pigment as long as pigment is fixed before putting foil on top

Reactives might produce good colour but have poor reproducibility

Draw some electrical objects; I had said I might do this with the OHPs themselves as they are quite sci-fi looking, so think about what I could draw

Make sure I have a variety of images, some busy, some quiet, some large, some small scale

For tech file, need notes next to actual fabric samples and photoshop designs, focus on effects I like or new ones used, how things are fixed

Try and narrow down a context for final designs - cushion, wall hanging, tea towel, furniture cover? I think something found in the kitchen might be good because of the shiny look and reflective nature of taps, ovens etc. though equally  it might be interesting to subvert this idea and bring shine to the livingroom

Can have a mix of photoshop and fabric samples for final pieces, 8-10 things including context images

25th Oct 'Foil Cave' and OHP experiments

To get some more interesting images and backgrounds to work with, I used 2 OHPs to combine some of my acetate images with objects. I feel like they're starting to work well, as the colours are more TRON-like and there is a range of textures present.

 

 

I like that the solid shapes of the floppy disc (left) and lace stencil (right) have been 'filled' with other marks or drawings, and the images are quite graphic with the bold black lines.

I also draped the OHP with foil to create a dark cave, which was then lit with LEDs and laser finger rings to encourage reflection and interesting light effects. I then photographed this and added shadows or highlights using Picasa. The folds in the shiny foil create crisp lines which contrast well with the diffuse light patterns. I started to add in objects as well; the circle in the bottom right image is from the inside of a floppy disc.

 

 

 

 

I also cropped small sections of the images to create backgrounds that I can use for photoshop designs. I can layer lighter or darker brushes on top as appropriate to get the right feel. Some of them may look better as they are, but I think it's worth doing a few experiments to find out.

 



 



 

Thursday 24th October Careers Advice Lecture

Takeaway points from this lecture:

It's never too early to network or apply for placements. Make a linkedin.com profile and a CV.

Networking just means informal fact finding; getting people's contact details, asking them for their experiences, advice on presentation, usepful people to know and vital events and asking about work placements or short term project work. This may or may not lead to a job.

When meeting someone, SHINE, C!:

Smile

Handshake

I contact

Name

Enthusiasm

Contact Details!

There are many ways to find info about careers, networking, placements and jobs:

HUB Careers service (open easter and summer and can be used up to 3 years from graduation)

Craft Centre Northern Quarter artists

www.prospects.ac.uk

www.ucreative.ac.uk

www.arts.ac.uk/student/careers

www.skillset.org

www.chb.com

www.csd.org.uk

www.texi.org

www.interiortextiles.com

www.designdirectory.co.uk

www.artsthread.com

www.jotta.com

www.ctdg.org.uk

www.machestercommunitycentral.org

www.creativeindustriestrafford.org

www.creativetimes.co.uk

www.meetup.com

If wanting to go freelance:

www.thedesigntrust.co.uk

www.nesta.org.uk

www.mihmentoring.com

flyingstartonline

www.innospace.co.uk

www.artdes.mmu.ac.uk/designlab

Things employers will look for: COMPETENCE

Commercial approach - idea of costs, pricing etc. 

Organisation of an event or group of people

Masterclass attndance

Passion for design, involvement in arts scene

Exhibitions, competitions entered

Team working skills

Experience - placements, internships, residencies

Negotiating and influencing skills

Community work

Extracurricular projects, work, hobbies

Print designers who work like me

I had a look back through some of my books looking for designers who work in a similar way to me. It's reassuring to know there are still people screen printing and not just doing digital design. Also I tried to find people who work with lots of layers not just the same design in repeat.

Anne Jochum's 'Flowers Fly' combines hand
drawn and digital techniques for
wallpaper, home decor and other designs

Ella Doran 'Disco Blue' 1990s made
by digitally manipulating photographs. I
could do a similar thing with my OHP photos

Arthur David uses digitally manipulated
drawing, painting and graphic design.

Jessica Gonacha 'Leaves of Blue'. She freelances making
wallpaper, prints on fabric, illustration and more.

Maija Louekari assemblage of geometric shapes

Hanna Werning left: Spring/Summer 2007 Layered Designs

These two designs are achieved using techniques I will have learned by the time I finish this unit:

Laura Mackay 'Blue Devoré' made by burning
out a pattern that creates a contrast in texture

Suzanne Silk uses foiling to bring out this image of a
crane on a multi layered silk organza kimono

The remaining designers work with screen print in some way.

Panayioto Panayiotou 'Lipstick and Hairdryer
Ray Gun Fabric' hand screen printed
design on cotton fabric 1950s inspired

Saro Syväluoma 'Turquoise Forest' screen printed on 100% linen

James Pegg 2008 hand screen-printed sample 

Publisher Textiles. Their motifs are built up with layers
of dye printed onto a prime artist's canvas. 

Eley and Kishimoto 'Birdy' 2003 ? screen print ?
doesn't seem digital as shapes are irregular

Further Photoshop Experiments

In order to produce a wider range of paper samples I converted more of my marks and drawings into photoshop brushes and added darker colours to my palette. Below are the initial results of taking my designs to a more 'TRON' place. 

This image is quite traditionally 'pretty'
but the darker colours give it an edge. 

I focussed on the 'battle' element of TRON, with tank-like shapes (taken from lace) tread mark-like shapes (from my summer project paper cut of a brick wall) and a population of shapes resembling carriers from TRON (stencilled from lace) advancing in different directions. By layering the 'tank' shapes I helped to create a 3D effect.

I tried to depict a sense of movement here, by combining sketchy pencil
marks and more graphic, clean-edged ones drawn with pen. The colours are vivid,
representing the busiest section of 'The Game Has Changed'

Tutorial Monday 21st October

This week we discussed what we would like to produce towards the end of the project. I would like to continue with photoshop designs, but also get into the print room to do some screen printing work. Alex agreed that foiling would be appropriate for the Daft Punk theme, and suggested printing a matt surface onto shiny fabric to get the opposite effect as well as trying to use the rough side of printer acetate to pigment print on. As there is a month left, he said it's time to start printing, so I have prepared the following designs on acetate to put onto screen:

 

I tried to include a range of marks, with hard and soft edges, in groups or as single images so that there will be enough to make a variety of combinations.

To make some more interesting marks and images, I plan to continue taking photographs using the OHP and incorporating my sourced reflective materials and lights. Also I will use a black fabric piece I previously knitted as a background for photos, as it draws in the hand-made feel that encompasses lace and the dark colours of TRON, along with texture and a hint of a domestic interior. Using shiny thread in knitting could provide another source of reflection, and I could try weaving it into the black knitted piece.

The two initial designs I did in photoshop were too light in colour, and although they do capture the mood of the soft undertones at the beginning of 'the game has changed' (which to me echo the start of Schubert's unfinished Symphony) they don't convey the overall feel of the piece, or of TRON. The finished one below could still be incorporated as part of a darker collection though, in order to show the range of the music. Also in Photoshop Image, Adjustments, Levels can be used to darken an existing image, or Image, Adjustments, Invert, or Hue/Sat to also alter the colour.

CP - Contents - At Home, Friday 18th Oct

I enjoyed this week's topic, looking at homes, clutter and storage, especially the contrast between historical intentional 'clutter' which really was more just a busy aesthetic to show off your possessions and the modern sense of the word where unused items sit in a mess, unordered and in the way of their owners.

Now, because goods are cheaper and accessible to most, having a lot of stuff is not seen as a good thing. So we hide it away to achieve modern slick lines with less visual distraction. In other words storage is seen as a solution for this clutter problem, instead of buying less. Objects also become representative of our personalities; there is so much choice that we can now group and define people by their consumer choices.

The question brought up by Alison Slater during the lecture of 'what would happen if you were reconstructed according to your facebook information' was a scary one; it demonstrated that ultimately, stuff whether real or virtual cannot ever really describe a person.

I am aware that I have become more involved with trends since beginning my degree, trying to keep up with others' opinions of what should be made and bought. I never used to care that much, buying things I happened across because I liked them, and bought into the concept of the market less. It makes me wary of how much I will need to adapt my designs to fit into the jobs market, but it might be a necessary evil and I do realise that if you shop in a mainstream shop you're already part of the system whether you agree with it or not.

This leads on to the question 'is designing more stuff really ethical?'; I suppose the answer should be no. However, there is definitely a link between ones' surroundings and psychological well-being, and given that people in general are in a constant state of flux in terms of emotion and circumstances there is an argument that simply changing small aspects of design could make you feel better. The idea of changeable design could be a way around this in the future; a high tech fabric could act like an etch-a-sketch, where you could wipe away an old design and replace it, with special effects giving the illusion of texture. This would never replace the traditional real feel of fabric but with products such as wallpaper this might not be as important. One problem is that with certain things, just having an object feels better; books and dvds are things I would never part with. Storing them digitally just doesn't work for me. So perhaps it is the idea of ownership and accumulation that needs to change; libraries, swap shops, charity and recycling are ways around this. But again this comes back to the question of what happens to pure creativity if you always start with someone else's design and adapt it slightly? To find a compromise we could look at environmentally sound ways of production, to enable new ideas to be generated and made into products without the worry of adding to the pile.

Meanwhile, I could probably do with some more storage...

Colour work

Now that I had some interesting shapes to work with, I decided to try working in colour. First I interpreted my OHP light photographs using coloured pencils, extracting the colours and attempting to mimic the naturally fuzzy texture of the light.

Colours altered to be more blue

 

I then looked at my pen drawings, and tried using the pencil effect to make it look as if the shapes were moving, again using the colours from the OHP light photographs. Blending colours using small pen strokes also gives the images some energy, and the bold contrasts are in keeping with the TRON colour work.

From Design Taxi's website, this series of pieces by 1010 called 'Abyss' shows a similar use of colour and shape to produce an illusion of depth:

I later found this work entitled 'Forever Bicycles' by Ai Weiwei on Colossal's website, which also uses repetition of shapes to emphasise their 3D nature and makes them seem as if they are moving:

Tutorial 14th October

My OHP 'drawings' have been working really well so I'm going to continue using them. Alex suggested some good ways to develop these ideas further:

• re-projecting the projected images onto foil or reflective material
• look at where I'm projecting these shapes - corners, tables, interiors
• use colour, and keep a good mix of colour - light, dark, a variety
• investigate other 80s technology - eg. casette tapes on the OHP 
• use an old style camera to get grainy images - disposable camera?
• use 2 OHPs to project 2 different colours onto the wall, use objects to make weird shadows, in between lens and wall, as well as between lens and OHP bed
• digitally project the images from the 1st OHP experiment onto a wall and combine with other drawings or objects
• later on illustrator try out the mesh function, to mimic the MCP net-like TRON drawing
• use OHP photos with accidental areas of interest (including the doors or light from outside the base room) for future compositions
• focus on making content 100% mine - use drawings not just directly use lace
• can try the 'filter' then 'find edges' function on photoshop
• try motion player on photoshop: 'filter' then 'blur' or 'motion blur' to get a movement effect
• increase saturation on 'northern light' - like OHP images
• try moving the camera as I'm taking a photo

Thinking about shiny materials I could make wire 'drawings' to place on the OHP so get more definite linear shapes. Also further to a conversation about Christmas stock being in the shops too early, I thought that christmas lights and tinsel could create some interesting light effects. I also have some hand-crocheted decorations which I could project so that the work is mine.

I had a quick look on amazon and found some reflective tape, a foil emergency blanket, blue LED adhesive strips and some 'laser rings' which could make some nice marks when moved. They should arrive next week so I can take some more photos.

Thinking about light reminded me of a Danish-trained designer called Astrid Krogh whose work I first came across during a project on flowers. She uses neon tubes to represent fairly traditional patterns and demonstrate the changing appearance of textiles in different light. A commission for the Danish Government, which she humorously titled 'Polytics' captured this effect well.

Alex suggested looking at Rupert Newman, who used to focus on textile production but has become more of an installation artist, though his projections are similar to his original textile designs. Also he plays with light on a very large scale, covering buildings and walls. I really love the movement and colour in his work, with the more angular work being particularly relevant for my project.

Distorted projection emphasises the 3D nature of the building

although 2D, by using angles and nets Newman makes this drawing stand out and seem 3D

I like the way existing features are accentuated; it makes it feel as if the light installation could be permanent

While looking at Newman's work I came across Jane Bowler's fashion pieces. Again, angular in nature they form 3D armour-like shapes and colour is used sparingly to contrast with the strong neutral tones.

I like the asymmetry and futuristic feel with broken up colour

The shine coming off the clothes emphasises their 3D form; by using reflective materials I could recreate this 3D look in a 2D image

The shape of the print used here gives the illusion of movement, with the colour in the top encouraging you to keep looking at different parts of the print

Syndicut boxers' designers Alice Begg and Louis Hudson caught my eye with their bold use of colour and angular geometric pattern they fit in well with the idea of movement, line and light for my project.

 Alice Begg

  Louis Hudson

Finally, Myriam Dion makes some amazing embroidery-like paper cuts, which seem as it they are moving, as if they were an optical illusion or magic eye picture. The finished result is not only visually attractive but doesn't detract from the original material; still recognisable as a newspaper sheet, the paper is intact, just with pieces highlighted in a directional way and subtly manipulated into art.

TRON 1982

To go back to the source and see a different use of colour in the TRON franchise, I watched the original fillm which inspired TRON Legacy and led to Daft Punk's soundtrack.

The graphics were revolutionary at the time and some are still attractive; many of the generated sequences resemble nets or models from today.

There were several things I noticed visually;

the computer code was a bright blue, forming horizontal lines

there are lots of shiny, reflective surfaces in the real world sequences which create mirror image effects

when characters are emotional - eg. pain, love the colour of their suits intensifies and brightens

in the arcade the neon signs leave an outline when they are off, and almost blinding filled shapes when on

they mix clean cut lines with fuzzy texture to indicate movement

kaleidoscopic effects are used, and create almost lace-like electronic patterns

Neon accents. Colour hand painted onto film after shooting

Lace-like initial drawings of the I/O Port

These traits could be used in my work; these elements could dictate materials used (foil is reflective, flock is fuzzy) composition (linear, kaleidoscopic) types of image used (outlines, filled shapes) and when stitches in the lace are closer together or overlapping, the colour could be brighter.

Also, there is very little music in the film, sound effects dominate which is unusual now. Daft Punk's music fills in the texture and enhances what you see on screen.

In this fight scene the light emanating from one of the characters looks like the multiple shadow effects I achieved using the OHP:

I could make a few mock-ups of possible screen print designs with overlapping, colourful shapes  on photoshop to see if they look good, and to play around with composition and scale.

I also noticed a similarity between early drawings of a character's costume and the OHP-projected drawings of the negative space in the lace; both are linear, black and white, and extremely detailed.

Original part of the lace

Drawing of negative space

These similarities seem strange as lace and daft punk seem like they are totally different to one another, however by combining the bold sense of colour from tron and delicacy of lace, and  by visually interpreting the repetitive rhythm and contrasting textures of daft punk I should create some interesting results.