Music-related brief pt. 3

This song is about bringing people together

I'm basing it on the unused thumbnails of the building idea I had for the first song I did.

some other briefs

Spirit of Soho:
http://sohocreate.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/DetailedBriefSpiritofSoho2016.pdf

Location 1: Finish TV studio
27-grid film/animation
this is nice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvC2Du-lK7M

Display Wizard:
https://www.displaywizard.co.uk/graphic-design-student-competition
deadline 1st may 2016

https://www.orionbooks.co.uk/Competitions/Orion-Creative-Competition/Orion-Student-Art-and-Design-Competition-Introduction.page

Music-related brief pt.2

After reading the lyrics to my next song of choice, I wanted to play on both the title of the song and the line 'Don't make me wait forever'.

This one shows the singer waiting forever - as he waits longer and longer the heart on his cap disappears.

This one plays on the title of the song - the singer is escaping into the psychedelia of the music in order to remain blissfully ignorant.

A music-related brief

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/max-richters-sleep-the-longest-continuous-piece-of-music-broadcast-by-the-bbc-10502454.html

I read this article before tackling the artwork since the composer of Sleep talks about the piece and his ideas behind it.

  

I thumb nailed some ideas which I felt represented the song - I liked the idea of the song carrying you into slumber so tried to go for a very relaxed composition of the floating man, keeping in mind Loomis' theories of line in composition: 

I ended up with a really weird gouache painting which I like aesthetically but I don't feel like it fits the calmness of the song that well. 

I went to another composition because of the what the composer said in the article above: 

-'At heart its about engaging with fewer objects in a more extended and deliberate way'.

-'That's what I've sought to do with Sleep: make a single object that can function like a landscape for the listener to inhabit while sleeping'.

I liked this idea of a more minimal composition that incorporates his idea of the song being a landscape:

The concept of the song taking you to slumber still holds true in a much more effective and successful way. I also think the image is much more 'me'

Clockwork update

Very happy I decided to not call this project finished. Just whipped this up, and while I'm still not entirely convinced by it, it highlights the typographic problems with the previous design which needed sorting.

I think this design has much better contrast, particularly on the front cover, but I need to really tighten up the musical notes to a more complete state until I can make a better comparison. I also included minimal amounts of texture from the screen prints, but copying those over more efficiently is a bit troublesome due to difficulties with their transparencies.

A Clockwork Orange screen printed

I screen printed the cover design today and, remembering my experience of screen printing the Grimes poster I tried extra hard to get the registration perfect where the text overlapped two different colours. The registration ended up being pretty perfect for a lot of the prints which I was extremely pleased with. Also, it seems like a trivial detail, but I realised that pushing the squeegee back for the flood coat at the same angle which you pull it (rather than reversing it) keeps the squeegee cleaner and makes for a much tidier process.

Anyway, after all that, I've decided that screen printing and scanning doesn't produce an aesthetic that great for a printed book cover. I think the texture is a bit too garish and although the text is as legible as it can get, I still don't think it's good enough for market. In retrospect I probably should've screen printed at a much larger scale and then shrunk the image. I'll try and incorporate some of this texture into the digital version.

A Clockwork Orange development

Did a quick rough with the Penguin template and referencing Alex's love of music and how it is used against him in the scene. Although the main view of the composition is of the front cover, I'm trying to see how the design can be extended to the back, so that it doesn't seem like an afterthought with a blurb slapped on

I refined the drawing with a brush pen and then added some texture which looks pretty cool - I would like to get some authentic texture in there so I think I'll screen print it for fun and see what happens. I continued on with the design without using the musical notes and ended up with this:

But I'm looking at the rough with musical notes now and actually really like it. I think that it helps cement a stronger concept. I'll screen print this design, but might not call the project finished just yet.

A Clockwork Orange

I went to Waterstones recently and saw the nature of the illustrated book covers they have - there is now more elaborate illustration on book covers than I remember being a while ago. I particularly like the design for 'The Bees' (the hexagons are shiny in person) and 'The 100 year old man..." for its ambition in consuming the whole cover in illustraton.

I re-read A Clockwork Orange and did some thumb nailing. I was really into the idea of making a design that showed Alex and his three droogs. I feel like the movie version's iconic nature makes this an incredibly difficult task, but I produced silhouettes based on the description given in the book and the weapons they are said to hold.

Anyway, after I thought they didn't have much power in themselves, I remembered Owen Freeman did some cool designs for William Burroughs' books. And this was when I realized that I didn't have to make a purely symbolic cover, but one more representational. I quickly thumb nailed the scene where Alex is strapped to the chair with his eyes peeled open and began to develop the image

I like where it could go if refined. It's pretty scary, which I think is appropriate since the book can be intensely disturbing at times.

War Horse finals

Having gotten advice from Patrick for the interior illustrations and Matt for the binding, I've made numerous changes to each of the images and think I can call them final now.

I mocked the book cover up on a template several times towards the end in order to get a better idea of what needed tweaking. This was a really useful thing to do before I was able to call it finished.

Overall, I'm really pleased with what I've produced for this brief. Even though the process was frustrating, what with all the times I made myself start over, I think it was definitely worth it. I feel like I've really pushed my skills within an area of illustration that I'm interested in and have gotten good results. 

War Horse binding

Some bindings from the FS website which I find particularly inspiring:

I want my design to be two colours + cloth binding colour as I feel that this colour limitation offers sufficient colour information to make a striking design, and the ones on the Folio Society website which use this scheme are among my favourites:

 

I want to avoid using barbed wire as a motif on the binding as I feel it is obvious and cliched, instead opting for the dead trees of No Man's Land

I developed the thumb nail of the horse's head and trees but felt that it wasn't working very well:

I also feel like the composition isn't subtle enough. I've tried a more subdued composition that isn't so 'in your face':

 

I really like this idea and will keep working at it

War Horse image 3

Chapter 14: "I bent

down to nuzzle him, pushing at his neck in a frantic effort to make him move, to make him wake up"

This is the final image for War Horse. I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out, especially as I think the composition is more ambitious than what I usually attempt to create. Looking at the small version online though, I think it might benefit from more open space, so may remove the bottom right bush.

With this complete, now I just need to make the binding.

Thumbnails:

I was originally going to go with a more centralised composition with a dead tree to really home in on the fact that Topthorn is dead, but I re-read the passage and realised that I had completely overlooked various key things about the scene, such as the fact that they are on a hill with a river and grass while the German soldiers are relaxing out of uniform.

War Horse image 2

Chapter 3: …by the time war was declared that summer Albert was riding me out to the sheep each morning and almost every evening after his work.

I think this is going quite well. Now that I have two images from the set to look at with the colour scheme, I feel a lot more confident about my decision to start over and think I can definitely make the deadline.

daryl cunningham

War Horse development

I continued with the aesthetic that I produced last semester, but ended up with a really broken and uninteresting image. I re-drew it zoomed in and with larger shapes to tidy the composition, but it wasn't working. The zoomed in composition also meant it didn't work with the previous image anymore.

I'm starting from scratch which is risky when the deadline is only a couple weeks away but I'll just push whatever drawing and compositional skills I have to make the image work. This is already going a lot better anyway:

I'm being a lot more strict about the amount of major shapes and the 5-colour scheme.