Naked Lunch: Product, range, distribution

To unify the 'campaign' for Naked Lunch, I thought it would be a good idea to take some inspiration from the way the book was written - it is mostly in the 'cut-up' technique, making it very disjointed and hard to follow, so I decided to cut-up the initial nude I did (first image) and re-arrange it into different images:

 

The second image is a portrait of Burroughs whose experiences are in the book, the third is a centipede to represent the 'black meat' drug in the book which is made from its flesh, the last image is an abstraction of heroin use. I feel like with these four images I cover most of the themes of the book.

Similarly for the bookmark, I've taken brush marks from the original image to make a vertical design. This has proven to be a very economical but interesting approach to designing a range of imagery. 

The Bell Jar: screen print

I screen printed the Bell Jar posters today, and while I couldn't quite mix the right colours (still need practice), I think it makes for a striking poster.

I also thought it might look cool and vintage-y by changing the paper to off-white on Photoshop.
I used the arm to pull the squeegee but still had a few problems with pressure in the corners. Even though I usually get annoyed by these errors, I found myself not minding them so much with this print.

I think it's good that I'm trying to use these book cover briefs to beef up my portfolio by doing similar things with each cover, but then also doing something unique per book - animated trailer for Lolita and screen print for The Bell Jar.

The Bell Jar: Product, range, distribution

I've updated the front cover slightly, to increase the size of the type and soften the dark glow around the shadow letters.

I've produced a bookmark and a poster to start the range. I'm liking taking a typographic approach to making these products and think that there is a lot of conceptual potential - The overbearing nature of the city is a key theme of the novel and I think the height of the type communicates this. The suffocating nature of the protagonist's stress is communicated through the claustrophobic treatment of type and figure on the poster.

I thought the typography had strong potential to be displayed large scale as a window decal too, so played around with that idea on a store front:

I'm most pleased with this design:

The use of figure and type communicating isolation within the book.

War Horse re-done

I have finished refining all my War Horse images and re-designed the binding design. They are much stronger images now and I am a lot more confident about their place in my portfolio. It's frustrating that I submitted what I did to the competition, only to come out with these a couple of months later. At least now I know that I'm capable of making images to a much higher standard than I thought, with a process that I feel much more comfortable doing.

War Horse 1 + 2 updated

I think what I am beginning to learn from doing these is some semblance of an 'illustrative process', which is allowing me to re-create and refine in a relatively short amount of time thanks to the compositions and colours already being mapped out for me. 

Approaching things purely digitally simply doesn't work for me for more sustained pieces of illustration. More life is imbued in the images when I've worked them traditionally and built on top of that with the computer.

Very upset I didn't realise this in time to submit these images for the Folio Society competition, but encouraging for next year's competition.

Updating War Horse

Just starting to update the illustrations for War Horse and the difference is already insane. While I'm being less expressive with the form of the horse, I think that perhaps this was the more appropriate way to go in the first place, simply due to the nature of my work. 

The original images were purely digital due to the time constraints I felt were present in making the deadline; but now that I've had time to consider the drawing in pencil more and then go over in brush pen things are looking a lot more refined.

I'm looking forward to finishing this first image and then tackling the rest as this has been an encouraging start.

Lolita: Product, range, distribution

As part of expanding upon the book covers I've produced and getting more of a sense of product, range and distribution, I've developed a very simple animated sting to promote Lolita, using the imagery already produced for the book jacket

Lolita Book Trailer from Emanuel Santos on Vimeo.

Pretty pleased with how this has turned out. Not sure whether it will be appropriate for all the book covers I have done, but may be worth experimenting with short animations further for things like e-books.

A poster for the book (18"x24") that could be featured in and out of stores to promote the edition. The quote is taken from the opening of the book.

Re-appropriating design into a bookmark.

Re-appropriating the poster design into a point of sale design. I really like how this has turned out, and would be interested in doing one for the other books. It's obvious that this design template wouldn't necessarily work for the others which makes it a much more interesting challenge figuring out what would work best for each of them. I imagine something tall for The Bell Jar would be quite striking.

Animation for books

Jungle Book publishing teaser from Robert Hunter on Vimeo.

I love Robert Hunter's work and this animated teaser of his for the Jungle Book is simple, but really nice as a promotional item for the book. I want to incorporate animation for at least one of my book cover briefs, even if its just re-appropriating what's on the cover, rather than making a whole set of new imagery

17/3/16 Tutorial

From this tutorial, I'm adding a new brief to 603 which is based on the book covers I've been doing for PPP:

Having done these, it was advised that I think about product, range and distribution for each of them rather than just doing one and moving onto the next. I had already thought about doing an animated trailer for Lolita at some point, but thought that my time would be better spent working on the rest of  my briefs. This body of work will be labelled as OUIL603 Brief 7

Once I complete these (spending two days max per book), I should return to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and evaluate what could be done differently with that brief.

I also am planning on re-visiting War Horse as I'm not very pleased with how the inner illustrations turned out in retrospect. I need to approach the illustrations with more consistency in mind, as well as within my other projects.

If I can dish out two more illustrations for Secret 7" even it's past the deadline, it will make for a nice amount to go on a portfolio spread, and match the format that I could potentially present my gig posters at.

Resolve and present appropriately all the briefs by the end of Easter so that I can spend the last weeks of the course resolving the big kahuna and make something really far out.

Update 6/5/2016: The Bell Jar, Lolita and Naked Lunch are now split into their own briefs - SB7, 8 and 9 respectively.

Cubular planets + Peer review

Mercury, Mars, Neptune and Uranus to join Venus

At the peer review, people seemed to like the fact that my project had evolved quite far beyond what was originally proposed.
I came to the peer review with my cubular planets and suggested that I could actually construct painted cubes to represent the planets out of plexiglass, and could potentially light them up from within. It was brought up however that perhaps not all planets would benefit from being lit up like this, which would then lead to the question of what the point of plexiglass was.
If I were to go through with this, then a sensible thing to do would be construct each planet out of relevant materials, but then this obviously presents problems when constructing the gas giants.

I was made aware of Cycle the Solar System, a cycle route from York to Selby that has a scale model of the solar system and it was suggested that I could begin to think of my project has something a bit more experiential - such as using layers of plexiglass to show the planets of the solar system, alongside some information about them on each sheet (so it still maintains the educational aspect). This can then be considered alongside a concertina book if I still want to make one (which I do).

I need to pay close attention to the context of the my product and why I approach making parts of it the way I do.

In terms of general body of work, I need to begin to think about how I group projects together so that it works as a coherent body of work. This is particularly with my posters and book covers which vary quite radically. I also need to put the same consideration into mixing colours for screen print as I do when working on screen.

Electric Sheep front cover

I began by doing a bit of research into the Sci-fi covers that you can find in Waterstones alongside some Folio society covers just for a bit more variety.

While Sci-fi covers are historically famous for having hyper realistic painterly imagery (as seen in those for the SF Masterworks series), I have also noticed a developing trend for some titles to have more graphic imagery as well. This is most suited to the way I work so is what I plan on taking inspiration from.

Alongside designing front covers, I also considered what the Voigt-Kampf empathy test used in the novel looked like. I went through quite a lot of options for the front cover but eventually decided to put the focus on the cult from the book called 'Mercerism', which has its followers continuously fuse with a man called Mercer while he climbs a hill for eternity.

I found this article which has various novel series grouped by similar book jackets. I haven't read any other books by Dick, but I like the potential of keeping a series open, so I think having a simple band for the text is a good idea. 

Anyway, I developed the image further and ended up with this:

Mocked it up to get a better idea of how it looks. Pretty pleased with it at the moment since its not like any other cover I've seen for the book, seeing how it focuses on a more abstract concept from it.

OUIL603 Studio Brief 6 - Board

Evaluation in the next post or Here

Rick Deckard:
"In the irregular light, the bounty hunter seemed a medium man, not impressive. Round face and hairless, smooth features; like a clerk in a bureaucratic office. Methodical but informal. Not demi-god in shape... overcoat."

Shutterstock complete

Shutterstock from Emanuel Santos on Vimeo.

Went to the booth with Adam today to record the lines for the video. I fiddled with the timing of the slide of thumbnails in order to sync more neatly with the sound of the music track which was taken from this site: http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/track/the-jazz-piano

Having completed this, I have now finished the brief.

I think that this has been an enjoyable brief to complete, perhaps mainly because of the screen printing aspect of it. I set out to make a series of images that were relatable to others through the nature of the story they told, but also illustrations that were quite personal to me. I think that screen printing the images was a perfect way of showing my art school story.

Once I began doing heavier research into the concepts behind the archetypal stories, I feel that my images gained more weight and I felt a lot more confident in what I was doing with them. I think that the idea of telling stories is incredibly important in every image, and surely this brief has helped me exercise that skill to apply it to other illustrations that I produce.
I think if I take the principles of image-making that I've learnt with this brief (while also keeping in mind the modernist principles I developed in COP), I can really push the intrigue of my illustrations a lot further.

Shutterstock video test

Test video from Emanuel Santos on Vimeo.

The password is password


Adam is helping out with the voice over for the video:

[Title appears: THE UNIVERSITY STORY]

ADAM: The three prints encapsulate snapshots of the familiar experience of art school.

[THE QUEST appears and develops as thumbnails]

ADAM: An applicant’s interview means our hero must quest to a new city and face treacherous weather. He is armed only with his portfolio.

[COMEDY appears and develops as thumbnails]

ADAM: An ensemble cast join our hero to a lecture, potentially hung over, bored or just inattentive.

[VOYAGE AND RETURN appears…]

ADAM: After our hero’s voyage, he returns home a graduate, but was it worth it? Has been fundamentally changed?

[COMPOSITION appears]

ADAM: Formal subdivision is used in order to achieve compositional harmony between the three prints

[Nice photo of prints pans]

[End]

Shutterstock all printed

Finally got a good set of prints of the Shutterstock images.
I originally had all 6 screens (3x2 colours) on one big screen, which was causing problems with maintaining pressure. I exposed the last two blues on a smaller screen and had absolutely no problems with printing.

Will try and stick with smaller screens next time - this has cost me a lot of paper and ink.

Now to do the 30 second video

Secret 7" - Max Richter again

It's past the deadline, but I had the idea for this image in my head and thought I might as well make it and format it in the relevant dimensions. I think it works well for the song anyway as being submerged in water is pretty relaxing, just like the song.

Printing Shutterstock

Spent the day screen printing my images for Shutterstock, but had some pretty disappointing results overall. Certain prints came out okay, but I don't feel the registration is good enough to be submitted for a D&AD brief (except for the portfolio image on white cartridge which turned out well, apart from the bleed along the bottom edge).

Some really big problems with the blue colour for the third image meant I have to postpone printing it till later.

I really liked how the prints were looking on the off white somerset so I bought some more sheets, but had more difficulty printing on it the second time round:

Lyndon said it could be due to the texture of the paper - I would like to get a complete set on the off white stock, but I'm not sure if the payoff is worth the effort and money when the prints still look quite nice on Snowden cartridge.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

This is my final brief for OUIL603, producing a cover illustration and three inner illustrations for Philip K Dick's 1968 novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?".

I've begun re-reading it and, as I did with War Horse, am taking notes of points in the novel which are interesting and may be worth illustrating:

• Ch.1, pg.13 - Sheep control panel
• Ch.2, pg.18 - J.R.'s living room (with a window outside visible)
• Ch.2, pg.24 - J.R. holding an empathy box
• Ch.3, pg.25 - Rick walking down animal row
• Ch.3, pg.27 - Rick looking at Nexus data files
• Ch.4, pg.34 - Landing on Rosen Association rooftop/seeing the owl
• Ch.5, pg.40 - Rick testing Rachel Rosen
• Ch.8, pg.68 - Rick about to leave
• Ch.8, pg.68 - Entering Polokov's apartment
• Ch.8, pg.73 - Polokov's head explodes
• Ch.9, pg.78 - Luba Luft's room
• Ch.11, pg.101 - With Luba in the museum
• Ch.11, pg.109 - Rick is given VK test
• Ch.13, pg.117 - Roy and Irmgard appear
• Ch.14, pg.121 - Roy's metal frame
• Ch.15, pg.127 - Animal row again
• Ch.15, pg.129 - Roy and Iran on elevator "...Together they moved nearer to god"
• Ch.16, pg. 141 - Rachel Rosen
• Ch.17, pg. 153 - Sitting in a car with Rachel while she smokes
• Ch. 18, pg. 161 - J.R. in tomb world
• Ch. 22, pg. 178 - Rick holding toad (draw from above?)

An interesting thing that Ben mentioned was how sci-fi takes inspiration from surrealism as well, so consider how my work can honour this.

Shutterstock all images finished

All the images are finished - now just to figure out the right colours and print, then begin thinking about making the video of my progress which will be quite challenging.

I tried several different colourscapes but am most happy with keeping it simply red and blue.

Researching

I've started collecting research into the planets of the solar system. This research is coming from the Otherworlds Exhibition, the Planets book I bought there, and various other sources from the internet I've discovered. I will eventually distill this information down into the most interesting/relevant bits to include on the material I produce.

Less representational planets

Off the back of yesterday's note taking which took me up to Saturn, I've begun to start making imagery that reflects the planets more in terms of their characteristics:

Two facts that really stood out to me were the fact that Mercury's temperature fluctuations between day and night are the most extreme of any planet. This is due to its lack of atmosphere to stop heat during the day, and therefore inability to contain it at night. I'm trying to show this with red and blue sides for day and night.

The other fact is that Venus' atmosphere of sulphuric acid clouds is so thick that it blocks out 80% of all sunlight. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to depict it quite dark and simply, with only the significant variations in ground level being visible.

I tried translating these to larger paintings, and while Venus has turned out pretty well, Mercury needs a lot of work.

I also did a "cubular" Venus. It looks pretty cool.