OUIL406 VISUAL COMMUNICATION EVALUATION

SB3 - Persons of note

PERSONS OF NOTE

>I was very excited by this brief as I have always been interested in portraiture and work with people and faces. I also like the idea of using people that have achieved something and have a story behind them, rather than doing modern day celebrities such as Kim Kardashian who I'm just embarrassed to call a celebrity. 

>With the brief being so open I'm actually a lot more worried about my end result. As I found with previous tasks when I was forced to use one method I created a far less generic result and at the same time learnt a lot more about materials. There's too much option now!

The people I initially got  were Jim Henson, Ivor Novello and Bettie Page. I then did a bit of research on each person to try and get an understanding of each person to make the right decision of who would be best for me.

>I then decided to choose Bettie Page, as I didn't know how to approach Jim Henson without just copying Sesame street characters and didn't have much of a personal interest to Ivor Novello. I also found Bettie Page's life very interesting, being a pin up model and being an evangelical christian then developing schizophrenia - I just wanted to explore further.

RESEARCH
I wanted to find out about Bettie's life in a way that wasn't through wikipedia and reading articles, so managed to find a documentary about her on Netflix. Whilst watching I took a couples of pages of notes that I could work from. The main features of her life were:

>Becoming a pin up model
>Marrying four times
>Becoming an evangelical christian
>Being schizophrenic


Although her life was interesting, I found it hard to start creating ideas as she didn't specifically achieve anything.. She's well known in being a successful pin up model and that was her achievement.. So I found myself just drawing her in different positions.

Because I was finding it hard conceptually with this brief, I decided to experiment with materials and media to see if the results were successful. I really like these bright gouache paintings, because they're playful and show character. The bold pink shows her femininity and sex appeal which she was known best for. I think I'm going to use this material further in my investigation.

>But something still isn't right I'm still struggling to do something other than copying a photograph of her it just seems like a cop out..

TUTORIAL FEEDBACK

>After the feedback I was a little more relaxed as it seems like I wasn't the only one struggling to come up with ideas that again wasn't just copying a photo of her. I need to think more about her and what her life/story was all about and try to portray that into an image.

>So I did a couple of sketches to see how I can put her story into a visual form. But with her being christian and schizophrenic I found it hard to try and show this and at the same time not be offensive. WHY IS THIS SO HARD :( So I returned to doing sexy gouache paintings of Bettie.

>Although this doesn't show much about her life, I really like this painting because of the shapes and colours. I think the pink and the blue work really well together, reminds me of femininity and masculinity which I don't think was really a conscience decision. I think I'm going to explore this style a lot more but try and add some context to it

From the previous success of the postcards brief I thought I should have another experiment with illustrator and see how that turns out. From previous briefs I have learnt to always try something new and never just stick to the same materials. Especially as my postcards showed that I have the potential to be quite good at illustrator, so I want to improve those skills further. - TAKE A RISK!

>I like the way that these illustrations came out. Again I like the colour scheme and style of work by using block colour, and there's actually a concept coming through in these ideas. Although I do think that these could be seen as a little offensive, especially with schizophrenia being such a taboo subject it's hard to try and explore.

>I then scrapped that and tried to think what I was actually going to make. So I created some roughs but was going no where!?

IM OVERTHINKING EVERYTHING
It doesn't have to be that complicated.
Stick to the main points about her.

What's working well for me? the gouache and illustrator route was good, nice colour scheme and style of work - try to embrace and focus on that then the work will create itself (kinda)

CRITICAL INCIDENT 

When playing around with illustrator, I copied the whole image then changed the opacities and placed them around the original image just to see what it would look like as I was curious. I then realised that this shows her schizophrenic side! What a great accident that was! It's not offensive like the previous and still obvious to what I want to say. Although I hate this composition. I think it would work a lot better with just the face because there's just too much going on to focus. 

I think that this is far more successful than my previous one as there's not as much going on to confuse you but makes you focus on her. Also just adding one 10% opacity layer is all that needs to be added to show the schizophrenia element. I also like the solid background colour, as I feel like that's all that is needed. The main focus is her, especially being a modal. 

After the group feedback, I was told to stick to this colour scheme (which I was already happy with, so was glad that people agreed) and to do patterns of token elements of her for my postcards and for my stamps have the same picture of her in a wedding dress but getting older.. Both these ideas really don't excite me, and if they don't excite me then they wont turn out great = fail. I think I have a case of illustrator-itis - spending too much time on illustrator without really knowing what I'm doing just churning out the same kind of thing.. I need to step away and actually THINK about what I'm doing instead of expecting it to jump out of my computer screen.

So I had a chat to Matt for some extra guidance and worked out what I was going to do..

A2 POSTER - Same as above but with two different faces - happy Bettie and a more twisted Bettie, probably screaming/angry - this enforces the idea of her mental health but not in an offensive way

>I used my face to create the facial expression that I wanted

>And put it all together

>I also tried putting the scream face on this smiley face, as I thought her smiling would work better. But the composition I felt looked better in the other image so went with that one instead. 

FINAL OUTCOME 

>I'm pretty happy with this outcome. I really like the concept behind it, as I think it's pretty clear but done in a respectful way. The two faces also line up really well so almost looks like she's turning into this demonic creature, which is kind of scary but works well. I also think it works well as a poster, because I think if it was hanging on a wall you'd want to go and look at it and work out what it was. I like the idea of it intriguing someone to go and check it out. 

POSTCARDS - Stop overthinking it. Keep it simple.

Have the same position but wearing a different outfit each time

Which position? Again keep it simple. Maybe just one hand and a shoulder? Just the back? 

I took a photo of the position I wanted her to be in 1)I didn't want to keep copying her model poses, this would be more real 2)I can make it a lot more tailored to how I want her body shape to be

>So I pentooled the face and my body and put them together to make... 

POSTCARD1!

>This postcard showing her profession 

Im glad with how this postcard turned out as you can really see how I've improved with using illustrator, using opacity and layers to create a smoother aesthetic to that of my initial Bettie ideas. This has actually helped my digital confidence as it shows how far I've come just by practicing! Although I think it may be time to use other tools instead of just pentool to create work...

For my next postcard I decided to do her as a bride and for some insane reason I thought it would be a good idea to make a lace dress.. So I found a picture of some lace and started pentooling..

AND HERE IS WHERE IT ALL WENT WRONG

After finally finishing my second postcard I go to save my work quite happily. Illustrator then crashes and force quits. So I loose everything...

...

..

After a cool down shower and a couple of deep breathes I tried to think of a solution. I saw on my desktop that I had taken a screen shot (image above) of a pretty much complete version of what I had initially done - there's hope. But I had to get rid of the bright green high lighted area which I struggled with a little, but I think I got away with it....

POSTCARD2
>After my panic attack I finally finished my postcard which I am happy with. Although the quality isn't half as good as the others I just didn't have time to redo the whole thing. It was the best thing I could do out of a bad situation. At least I have learned from this that I should ALWAYS save my work as I go along so this never happens again!!!! The only way I should see this as is a lesson for next time.
>But I really like how the lace looks in this postcard, I think that the time I spent making it really paid off and looks dainty and elegant.



>I wasn't too sure what to do for my final postcard. I knew I definitely wanted to add her religion into my work but wasn't too sure how without being offensive. So I decided just to keep it as simple as possible and just subtly add a cross in

POSTCARD3

>Although I am happy with this postcard, I feel like it's a lot more rushed than the previous two because I was behind on my mind schedule that I had thought up. But, I do like how it's subtle and doesn't need any other elements to explain what I wanted to show. As well as the colours again working well together. I also learnt my lesson from last time and found myself constantly saving my work every 5 minutes..

ANND THIS IS WHERE IT GOT WORSE

So after I had perfectly planned out everything to be finished in time for my hand in, I became incredibly ill and had not even done my stamps wooo

 

So I stayed in bed a drugged myself up and created these:

>I knew before that I wanted to create something simple - a token element of her outfit or a specific body part. But as my postcards and my poster was based on portraiture I thought id go for item of clothing. I also didn't want to image trace other people's photographs..

>But I was quite clever with this, as I realised that I could just use the base for the first bra that I made and change the colour/shape a little to create a different bra so saved me half the time! 

>I'm also pretty happy with how these turned out considering, they look dainty and cute, just like what Bettie's bras used to be like. 

OVERALL EVALUATION

Overall I am pleased with my outcomes for this project. When we were first briefed on this topic I would have never thought that I would have come up with the outcomes that I produced. It definitely shows how much I can pick up a new tool and, by practicing a lot, can really start using it to create my own style. It's really exciting to see how much I have learnt in such a little amount of time, it's so encouraging. 

I think where I fell down on in this brief is research, as I got so caught up in the digital world that I didn't spend enough time looking at Bettie herself..But yet again I had watched and took notes on a documentary of her whole life so knew everything that she did and who she was as a person. Maybe what I should have looked into more was about what others thought about her - forums, fan pages etc.

But, the brief is to create a poster, 3 postcards and 4 stamps depicting your chosen person of note and that is what I did! I stopped overthinking everything and just stick to what will work best! I think that is definitely something I will take with me to my next projects, because when I start overthinking everything my ideas just get a bit too all over the place and just rubbish. 

I also think I've done pretty well for not even being able to leave my bed for a few days but still managed to finish my stamps and blog this