Box Project: Part 3 Narrative Sequence (1st Attempt)

For this project, I was given a photograph which i had to use as a catalyst to generate a sequence of images. The photograph represents one point in time, it may be at the start, the middle or at the end of my sequence of images. I did to have to use the actual photograph in my imagery, although i had to refer to it visually and interprate it in my imagery.
The sequence had to be a minimum of six 'frames' or images. there were no restrictions in size, colour, or format of the sequence.
This was the image I was given.
The first thing that caught my eye with this image was obviously the portrait photograph of a man, and the side view of the same man. the first thought that came into my head that was the image was a Mug Shot, possibly a criminal mug shot. The information on the image, is describing the man using weights and lengths of the mans body/head.
After thinking out some ideas I decided I wanted to work in a comic style and I started looking at the work of Jhonen Vasquez.
I love his style of work, very dark with strange stick like characters which strange personalities and unusual looks. i also love the amount of detail in his imagery and his stories are fantastic, written and illustrated well.


After looking at some of Vasquez's comic imagery I started to think of a story for my piece of imagery.
I came up with a story about a robber, using the mug shot image at the end of my sequence, as if the robber was 'caught' by the police. So I started working on a character for my story. 'The Robber'.

Once I came up with a character I stated to develop the story.
Firstly I drew out my mug shot frame, in a similar style to Jhonen Vasquez's work, using sharp edges and very rounded edges in certain areas, also my character is very 'stick man' like which gives his a unique look.

To create this style, I simply drew out my images and character with thick bold pencil lines, giving a scruffy look to my work. I then scanned my images into photoshop and used the 'Levels' tool to make my the lines of my images black, giving the images a dark, quirky look.
After this I started to work on the rest of my frames.
1. Robber planning his bank break in.
2. Robber about to break into a bank. (Outside a bank, dark, torch)
3. Smashing a window?
4. Finds money, happy!
5. gets caught by police, guns.
6. Caught, Mug shot.




























After drawing out all my frames and playing about on photoshop with them, creating backgrounds and putting small bits of detail in them I started to think about boarders and how to put my 6 images together. Again looking at how Vasquez works, he uses many different boarders within his work. I first tried out a simple thick black boarder which worked well but I then tried more jagged boarder which I thought worked better with the theme of my images.

After finishing putting the piece together, I felt there was something missing. I sat with my tutor and spoke about this piece of work and we both agreed that the story I had come up with was to straight forward and obvious and I needed to do something abit different with my imagery and maybe not tell a straight forward story. So I decided to keep working on this project. After thinking for a long while I couldn not think of anything else I could do with the pieces I had already created so I decided to start this project again and take it from a different approach.

Portrait Painting

I thought I would make a page for some work I do at home in my spare time as I may possibly be able to refer back to this for my work at some point in this year.

This is a painting I did over the summer, reason being that I room had been re-decorated and I wanted something to put on my wall instead of random posters, so I decided to do this painting of me and my friends. I'm not great at drawing/painting portraits but I am very proud of this piece of work, It isn't picture perfect but I like my use of thick paint and shading. I really like this piece that I did and I hope to do some more a some point in the future.

Tim Burton

Tim Burton is my favourite film director/producer. I love his dark and random way of thinking. His films are very interesting and fun to me, I love the use of story telling and his character designs, they are very unique and inspiring.

He is mostly famous for his dark themed movies, such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissor Hands, Sleepy Hollow and many other films. One that inspires me most and many other people is The Nightmare before Christmas (Animated film). The story and character design is amazing.
Tim Burton designs most of his characters and he sketches them out on paper before taking them further.his original sketches for his characters are very rough and full of lines and messy marks, I love this way of working, as I am a very 'messy' person.

Jhonen Vasquez

I think that Jhonen Vasquez is an amazing comic illustrator/ cartoonist. I'm always attracted to strange and dark cartoons and I have never come arcoss anyone quite like Jhonen Vasquez before. I first saw a cartoon named Invader Zim at a friends house a few years back and I was inlove with the dark cartoon comedy and all the characters were very interesting and unusual.

After this I started looking into more of his work to find out that he had created a few comics over the years. (I am not a very big comic reader but if I am attracted to the art work and find characters that look interesting I am very willing to read them)
He had created comics such as Johnny the Homicidal Mainiac, Fillerbunny and Squee! All of these comics were published by Slave Labor Graphics, who have many other unsual illustrators/graphics designers who I am also interested in.

The characters Vasquez creates are mostly all slim lined, almost stick figure like which interesting head shapes and faces. His stories are usually dark and disturbing, but not disturbing enough to scare children away from his comics. Though Invader Zim was aired on Nickelodeon, after the second series the show was cancelled due to its dark tone and voilence even though the show had good ratings.

He also created an album cover for a successful band named Mindless Self Indulgence, for their album titled "IF"

My Cartoons

Over the summer, When I was bored I started to draw cartoon versions of me and my friends, I drew them out in pencil, then drew over them in thick black felt and scanned them into photoshop, I then coloured them in using photoshop. I got this technique from my summer project. I think it worked really well.

Summer Project- Sketchbook

To start my project Me and my group picked a piece of work my Michael Craig-Martin. I started to think of ways that I could re-created this piece, firstly I started to copy sections of the image using a different technique to Michael Craig-Martin.

I started by collaging shapes similar to shapes used in the image we chose, I stuck the simple shapes together and drew in the details with a black felt pen.

I carried on using this technique and I picked out small parts to re-create and create a small composition. I then played about on photoshop to make my piece look less messy.
This piece was my first final piece, I then passed this on to Alex and he then worked on top of this or worked in his own way using this for inspiration.

I next started to draw objects from my own household, again pens. I carried on working in this way as I felt collaging them and drawing the detail in with black felt comfortable and I thought this technique worked quite well.

After drawing a handful of objects I sarted playing with composition and colour, again using the piece of work by Michael Craig-Martin as my inspiration.

At this point came the first switch, I passed my piece on to Alex and Chloe had passed her first piece on to me.

Chloe's Piece.

After Chloe sent me her work, I wasn't too sure where to go with it. I looked again at the piece of work we had chosen by Michael Craig-Martin and I realised that he didn't really leave much space within his image. So I decided to place some of my objects done in my style on top of Chloe's piece, using Photoshop.

This is what I came up with.

I palced my images of objects I had created on top of the piece, placing them in spaces and on top of other objects, using up more space as Craig-Martin does.

The objects created by myself and Chloe were done in very different styles and you can tell which object were done by who, my objects give a slight texture to the piece which gives it an interesting effect.

I again passed this piece on to Alex and Chloe passed on her next piece to me.
I really liked this piece of work, I thought the different shades of black and grey worked really well. I also like that some objects look less flat than others, they look slightly 3D which gives the image more effect.

I tried to work in a similar way I was working using black and grey papers, but It didn't work very well (and I ended up throwing it away). After this I changed the style of my work, I started drawing the objects out with black felt tip and scanning them in.

After this I played about on photoshop with compositions and colouring them in.

I think this worked well, but It didn't really relate to the piece that Chloe had done in black and white. I then thought about colouring my object images in black and different shades of gray as Chloe did, but having the outlines of the images indifferent colours.

After this I started making compositions with my images and using different background colours and scales to see which worked the best.

Jan Lenica

Jan Lenica, Born 4th January 1928, in Poland. He was a polish Graphic designer and Cartoonist. He Also does poster illustrations which i find very interesting and I try to give myself a similar style with in my own work.

I find his Characters very unique and insteresting to look at, I like how the shapes used are not perfect and more 'randomly' shaped, gives the characters more of a personality and unique ness. I also like the block colour used, giving them a silhouette style, which i feel works really well and I have tried to work in this style in the past which I think has worked really well.