Category: Impactful images (Sara’s project)

Images

The Hardship of Being a Woman

Woman

mind map

Process

My word for this task is woman and I wanted to show how the society criticises women in general. Not only do women experience in gender inequality, women also always get objectified by others. Therefore, I decided to put on frame to it, just to make it look like a displaying item of an exhibition.

Moreover, people usually describe women as beautiful, pretty or elegant, so I think it will be a great idea to use a goddess to represent the image of a female. As the sky symbolises freedom and the residence of the gods, I used a picture of the sky that i took before as the background.

For my final, I did different hand gestures and took a few pictures of them, I then outlined and coloured them on my ipad. Those hands represented people in the society, all gestures mean their own way of rudeness and criticism. Also, I painted some blood near the intimate part of the statue, to portray the situation of woman being shamed on their period.

The animated version IMG_2409

Self-reflection

As this is not my first time doing this kind of task, I have my past experience to help me avoiding some unnecessary mistakes. However, it has been a while since the last time I made a graphic design, so I feel like this is a nice chance to warm myself up before my real classes start. Overall, the task was fun to do, I enjoyed spending the whole day on editing images and drawing on my ipad.

 

Work

In Sara’s project, I created and shot a set of images that represented the noun ‘work.’ On my first slide, I show a work colleague sat at his desk designing, this is then accompanied by an illustration of his desk.

For the contrasting image, I decided to play with the idea of bullying in the workplace. This is shown by the fingers pointing at him. On reflection, if I’d had more time, I definitely would have liked to convey the ‘bullying’ scenario better. This could have been by adding a phone onto the desk illustration which showed threatening or degrading text messages.

If I were to do this project again, I would spend more time on the contrasting image and create a stronger link between the two juxtaposed images.

Britain

The word I was given to work with, was the word ‘Britain’.  Immediately these images popped into my head; the Union Jack, the Pound Sterling, the Queen, Scones and tea, red telephone boxes, black cabs, the Big Ben, and Buckingham Palace.

However, I wanted to stick to simplicity. I wanted people to immediately recognise the word ‘Britain’ in my work, and to me that meant using the map of Great Britain, and the Union Jack, which symbolises the union between the four nations. I did not want to overcrowd my image and make it confusing. I wanted my work to be simple, yet effective.

The stitching within my first image symbolises that the four nations were sown together in the past to form Great Britain, but in recent years and since Brexit negotiations started, there has been tension, and so the stitches have come undone in places (seen in image two with the scissors).

I placed the scissors at the left top corner between Northern Ireland and Scotland, because that is where the most tension lies within the union of Britain due to Brexit negotiations. It also visually balances the weight of the strong Union Jack on the bottom right corner.  The scissors depict the looming threat that Britain as we know it, might look different in future if some of the nations cut themselves loose to be independent.

I created my first image on tracing paper with paint, which did not work very well because it made the tracing fold, so I created the second image on normal paper. The paint also didn’t stick to the tracing paper very well and therefore the second image appears darker.

 

 

An exploration of protest

For this task we were challenged to create two similar images- one that perfectly encapsulates the keyword and another that would change the meaning. My word was ‘Protest’. At first I had difficulty figuring out where to go as protest could mean so many different things, it meant I found it hard sticking to an idea. Eventually I decided to explore two variations of protest, one being huge organised protest in which large groups of people come together, and the other being a more individual and vulnerable protest. The oppressive force in both of these images would be the policeman, due to the recent examples of police brutality throughout the world as well as that same brutality but on a much more personal scale (for instance, domestic violence). Both images include the policeman in full riot gear, with one of them having silhouetted protesters in the foreground, and the other having a mother and child. I definitely think I could have detailed these images better to perhaps push further the idea as I don’t think it is easy enough to understand without the explanation with it.

Happiness

The idea:

The image which immediately sprang to mind when considering “happiness” was a sunflower, maybe because of the colour yellow, or maybe because the word “sunflower” just sounds happy. I liked the idea of a whimsical character so I gave the sunflower a smiling expression. To turn this image on its head, I drew from the connection between a crop such as sunflowers which are used for oil, and the harmful effects of pesticides used in their production. It is well known that bees are dying at an alarming rate due to factors such as pesticides, so I thought to include dead bees to dampen the mood of this otherwise joyful scene.

The process:

I began by sketching the idea out and inking over it with a drawing pen. On Illustrator I then vectorized the image and coloured it on photoshop. Upon recommendation I animated a camera pan from the top of the image (the happy part) to the bottom (the sad part). I also duplicated the image and darkened it several times to give the animation more depth. I’d never made a GIF on photoshop before so this was a new experience for me

Reflection:

While I think I’ve achieved my goals well, when linking the outcome to the actual brief, I’ve realized that the link between happiness to ecocide is a bit tenuous. This is an important finding as to me, it highlights how it is easy to follow your own interpretation of a brief instead of the actual one.

‘City’

This project was firstly about creating an image which explained a noun. I was given the term ‘City’. In the first image I have drawn an outline of Earth which is surrounded by a few of some famous landmarks we have in our awesome cities. After sketching them in, I have painted over a wash of mixed watercolour over each of them. The 2 colours on every attraction symbolises the flags of their respective countries. After that, we had to take the image we had created and add a second element to change the original nature and meaning. The second image I have created has an educational aspect to it. I decided to incorporate the idea of LEDC’s and MEDC’s. I realised that a simple outline of any building skyline represents ‘Cities’ well, therefore I decided to circulate that outside the drawing of the Earth. I have included a collage of text (names of cities) which are written in an ordered way. Where the buildings are taller, the cities are more economically developed and where the buildings are shorter, the cities are less economically developed.

The first interpretation of the term ‘Cities’, gives us a flawless and perfect view of our Earth, however the second image changes this idea of perfection and encourages us to look deeper into the problems in our cities.

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Chocolate

The dangers of chocolate

In Sara’s project i was given the noun ‘Chocolate’ The first image, which is shown in the featured image, clearly conveys chocolate. The hearts and smiley faces represent how chocolate makes us feel which is usually happy, The hearts are also linked to valentines day as chocolate is a typical valentines day gift. The above diagram shows ideas linked to chocolate i could use in my images. The below image is almost identical to the first however, the Dairy milk has been replaced with the words Heart disease and the hearts and smiley faces have been replaced with skulls and bones, this represents the danger of chocolate and what health problems it can lead too.

In this project i used paper, Pencils, pens and tracing paper. I liked the outcome of the project and how theres a clear link between the two images, However i think i could. have improved by making the presentation of the images more neat and clean.

Love

For Sara’s project, I created a series of images that capture ‘love’ in a meaningful manner. I decided to play with the idea of family and the love parents have for their child. I chose to use continuous lines to illustrate the parents with their baby. These lines link the family members together and can also represent the ‘timeline’, further playing with the idea of family love.

For the second image, I wanted to show the boy as a young child. Finally, for the third image, I portrayed the two parents standing beside each other. I wanted to capture the loss of the child, which left the parents alone with their heartbreak. I wanted to leave room for interpretation, and so my triptych can either be seen as the death of the child or as the boy had aged and moved away from his family home. On top of this, I decided to move the subjects to the left corner for my final image to help convey the emptiness they feel as a result of their loss.

To add contrast between the three images that I created, I decreased the saturation of the colour used in each.

If I were to do this project again, I would like to create more of a connection between my images to make them more of a single cohesive piece. I would also like to explore the use of animation to create a moving outcome rather than a 2D image.