My second module provided aimed to focus on the development of my editorial skills within illustration and improve my ability to clearly communicate an emotive and representative concept in relation to a body of text. The movies we were asked to then watch and review were: The Birds, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Tetsuo: Iron Man. These reviews would help me gather a complete overview of each of the movies so I could better refine and develop my concepts around elements of the film more successfully.
During the first stages of this module we were asked to research a broad spectrum of artists which we felt personally drawn to in order to better understand their processes and techniques. During this one artist I researched was Jeremy Booth, following on from my research I decided I wanted to replicate his style as I was unsure at first his exact movements of creation and I felt by replicating a design based of his style would really help me to understand this further. Following on from this more visually inspired design I chose to utilise this style of technique on the development of an illustration based around one of the movies we had been set: The Birds. As I felt this would push me in order to truly understand the more editorial structure of a design along with how my chosen artist would work on such a design if they were to emulate this work. I found this strategy extremely helpful as it has allowed me to fully breakdown each stage of the design in order to become more efficient and precise with my chosen methods and tools.
I am pleased with my interpretations of Booth's style, I chose to add slight areas of adjustment for instance I explored the inclusion of a gentle smoke rather than a blocked silhouette in the first image and for the second I incorporated a gentle fade into the sea which occurs naturally as well as the closest birds shadowing underneath the asset. Although this varies slightly from the exact interpretation of Booth's style I feel by doing this I was able to incorporate my own personal interpretations and ideas so I wasn't purely emulating another artist's work. Regardless I am pleased with the colour choices for my second attempt as I created the design from scratch so didn't have any initial colours to base my work from, I also made sure to keep the shapes and detailing of my design to a minimum as seen within the work of Jeremy Booth to ensure I was able to capture the editorial style. If I were to repeat this design in the future I would have liked to create unique compositions for each of the birds, however seeing as this was primarily a quick experiment I chose to duplicate my element rather than spend time I didn't have developing this experiment further. One element I am happy I included within my Birds attempt was the exact typography of the movie as I feel this really helps make the illustration stand out and become more recognisable to the movie, although I need to ensure I can achieve this without the use of text as well.
Following this I then chose to attempt a different form of illustration still utilising the movie the Birds, where I aimed to use a still frame from the movie in order to emulate the same editorial style. Although I feel that due to my choice of still frame it was not exactly effective as it is difficult to determine that it is a seagull the character is fighting with and the structure of the character is completely off. If I were to repeat this type of illustration in future I would definitely try to ensure I was trying to work from clearer reference imagery as despite simply trying to locate and place colours it is difficult to maintain structure when you cannot understand fully yourself which element you're working on. Due to this I got to the point where I decided to stop working on this illustration as I felt it would not work beyond a quick experimentation and if I were to use a still frame in future i would look for something more effective, although I still wanted to include it within my work to demonstrate my process.
Following on from this attempt I wanted to discover whether it was due to the choice of reference imagery so I reattempted this illustration using the realism technique I learned during one of workshops. I wanted to reattempt this technique considering I have only had one opportunity so far to use it whereas I explored the Jeremy Booth inspired style a few times now. During this illustration I changed the still frame reference however since I was working on my IPad due to health reasons rather than the computer I had to also download and then learn how to use the oil paint brushes once again on this new platform. It was a lot more difficult to be more intricate and accurate so if I were to use this style for my final I would definitely make sure to use Photoshop rather than Procreate, as it created much greater visual results which I will show below:
I feel that despite my illustration of Testuo appearing more complete and finalised I do still like the expressionism within my attempts at the scene from the Birds. Both were my first attempts on the chosen software which shows clearly the difference in possibility with procreate, although I also spent a lot more time refining my Tetsuo illustration than my Birds one considering as I have previously stated I was just attempting to complete a quick experiment based around the chosen still frame more than anything. Although it has shown me not to use this technique in future on Procreate as it is not completely efficient and is much harder to use.
I am pleased I managed to create a range of experiments based around a film provided for my choice, as I feel it has helped inform me of the types of style I would like to use most for specific films. For instance the Birds works better as a clean editorial whereas Tetsuo works well as a more defined, realistic illustration. Although I have not managed to complete an experiment yet for the Grand Budapest I feel they will share the process of the Birds where the cleaner more graphic editorial approach would be more effective, however perhaps I could create an experiment for this looking into the use of textures so I can compare this theory.
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