Visual Project development post #5

To finish off my visual project, I decided to give the posters a bit of a colour change. I scrapped the ‘secondary’ colours in the shapes that frame the ellipse and opted to give them a solid black coat of ink. My reasoning here was that I wanted these posters to follow a certain style that makes them instantly relatable to each other and the secondary colours seemed to be acting contrary to that.

In relation to my chosen theme of movement, I feel like that theme is well accounted for in this piece through the use of Art Nouveau inspired linearity. The soft curved lines in the ellipses give off a sense of movement that was very prevalent in Art Nouveau design. In contrast, the curved lines that frame the ellipses give of a more dynamic sense of movement, due to the sharpness of the edges.

As a brief self-evaluation, I’d like to point out that I feel like I could have taken this concept so much further were I to use some form of digital media. I feel like it would have been a cleaner and more polished piece, and it would have also allowed for more experimentation with colour and different gradients. I could have also included some of the floral patterning so popular in the Art Nouveau style.

Visual Project development post #4

When I was doing research on how fine arts could inspire me in relation to this visual concept, I looked to the futurists. I wanted to use the way they captured speed on a page and bring it to the modern age with this project. Although I am still very much intrigued by the futurist and their understanding of movement and speed, I could not think of a way that would help my current plans for my project.

The Eiffel Tower 1889

Thus, I moved to the pointillists. Painters such as   Georges-Pierre Seurat gave me inspiration for how I could improve this poster design, from an aesthetic standpoint.

His work, like many of the pointillist artists, involved creating images solely through the use of singular dots of pigment. These pigments together would join together to form the image. I felt like I could take the idea of using dots of pigment and turn it into something similar yet completely abstracted.

Hence, using pencil and ink, I dotted out patters around the  Art Nouveau-like decorations. I was also careful not to add too much of these pointillist features to each poster. I did this to keep with the recurring minimalist theme that appeared to be emerging the further I get in the development of these posters.

As a personal reflection, I do wish I could have added some semblance of the futurists to this concept. I was very much interested in the concept of showing movement through repetition and if I was to have more time with this piece, I would surely have included that somewhere along the way. 

Visual Project development post #3

Using research I had done regarding film in relation to this project I was able to come up with an appropriate colour scheme for these posters.  In my research, I made note of the way colour is depicted in the film ‘The Matrix’. The film used colour in such a way that it relayed information about the plot to the audience. Whenever there was a green tint in the shot, the audience automatically knows that the characters are in the ‘Matrix’.  I wanted to take this concept of colour relaying valuable information to the audience in my work on these posters.

 

This led me to choose this colour scheme for my posters. I wanted to take colours that people will automatically relate to the film in question. With this, I feel like the silhouettes are supported by their respective colours that would hopefully give any viewer enough information to know what the poster is in reference to.

While I am satisfied with the concept in use over here, I do question my colour choices, namely in the ‘Matrix’ and ‘Spider-man’ posters. This will definitely be something I’ll look into as I get further into the development of this visual concept.

Visual Project development post #2

While still not certain how to proceed with the poster design, I decided to start the development of my other poster samples.  As I mentioned previously, I wanted to take iconic moments in film and use them in my poster design. My next two film moments are taken from the films ‘Kill Bill’ and ‘The Matrix’. I’d like to say that these films were chose with some sort of artistic reasoning but they weren’t. I chose these films purely because they are some of my favourite films and why not use examples I love?

By using my first design as a base, I would apply the silhouettes of ‘The Matrix’ and of ‘Kill Bill' to what little of a design template I had.  The example I chose for the matrix was a silhouette of Neo’s (the protagonist) glasses. While I personally was completely fine with that decision, I was unsure of how clear the imagery would be to people who are not as familiar as I was with the plot. This was quite a problem as a poster is supposed to easily tell the view what it is about at first glance.

I honestly could not think of another instance in the movie to use so I decided to keep the glasses in and possibly emphasise the nature of the poster in some other way.

I made progress in the design by again looking at Art Nouveau and how they framed their work. This lead to me repeating the below design at the top of the page to complete the frame.  

While satisfied with my progress so far, I felt that this concept could be so much more if I was to use digital media to produce it. Unfortunately, I have no experience with any digital media but if I was to have more time with this, it would definitely be something I’d look into. 

Visual Project development post #1

After having completed our research segment of our assignment, I found that while I had an idea of what I wanted to do for this project, the idea was vague and not nearly as substantial as I’d have liked it to be. I was certain that I wanted to use iconic moments in film mixed with some features of Art Nouveau poster design.

'Poetry' Alphonse Mucha

This design by Alphonse Mucha has features which I wanted to use in my own poster design, namely, the ellipse like border around the figure. I very much enjoyed how well framed this work is, using that ellipse border so I wanted to translate that into my idea of using iconic film moments. It is worth noting that movement was something I wanted to take from the works of Art Nouveau due to the emphasis on curvilinearity. 

With this idea in mind, I began sketching my idea. I used ‘Spiderman’s iconic pose and framed the figure using and inspired take on Mucha’s work. I decided to use a solid black colour to make the figure look like a silhouette. I did this in hopes that the iconic figure would be recognised by just the contours of the shape.