As an addendum to the 3rd Assignment, we were given an article regarding the political goings-on between America and North Korea.  Specifically, the strange and tense relationship between Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump. The two leaders were making ridiculous statements almost daily in the press, and the political and military stakes were quite high.  There was talk of nuclear arms being used, and personally, I was trying REALLY hard to ignore it all because it really triggers my anxiety.

I was trying to picture their faces, and it occurred to me they're quite similar.  The hair might be different color, but they're both chubby and spoiled.

ANYWAY ... I had a random conversation with the girl next to me, and we called them children. So I thought I could do a political cartoon Illustration. Both of the leaders drawn as little babies with tears and fighting each other with little baby slaps.




I guess I work best when I have other people around off whom I can bounce ideas !

The third project was intended to be a design centered around the idea of 'chaos' and how to communicate that in an Illustration.  Specifically, what it represents to us.

In class, we saw a jungle-themed piece with some tigers and bears that was laser-cut, and I was thoroughly impressed. As a personal tie-in, because of the animal subject matter, I immediately thought of the Faroe Islands pilot whale massacre (https://youtu.be/HYOTkwFhe-w). This is a topic personally touching to me.

Whale killing pool concept

I saw in my mind's eye a composition of the whale killing lagoon.  Whales, seen from above, could be drawn in curved, swimming motions, circling each other, trapped and bleeding.

In speaking with Doug, I was dismayed not to be able to use this piece. After discussing it, I started to understand the details of the process involved in laser cutting. I would have to focus on very simple lines which could be burned into the wood surface, and be wary of crossing those lines over, lest they become a big brown blob of burned wood.

We also discussed extensively my penchant for making mandalas, and developed the concept of a butterfly mandala, to express the concept of "A butterfly flaps it's wings in africa, and start a hurricane in Florida." How a chaotic chain of events can be started by a single, seemingly insignificant event.

Some other ideas included a messy, chaotic room. Originating from my own small apartment, filled with massive bookcases and painting supplies strewn about. Because it's ironic how creativity and beauty can come about from such a chaotic place.

Another idea was a meat grinder.  It would be putting in beautiful things such as butterflies, and spewing symbolic images such as money and a briefcase and a gun.  The idea was to express the effect the "daily grind" can have on beauty and natural impulses. Twisting them into carbon-copied, violent expressions of pressure of everyday life.

The next concept was a hand, held in the shape of a gun, and held aloft by butterflies. Doug thought this would make a good Mandala.

I felt REALLY good about my concepts for this project. I felt as if the strong emotions associated with my first association (whales) helped keep my creative juices flowing, and brought on the other strong concepts.

Meat grinder

Floating hand

Butterfly mandala

Cluttered source of beauty

The second project was particularly challenging for me, and that was to come up with a concept for a gif. I decided to use AfterEffects as the vehicle to get this project done which may have been a bad choice, seeing as to how I had never worked with this program before. None the less, as you can see that I 'got it done,' it is technically speaking, incomplete.

My initial idea was for balloons drifting into the air, spelling out "harmony" as my chosen word. In the end, it was agreed upon between myself and my the instructor to come up with more of a narrative to the piece, hence adding the little girl.

As I progressed in adding more details I animated the girls legs and then added the birds ontop of that. At this point, the multiple layers required for the multiple birds began to be very tedious to animate. Its possible that there was an AfterEffects shortcut that I wasnt aware of, but I animated each wing of each bird individually. I was trying to create a random, natural movement and ended up spending the majority of the time just on the birds.

Since this was my first time using AfterEffects I had no idea what I was getting myself into, so unfortunately I wasn't able to finish the entire gif to my liking. The gif was supposed to have her float away with the balloons and then drop, with a changed facial expression. Despite this, I think the gif is a good potential to furthering the concept.

For the first project I decided to design a book cover for a novel that I am 'semi-completed' reading called the 'Sisters Brothers' by Patrick DeWitt. It is a 'southern gothic' story based on twin bothers that are hitmen with a comical twist to it. When I read it, it conjured up dry, dusty, gritty imagery.

I came up with some ideas for the preliminary sketches that came from sugar skulls and pistols, representing the overall theme to the book: the 'day of the dead' symbolism, hence the story taking place in California, and of and the twin brothers. 

I considered a variety of western symbols, like wagon wheels and plants like Sasparilla, desert cactus's and tumbleweeds. But in the end, I went with the sugar skull. I feel like it captures the kind of attitude of cynicism and playfulness while at the same time being a direct reference to death. Since it's a book cover, I am looking for something that will wrap around the spine either a desert landscape or some birds.As usual, I got ahead of myself and forgot to add the spine of the book as a separate artboard. Ended up spending quite a bit of time figuring out how to resolve this. I found it helpful to print out the unfinished piece and wrap it around an existing book to better see the size I was working with in real life.

After that I did some more detail work on the skull, the little circles and colorful flourishes really make it stand out. I added some smoke to the guns with ended up filling up my previous idea of something that will wrap around the spine.

Then, I added the text which was a hard choice. I felt that I had kind of a 'carnival theme' happening in the image, so I decided to go with the Rosewood text.

At the second stage of the project I was still a little unsure as to what to do with the background. I played around with different textures and other ideas like putting a desert scene behind the image until I got the idea to find a vintage map of California during the era that the story takes place, the early 1900's during the goldrush.

The color palette I chose was intended to be old fashioned 'Western Carnival' theme with the acid yellows, reds and blues.

The textures I used in Photoshop were 'gritty' textures that came from charcoal,  brick and concrete.

In the end, Ill admit that although I am satisfied with the main image, I should have chose a different font. I think the font is distracting and hard to read to the viewer. After class critique, I especially reconsidered the whole design concept together. There was a comment about how I could have incorporated the guns into the skull, and I agree that would have looked more interesting.