Within my piece, to take into account the sessions we have had in the labs, I will be using a few of the elements and techniques that we have learned here.
In terms of lighting I will be using this to add different effects to my backgrounds of the piece, making the lighting conditions change and adding a more interesting look to them. All of my scenes are outdoor based so I thought that adding some lighting into them would aIn terms of lighting I will be using this to add different effects to my backgrounds of the piece, making the lighting conditions change and adding a more interesting look to them. All of my scenes are outdoor based so I thought that adding some lighting into them would add to the atmosphere and ambiance of the piece and make it believable that it takes place outdoors. I will be making use of ambient light to add in some lighting to my first scene in particular. This scene will be the sun rising over the kingdom and I will be using this ambient lighting to create the colour changes that you would usually see within a sunrise, from deep night, to orange to blue daytime sky. I will also be using the lighting within my forest scenes. Within these scenes I will be using ambient lighting again to create the illusion of clouds passing overhead and trees blocking the sun in places with the sky dimming and brightening. I think this will be really atmospheric and add to the feel of being in a tree covered forest.
Example of how I am using Lighting and ambient lights.
We also had some lab sessions on particles. I knew that I wanted to do something similar to this when I first came up with my idea. On the character introduction sequences (where there will be 2 characters per scene) I wanted to have them have particle effects in the background of these scenes to add some personality to the characters. These effects will be layered over the background with the characters acting as foreground elements. I will be using what knowledge I acquired within the lab sessions on particles and applying them to shape layers which fit the areas behind the character. The particle effects will rain down behind the characters to add some interest and dimension to the piece itself. I may also use some particle effects in the end sequence with the title of the show on it to maybe mimic some explosions or such behind the text and in front of the blurred background within the scene. I think this will add some interest and personality.
There are many arts festivals all over the world but I wanted to look at ones within the UK for inspiration for existing festivals and fairs so that I could gather knowledge about how things are done within the UK design community.
The Frieze Art Fair is a festival that happens around October every year in London. This festival was created to celebrate living artists and show off contemporary creations to a range of viewers. The festival hosts over 170 galleries and artists, showing a unique and diverse range of artworks. As the selection of media and art genres is so broad the branding and promotion for the festival seems to lean more to being bold, minimalist and striking rather than creating anything overly complicated to sum up the event.
Frieze Art Fair, London 2018
The main advertising posters which are viewable outside of the event are a solid blue colour with a minimal amount of text. The logo used on this poster is really interesting as the font is broken up by blue lines and to me almost resembles blocks fitting together to create the letters. This makes me think that the logo sums up the festival well as it is of course the works of various artists coming together to make something new. The logo also has some corner pieces to it, showing the boundary of the logo and giving the illusion of there being a box around it. The poster is very simple in itself but I think it is very striking and the minimalism draws the eye to the elements you want the viewer to focus on. The minimal text allows the information that is there to be bold and the forefront of the design. I will take this into account and on top of my collage designs will think carefully about the text that I am adding to my pieces to make sure the information is striking and important so no space is wasted.
Frieze Fair’s Website
The festival’s website follows a similar style to their posters, that being minimalism as the forefront of the design. The images seem to be carefully chosen to draw the eye and add some colour to the simplistic site. This puts the artwork itself in the forefront and makes it very eye catching. The website also seems to prioritise important information over much visual clutter. The art piece shown on this page is bright and colourful and catches the eye and is layered with important text.
The other festival I chose to look at is Brighton Festival. This is the largest art and cultural festival held in Brighton every year. Beginning in the late 1960’s this festival constantly works to become more diverse and ambitious with its featured artists every year. The festival hosts a range of artists from performance and music to traditional medias and is constantly working in collaboration to bring new forms of media and creators to the spotlight. The event hosts artists and performers from across the world but also works to promote the work of local artists as well.
Brighton Festival’s Website
The promotion for this festival seems to be focused on creating really recognisable and strong branding to make a memorable impression on the viewer. The logo is the forefront of the website with elements of it being used across the website. The pointed edges of the F logo can be seen in various parts of the website. The site also focuses on multimedia assets and there is a video showing interesting pieces and exhibitions from the event. The logo and the important text are layered over the top of this video. This feels like a form of collage within the site as it is layering different elements together with different media’s and it gives a really interesting effect as it is very bold and makes the viewer keep looking at it to see all of the pieces. The rest of their visual branding and promotion follows the same style of layering assets and the same bright pink colour scheme.
For this assignment we were tasked with creating an immersive experience based on the children’s story, Alice in Wonderland. Coming up with an idea for this project was difficult at first as I have little to no experience working creating this kind of piece and was limited by my pre-existing abilities and what I could learn in the lab sessions.
Wonderland within the game Alice Madness Returns
For my piece I want to create, I want to start out with being in a normal dark forest. Being surrounded with trees and bushes and no clear path to lead down. An orb of light then appears and the camera is seemingly being lead by a light through this forest. This will then lead to a table in a clearing with the eat me cookie and the drink me bottle which are an important part of the base story so I thought it was good to include them as a nod to the original. The camera will then dip down towards the table with the objects on and cut to white. The camera will then pan back up and bring the forest into view again, however now it will look different. The objects on the table will be gone from view as if they have been used up. The world around you will be more fantastical than it was before with strange and unusual colours and things flipped around and looking weird compared to the normal looking scene from before. There will also be floating playing cards visible in the sky and other elements to make it look like the world is falling apart and changing into wonderland. I imagine the sky will be pink and the grass and leaves in the forest will be blue to give a really surreal feel to the piece. The viewer will be able to look around this environment to see the world around them.
They then will be lead down a path to the left after seeing a card red hearts card in that direction, they then begin walking looking at the environment around them, eventually the screen will cut to black as if it is the wrong direction. They will then be taken back to the table and try the right path, the same thing will happen with a balloon, and you will be reset again to black then the clearing as if you are being forced to go back to the start. The orb of light will then appear again the final time you are back at the clearing and will lead you away from the table and deeper into the forest eventually cutting to white as if you picked the right option.
Alice at the beginning of the game in the real world
My idea is inspired by the video game Alice: Madness Returns, the 2011 sequel to American Mcgee’s Alice. Within this game the character of Alice Liddell goes on a journey to discover her memories. The aim of the game is to work through from the real world to wonderland. This game inspired my piece as the beginning of the game the world and the colours in the environment are all dull and normal and boring. The game is saturated with beige and brown colours showing how boring the real world is. As you progress through the game you enter wonderland and find places that mirror the real world areas except now they are brightly coloured and everything is vivid and vibrant. This contrast gives a really magical feel to wonderland within the game and really distinguishes the worlds.
Having this distinction in colour and tone within the world I think will give my piece an interesting feel and really make it clear to the person within the experience that they have been transported from the boring normal forest within my idea into a magical enchanted one that will take them on a journey. I will also be making use of transitions within my piece to teleport the viewer to different locations e.g back to the starting table to reduce any disorientation between locations. I will also be making use of some premade assets within my piece, such as the forest landscape, to improve the quality of the piece and allow me to focus more on the experience itself and how smoothly the animations run.
Arts festivals are a type of festival that combines a diverse array of art forms into one cohesive space in which creators can display and sell their work and gain a new audience. These art forms can include but are not limited to: art, fashion, literature, performance theatre, photography, film and music. These festivals can combine a wide range of these formats or be solidified into just one kind, such as a music festival or a film festival meant to showcase each of these artistic disciplines. The genres of artistic expression portrayed in these events can vary as well and can either stick to one genre/theme or try and display a range of them to bring in a larger more diverse audience.
Hay Festival, Hay-On-Wye in Wales
These events are first and foremost created to celebrate art and the work displayed at them. It gives artists freedom of expression and a chance to showcase their work to an audience who may not usually see their work and allow them to grow in popularity. The artist can also have a chance to interact with individuals who admire them and host meet and greets to meet these fans. The artists at these events can also put their artwork up for purchase and sell art commissions to interested buyers who may be attending. Additionally at some arts festivals workshops and demonstrations can be ticketed events within the main event, allowing customers to develop skills from professional artists.
The range of events and artworks that can be seen at an arts festival varies from event to event. A lot of more modern festivals choosing to add more musical elements to their festivals to draw in larger crowds as notable musicians and bands can play at these events. These festivals also can host local or notable designers for clothing boutiques and brands to allow people to purchase sustainable clothing and remove the need for purchasing on the internet from your favourite artist and harming the environment with the transport of your package. A lot of young people are interested in helping the environment and buying from sustainable creators, brands and local businesses for a range of art forms. Many like to support a local artist, so arts festivals are a good chance to be able to do this by purchasing an art print or some merchandise from the creator.
To help inspire me and look at existing examples of modern collage, I decided to find some artists that I thought were interesting and creating work in a similar style and for a similar purpose. Below is a collage artist that I discovered, Martin Vallin, who works primarily in creating unique and interesting advertising campaigns for designer brands. I was particularly drawn to the work produced by Vallin as I think looking at relevant advertising campaigns is important, to see how things are being done by professionals in the industry of promotion and advertisement.
Advertisements by Martin Vallin for Delvaux SS18
I was most drawn to the use of multiple layers of images with the differing in colour vs black and white within a lot of the work. I think it really helps the feature elements to stand out. I also am inspired by how centralised the designs are in the middle of the advertisements, it is really striking in contrast to the plain backgrounds and I could see something similar being a technique I use. I think creating some of my poster marketing to be inspired by this style of collage would lend well to my project as there is a lot of room at the edges to add textual information to the piece whilst not compromising the collage.
Advertisements by Martin Vallin for Vilhelm Parfumerie
I really like how Vallin plays with the size of items and how the images are cut together. The differing sizes and shapes give a surreal feeling to the advertisements and make them stand out a lot. You could spend a lot of time looking at them and finding new elements every time, making the audience want to come back multiple times just to investigate the images.
I decided that a good place to look for more interesting modern collage artists would be Instagram. A lot of artists enjoy using platforms like this for their portfolio’s. The first artist I discovered that I loved the style of was Marcos Coelho. Coelho uses digital collage techniques to make interesting, colourful designs, incorporating photography, drawings and graphical elements with text to create unique pieces. These pieces that I have included in my post were the ones that struck me the most and I found most interesting and similar to the style I have thought about for my own pieces.
Collage Artworks by Marcos Coelho (@_mrczz) on Instagram
I really enjoy the interesting combinations of images with the shapes and colours of the graphic backgrounds. I think it’s really striking and adds an interesting brightness to the pieces. The use of different techniques and digital materials adds depth to each piece and really shows off the layers between each element. I particularly like the top right image as I think the contrasting edited colours of the image compared to the background really draw the eye and that the curved text is a unique addition that relates the text to the background patterns and adds purpose. Additionally I really enjoy the bottom left image. The photo collage aspect is minimal but the drawing on top adds an extra layer to the design and is similar to what I was considering creating for my promotional materials. I think the drawings on top add a personal touch to the designs and really elevate the piece, offering depth and an insight into the artists thoughts as each additional drawing is purposeful to the design.
The final artist I found to study the work of is J. Nathan Dziedzic also from Instagram. His style is very editorial in my opinion and even though he uses colour sparingly I think he is able to use it very effectively. From reading his captions, Dziedzic uses digital and physical collage techniques and is a fan of screen printing to create his pieces. Most of the imagery used is found content from magazines and such. I really like the texture and jaggedness of this artist and I think that his collage work is really striking.
Collage Artworks by J. Nathan Dziedzic (@formandtype) on Instagram
Each of the pieces I have added to this post feels very distinctive and the images used give a really professional feel to them. The colour pink was used a lot in a lot of the pieces I saw and I think it is a great contrast to the images used within them. Elements of graphic shapes are used in quite a lot of the pieces I saw along with some typography which I think adds a lot of depth. The fact the artist uses physical collage techniques in some of his pieces is really evident from the jagged textures on the edges of some images and adds an organic look. Printing images to then destroy physically and scan back in to assemble may be something that I end up doing as I think it looks much more natural than anything that could be created using digital erasing brushes or textures. I really like the top 2 images here the most, they have less collage elements than some of the other pieces but I think the minimal aspect of them adds to the pieces and makes the collage elements that are there more interesting to pick apart with your eyes and view the layers.
Additionally I also created this Pinterest board that I am actively adding to and using to amass different collage artwork from different artists around the Internet. I spent some time trying to find some images which were inspiring to me and had elements that I want to include in my designs. I am still particularly drawn to the ‘vintage’ early 00’s style posters as can often be seen in this Pinterest board. I think that the nostalgia of the editing style and the collage techniques together will be really relevant to the young adult/ early 20’s target audience which I want to cater to. The use of doodles and other small graphic artworks layered with the images and the addition of text, I think is very visually appealing. Paired with the bright colours, I think it would fit really well with the art and fashion festival that I have in mind to create. I really enjoy how purposely imperfect a lot of the images I’ve gathered look and I like the use of ripped looking images, to call back to old collage techniques.
Poster / Advertisement Collage Inspiration Pinterest Board that I created.
Looking at an artist’s portfolio who makes graphic work similar to the brief of my project and also creating the Pinterest board to more broadly gather a mood board of the styles and aesthetics that I am interested in I think has been a useful exercise. I think it has helped me to see the vision that I want to create and show the artistic direction that I have been thinking about taking.
Within this post is the animatic that I have created to show how the full opening sequence will look in an animated form. I created 60 frames for this so that the animatic would be around a minute long, true to the final form the project will take, to show how each part of my storyboard will work together. I wanted to create an animatic so I had a clear plan of how the opening sequence would look and to make sure that my storyboard would work and would flow correctly. I used my storyboard as a template for some of the frames of this animatic and then added in the frames in between to show some animation between the scenes. I also tried to show the camera angles and such that I wish to use and the zoom and slide transitions between the scenes to see how they would work together.
I created this animatic and the storyboard in the programme Procreate so that I could sketch out the frames on my iPad. I think that this, although time consuming to create, was a useful exercise to do as it helped me to solidify my ideas and meant that I had a plan and know that my storyboard will work when I create the final piece. It also helped me realise which layers should be separated and such to be able to animate them effectively in the future.
Below is the storyboard that I have created for my opening sequence for this project. I have created 12 panels showing scenes that I intend to create. I wanted my piece to focus more on the characters themselves and establishing the world that they are adventuring in, rather than making something that was overwhelming with plot as the piece is only 60 seconds long. Most of the panels that I have drawn will be around 5 seconds long on average in the final opening sequence, some being longer and some being shorter but all roughly being 5 seconds.
My storyboard opens up with an establishing shot of the setting of the show, a fantasy kingdom. It starts out at night time and the sun slowly rises to reveal daytime and sets the happy and light tone for the opening. Once the sun as risen, the camera then zooms down into the forest within the image and the zoom changes to a shot of the forest. This is a wide angle shot encompassing the background and the main character, walking through said forest happily. The camera then changes to a mid shot of the main character from a front view still walking along the forest path. It then zooms in for a close up of the character who waves at the camera/ audience as an introduction.
The next panel in the storyboard depicts the camera zooming back out and showing a different location in the setting of the show within the kingdom. The foreground of the shot shows the main character and the 3 side characters together. The initial zoom out is from the main character to this shot to make a smooth transition of location. The 4 characters are then seen to happily wave at the camera again as the main character did to get across the friendly personalities that each of the characters have. This scene then slide transitions into the character introductions.
For the character introduction scenes I want to be able to show off a part of the character’s personalities to make them seem unique and likeable to the audience. I want each character here to have a different animation and the background of each half of the scene to relate to the character and use the particle system in After Effects to add some character elements to the background. Once the characters have been introduced and their names have been shown on screen the scene then transitions to the characters all walking together on the same path seen near the beginning of the sequence. This is meant to show them working together and how they are friends, as they are walking on the same road the main character was earlier seen alone on. The final panel of my storyboard shows the title of the show fading onto the top of this walking group scene as an ending, finally introducing the title of the show.
For this project, the piece I want to create is a 60 second opening sequence for a TV show. I want to create something for a fictional show that’s target audience is children. This opening piece will be 2D and include graphic work produced by me as well as manipulated stock images for the background layers. I will be drawing the characters and foreground elements myself and using stock for background as this will make it easier to create high quality character graphics and such. I want the show to be a child’s adventure animation with a light friendly tone to it. As it will be an intro sequence, and the target audience will primarily be children, the sequence will mainly focus on establishing the world and introducing the 4 main characters that I intend to include. It will also of course feature a title card at the end of the sequence to introduce the show.
Below are some existing children’s show openings that I found interesting when looking into existing intro sequences. In the second clip below, from the show Gravity Falls, I particularly enjoy the named character introductions which effectively name the characters and I will most likely be including something similar to this.
Collage, though thought by many to be a more modern form of artistic method, is actually a centuries old practice. Historically the act of gluing paper onto other materials can be seen in the 1100’s with artists in Japan using silk and paper to create artwork. It can also be seen in the 1400’s and later centuries in Europe in the rise of medicine and medical texts, such as creating anatomical diagrams with collage techniques implemented much in the same way as a children’s flap book.
Picasso, ‘Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper’ (1913)
Collage also has a prevalence in the Victorian era in the form of a rise in scrapbooking as a hobby by many young women. The Victorian’s also incorporated nature into their scrapbooking techniques in the form of pressing flowers and layering them to create natural looking collages. The term for the technique, however, was actually coined in the early 1900’s to describe some of the works that Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were creating at the time despite the practice existing in various forms through history from the invention of paper.
Collage doesn’t have to just include paper being stuck onto a surface however, though this is often the default and what is usually thought of first when the medium is mentioned.. Collages can be made using photography, fabrics, painting, drawing or even sculptural elements and working in three dimensions. Digital forms of collage have started to become more prevalent in the last few decades due to the advancements in technology and the advent of programmes such as Adobe Photoshop to help layer images and vectors together virtually.
There are different sub techniques of collage, including montage and photomontage. Montage is a form of collage which usually consists of a group of images which are gathered together to create a piece of art. These images usually have some relevance to each other and are often based on a theme. Photomontage however, though similar, is usually used as a form of political protest and brings together images to get across a point to the viewer and make a statement. Montage and photomontage techniques are very similar to what digital artists are producing and how a lot of promotional materials are created. Images are collected together which fit the product or business theme then overlaid in creative ways, often creating something new from the found materials.
The assignment that I have chosen for my major project is based in collage and creating marketing and assets for a fictitious arts festival. I have chosen to expand this and interpret it in a way that is more interesting to the target audience I want to pursue. My idea is for a modern arts, fashion and music festival which caters to the trending styles and sensibilities of young adults.
For this project I will be creating a series of assets for this festival which can be used in advertising and marketing towards the target group. I will be making use of physical promotion and digital promotion for this, including making posters, social media posts and possibly incorporating the popular video app, TikTok, into my promotion to be more relevant to the young adults I wish to reach with this project. I will be using a mix of found materials from stock photo sites etc, using my own photography and creating art/graphic pieces to incorporate into the collage pieces. I am inspired by the current trends in fashion and pop culture which are popular with Gen Z, namely the rise of the Y2K aesthetic and vintage/ nostalgia content, and believe this could tie in well with the collage aspect of the project.
For this project I will be beginning by researching overall the history of collage, touching briefly on early history, looking into arts festivals and finding some examples of collage styles that interest me for inspiration for my project. I will also be making use of platforms like Pinterest to amass a board of images that I find inspiring and essentially creating a digital mood board.
