Callum's Computer Arts: 2011

For the part of the course, Visual Literacy, our first project given was run over 5 weeks with the following brief:

You are required to visualise words or phrases that will be given out to you over the 1^st 5 weeks of the semester. These will be given at the start of every week and you should show evidence in you sketchbook of how you as an artist would visualise them. This may result in more than one attempt and or interpretation, and creative experimentation should be evident in you sketchbook. Your response can be personal or commercial, however you should be imaginative and expressive in you approach to the visuals.

Out of these 5 words, we were to create 4 final digital images.

The first of five words that were given was ‘help’. I had little focus and no clear idea as to where I wanted to take this word, so I began the project by sketching out random ideas.

I moved on to see if I could utilise a song as the inspiration for my digital piece. I had chosen Alice Cooper’s ‘Under the Bed’ to work with due to the repeated lyric of ‘Save me!’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yamZk1f0uyw

I was however also keen to incorporate a more significant meaning to my final piece, so I stepped away from the song and delved deeper into the different uses for help. These included needing help mentally, turning to religion for help and Death being a friendly figure.

With this in mind, I developed an idea where Death can be the help to

suffering and from there, came up with my final image.

The final digital image, one with a sepia filter, the other with a negative filter.

The second word given was ‘vintage’. For this I had a more concise idea that I wanted to go with, using period-based outfits to create a final image.

With the outfits established, I decided to try to recreate The Beatles ‘Abbey Road’ album cover, replacing the band members with the outfitted characters.

However, I was not happy with this piece and from that moment on I was almost certain that this would be the word not to be produced digitally.

The third word given was ‘microscopic’. I had two definite routes I wanted to take this piece down, one being fantastical with a ‘what if?’ situation involving giant ticks. The other idea was of a ‘God eye’ and how we as humans are microscopic in comparison to the universe around us.

I developed the two ideas forward until I came to two final ideas. In the end I opted for the ‘God eye’ idea, as I found it more eye-catching (pun unintended!).

The final piece:

This represents how we as humans are microscopic in the eye of the universe, and yet the human eye itself is one of the most complex and microscopic things known to man. However, even though we are diminutive in size, the amount of damage we have caused to our Earth is unbelievable, hence the cracked and damaged skin and the tear trickling from the eye.

The fourth word given was ‘urban’. For this word I had two ideas, urban legends and urban warfare. However I only took forward the idea of urban legends, as I had no clear vision as to where I would take the urban warfare concept.

I was particularly keen to use the legend of ‘Bloody Mary’ as the basis for my digital piece and thus developed a few concepts. In the end I decided on using photo manipulation to create a dark image of reflections in a smashed mirror in a bathroom, in-keeping with the ‘facts’ of the legend.

The final piece:

This was done using photo manipulation, having taken 5 separate photos, which were then experimented on with various filters, gradients etc.

The fifth and final word was ‘happy’. With this I had the initial idea of portraying vanity as a monstrous collaged being, with the idea of ‘What really makes you happy?’

However, due to the constant reaction of raucous laughter that this piece was given, I scrapped the idea and went down the route of ‘What makes me happy?’ With this in mind, I developed the concept of a tattooed face, as I have quite a keen interest in tattoo art. The face features symbols and graphics as representations of things that I believe to make me happy.

In the background, the words ‘story of my life’ were repeated in a variety of my favourite band’s fonts. The idea behind that was that tattoos can be used to tell stories or to commemorate something, so the picture became like a tribute to my life.

The final piece:

This was done using a photo of myself as the basis with hand drawn and coloured images (using a graphics tablet and photoshop) placed on top.

Our second project given had the following brief:

Choose one of your favourite books or pieces of text. You must choose a book that has NO associated visuals e.g. pictures, comics, TV, film, games etc because it is your task to create new images to illustrate the written concepts and not to reinterpret imagery you have already seen.

Scrutinise your chosen story and develop a look and style for the production in terms of character, place, setting and evocation of atmosphere.

· Image Five - Compose an image in Photoshop using specifically chosen imagery in a way that illustrates your visual interpretation of a scene in the story.

· Image Six - Make a composition in Photoshop using two-dimensional mixed media to illustrate the visual persona of one of the characters in the story.

The point of the task is not to create a literal depiction of the story or character, but rather a montage of significant and crucial elements that combine to illustrate the genre, atmosphere and style of the narrative.

I took to the project with a strong idea of what I wanted to do. As my piece of text that I was to use to create two digital images from, I chose the concept album ‘Operation: Mindcrime’ by Queensryche. I laid out the lyrics and doodled beside them before choosing specific parts in order to generate concepts.

I found it particularly useful to listen to the album whilst working so as to get the emotion from the music itself as well as the lyrics. From here I worked on various concepts concerning scenes and the main character Nikki, out of which I came up with two final pieces to be digitised.