Floppy Disks and Self Defence Wigs

I've been doing research into who I'm going to be doing the next part of visual communication on, and due to the fact that there was such a large amount of information on the Internet and that pretty much all of this information is absolute GOLD, I'm going to be researching Yoshiro Nakamatsu further. 

I have no idea how I wasn't even aware of this guys existence before now, not only did he invent the floppy disk, but he also has over 3000 patents to his name and is seemingly one of the most ridiculously eccentric people on the planet.

Heres a few of my favourite things I've found out so far:

• He invented a self defence wig (literally what?)
• He prefers people to address him as Sir Dr Nasamats  
• He credits his ground-breaking inventions to diving underwater until he's exactly 0.5 seconds away from death, which then prompts his brain to work more efficiently bringing great ideas to him
• To make his underwater brainstorming easier, he has developed a notepad and pen that works underwater to note s=things down as they come to him/ sketch things
• He is currently 88 but plans to live until around 144. He credits his current level of fitness to one of his inventions the "celebrex chair" (still trying to find out exactly what this does)
• He sadly has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but is fighting it with a few methods, some of which are his own. The one that I could find the most record for was a song he sings about his illness which is supposed to help fight it off? He performed it recently in Tribeca when he was there for an award/88th birthday celebration

Next:

I mean I have no idea where any of this information is going to take me, its all completely bizarre and could go so many ways, but I'm really excited about it. This mans cool and I want to know more about him and what he does with his everyday life, I hear something about him winning some kind of culinary award but I still need to look into it. But so far I'm 100% certain that he's the guy to go for, I can see myself already getting immersed in his life, I could see it being interesting if I were to look at some of the objects and inventions that have shaped his life so far?

The man himself

Doing his thing, underwater brainstorming

Greeting fans at his 88th birthday celebrations in Tribeca

A taster of his song to prevent prostate cancer

Jumping in a pair of his own 'Pyon Pyon' boots he invented

York Observational Drawing

Yesterday for our last visual language session we went to York to do a day of observational drawing like we did right at the beginning of the module. It was really interesting how different an experience yesterday and the first observational drawing day were, I think at the beginning of this first year I absolutely dreaded any kind of observational drawing as I didn't think I'd ever been any good at it and didn't really see the point. I would spend absolutely ages sketching out something I could see really precisely before realising that if I was going to do it any justice and fill it in with shade and tone to suit the hyper-realistic sketch I'd begun, I would be there hours. And even then it probably wouldn't even look that good. However, in yesterdays session I think I realised how much what we've learnt in visual language has shaped the way I now think about first hand drawings, I can now put what we've learnt into practise and therefore come out with much better outcomes which I don't hate looking at. 


These are some of my favourites from the day:

Things I've improved at:

• Selecting appropriate media for a drawing, this one always seemed to me like something I knew how to do, but I think as someone who'd never really done observational drawings before I didn't know the first thing about what I might like to draw with. I came really unprepared to the first session with just pencils and some old graphite, but yesterday I brought charcoal, watercolour, wax crayon and some felt tips. I think its been a case of trial and error to see which ones I like, and also which media aren't really as time effective for doing larger scale observations, such as pencils.
• scaling what I'm seeing down to fit onto the page, and also selecting and cropping a certain part of what I'm seeing to make for a more interesting and well composed picture. After the workshops on depth, framing, overlapping and composition we had I started to properly think about what my eyes were drawn to so therefore what I might enjoy drawing, and I've found that giving this more consideration has helped make my pictures look more balanced and more interesting in general
• translating what I'm seeing and putting it into my owns words, where I used to think the only way to draw something was to copy it exactly I now know that things are much more interesting when you can see a little bit of the hand of the maker in them. I now have a slightly more sketchy vibe going on that I used to reject thinking it looked childish, but now I can see that I'm showing things the way I'm seeing them and that doesn't mean they have to be perfect, its more about capturing the feel of something
• just generally having the confidence to try things multiple times and not give up halfway through is something I've gained in this module. At first I was really intimidated by the amazing talent I was seeing around me, I'd never seen so many people who were good at first hand drawing before so in my head everything I did was inferior (and to be honest, I'd be lying if I said I didn't still feel like this sometimes). But now I can see that everyones different, whilst observational drawing might not be my strongest point and I think theres always room for improvement and I'm still finding myself in this area, I can draw enough to enjoy it and to gain some valuable visual understanding from it and thats a massive improvement for me

Things I could improve on more:

• Although my confidence has improved from last year I do still need to learn to look at my own work and what can be improved there rather than comparing myself to others
• I could be a little less precious about having a nice outcome in an image, and just learn to let go and make mistakes. I think the perfectionist in me knows that if I try something really wild and exciting for the first time whilst sketching then I could risk having a sketch in my book that looks bad or isn't how I want it to be, so in the past I've always stuck to drawing how I'm used to drawing and playing it safe. However from this module I now know that doing this won't help me develop, and although I've pushed myself a lot, I could still push myself more and make more mistakes
• on a similar subject I could do with spending less time on each drawing, I think the careful way I make observational images has limited me and means that I spend too much time on silly details, where if I was a bit bolder the whole process would generally be a bit quicker

Synechdoche?

Today was hard.

We had to try and think of a synechdoche and illustrate it, to help us with our next task of illustrating a person without just doing standard portraits. I chose to illustrate our friend Aimee's nickname "plant lady". 

Whelp here it is, not my finest work.

Good points:

• I think I understand now that the point in this was to not illustrate the person but to illustrate the object that we associate with that person, which is hard for me as I now quite enjoy drawing people. But now I know this I can focus drawing objects and other things which I also enjoy and might be a nice change of pace
• The composition of this is pretty nice, and I know thats not the point in this excersise but its nice to see how the Vis-lang sessions have completely changed my outlook on composition

Bad points:

• This is definitely not the most creative thing I've ever done, I've literally just drawn the two parts to the image, a flower and a girl, but in future when I know more about my research topic then I'll be able to go more in depth and have better things to say and illustrate

FINISHED THE THING (a rant?)

We had the crit of our final stickers today and I am so happy with most of the feedback I'd been given, a lot of it was really constructive and a few people suggested that the designs could have been made even simpler through not using so many black lines, which got me thinking about the the way my designs were structured and how I could improve on this in the future. 

I did also get some feedback that said maybe I could have not included the thigh gap on the strong females sticker like I did, so it would be more inclusive to plus sized women. At first this upset me as I'm a very open and equal minded person and it hurts me to think that any of my illustrations might have made anyone feel alienated or excluded. But then I got to thinking about my reasons for choosing to represent the woman's bum how I did, and I realised that I needed to consider that I had given it some thought, it wasn't a snap desicion, or made to only show slimmer figures or tell only smaller women that they're strong. When I'm coming up with ideas about what the piece will represent  I am also thinking about how it will be constructed and what composition and elements make for the best image overall. Whilst admittedly I could have not given the bum a thigh gap, my intention by adding the gap was to make it more obvious what the viewer was seeing by highlighting the shape and outline of the bum and showing some of the background colour through the gap. So that you could see that this was a 3D thing that didn't only exsist on this sticker. I chose to do this for the same reason I also chose to add cellulite marks on the bum and upper thighs, to give it some dimension and depth, and so that those viewing it might find it more easy to identify it as what it is, to make for a more relatable and immediate illustration. My sticker at its base form was supposed to encourage women as a whole that they are strong as hell, in this I gave no mention to which ethnicity, height, weight, age, sexuality or anything else those women should be, I simply wanted anyone who identifies as a woman to know that they are strong, but if someone has taken from that that it excludes plus size women then I apologise, and maybe in future I need to consider that. 

Successes of this brief:

• Learning how to properly use Ai (I will for sure be using it again)
• Getting to grips with making a colour palette to add effect to a project and sticking to it
• I feel I've made something that a lot of people can relate to and identify with and would hopefully make a little change to someones day
• I think I've learnt a bit more about simplifying shapes and ideas to their base form, at least a bit more than I did before. I also am starting to appreciate the beauty of a simplistic design.
• I talked about something I'm passionate about and I realised I had A LOT to say about it! Need to do this more often

Failings or room for improvement in this brief:

• I still probably over complicate things more than necessary 
• I find it very hard to only stick to two colours but can see how much better it makes everything look in the long run!
• I could have maybe decided firmly on one or other of my stickers earlier on and then developed just one further until I had something a little more refined or simplified?

Feminist Posters @ Village

Today I went to Village bookshop in Thorntons arcade and saw the new See Red exhibition of feminist posters there. All the posters were from 1974-1990 and were so massively inspiring how humorous but still so effective and eye catching feminist art can be, and has been for years. There was a massive diversity as to the way the posters were made, some were all text, some were intricate paper-cut and some were screen printed. They all had slightly varying points to make and issues to raise and they all had varying degrees of severity in which they did this, but one thing was constant for me. They all depicted the strong side of women that doesn't feature enough in any kind of art, and for me (and I know I'm their target audience) that felt really empowering and special. I know it is only through in-equality that these posters need to exist to begin with, and thats really sad, but it was also massively inspiring to see women taking a stand and making these beautiful things with equally beautiful messages all gathered in one place. 

This really got me thinking about the stickers I've been making and how without even meaning to, most of my stickers were quite feminist in theme and message. I really like that and take it as a personal victory that during the visual narrative brief I was struggling to get to grips with talking about what interests me, and having a voice for something I'm passionate about, much less making that come across visually in any of my work. However during this brief I've jumped at the chance to talk about things that anger me and I've realised I do have a lot to say and illustration is a great way to articulate that especially if you're someone like me who finds words and speaking out loud quite difficult. Going forward I'm going to make more of an effort to consume media that talks about issues that I find interesting (as well as ones that don't) to educate myself further around those topics, hopefully it'll give me more to say on the matter and will make my voice in the illustration community a well informed one.

FINALLY

Hallelujah, today I made some stickers that I'm actually genuinely pleased with!

Not sure whether I just woke up today in a really motivated mood or whether I've actually improved at Illustrator (I hope its the second one), but the designs I've done today are much more the kind of thing I was setting out to produce in the beginning but just couldn't get my head around how. 

Today I've actually genuinely enjoyed using Ai, even if it has taken a while to get my head around some of the software, I love that you can get proper symmetry using it, and flat colour as well, its worked really well for what I was hoping to achieve with these stickers. 

LOOK AT THOSE BOYS.

MHHYEH.

In terms of the message I think the first one is my favourite and applies most to something I'm passionate about, especially since living with 4 such lovely, but sometimes insecure people like I do know, I can see that its important to remind people that they are strong and lovely and its not conceited to acknowledge that.

Illustrator Can Be OK (sometimes)

I MADE THINGS ON ILLUSTRATOR!

In the workshop yesterday and this morning I've been working on some of my better sticker designs and I'm honestly so shocked at how easy I've found using Illustrator, I thought I'd find it much more baffling, but I think just by forcing myself to sit alone with it for a few hours and working it out I've realised how much logic there is to it. 

These are the three designs I've made so far:







1. 

The first one is UNDOUBTEDLY my least favourite. It can out so much different to how I'd intended, also I did it at the end of the session so I was rushing a little. I think I might try and make this one again but using softer more pastel colours instead as I think in a way it looks a little too human and graphic? The belly button also needs to lower as at the moment I will admit... it looks like a shocked face. I've learnt that it is pretty hard to add any sense of depth or tone into work on Ai, but this means I'll just have to get better at selecting and designing more appropriate things to make using it.

2.

This one was actually the first one I made in the session, and looking at it now, I really really like the design and the spacing of the sticker and how its worked out using Ai, its given it a flat quality but I really like that as its something you can't always achieve by hand. The colour scheme is also probably one of my favourite things to have come out of this project, using black and purple is something I've always thought looked a bit tacky and maybe childish? But in the context of this project, I thin it assumes this kind of witchy quality when its paired with the imagery of cats, which gives a new layer to the feminist stickers I've been making. I also think it makes it looks playful but serious in a sense as the colours are quite dark and draw the eye. 

3.

The last one is the one I did this morning, and I'm so shocked with how quickly my illustrator skills have improved! I could never have imagined that you could make complex shapes like this on a computer but I'm now finding that pretty easy, as well as getting to grips with using the reflect tool to make everything a bit more symmetrical (again something you can always achieve by hand). I think this one shows a bit more of my personality and style through it as I'm learning how to utilise the tools to express my own tone of voice in my work, but at the same time making it look a little more polished. Also so obsessed with putting text on a circular path like this, I'll probably make some more that follow a similar template to this one, it reminds me of a guide or brownies badge. 


TOMORROW: 
- I'm going to come into the Mac suites again and maybe focus on making a few of my other sticker design for different causes to see which ones turn out better, as much as a like the colour scheme I've been working with it might be interesting to see how other colours translate on screen and in print. Also the black and purple ones might be a bit too dark? I'm not too sure whether I just think that because I don't use those colours much or whether they actually are too dark but I'll take the print outs home with me and think about it.