Final Designs

Design Concepts

Me, myself, and this Wacom Tablet

This is the only kind of drawing tablet I own. It's Wacom Intuos3, Medium size and I received this for my birthday gift five years ago and I have been using it ever since.

Back when I was a lot younger the only drawing surface I had access to was a piece of paper and traditional writing utensils such as pencils and pens. Of course, hundreds of sheets of papers were grinded to bring my visual fantasies about, with many completely forgettable creations as a result of my puny human brain.

Fast forward several years when my puny human brain evolved into less-puny human brain and my stick figures developed into slightly plausible human figure, I came across a drawing tutorial that made a mention of "Wacom Tablet." Curiously, I looked the unfamiliar term on the almighty Google in order to enhance my knowledge on this "Wacom Tablet."

Then a whole new world opened up to me. This mythical tool allowed the wielder to create art unlike any other. It felt like magic. I wanted it. My very soul craved for a taste of its magic as I anxiously chowed down on a bowl of instant noodles I had in my hand as I continued my research. One tablet to rule them all.

Again, fast forward few more years in 2005. I receive the fabled tool during late summer. I hook it up, open up Notepad, close Notepad, open up Paint, and began my reign of pure, unadulterated terror as I annihilated the blankness of canvas in favor of whatever the heck I was drawing back then. All I remember was that it was one of the third greatest moments of my life.

Wearing my first fancy hat has nothing compared to this.

Color Palettes and Pitch Idea

For the project I decided to use palettes taken from famous landmarks using ColourLovers website.

St. Basil's Cathedral, Russia

Stonehenge, England

Taj Mahal, India

Pitch Idea: I've chosen to go with drawing tablets (Wacom Tablet, Bamboo, Wii Draw, etc.) to represent my ad campaign. The idea is to put the pad on top of a photo representing a famous landmark and creating a new drawing through the tablet drawing area.

This sketch represents the general idea of my campaign. There's also a plan to put in new drawings in addition to the ones already represented in the photo, much like how movies add CGI renditions in background to create a fictional setting, such as locations in Lord of the Rings and Snow Fortress dream level in Inception.

It all begins with a single stroke

Alternative Tagline: “The world is your canvas”

I'm sure as a child everyone has come across some form of entertainment through art such as comic books, cartoons, and exhibitions. Back when I was younger and still stuck around for Saturday morning cartoons, I was always infatuated by commercials and movies that incorporated both art and live-action within the scene. My attention was always occupied from the blending between actors in real or fictional environment interacting with animated objects, forming a very noticeable contrast between textured and monochromatic reality and contours and bright palettes of cartoons.

Geico's iconic gecko is blended into real environment using three-dimensional rendering.

Perhaps it was my fantasy desire to see such bright, cel-shaded shapes with rough outlines come about in reality that got me interested in live-action/animation style that we commonly see in television screens, whether they be the gecko from Geico commercials, Captain Crunch or Looney Tunes characters in Space Jam (And I guess also Mr. Opportunity from Honda, but I have an irrational dislike against him for some reason I can not fathom).

Mr. Opportunity is a cartoon character, who is animated within the real world interacting with live actors.

He also promotes cars. Just saying.

On the other hand, unusual application of art styles in real-world environment also gets my attention, since we do not often see stop motion animation using solely vegetables and salad dressings or cover entire building side with orange fabric. We also do not see art created by driving a car with painted tires around a gigantic canvas, which was exactly the case for BMW Z4 Roadster's promotion “Expression of Joy” in which the driver was issued a remote-controlled car with paintable tires, controlling the vehicle using a screen showing the full canvas like an artistic, non-violent version of Grand Theft Auto.

The following shots demonstrate car painting, using spray-painted tires to create brushstrokes that run across the canvas.

Combining two seemingly unrelated themes into one coherent style creates a unique example of sheer number of possibilities in compositions, and they certainly succeed in attracting audience through unique, unpredictable style. However, this does not necessarily mean the outcome will always be successful, but it is definitely a worthy innovation in advertising business.

Maybe this is why I also like crossover series. Stay classy, Capcom vs. whatever!

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Expression of Joy website: http://www.expressionofjoy.com/#

Subtractive Coloring

Here are the two different shots of my replication of one of the monochromatic palettes from the previous post using subtractive coloring.

Color Worqx Results

MONOCHROMATIC

TRANSPARENCY

ITTEN'S CONTRAST

Silhouette Collage Final

Silhouette Assignment

Artist Research: Mark Bradford

The most striking feature in Mark Bradford's collage works is the tight formation of found materials which becomes a type of mosaic as a whole. Sharp, geometric shapes cover the majority of canvases, consisting mostly of rectangular objects held in a pattern resembling a top view of the city or an urban map. The large canvas size of Bradford's works provide immense congregation of collage materials forming larger shapes as a whole and create a sense of layering as the image is viewed from different distances and perspectives.

Many of Bradford's work make strong use of low-key values, featuring either black or white as dominant negative space colors. More contrasting colors such as blue vs red in “Window Shopper” are added in to provide variety and placed next to opposing colors to create balance.

The collection of merchant posters provide different aspect of Bradford's works, involving a pattern of large, bold text laid on top of high-contrast backdrop and putting them all together to create a wall of text with huge variety in font, size, and bright background colors.

The plot thickens: More random album designs!

 This cover was from Sean W. as part of album design peer edit.

 Here is my second revision of the album design, adding white spots at the bottom to emulate camera flash and also give the bottom title much suitable background to work into.

The final design. The only difference is that I further adjusted the top title with a hazier copy to emulate thought.

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Here's my edit of Sean W.'s album cover.

Random Album Design Round 01

 Here is the first design output. Please note that the red border is bleed area, meaning it will not be the part of final product.

Here is the image used for the album, resized for viewing pleasure.

Album Scavenger Hunt

ACHROMATIC

CHROMATIC

HIGH-KEY

LOW-KEY

Group members: Evan C., Sean W.

Reading Comparison Summary

Oliver Grau's “Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion” follows the advent of virtual art and its subsequent development as a viable art media in the contemporary environment. The text emphasizes the principles of immersion within a three-dimensional environment to experience virtual art to the fullest, allowing the audience the freedom to see the piece from their own perspective instead of a single limited perspective provided by two-dimensional artworks.

Art21's blog regarding art within a virtual environment expands Grau's writing further by applying the principles of virtual art into Second Life's three-dimensional environment. Second Life's versatile artistic tools and wide availability to the pubic allows every character to create their own virtual art without facing the limitations of expenses and space a person would encounter in real life. The article emphasizes similar key concept of immersion in order to experience virtual art as Grau's. Second Life's surreal environment allows characters a huge degree of flexibility in which they can work and experience virtual art that would otherwise be impossible in reality.

Hyperformalism deals more on the creation of visual art through compact formation of individual pixels displayed on the monitor, placing more emphasis on digital collage rather than immersion in three-dimensional environment. The wide availability of 2D and 3D processing softwares allows just about anyone to create a form of art. The key point of hyperformalism is the ability to “undo” a process, giving the artist freedom to go back and retry the process over and over again with ease, something that is not easily provided in many traditional media.

Watch the Worlds & Crows - Comparison Summary

Robbie Dingo's “Watch the Worlds” and Akira Kurosawa's “Crows” both materialize Van Gogh's paintings to three-dimensional environment by directly exploring Van Gogh's works from within, as if traveling inside the very painting itself. They go inside deep into the ideas behind the paintings and connect two-dimensional aspects of the paint canvas with three-dimensional reality we live in.

Dingo's recreation of Van Gogh's “Starry Night” in Second Life's virtual three-dimensional environment sets an entirely new perspective in Van Gogh's work that would otherwise be completely obscured in two-dimensional space with a scene in which a character can explore freely, going beyond the layers of canvas and bringing a whole new life in painting. 

Kurosawa takes a different approach to Van Gogh's works compared to Dingo, going directly inside Van Gogh's works and exploring the ideas behind the paintings. Kurowasa imagines what Van Gogh had in his mind as he painted the pieces and follow the process, transplanting himself upon the two-dimensional plane of Van Gogh's numerous pieces in a dream-like sequence.

Destruction in Abstraction Final

Destruction in Abstraction Preliminary Sketch

To do:

- Add more abstract principles (Simplify explosions into more basic shapes
- Balance (Positive and negative space

Abstract Layers Feb. 7, 2011

Layers de-synchronized a bit when I tried to push the canvas down on the scanner.

Feb 2, 2010 Quiz Product

Exquisite Corpse

Mark and Gesture

Artist Research: Matthew Ritchie

Matthew Ritchie's artworks mainly consist of straight, organic lines throughout the canvas. Despite the simplicity in the shapes and lines, Ritchie manages to create a sense of complexity and depth within his artworks through chaotic representation of the lines which in turn forms into vivid, detailed scenes. This characterizing the vast possibilities of a simple concept, which in this case is the usage of lines in multiple forms, whether straight or curved with many points of intersection.

Ritchie's usage of both two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces also help visualize the concept of vastness in the universe we live in by providing limitless ways we can represent a relatively simple object. The sheer scale of what seems to be small, normal lines eventually evolve into a unique creation of its own, each containing its own story behind it. The abstract themes represented in Ritchie's works definitely run parallel to the enigmatic nature of the universe and how we came to understand it.

Introduction

This is Seok (Danny) Ji's blog for LCC 2720, where I will post the assignment and entries of that nature.