OUGD104 End of Module Evaluation

OUGD104 End of Module Evaluation

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN - LEVEL 4 

Module Code - OUGD104

Module Title – Visual Language

End of Module Self Evaluation

Name - Michael Mooney

Blog - you're on it

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

I feel that whilst I may not have completed as much work as I wish I had done, I have developed skills in terms of generating ideas and keeping things simple. Whereas before I felt almost unable to obtain one solid idea, I feel a great deal more confident in selecting one concept and idea and continuing with it. I have also realised that I am able to draw - I was under the impression that my drawing skills were not up to standard, but I have gained a great deal of confidence in this area.

2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?  

I enjoyed studying the work of other artists and designers who have also created sequential artwork, this process inspired me greatly and left me with a large number of ideas. I do however wish I had taken out more time to study other work.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?  

I have realised that I do have a strength in terms of drawing and illustrating, a skill I had not realised I possessed. Unfortunately due to certain circumstances through the Easter holidays I did not draw as much as I could have done, which I am quite upset about. I definitely wish to pursue this activity further however in future briefs.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?

My persistent lack of organisation and time management, and due to this, I was less able to identify weaknesses in my work. Generally my software skills leave something to be desired, and so I will practise further when I have a Mac of my own. 

5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these? 

1 - Start immediately, and do not stop until I have reached the stage I was aiming for
2 - Manage my time better, and not land a job just before the Easter holidays
3 - Get my work out in the open, show people, publicise myself and my work, as I am wasting my time otherwise
4 - Get more involved with photography, as it provides a bank of imagery for me to work with, which I do not have at the present stage.
5 - KISS - 'Keep it simple stupid'........can't remember who thought that one up but it works.

6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas:

(please indicate using an ‘x’) 

5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor

	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance			x
Punctuality			x
Motivation	x
Commitment			x
Quantity of work produced		x
Quality of work produced					x
Contribution to the group		x

type and grid

 Work from a visual language session some time ago. Essentially we were asked to select a page from a magazine or newspaper, analyse the grid and then re-arrange how we saw fit. Unfortunately I was unable to find the original magazine image, I'm sure it's about so I'll get that in here very soon. The image below shows some layout ideas based around grids and stuff. Grids are actually wicked, more fun than I imagined previously, but then again I had a lot of fun with the grids in maths exercise books when I was younger, perhaps because I couldn't really do the maths that well but I could conjure up neat patterns, I wish I still had those books.

 

So then after that I chose one of the ideas and drew it up nice and neat. I like the look of centering the main body of text and image, I feel that this gives the elements a little room to breathe rather than cramping it all the way up to the edges like I see in a lot of publications. Perhaps at some point I'll get more to grips with InDesign and try and knock out a proper professional version.  

 

 

another nice idea.

I stripped it all down a bit further to create these two images above. I get the feeling that these are actually the most effective of all designs, it would be refreshing to see some stark contrast black and white cover sat in between a load of other colourful comics. It would be nice to some proper screen prints, or perhaps reverse it and screen print with some chrome ink onto some black paper, something I've wanted to do for a while. 

A refinement of a previous image.

front cover continuation

A couple of dark murky images I sourced from an NY photography book.....I will reference these asap....I figured I could use them as some kind of backdrop for the front cover. I really enjoy the way they look, it reminds me a bit of the style of photography on Burial's first LP which is grim and holds a sense of tragic realism. This would work quite well for the comic, as the story depicts the similar sense of youthful realism, growing up to realise that the world is in fact a very unfair place and that not a lot works out how it was originally expected. 

 

 

Overlaying the drawing onto the photograph and adding some type. Obviously there's plenty of room for improvement but I'm quite liking the general feel of it.

These two shown above take a slightly different approach, I used the textural feel of the second photograph combined with the drawing to create quite a harsh, cold image, still retaining that graphic-novel style. I'd honestly quite like to create a whole comic in this style. I kept the type a little more basic and serious, as for some reason I felt the bubbly comic-type used in the previous images was in fact a little too playful and suits the super-hero themes a lot more. 

front page inital concepts

A couple of basic front cover designs. Essentially I drew up the elements by hand, stuck them on some coloured stock and photocopied them. Primitive would be the word....The printed copies actually looked almost okay, but no where near satisfactory. I figured the hand drawn feel would help to make it appear graphic-novelly and comic style. Turns out this would require investing a great amount of time in hand rendering type designs and stuff like that, so I guess I'll get involved with a bit of Illustrator and see what I can come up with. 

 

 

In fact, these are total crap, I almost feel as if I have to apologise. All part of the process though.

that was then this is now

watched this extract of the film on youtube, and it's exactly the way I imagined it when I read the book. Definitely going to get hold of a copy and watch the whole thing......I really like this style of film.......sometimes...you know, old school American flicks, slightly dark and whatnot.

WH4T 1S 4 L1N3 - plan of action

ESSENTIALLY going on my chosen definition of 'Line' - 'A Connected series of events, actions or developments' - I have near enough decided and created a brief for this project.

Basically when I was younger I read this book called 'That was then, This is now' by S.E. Hinton. Here it is:



Wonderful book. Well sort of anyway. It was alright. Entertained me quite a bit, I've read it three times, which is more than any other book I've read, and it's fairly short and to the point. It's also fairly dark in places as well, it's about two best friends who grow apart in some fairly tragic ways. Anyway, it's got all the credentials to make a wicked comic strip, in my opinion. So this is what I'm going to do.

As usual, I've left things pretty late, and I now have ten days to complete this project. So in this ten days I will do the following:

- develop a drawing style to suit the storyline and characters, a style that can yield rapid results
- condense the chapters into short scripts to allow the story to be told in a fairly short space with the help of images
- attempt to have some kind of finished comic strip-type-thing ready for the deadline.

It's a lot.

I've heard they've made a film out of it too now. I haven't seen it but I might go out of my way to watch it just to make my life a tiny bit easier.

Further mind-mapping.

investigating a bit further into sequential art. Turns out the term 'sequential art' more so relates to stuff like comic strips and story boards as opposed to moving image and animation. I'll probably look further into creating some sort of comic strip-style artwork. Interestingly it was also pointed out to me that whilst the term was only coined in 1985-ish, the idea has been around since BC times, what with Egyptian Hieroglyphs and stuff like that, picture manuscripts telling stories and conveying information through image. Also tapestry is a fairly well-known medium that regularly employs sequential images.

What is a Line...themes.

A few randomly selected themes to get my mind working a bit. I'll spend some time researching and investigating various pieces of sequential artwork on my design context blog, to get some ideas for production techniques whilst I decide on some kind of theme. 

What is a Line...preferred definition

I quite like the idea of Sequential art, stuff that employs time as a concept, I feel that this can be much more expressive than static images. I came up with a few broad and vague ideas underneath, types of work that would contain a series of events between and starting and finishing point. A to B. or A to Z via C, F, M and the next. Or B to A, or Z to A, whatever. Backwards forwards sideways downwards etc, you name it. 

Direction and Magnitude and all that jazz.

Obviously I'm going to have to form a refined brief to give me some sort of clear direction of where to go and where not to go.

What is a Line - Brief.

There it is. The brief for the next Visual Language project. Looks like one to really get stuck in to. Dig my teeth in and whatnot. Bite off as much as I can chew. and more. 

colour postcards

images made for the postcards for the Photoshop colour theory brief. Manipulating images taken in Visual Language sessions with regards to the colour red. Definitely did not spend as much time working on these as I should of, but that's a lesson learnt for next time.

 All of them are placed on 410x148mm canvases in Photoshop, before the background layer is duplicated. One layer I made black and white, whilst the other I coloured red and altered Saturation, Contrast and Exposure levels to achieve interesting effects. Following this I combined the two layers through use of a circle.

I'm enjoying this one quite a lot, could be combined with some type to make a quirky, slightly retro poster design. Some nice Helvetica maybe..........something to try in future I reckon. 

improved type...

a hand-rendered version with an improved 't' for better legibility....although it now no longer matches the first 't'......though that isn't so much of a problem I imagine. maybe the extended part of the 'e' isn't such a good idea either. so many issues. 

book title type

running on the idea of triplets and whatever I spent some time messing around with this typeface I found....called Park Lane I think......it caught my eye straight away due to its similarity with musical scores, so it was an obvious contender. I initially drew this out by hand and then switched it up to digital, which looks somewhat less desirable than the original, which I'll upload at some point. 

Problems I noticed straight away were that the second 't' is too cramped and therefore becomes slightly less legible....looks more like 'triples' at the moment. I don't even know if 'triplets' is a good title word at the moment. The 's' has been slightly distorted as well, and this is why I often hate computers for how impossible it seems to just do something really simple. long. I wouldn't mind throwing in a couple of compound time signatures in the middle of the p where the e begins, on the score. Just for some subtle musical references.

books for book fair.

..................number 3 is the theme that I have been given.
Therefore after a short while of brainstorming and messing about I've decided that I will base my small edition of ten hot-dog fold books on the idea of triplet and swing-based rhythms in drumming, both which can be considered compound rhythms, meaning they are based around the idea of having a multiple of 3 beats in a bar instead of simple beats which would be multiples of two. Of course there are hundreds and thousands of variations, and of course these swung beats can be incorporated into 4/4 signatures and whatnot. and vice versa. but basically I'm planning to make some sort of simple booklet aimed at those who are interesting in learning some alternative rhythms, or even those who have never played drums but would like to get involved........

Vis.Lang photography session.

generally a session to mess around and get to grips with using SLR's, and also making use of artificial lighting to create some cool stuff. Matey who ran the session was a decent guy and all, explained stuff well which I was happy about becuase I've not really known all that much about photography before.

Our two chosen objects.

adding a green gel to the light. its pretty cool how easy it is to make such a bright object lose its intensity simply by only allowing a certain colour to hit the object.

adding a second light into the equation, from a different direction. the objects almost stop possessing their own colour and start taking on the colours of the lights. where the red light is absent the green becomes more intense and vice versa.

new objects, with yellow and blue light. in some ways this seems more effective than the first objects, as the presence of the lights is only apparent in the shadows. magic.

same again with purple and green. it's strange how the paper seems to stay white despite there being two colours shone upon it. or perhaps it is green and purple but it's difficult to spot as the shadows are more intense.

a couple of other cool bits and pieces just to finish it off. 

Madrid Bullring - visual synecdoche



Madrid metro - visual metaphor



real madrid - visual metonym