Wednesday 25 November 2009

CPP Aardvark Doorstormers

finally .... its here

CPP Aardvark DoorStormers from pie face on Vimeo.

Monday 23 November 2009

presentation

just had our presentation

It went well

That is all

Sunday 22 November 2009

extra

just a couple of things i missed out with the ideas and inspirations.

One of the initial things mentioned whilst talking as a group was the idea of basing the door around some of the items/ areas within the Harry Potter books/ films.

There were 2 main areas when looking into this. These were the Room of Requirement and the Mirror of Erised.

Each of these things show/give the viewer what they desire, what they would like to see. These concepts link directly with our piece and spawned many ideas which are featured within my sketchbook.

final music

didn't say how long it would be.

I felt that

Walk in Space by Fingathing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOgDzgqQ93I

was the best choice. The music had a solid base line whilst the top beat kept you interested. The music seems calming at first, drawing you into the music. This works well for our video as the aim is to draw the audience in and take them on a journey of our imaginations (ish)

The music holds enough differences to keep the audience interested but also keeps a distinct tempo and rhythm. The use of a single track means the audience is lost within the piece, time slips away. This isn't just idle chat. I tried the music and the piece out with a few people and the first comment was, 'No way was that 5 minutes' (steven swanborough)

Lets hope you enjoy it

Song choices

As part of our video, we wanted a really good piece of music that could be attached to the piece. As all the pieces were varied in length, we felt that a single music track would be the best option which could be as is, or edited so that it could be extended to the length of the composition.

Out of all the music tracks that Chris found, it was whittled down to just 3:

far from refuge by god is an astronaut
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awrRz24ulD0&feature=fvw

Walk in Space by Fingathing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOgDzgqQ93I

Keystroke by Her Space Holiday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YENW9uCyKM4

The final choice will be revealed later on.

My interpretation

From the very beginning, ideas were coming thick and fast from all members of our group (the 3 out of 4 that were there anyway).

Here are some of the things that inspired my ideas:


My style is very much inspired by the art work from Heroes (TV series) and the illustrator Tim Sale. I have mentioned this artist in my own, personal blog.

Here is a link:
http://rorysnaddonmi.blogspot.com/2009/08/heroes.html

My love of films also inspired many of my ideas, so much so, that i had a whole page dedicated to doors from films/ based on films. My Third idea within the CPP Aardvark film, an epic 6hr drawing but only 1 minute of footage, was based around a collaboration between Men in Black 2 and Monsters Inc.



The idea of another universe/ galaxy behind a door intrigued me, espcially when playing with scale. Would the other world be much larger or smaller than our own. It all depends on which side of the door you are on.

The idea then developed into as i began to think about the first DVD that i owned and still have. Monsters inc. plays on a similar, different universe concept but actually involves a door. I then decided a characterised version would be more suitable for the overall theme as i wouldn't want to open a door to a bunch of monsters that want to kill me.

That is all for now

time line of drawings

As part of our piece, we wanted all the work to be kept as a secret, that everyone was treat equally and that the unveiling was as much as a shock as we could possibly get it to be.

As Chris has already mentioned, we had managed to accomplish this as people are still asking us, 'What is behind your door?'

Its just a void, an empty canvas which our ideas can be projected. It is whatever you want it to be. A mystery, a new world, an idea, a disaster, it is anything!

Here is a time line of our work in week 2.

By the way, the images are in reverse order so i suggest looking at the bottom image first : )




























Similar Collab




local artist David Parkinson's ( http://www.davidillustration.com/ )work can be seen outside Magma book store in the Northern Quarter of Manchester... Magma often change the designs of the boards that stand on either side of their shop front but this is the first time I've seen an artist actually post the work with a bit of an explanation.

In the same way we have chosen a theme for our door, Parkinson and his friend, Mark Penman, both had the same theme but two different approaches and styles to it...

original blog post: http://djparkinson.blogspot.com/2009/06/boards-for-magma-bookstore.html

MOOAR 2.0 (now with added OAR

Although I might be over doing the time lapse thing now... I still find it amazing... it's like the next step for illustration... rather than looking at a flat 2D image in a magazine or online... you can now see how it was made... I'm really excited to see how all of our work flows together in the final video (although I know one of my own pieces was slightly cocked up when the camera was knocked out of place but too late to worry!)... but I'm again coming back to my interest in creating something a little more tactile that an audience can get more enjoyment out of and involvement with. I even tried this within photography and taking an image of a 3D object, that is printed onto a 2D surface but I turned them into anaglyphic images thus making them '3D' again.. (*technically not real 3D but the illusion of it).

I'm slightly going off on one here.. and should probably save this for my own blog...

http://www.babelgum.com/4006107/pirates-cia-timelapse-graffiti-mural.html
I stumbled across this video which reminded me of our own and how we've been trying to decide on the correct piece of music to complement the footage. It is another time lapse video of a large scale collaboration, but they have edited the footage to fit with key beats in the soundtrack which adds to the viewing pleasure... but they also completely paint over the final piece as if it never existed... no matter how often I see it done.. you can't help thinking WHY!!! why not leave it and let people admire it in person for a bit... :(

( they also had a few other time lapse vids for those interested! :P http://www.babelgum.com/browser.php#grid/SEARCH_SIMILAR,clipID:4004331,includeClip:true,order:MOST_RELEVANT )




the particular group of people featured in the time lapse video are the Pirates (http://piratesonblog.blogspot.com/), who are all well known graffiti/street artists within their own circles but collectively come together for commissions and projects. Hopefully, even after this project has ended a few of us will still collaborate from time to time :) what I like about the pieces I've added here is again HUMOuR and FUN. Like how Keeley made the chairs look like mouths, Pirates have made the windows look exactly the same.... and although a more serious topic of unprotected sex, they have still added humour to the work rather and are being quite vulgar with it (which is still funny.. depending on your generation)...





The members of the Pirates are listed on their blog but I found one of their team prior to this... Disco Teck ( http://www.teck1.blogspot.com/ ) again purely by accident via a magazine. As I mentioned before about graffiti and street art becoming popular, Disco Teck, the Pirates and various other names/labels their associated with have gone from graffiti artists and collaborating artists to commercial design collectives with offices around the world and rolling in it :) I now feel that once I graduate, all my interests will have fallen out of favour.. :/

MOAR!!

Well I can't leave it as just a few artists who influenced our choices... !

One original suggestion of what we could do with our door was to sand it completely down until there was nothing left but sawdust... and then try and fit it to a door... or place it in an empty doorway and make people 'open' it... we could've gone off into some bullshit about how it technically is still a door... maybe it was the evolution of a door back to a simpler state.. or maybe it was just an excuse to destroy something... either way.. we didnt go ahead with the idea.. but I did find an artist who did a similar thing...

Yogi Proctor ( http://www.yogiproctor.com/ ) who I found in my Concrete 2 Canvas book (also in the library) basically filmed himself taking an electric sander to an antique chair... apparently interested in the form of things... however I am left wondering, what is the stupidest thing someone has EVER done and then called 'art'...?


its a good job we didnt do this I think!

Samuel Francois ( http://www.samuelfrancois.com/arbre.html ) is known for his bright additions to nature. In a similar vein to our own theme of work, Francois chose to paint brightly coloured patterns to recesses and exposed areas of trees which made them look as if they are hiding away different personalities and their true colours on the inside of their bark. The practical side of this is nothing amazing, its just adding colour to trees, but the idea that trees have this hidden side to them again sparks the imagination to conjure what else they might hide, what colours would be inside other species of tree, what could would you be on the inside? something so simple that can make another person open their mind even just for a second is a wonderful thing... I fear the majority of younger generations are lacking in imagination... :(




Olle Hemmendorff ( http://hemmendorff.com/ ) one day got tired of his ordinary kitchen floor and decided to draw on it... I would LOVE to do this in my own house... however, with my current living arrangements I would be killed... and I reckon if I moved in with my girlfriend I'd get very little say in decor...
anyway... again with this piece of work I am interested in the technique and appearence, it's like graffiti/urban street art has become so popular that it is no longer posted on walls under the cover of darkness but is now venturing into our homes and completely D.I.Y. which I dont mind.. but I cant help feel over saturated with it in recent years... especially with the millions of Banksy copy-cats... (myself included in that a few years ago!). Hemmendorff's own D.I.Y floor is particularly appealling because of its character, the cartoon looking, heavy outlined wood panels are drawn in a state of disrepair... with weeds growing between the cracks and the odd nail bent and sticking out... the humour in it makes me smile each time.





Thomas Keeley ( http://thomaskeeley.net/ ), I looked at this guy's work with the idea of making the door itself into a character... I suggested the idea that we could all create characters that represented doors or our pathways... but it was just an excuse to create a character and make it 3D.... either way I found Keeley's work fun in the way that an ordinary object can suddenly be personified with the addition of an attribute we relate to as being human.. or alive... for example the teeth added to the chairs suddenly take a functional piece of furniture and turn it into a scary being who might eat you when you sit on it!!!!






similar to this, when I came across the Faces in Places ( http://facesinplaces.blogspot.com/ )blog last year I was again smiling at all the weird and wonderful expressions found on inanimate objects... but also made more aware of our own tendencies to form images from various lines, marks, holes or moldings... is it a comforting thing if we paint a happy face on things? or is just an overactive imagination?

How it all came about...

As shown in some earlier posts... the whole idea to do a time lapse video of ourselves painting the door with each of our design came from a DVD of mine ( http://www.b-stormers.com/motionpaintings/ ). I found it by accident a few years ago in Magma after seeing it played on the TV there, it was great to see how not jsut one piece of work started out but many and the interesting idea of painting over what had previously gone before was alien to me... I'm sometimes teased about how precious I can be over my own work... so this format meant I didnt have time to worry about every detail nor how it looked at the end... I was again reminded that the focus should be on the idea and not the 'style' of how it looks... however I've used this project as a release for me to do some of my own work/my own thing.

Those that follow my own blog know that I love cartoons and comics and I feel like I reverted back to a more comfortable drawing style... black outlined, cartoony and graffiti like. Last year the idea of using techniques that were appropriate to the idea etc. was discussed and I kind of got the impression that my interest in cartoony drawings was frowned upon.. but due to the nature of this project and its close proximity to graffiti I jumped at the chance to craete something in a style I felt would look good :) (like always I did just want to show off my own skills, but this project was more about our interests as I mentioned earlier)....so... I started looking to artists that I thought would fit this brief...

First off I raided my graffiti books, 'Art of the Rebellion', 'Street Logos' and 'Concrete 2 Canvas' purely for artists who draw characters with a cartoon-like style...

Flying Fortress ( http://www.teddytroops.net/ ), has graced my research before was an immediate influence purely in the creation of my Monster character as I wanted to achieve the same 'look' of smooth crisp lines/edges almost like it was a vector piece created on the door.


another piece by FF gave us the idea of not only using the door as a canvas but to add pieces to the door that could be painted on and then removed to be shown as evidence... however due to time we didnt get chance to pull this off... We had intended to add 3 canvases to the door and then paint as normal... but before painting it all white, we would remove the canvases to keep as reminders.

Dave the Chimp ( http://www.davethechimp.co.uk/home.php ) was another easy choice in terms of technique, with his simply shaped characters coming to life on walls, doors and other various canvases, each with a strong cartoon and comic vibe/ancestry to them. Chimp clearly enjoys what he does, and enjoys having a laugh at the same time... jsut read his 'About' section on his website! It's this fun factor that I want to capture in all of my work... and I know in a couple of previous briefs I completely missed it! I just did a piece of work that fitted the bill and then moved on... not good! thats not me. I want to deveop my own personal style and feel I need to focus my attention.. but here is an artist who has fun with what he does, he expresses his own personality into his work and spans various techniques/areas from 2D to 3D, graffiti walls to canvas... why am I not relaxing about my work and doing the same thing...









this piece in particular could be seen as Graphic due to it looking like an icon or logo. The thing that makes it graphic is that it is easily readable and understandable... the execution of it through technique just makes the message clearer... I must remember... IDEAS first, before I even consider style....

this project has certainly helped and opened my eyes! :) most of all... I've had fun because I've been around some great people and been able to just be myself....

Joe Ledbetter ( http://www.joeledbetter.com/mainpage.html ), yet another artist who takes his creations across different mediums but also creates work in a comic/cartoon style. I don't know if it's because I loved cartoons as a kid that I still watch them to this day or because I always said from an early age that I wanted to draw cartoons (after copying images of Sonic the hedgehog, Mario and the Teenage mutant hero turtles)... either way.. Ledbetters work just seems to make sense to me... maybe not his depiction of characters and the situations they're in, although they are bloody cute... but more so that everything has a solid outline... you can read shapes which become limbs. You get a sense of the characters personality through the way he has drawn them...





I can get distracted by this cartoony style a little which I admit, but thats also why I took a shine to things like contour drawing.. (which was the technique I used for my naked woman design)... as it removes any over thinking on my behalf... but I jsut need to keep it all in check so i dont get carried away and lose sight of what I was doing...

also thought I would try researching about human curiosity... but I've pretty much covered the generally gist of this site in the previous post.. ;)

http://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/students/explore.htm