Communicating Identity

Intent - to investigate the visual communication of abstract feelings and thoughts

Content - poem, video and music

Communication Objectives - to communicate a sense of childhood in the form of an idealised unreliable memory

-to communicate the abstract nature of identity

- to communicate the introspection of thought

Using a variety of resources this week, I analysed them all to see what kinds of techniques, metaphors and creative style was used so I could apply it to my own work where I illustrated 3 sources. The references I used to inform my intent use gesture, idealisation, surrealism and nonsense to portray a sense of Identity. I want to look at the surreal side of the how it's working to apply to my own piece. Inside Our Heads and The Footprints She Made. I have focused on Identity this week but will be continuing to do more with the others.

Thumbnails.

I think the last one is more considerate of the resources I analysed and is a little more complex than the others. It is quite an abstracted, surreal pice which I think could also be linked into the previous work influenced by Shaun Tan's The Arrival. The perhaps confusing imagery could be reliable in terms of identity as we are trying to decipher the image. We may not be able to understand it all, the same as our own identity.I would come back to the piece to figure more of it out.
The abstracted, surreal side to this piece is something I wish to incorporate more into my practice as I think the way it works is thought provoking and adds another layer to a piece which brings you back to it again and again. In terms of my FMP prep. I will consider this communication objective as incorporation in the work I produce.

Communicating Emotion

Intent - convey the use of metaphor to communicate emotion

Content - news article

Communication Objectives- communicate the emotions the article suggests via visual metaphors

Reference - Shaun Tan's The Arrival 

Shaun Tan conveys emotions in his work in surreal and abstract ways so his The Arrival piece was used as reference to analyse when trying to convey it in my own piece. There were lots of elects to his work which successfully portrayed metaphorical emotions. 

Tan involves pages of the same image but variations of it. For instance, there is a page full of clouds. In metaphorical terms, this can be related to loneliness. Everyone looks at clouds so it is something we all have in common so they bring everyone together. The immigrant in The Arrival is therefore not as alone as we may first interpret. 

On the other end of this spectrum we see Tan emphasising the loneliness of this character by using compositional techniques. Panning out from the character to reveal a vast sea and a single lonely boat. 

A recurring piece of imagery he uses is a paper bird. This could symbolise a familiarity or a comforting reminder of home for the character.

Imaginary creatures and language is used throughout the narrative. It involves the reader in the characters sense of displacement as we too, will probably not fully understand what these creatures and language means.As a reader we can therefore relate.

The main techniques Tan uses to convey the emotions are composition and repetition. I will take these into consideration when creating my own piece using the article below.

The article below is what I used as my content to produce an illustrative piece. 

My initial ideas were a more symbolic portrayal of emotion rather than a metaphorical like the recurring paper birds in The Arrival.

I wanted to portray the sense of loss in my piece with the disappearing place settings and the taking over of the sea. 

Final Piece

I think using a metaphorical portrayal of emotions is quite difficult as I think my work ended up being mostly symbolic. I still think I have managed to represent loss in my piece though. I've used variable repetition in like Tan has with the clouds in his work but I have transformed the original box completely so that the last box is taken over completely. I like the idea of using the composition to get across a message so with my practice I may do more of this to see what results I can achieve depending on what I want my work to say. This may help bring attention to certain aspects of the piece, emphasising a message I want to get across or like in the previous research, a character trait or feature I want exaggerating or to be the main focus.

Caricature

The Intent - investigate the idea of communicating something about the nature of someone by caricature. 

Content- test character for the experiment (Nigel Farge)

-knowing something about the subject so a better understanding of personality can be illustrated.

Communication Objectives- highlight a trait of a person

-in Nigel Farage's case the fact that he is power/ ego driven, he's sneaky and is all talk. 

Reference- other artists work such as Steve Bell and Gillray

Both caricaturists have included recognisable traits and features of the characters portrayed. Emphasising elements we can pick up as very characteristic of the individuals. This is what I am aiming to do with the process I am using.

I used Nigel Farage as a reference point when it came to investigating the idea of communicating something about the nature of someone by caricature. I tried to single out features that stood out to emphasise a certain trait of the subject matter. I made a clay head replication whilst trying to emphasise the mouth of Nigel Farage. I tried to get the point across that he is all talk when it comes to his personality. I exaggerated this further by drawing the clay face and obscuring it more.

The end result of my piece ended up being more of an anthropomorphised piece which I think in the end works quite well. The emphasised features, mainly the mouth, infer he is a big talker or in terms of the anthropomorphism, an ape in a suit talking rubbish. It was through this development of manipulating the face and character that I could achieve this result. 
In terms of my own practice the concept of developing a character this way is something I can apply to other things too. I am not particularly interested in the aspect of character design. However, I do enjoy personifying buildings so I could apply this way of working to this. Initial sketches of a building and then researching the place and gaining more knowledge on the buildings use and the kinds of people who go there. I could then begin to illustrate the building better because I have this extra information and focus on parts that I want people to pick out. I think this will allow for a more successful development process as I will be more familiar with what I am drawing which will hopefully come across in the final piece.