CRITICAL REVIEW/ Final Major Project

Student Name: Ewan Turner Pathway: Visual communication

FMP Title: Friends and strange place

To be handed in alongside your FMP hand-in

1. Briefly describe the context of your project and how you used a range of critical perspectives and approaches to initiate your idea.

My project idea was initially inspired by the little drawings, in my old sketchbooks of my friends and strange places I’ve been in in every day life, hence the name friends and strange places. In the initial stages of this project the idea was more about me and my perspective of what I thought were strange places and funny habits that my friends had. However the project evolved and the context gradually became about my friends and places they thought were strange. I believe I am involved in the creative and illustrator scene in London. I attend many events, galleries and talks. I believe this gives me a good critical perspective as well as a great understanding of my target audience. While not only receiving feedback from tutors of which impacted my project, as seen on not blog and in the sketchbook, I also received constant feedback from my peers which helped me understand new perspectives and helped me solve issues like my spelling.

2. Describe how research, analysis and evaluation helped you to feed ideas and develop concepts?

It was through research that pretty early on in my project that I realised that my initial view of strange places was paint lakes in Australia and mountain in Ireland formed by the gods wasn’t what interested me. After I didn’t more research and analysed results from my survey I realised that what a strange place is is actually a matter of perspective and sometimes my own city can be very strange. This evaluation went on to inform a lot of my concepts and ideas. I also found that it was the research into the execution of certain concepts that helped develop them and develop them into final products. One example of this is the printing of my book. While I had the content of the book, it was the book publisher Blurb of which I found through my research into book publishers and the software Book Wright that allowed me to develop the content of the book in to a book. I also believe that being more experimental with my research, something that was suggested during a group crit, helped me improve my project. While initially I started looking into photographers through to music this eventually let to me experimenting with AR and animation of which really stepped up my the development of my project to a higher level. I also used a song that I found doing my research into music and paces in my AR animation.

3. What specialist skills and methods did you use to realise your project?

This project was a very interesting one for me as almost completely by accident I have stumbled onto loads new types of software that has given me a new set of skills. For the creating of the illustrations in my book however I used a wide range of both physical skills to to digital, that I was already familiar with such as photoshop, illustrator and indesign. I used indesign to bring the documents together and test what the book would look like before transferring it to Book Wright. Book Wright was the book creation software form the publisher Blurb of which I then had to learn so that I could use Blurb to publish my book. For creating the animation, that I used for my augmented reality cover, despite having experience with stop motion animation I knew for this animation I wanted it to be really smooth so I had to learn after effects. For my animation I leaned the basics which was enough to execute my idea. I found and then learned how to use the augmented reality software Zappar. I leaned how to attach pictures and videos to a code so that when they are scanned these pop up and can be interacted with. While developing a hand made book as a backup I re leaned old skills such as testing paper and bookbinding which I used to create a physical book.

4. How did you integrate practical, theoretical and technical understanding to solve complex problems within your FMP? Please use examples.

My concept friends and strange places is very broad as a concept and because of this it did lead to some problems. One of the major problems I had when it came to start creating a final concept was that because I had been creating work in such a broad theme the contese of my book ideas didn’t have an anchor linking it together and just seemed like a collection of images. Once I realised this with the help of my tutor we set some targets to help me find my anchor.  I needed to write some mission statements for the project that would some up what I wanted the project to be about. From this I then began coming up with ideas and eventually I engineered an idea that connected all my mission statements. The idea to have a book featuring images of my friends and then illustrations of places they found strange.

5. What systems/ tools did you use to plan your project and how effective were they to organise and develop your work?

Initially I used the proposal in which I had planned out what I intended to do for each week and posted this on my blog, so I could then reference this as I went along. I regularly changed and updated the timetable when it was no longer relevant or my ideas changed. I also made a point of regally stopping and evaluating myself and the direction of the project in my sketchbook and then in greater detail on my blog. If I had any issue I would make a plan for how I would then move forward. I found these systems useful as I wasn’t constantly worried about making sure I was organised everyday as I would just check with the timetable or my last plan to make sure I was working effectively.

6. What type of evaluative and reflective records did you keep? How did this help you develop your learning? Please use examples.

I used my sketchbooks for mainly experimentation, image making but I also regularly stopped to evaluate ideas and reflect on the direction I was taking. I then used my blog for recording my evaluations and reflections in greater detail of which aloud me to easily access this later on and return to old tests or aspects of research. An example of this is when I was testing and developing the design of my book in between image making, the blog allowed me to go back and look at what went well and what didn’t go well so that I could put it into action and develop my book. This allowed me to better address things that needed changed.

7. Who is your intended audience? Describe techniques and methods you used to communicate your idea to them.

My intended target audience is young creatives of the world and more specifically from London. I knew from the start that I didn’t just want to appeal to my target audience through my final book. I wanted there to be multiple aspects of it, attracting young people interested in creativity and involved within the arts. Initially the plan was to produce products to go along side the book like total bags and poster oh which are immensely popular with young creatives. However it wasn’t until I went to a talk by Sascha Lobes, at the Conran store, did I realise that I didn’t want to just create mechanise that was flat and just part of a flooded market. Instead at the talk I was exposed to the possibilities with things like augmented reality and animation, as seen with Sascha Lobes It’s Nice That AR cover design . This mad me realise that is I really wanted to make an impact and catch the attention of young creates I needed to use AR and movement in my design and so thats what I did.

8. Overall summary: Describe the key points to take away from this experience. In what ways will your approach to creative production change in future as a result

One thing that I will take away from the experience is  that the preparation for the proposal is key, as if you don’t prepare properly it will be an uphill struggle at times as I realised. I believe that my thinking while making the proposal was wrong and led to me struggling at points during the first few weeks of my fmp. Where I think I went wrong was I had it in my head from before the proposal that I wanted to make a book and then I built the theme and proposal from there. This was wrong as I hadn’t prepared for research into strange places and my friends and had instead just planned loads of image making and then book making which wouldn’t work as I had no research to work from or a theme to the book. In future I will change my approach and not worry about the final outcome and instead focus more on the theme and exploring it through research before moving on to coming up with ideas and image making. Something else that I will take away from this project is to push my self out of my comfort zone and too push my final outcomes further. As seen in my proposal and in some blog posts my original intentions for my final outcomes would have been a book and products like tote bangs and posters. However what I learned from the Sascha Lobe talk inspired me to take my project further out of my comfort zone and I learned ew skills in animation and augmented reality that I will go on to use in my creative production on the future.

The idea for my AR animation was I wanted to bring my book cover to life and this is why my animation idea is based on the cover.

My idea is that the image of my friend Alex on the cover will walk from left to right and then right to left and as he does this the letters of the book title will float away. After he gets to the middle of the page again he will stop and then the camera will pan over to the back cover of the book to show what he is looking at and the text on the back cover.

I learned pretty quickly how to make things move using the timeline and the position settings I just now needed to put in the time to get everything moving. The first issue I was faced with was I had exported the title letters individually on an a4 file and so that they would be in the right position on the page but when I tried to rotate them it was hard as the anchor point was so far away from the letter. I quickly feed this by cropping round the letter really closely and then animating them, and was really happy with how the letters turned, moved as it was random and smooth like I had visualised. The other part of the animation which I found really hard was making sure the movement on my friend Alex was natural. I had to spend time making sure the speed and the amount he moved was normal. I don’t think I got this perfect but I feel I’m as close as I could get.

After I was happy with the animation I then moved the animation into into premier to add the sound and make some of the pauses longer as this was something I couldn’t work out in premier pro. Adding the footsteps was tricky as just like the walking I had to make sure it seemed natural and in time with the animation. I also decided that the moment when the camera pans needed an up beat song to add bit of humour. I then went back to my research into music and I . thought the song Rio by Duran Duran was perfect and when I showed this to my peers they found it funny which I think is brilliant and is what I was aiming for.

Looking back and the proces of creating the animation I am really happy as I feel it went really smoothly and the main challenge was the time and work I had to put in. I think the animation also works as a great introduction to the book as they both reflect each other well. Some things that didn’t go as well as planned were some of the issues I had with pauses and sudden jumps but I think in the end of the day while I didn’t learn how to solve these problems in after effects I used my skills in other software like premier pro to rectify this. One thing that has surprised me is normally my ability with software lets me down but it think my research into the software has enabled me to effectively communicate ideas and execute my plan.

https://youtu.be/pzqavHWDTi0

I have never used augmented reality before and though it was going to be immensely complicated and expensive to produce but it is actually a lot easier. After some quick research I discovered loads of simple applications that would allow for a range of simple AR rendering to serious code and 3d affects.

The application I decided to use was Zappaer. Zappaer has both simple flat AR program which you an do online as well as a full on program for creating 3d experiences. For my idea of creating a cover that moves all I needed was the flat AR interface. There were loads of tutorials and once I worked it out I found it really easy to carry out tests and and experiment to see what is possible. All I need now it to create an animation to use in the AR

The way Zappar creates the AR is they give you your own individually programmed icon, of which you can use there sofware to program anthing thing to it. All I then need to do is put this on my book and when it is scanned people will be able to see the animation I create. The solution I came of with to make sure the icon stays on the book is I printed it out as a sticker so when my book arrives I can simply stick it on. I also designed another sticker to go on the inside of the book on one of the end papers that uses hand drawn symbols to show people what they need to do to see the AR, as I evaluated that without explanation people wouldn’t know how to work it.

Looking back I’m really pleased with the progress I have made in response the the Sasha Lobe talk. Not only have I taken my project up a level with the AR skills I have learned, I will also be able to use these skills in my create practice in the future. Leaning AR has definitely opened my eye to new things that I would have otherwise been scared off and now I’m really looking forward to learning after effects and how to animate.

I am big fan of Sascha Lobe and his design work and when I saw he was talking at the Conran Store during London craft week I had to go.

Initially I did think that my project was winding down and there wasn’t much that I would be able to take from the talk but I was wrong. He said many interesting things and the talk was brilliant but it was his work with animation and movement that really struck me. “As every young designer knows everything has to be moving now”. His work with movement was really impressive and he was right it just added another layer of impact that the design had and this has really inspired me to look at how I could bring movement into my fmp to create a bigger splash. Sascha Lobes augmented reality cover for Its nice Thats Nicer pages book is a stunning and influential piece of design.

At the start of my project I new that I didn’t just want to have a single one dimensional product and was planning to produce extra deliverables such as tote bags and posters. What this talk has made me realise though is that don’t want to make flat static mechindiese to fatten up a project, I want to use moment to make an impact.

I am really happy I went to this talk as it has been really influential. It has help me make better connections between what I am trying to achieve. From this I intend to look into augmented reality and animation as I’ve also been inspired by some of Christoph Niemanns augmented reality New Yorker covers.

I still aim to use the published book as the final outcome but as it is going to take a couple more day to arrive than expected as well as the possibility of it not turning up at all. I decided to experiment with making a book by hand as a backup.  From a previous university project I already had the skills to produce a book and so I didn’t need to do much research I just moved onto testing paper and printers.

If I’m completely honest the hand made book I made was very rushed and is not up to my standard for me to submit it. There are a lot of mistakes cased by me not taking my time so its could be wrong for me to compare this to the published book. However I feel that I don’t have the time to get a handmade book to the standerd I want as I want it to be clean and professional like it is an actually product. So while I see the benefits of making a book overall I would like to go for quality of a published book.

It only occurred occurred to me while I was finishing up my last test that I didn’t actually have any idea of which way was the best way to get the book printed. I then decided to spend the rest of the day researching online and find a printer.

Initially I was just googling printers in London but came across the standard cheap flyer folders you see everywhere and none of them really offered the exact level of publishing I wanted and I had a lot of doubts about how to best send my work to them to make sure it is printed properly.

After a while I was starting to get frustrated and was starting to doubt weather or not it would be possible. I started asking around instead to find companies that friends had used to help me trust them and that is when a mate recommended Blurb. I was really happy with he different options and styles of book and was able to select the exact style I wanted. They provide you with software you download build you book in and then you can send this to print and it does all the hard work for you, the only draw back being I had to spend time learning the software and  transferring everything over.

The process of using the Blurb software called book right was actually a lot easier and a lot less challenging than I had initially thought. The Program is very similar to Indesign in which I was working on the book in before and so there were a lot of transferable skills. The prices was really fast and I felt a lot more comfortable and able to trust that it would be printed properly.

I made some design changes to the book the main on being that instead of folding in the middle of the page I decided to have the pictures at the top as it would ensure consistency and looked better. One of the only drawbacks oft hey software was that I had to have a multiple of 24 and my book was 44 pages but this was quickly rectified by adding more endpaper at either side of the book.

Looking back I am so happy that I kept pushing and found this software as it has been so helpful and easy to use. This program has taken what I had in mind so much further with the perfect size and having an image wrapped hard cover. I have sent the book of to be printed and look forward to in arriving.

During my brief break from testing I decided that I needed to start getting a move on to ensure that a printed book arrived in time.  From this I decided to work hard and produce one final test before I researched printers and sent it off. Similar to test 7 I decided to print it out to go through but this time I tried it at size A6.

One thing that I really liked from my last test were the ends papers and so I decided to take these further. I added another redesign and added end papers to the back now now there is 4 at each end of the book.

I Have updated the title page in the book to have the text of the cover but them a dedication so that I don repeat the core image too much. I just need to make sure I get the positioning of the text right. I also added a contents page to the book and so that they match the rest of the book I made the text of Introduction and contents headers now a hand written font.

I have also added all the remaining pages so that the book is now full and so I now have all I need to finish the book and send it off to print.

While this stage of testing is going really well one of the hang ups is that I don’t have a cover or a back cover I am happy with and I feel this is holding back the project. The initial two cover I design worked as place holders for a while but ultimately they weren’t good enough and no longer reflected the book.

I knew that I wanted a strong bold image on the front that really reflected the project and the picture of my Friend Alex’s Shilouette is something that I believe reflects this and this is why I selected I to be the focus of the cover. I decided to just keep it simple and have some handwritten text over it, and then put my name in white so it was readable but not he main focus. I experimented with trying a few different colours but ultimately I felt that the black was so much stranger and reflected the book better.

I knew that when It came to designing the back cover I wanted it to match the front cover and almost tell a consistent story. When I was looking for an idea for the back cover I looked back at the original image of my friends and saw that he was looking a design on a wall. This was really the Eureka moment as I came up with the idea to have the man looking at painting with a hand written blurb above it.

Overall I think that the cover design has gone really well and the decision to pause everything and focus on this challenge was an important one as not I can move forward and start to finish of the book.

Similarly to the images making this tests were made a varying stages of the images being finished and so not all have all the images. I decided to keep the first batch together as the changes are minimal at first but I feel that it is important to bring them together to show the progression over from test to test.

Test 2

Evaluation of test 1:

“With the speech bubbles they don’t work well with square images and sometimes there is a disconnect with the digital images. It has also been pointed out by my peers that the repeat of the same style of speech bubble gets boring which is something I should work on when I move on to the next tests. I will also need to modify the bubbles to fit the images in which I produce.”

For this test I focused on working out these speech bubbles. I tested a few different types of bubbles but was still having issues with them matching the tone of the illustration. This test has really exposed that the speech bubble style I want to use just docent work with a wide range of mediums. This tests has been informative as I intend to move on from using the speech bubbles and focus on the layout of the images.

Test 3

In this last test I had discovered the large challenges that came with trying to make the speech bubble work consistently and work with images of different media and large sizes. In this tests I made one more attempt to make them work by experimenting with Digital versions. While the digital speech bubbles are easy to make and work with any with size, I just think they look un appealing and boring and don’t communicate the concept. I think that the double page spreads of the images on there own looks really impressive and is something that I think works well and is something I would like to focus on when I move forward.

Test 4

Following non from making the decision in the last test to move on from the speech bubbles I decided to make a test of having the images large on there individual pages. I also added numbers to start progressing the design of the book. Looking back and comparing this test to others I do think I made the right design to remove the bubbles as now there is much more focus on the images and the connection between the person and their strange place is much more intimate. I also tested changing the colour of the pages to help some images stand out but when I showed some of my peers they dint like this and said that the plain white pages work just as well if not better.

Test 5

When looking back on the last test I realised that while not having text was a really nice idea while I still had the speech bubbles now they work gone the concept pf the book was unclear and some of the images no longer had context. This is why I decided that I now need to include text and more specifically the answers to the interviews. The first font I tries was Ultra, but I really dislike hoe think it was and new imidelty that it didn’t work as it docent work with small text and it  is overbearing so distracts from the images.. I also experimented with using handwritten text that I scanned in myself but ultimately I believe that this process would take way to long. Looking forward I need to find a better font and work on better layouts of text and image.

Test 6

On of the major changes from the last test is that I have switched the font to Helvetica. This allows for the focus to be on the images but is still readable and professional. I also started wrapping up the overall design of the book adding an introduction, a title page and images opposite these pages. Test 1 comment on cover “Personally when looking back at the cover I think that while the text and the overall composition is poor I do feel that it has a personal touch and is something that sets up the book quite nicely’ Since then I have decided more feedback that the cover just  isn’t good enough and have decided to remove it and have put aside time to start from scratch. In test 4 I tested using different colour pages to help the images stand out and while I didn’t end up using it I started experimenting with different ways to do this. The solution I have found is to add nice colours to the backgrounds of images so that the images can stand out but the whole page colour isn’t changed.

Test 7

For test 7 I had an initial idea for the cover which I sketched on the front and following form this test I will go on to develop. Following the new cover design I decided that I will also need to develop the back cover to march the front. I decided to print out his test so that I could then go though it with a pen.  One of the more thing I need to work on is the structure of the text on the pages, it was suggested that I should start looking at guides to make sure it is the same throughout. This is something that I will look into after I take a brief break to design the cover and the back cover.

I completes the vaping images at different point over the two weeks in-between and around book tests but I decided I wanted to pull it all together into one blog post as I believe it represents a key stage of creating the book.

Elliot’s rave in a church

This was one that I would have never though of before the project started but I think this is why I started this project. For this image I new I wanted to keep it simple so worked with the cliche images of rave culture (the smily face) and the church (the cross) and simple combine them into one face.

Joeys bar of Liverpool Street

This images was actually created during the experimentation period I had and was created in response to Christoph Niemans work. I first saw this bar on his snapchat and loved the few so much I scream shotted the image for later. I spoke to him about it at the time and then showed him the images and he loved it, and so decided to name that bar as his storage place.

Dortmund on Jacobs train

I was actually on the train to work with Jacob that day and it was greta fun. We were down about work but the fans singing and chanting lifted out mood. For this image I had a clear idea about how I wanted to represent the explosion of colour. I spent  while cresting a illustration with sharply of the tube scene with faces and scarfs but left blanks. I then got some yelled in a splashed it on to represent the explosion of colour.

Darcy and brexit

James in Zim

I have always been fascinated by my friend James childhood in Zimbabwe and when he suggested it as his strangle place I really wanted to reflect the story of the involvement of the army and the effects it is having on crop production. I noticed the the shop of Zimbabwe looked like the middle of a tax so I decided to build a tank around it. I also found this image of dead crops used a lot in protest so I decided to include this symbol. The position of the crop coming out of the cannon was inspired by and image by Rueben Dangor of the Arsenal FC cannon symbol misfiring to resent he climbs fortunes. Overall I’m really happy with this image and feel it really reflect the story.

Bryony lost in a forrest

Bryonys pace was a forrest we both saw wheel visiting Japan, as I was there I have seen I first hand and have images to work from. The key things I wanted to get in the image were the log tall tress the beautiful green of the leaves and the long path. In my first attempt I got the perspective wrong but the I tried again and was really happy with the images. I think that the decision to use ink was perfect as I was able to use a brush to create the leaf effect and the dark bold trees.

Guy and sunlight

Creating guys image was a strange one as initially I found it challenging as it is something that everyone recognises but isn’t really a sold thing to illustrate. I went back to my research and found magazine cover by Christoph Niemann of a woman by a pool. I really lived the simplicity of it and the boldness of the colours so thats how I decided to create the images as I based it on my own window. I was expressly happy with it and it is probably my favourite of the images as it is a nice looking images that communicates a clear message.

Cian up all night

Cian story was brilliant and immediately when I read it I just images him sitting in the dark on a bus with the wife of his eye staring though the black. I decided to represent the bus in a really abstract way and just use block of black to symbolise the light being of, with just Cian eyes being the only white. I was really happy with the first sketch but struggled to adapt it to the computer so it wasn’t  until I experimented with black ink and cleaned it up in that I was happy.

Alex in Japan

Alex’s was another strange place coming from our trip to Japan. I didn’t remember what he meant at first but after seeng the pictures It all came back. For this image I just decided to have a bit of fun and just experimented with black ink working and creating this organised Chaos. I really enjoyed representing the lines and slowly building up the image with the different elements. This is one of the images that on it won I think is great but with he text and the illustration of the person is so effective and shows how well the book concept work.

Alice and New York

The image I created for Alice was another image I created during my experimentation period and was inspired by Alices and. My experience of New Yorks and its parks in response to Anna Parini. We both spoke about how we lived the concert jungle of New York but how this made us, in particular Alice love New Yorks parks even more. I decided to represent the value and colour of the parks with a green bank note and the buildings surging them with grey squares. This is another one that I am really happy with and feel it is really effective as every peer I have shown it to had understood it.

Josef and gentrification in hackney

The idea for Josef image was one I came up with a while again when I was playing with potential political messages I would like to include in my project but didn’t have have a reason to make it until now. It is another imagine inspired by Anna Parini and uses the the metaphor of Jenga to represent gentrification. While this image idea did not come from the interview I don feel it is relevant and was actually made as a response therefore is relevant.

Myself

The image of the door was one I saw Christoph Niemann use in a cut scene in his Netflix documentary and I loved the image so much it inspired me when I decided to come up with a way of representing having to open multiple doors on open day tours. I took the simple image an reprinted it multiple times changing some to make them open or closed and some double. I was really happy with the idea of this a while it isn’t clear that it rates to open days it does reflect situations where your are confronted by a lot of doors. Looking back I was I think it was a great decision to take I picture of it on Brighton beach as I feel that it makes a beautiful background and is a great addition to the book and just adds another medium.

 

Lorenzo

When i did dome research into Woolwich market I thought that the structure of the roof was really interesting and decided that this was what I wanted to illustrate. I spent sages trying to think of some clever way to show this and it wasn’t until I looked back at Nicholas Belchman’s work that I decided I wanted to do just a simple pen drawing to represent the beautiful structure.

Sophie

Sophie’s strange place is a common one that I personally have been through a lot. The inspiration of how to show the confusion came from an image by Christoph Niemann where he’s used multiple arms to show the issues with spooning and I felt that this was the perfect was to represent tapping everywhere trying to turn on a tap. It too a few tries togged right and was a challenge but I feel the final image is funny and effective.

Looking back on the image making process I was really happy with what I created. I think that while all of the images are not perfect, in a sense that they absent all completely relevant or made in response, they all like to the individual person and I feel I have completed them to a high standard. So far I am on track with he plan and I look forward to getting all this work into the testing of the book.