Dialogue Ignites Change (A Self Evaluation)

As part of my 'Dialogue Ignites Change' project I decided to work with Age UK where I would make an illustration based on the memories of an elderly person who may have dementia. I chose this because it's quite simply a personal reason to me, and I feel the best work in life is done with such reasons.

(Above: A man by the name of Pete was one of the few I spoken to, he shared a memory of this place that I took a photo of this week, it's a place where 'Rag and Bone' men would roam by and Pram Races set, so I'm thinking that's how this place should be illustrated, as if it were a set, or a stage of memory).

The most difficult part of this was coming to terms with my sense of efficiency, it takes a lot of patience to have a conversation with a dementia sufferer and although I can be a patient person I was in a situation where I only had a moment to talk and it dawned on me there that it is important to have compromise, stringing a coherent sentence out of them was far and foremost the most difficult thing to do with these people but what I learned was that a little persistence isn't bad if you keep reminding yourself what you want, if I couldn't get what I wanted after going round in circles with the person I had to respectfully walk away and look elsewhere. It's a philosophy I seriously need to apply to how I work.

(Below: Now known as The Queen's Head, this place would have been remembered under the name Turners Vaults by Pete, this photo was found through a search of an online archive, looking at how the world use to look by browsing these archives gives me an undescribable sense of discovery and pleasure)

From the work I've shown there wasn't a lot of feedback, which is good because people know what my goal is with this image. It's only a bad thing because there's hardly anything to comment on.

The project was a challenge due to my bad time keeping (still haven't slept since yesterday morning) however when I think about the opportunity I have had in this one breif I sense a profound resonance. For a moment I was lost in another person's world that use to be somebody else's at one time and I hope my work creates that feeling for another.

Quentin Blake

I found this really meaty interview from the very succesful british illustrator, Quentin Blake. He's been busy promoting himself like this since he started working for the NHS making murals for children's wards and showing off his visual world. Blake believes that the young illustrator should do their very best to draw as much as they can in order to be succesful. The interview is on The Guardian's website here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2007/sep/28/art.booksforchildrenandteenagers

There's another link from that page to this: http://www.campaignfordrawing.org/home/index.aspx

An Eye for Character and a Love for Batman

Everything seems to be going by in a blur recently and I really got to keep up with these blogs, Since I've been spending most of last week just being outside in the wintery cold and soaking up some things whilst preparing for my essay I decided to show some character designs I made a good while back. I'm a Batman fan, not so much a fan of movies and videogames but in the fact that I love to draw Batman, it may seem unusual to some but I never draw the comic book hero as most others.

I find the characters endearing in that it's easily open to reinterpretation, If you think about why Batman has so sucessful a legacy it is because he is actually easy to draw in a archetypal sense, I suppose the same goes for the villians The Joker and The Catwoman. So far I only started to do full colour studies of two of his villians that I deem worthy enough to show off. I've been busy so these studies always take second place above my college work.

Collaboration and Completion of the Wellspring Leaflets

My collaboration project for designing leaflets/flyers for the Wellspring center in Stockport gained a succesful mark. The experience has taught me to have trust in others and to be more lenient about work processes, creating these was very much a gamble and in retrospect there was no real way to change that so it very much demands adaptability, just like Darwin's ideas, strength lies in the power to adapt.

The next step of this is to refine the illustrations, since I wasn't aware of how they would look finished, such as the hatching looking bad when you blow up the image, things like that need to be changed. Five more leaflets have to be made around other topics and the idea that was recenlty given to me has to be explored. The idea was that the back of the leaflets can have an alternate version of the illustration instead of the same on the otherside. something like one illustration conveys the problem and on the back is the solution.

The Mind of a Manga Artist (Takehiko Inoue)

An interview by Takehiko Inoue which focuses more on his daily and momentary feelings and thoughts towards his craft. He is known for his basketball drama 'Slam Dunk' and his samurai drama 'Vagabond'. Another Manga he started to make in 2001 called 'Real' is about wheelchair basketball players that highlights the psychology and mental struggles that the characters face. Another thing to note is how he uses a brush in his art, I've tried to use a black pencil in the past because it gives me the control like a pen but fades like a brush, and by looking at Masamune Shirow's work I can only pontificate that he does that. Yoji Shinkawa uses ink washes and goes over it with white correction fluid, not really the kind I find honestly suitable for manga comics but I find it a beautiful use of black and white media.

See Takehiko Inoue's interview here: http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2012/11/29/human-to-hero-takehiko-inoue-manga.cnn

Making leaflets For The WellSpring Center

Devising leaflet designs for the WellSpring resource Ccnter in Manchester, Stockport. Not everyone who attends this place is homeless and it's much more than the usual stereotype of a soup kitchen, instead it's a place that helps people who are at risk of being homeless. The leaflets that I have to make within a group, consisting of four (two illustrators and two graphic designers), are going to be designed to advertise the services of the place. They are divided into the following topics:

Alcoholism Advice

Housing Advice

Health Care

Narcotics Advice

Employment Advice

Debt Advice

I made some rough sketches (bit too rough, in retrospect should have cleaned it and used ink) that will be the basis of the illustrations, the whole idea of hands just seems to have evolved naturally, I don’t know how the graphics students will accommodate these into the leaflet designs at this moment but I found these to be the best idea in my sketchbook and so I hope they can think of something to make it work. There are ten in total that will be needed if the WellSpring does decide to pick it up. By working in a group I think it's going to involve some give and take, like the 'pass the parcel' game, only with a piece of art and instead of unwrapping it you just add or erase a mark so it looks good in the end, Showing them the above sketches was my turn, so now I'm waiting for my next turn and keeping myself occupied in the meantime.

http://www.thewellspring.btck.co.uk/MembersArtGallery

Something to think about during the project was the stories of the people who attend the place, some are very talented and their art proved inspiring for us as you can see in these links:

http://btckstorage.blob.core.windows.net/site1528/Street%20Stories.pdf

Art of Protest

Sadly it's been a slow week that's passed me but I'm gonna make a promise to show more of my art work in my next post, meanwhile I've been wanting to make something political for sometime now:

http://www.noisefestival.com/protest

The Noise Festival is giving us the chance to make and show protest art, the deadline for submission is the 14th of December, there's a lot of info on it found in the above link.

I think the best protest art has a look and feel of parody and propaganda, it has that connection that it needs in order to establish breaking an audience's apathy. However, it still needs to have the purpose of inspiring people and I can't help but see protest and art having a viral function that is created in order to be adopted by others. Memes seem to be a good way of doing this since their is no real authorship, it's for people by people. I remember as a child how people would draw the stuzzy or batman, they became memetic because they were so easy to draw and that's one fundamental rule of creating an icon. The trick is what every advertiser knows, be memetic and memorable. At this moment I've got a sketchbook at the ready so that I can be responsive to what's going on. Next post, promise.

The Importance of Dialouge

I found this very enlightening and analytical essay by Greg Smith that talks about Final Fantasy VII and how that videogame used dialouge within the story. (found here: http://www2.gsu.edu/~jougms/Ffantasy.htm )

I know my peers and writer friends will be interested and this post is more for them. The way information and exposition can come to us as an audience without us even thinking about, the implied meaning of words the way people address one and another all adds to the bigger picture. I take it for granted since Final Fantasy is a part of my childhood, it's hard to analyze but because of its influence I should. Thanks to the essay it shown that the first scenes in that game demonstate how one character is a guide and informant to another only for the roles to reverse later in the story just so that we, the audience can get our head around what's going on. You see it all the time in cop shows, the detective arrives late on the scene and his friend is telling him what happened, it's a dialouge and narrative convention, the author is telling us what's happened from the point of view of those yet to solve the crime.

This interests me greatly as I always wonder how audiences and we as humans decide what counts as a voice of authority and its intended audience or who it addresses. I've got a "dialouge ignites change" project coming up so it's something I'll be reading into this month, possibly I'll look at 'Breaking The Glass Armor' that Smith referenced.

The Future of Storytelling

At 2022NQ in Manchester this week the Eskimo Creative agency set up a talk/panel on Monday with other events there that ended on Thursday. It’s a part of the Kopparberg  Unestablishment festival That I believe is still on in Manchester until the 25^th. I was not able to attend them all since it was deadline week but I did go on Monday where Steve Layton chaired  a few speakers, instead of going through their biographies I’ll just put this link that describes them here: http://eskimocreative.com/unestablishment/

As the link says, I attended the event to gain insight into “The Future of Storytelling”.  The gist of it all is simple, the talk was about where storytelling counts in this day of age compared to the past, Steve Layton commented on the information age, as people handle our information and record a census they unwittingly may not realise that they hold the key to real and honest stories. Information of all kinds when you done the math on it can have a story extrapolated from it. I recently found this enlightening video on Narrative, it’s from a series of podcast interviews from film maker Kevin Smith, this excerpt here tells us about how human it is for us to want to puzzle together stories.

Mike Ryan, who has one of the rarest jobs in the world as a “futurist”, says stories are still important and will be more so important in an age of robotics and information high since they are a strong component for our humanity. We are also in a world where we are bombarded with Nostalgia products that are capitalised on in response to our collective conscience, one that could be born as the last century has had rapid change in technological advances and one that could be a consequence of a fear of losing ourselves within a scary machine dominated future where personal and intellectual achievement is lost as gadgets become a quick fix for our base desires. These are same gadgets that can be our tools as well as weapons.

My feelings towards the future of storytelling is that we have habits as a human race and it is these that can make us vulnerable to consumerism, when we exploit those vulnerabilities we have the option to respect the audience and thus as an author we must serve their persona without being a slave to it. To be a slave to it means we are just churning out nostalgia products for a quick buck, the intelligent will not be as keen to us with such methods.

There were two intelligent questions that was asked and answered by the speakers when I was there, both deserving of thought and debate:

1.)    What tool has recently advanced/changed the way we make stories?

2.)    How much input and control should we give consumers?

They all gave obvious answers more about the venues and forums we have available to tell stories in this age as well as give examples of how not to work as a creative. My answer to this is easily informed by a great story teller, Hideo Kojima. Not having the ability to make movies he settled on the interactive media of videogames, as a Games Master you play in his stories, you dance with the author as he leads you into a simulation. My answer is this analytical commentary video in its entire context, as is. The Video as comment inside fiction explains our need to make stories. See the intro and understand how this moment is of a videogame commenting on you as a person but fast forward to 3:50 to watch until 10:50 to see what informs me on this subject as well as the state of art in our world:

Consequential Art Practice 2

Finally able to show the summer project work, which I wrote about in august here: http://artofjimfitton.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/consequential-art-practice-time-for.html It has dawned on me that I should be showing more of my art since I did after all name this blog "Art of Jim Fitton". Deadline week will be the most obvious time where I can show my work on this site.

So now the main point of this post, I wanted to try and do a scene from 'Night of the Hunter' as a whole noirish manga style comic because I do actually love those comics and wanted to practice and deep my feet into the technical aspects of producing that style of work. I bought one of those How to Draw Manga books by Go Office and Graphic-Sha. One book I now have is 'Enhancing a Character's Sense of Presence'. I have this because black and white print is actually very limiting for an artist to work in, depth can't be acheived through colour and tones will rely on how you do hatching or stippling so this is a good area for me to practice in before I delve into using colour. There are specific tricks to learn so to enhance a figure's presence in such a limiting format and anyone who makes manga and comics like that need to know how best to render and light their figures. Since I was looking at film shots I still had to adapt the photography to what looks best on flat paper.

I didn't rely too much on the book since I prefer to learn by doing but I did find that working with those tones became a deep learning curve. Size of the tone sheets must stay consistent and layering the tone sheets can create a variety of effects, some desired and some not so much for the beginner. After realising this I may aswell buy other books that explore the tone side of this art from the 'How to Draw Manga' range, they tend to have alluring anime women on the covers which even I scoff at. The books that explore the technical side of things are the most informative in my opinion.

I was not going to go too heavy in to this small portion of the summer project by using actual pre manufactured manga tones, instead I downloaded PNG files and worked from my scanned images in photoshop (inked beforehand just like they do in comicbook making). I would like to use the real and tangible thing just to see what I learn but that's one for another day. The tones I got was through the generous users of Deviant Art. I'll be sure to post links on where you can find these tones in the near future.

The things I learned in practice are annotated well in page 28 of the book I bought, local comic shops and Amazon will have them. This here is from Vol 3: Enhancing A Character's Sense of Presence. You can tell immediately how I have made mistakes in my summer project by this photo alone and I have still got plenty to learn and master in this area. A future Consequential Art Practice 3 post? You bet!

David Shrigley

I recently visited the Cornerhouse in Manchester to have a look at David Shrigley’s ‘How Are You Feeling?’ exhibit which lasts until Sunday 6^th of January. Cornerhouse also has an interview with the man in regards to the exhibit on their website, found here: http://www.cornerhouse.org/art/art-news/an-interview-with-david-shrigley  and his website here: http://www.davidshrigley.com/

 What I really like about his images is how raw and rough it all is, very much like the man’s work is made in a sketchbook before it’s ported straight to the gallery wall. It has less to do about good draftsmanship and more to do with just communicating ideas and it’s because of this that his illustrations are plentiful and can gather as a large library, being at the exhibition on Saturday I almost got lost in his illustrations, also it shows that his illustrations do come from the heart, there’s something cathartic behind them.

His work as a finished product works like the whole meme generators you see on a google image search, not taking any power away from his work with that comparison but just so you know, that simple line of text accompanied with a straight up drawing just gets to the point in terms of illustrative quality.  I am very much concerned about the whole appeal of Shrigley’s illustrations. Its outsider art and looks rather naive, although I do find his vehement creativity and his hands on attitude to being a creative mind inspiring.

However the lack of draftmanship skill opens itself up to something more expressive and impressionistic, some of the figures I can only describe as the opposite of anthropomorphism in how they look and that’s rarely seen in my opinion. I recall Scott Mcloud brought up the issue on illustrating ideas using symbolic means in his book ‘Understand Comics: The Invisible Art’, Shrigley’s very much the same in his sensibilities, he’s makes cartoons that have a basis on clever and humorous ideas and thus such a roughly drawn, freehand style of his is very appropriate to what he communicates. This also raises further questions for me on what constitutes as a signifier within an image and also how much does the balance between conveying idea and conveying aesthetical skill outweigh each other?

The State of Illustration Today

After recently hearing hearing one of Adrian Shaughnessy's podcasts on the current state of illustration it's really had me thinking about where illustrators stand in this world and my future work. You can listen to Adrian's podcast here: http://www.shaughnessyworks.com/ Currently the man runs Shaugnessy works, a consultancy combining design and editorial direction, he's a co-founder of the london based design company Intro, aswell as being a co-founder for Unit Editions, a publishing company producing books on design and visual culture.

The State of Illumination:

Taking part in a small forum in response to the above podcast, I learned that illustration's effectiveness in this world is based on the commentary the image has, it can illuminate text, decorate articles but then again so can a lot of art do that. Social and political commentary, that's where I think illustration is strongest. A progenetive and early example would be Francisco Goya, a historical painter who infuses this responsiveness and story telling to his era within his work. And we can see an evolution of this responsive, satirical style within the works of Gerald Scarfe and many modern illustrators, especially of the political cartoonist variety. These are people who are not only highlghting something in an image but they do so in their own prefered colour, like a movie director, they adapted an existing text in their own way. And like a newspaper story, they can easily paint who we should feel apathy for.

The State of Commisions:

Personally for me, establishing your own presence, visual world and language would be the best way to form a portfolio; where as a weak portfolio is too full of commissions, it has no flavour. I believe illustrators thrive on self promotion more than photography as it’s easy to imagine what an end product of a photo will look like. Illustration is purposefully made to "illustrate" and "decorate" an existing state of text or media however an illustrator should never have to wait around for the next commision. They need to find their own voice and establish their presence, thanks to the internet this has become far more eaier for us. Also thanks to the internet, opinions are easily exchangeable, and I welcome any one who wishes to comment or argue with the points alluded to here.

Aya Suzuki and World Animation

I found an interesting article on animator Aya Suzuki who originally began her career in the UK before she went on to work on films like Belleville Rendezvous, found here: http://www.mangauk.com/?p=aya-suzuki There's something inspirational to me about working across the world and reaching an audience that covers a wide variety of culture, especially in comparison to people like Amano Yoshitaka who once went to his local animation studio to show his portfolio before he landed the job. In previous years studios never had such easily established ties to other countries but it's now considered the standard in business thanks to current technology and the internet. The article linked also puts light upon the working methods that Aya has used since there is a notable eastern and western style of making animated feature length movies.

Varieties of Animation

As the hardcore gamer may know, The decennial release of Tekken Tag 2 occured this month. My brother is a big fan of the series since 1997 and I play with him as a new release comes out as per the "bro-time". The tag titles being a subsidiary to the series, it acts as a megamix for prior games that are first released as arcade cabinets before they are ported to home game consoles. The best thing about these home ports, and the topic of this post, is that as gamers win enough rounds they are rewarded with a short cinematic movie relating to the character they choose to play as their avatar, since there are over 40 playable characters then there are over 40 movies. In the past these movies would build upon the same graphics and art direction as the rest of the game however in the newly released Tekken Tag 2 there are a few movies that have their very own, specific art direction and unique animation style. Take a look:

Just the sort of thing I've been wanting to see! The movies are distinct enough in their own style and methods that it gives me the opportunity to think about how to do my own animation.

How to Make Choppy Animation Look Good?

The next project I have to do is an extension of the summer project, based around consequential art, the whole idea around the brief is to build a world and test out story making skills visually. The end product that I am going to be doing is a “narrative sequence”; in the form of a short animation.

I’m no animator and so I thought about what would be a feasible and good looking aesthetic to set off the whole look of the animation, I instantly thought of the Japanese anime intros of ‘Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei’, translated in roughly in English to ‘So Long Mr. Despair’. Simply the look of these openings to the cartoon series looks spectacular and hypnotic as it forms this cut out like collage style. To have such a look seemed to make up for the lack of smooth and fluid animation and I figured that it’s an approach that I should consider. The next clip here shows a whole episode known as “Mystery Train” done in the look of these openings (which is rare for the series). I’m not sure how hard it was to make the episode but it certainly looks like the animators had a lot of fun on this one! If anyone is into animation I implore you to watch the video below.

I am not expecting to animate anything better than a South Park cartoon but the Zetsubou Sensei series certainly intrigues me with its use of lighting and textures in these rare moments. I haven’t shown any spoils for my work just yet, so I’ll be getting into practice as soon as I can and we’ll see just how much this has influenced me later. Hopefully I'll see more animation that empthasises look and texture over motion.

AX Manga and Takato Yamamoto - The limits of making Manga

I recently bought the first volume of AX Manga after looking at the work of Takato Yamamoto. Newly published in English, AX is an anthology that showcases alternative Japanese comics. I was wondering how the art style of Yamamoto and Vania Zouravliov could form to the graphic novel format, especially since manga is an industry of mass produced gradient tones I could not help but think what counts as too detailed for mass production let alone function? What is the challenge to make manga in this way and how do we make it easier for ourselves? First step to finding out these questions had to be me to pick up this book that defies manga convention and see how Yamamoto turned to making the only Manga he has ever made (at the time of this post), it may be just a simple matter of playing spot-the-difference between his art or it may be a matter for me to have to emulate the man’s work and find out for myself.

 

The black and white panels here are from Into darkness by Takato Yamamoto, a one-off comic from the AX anthology that reminds me very much of an Oscar Wilde quote:

“Yes, death. Death must be so beautiful, to lie in the soft brown earth with the grasses waving above one's head and listen to silence, to have no yesterday and no to-morrow; To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace. You can help me. You can open for me the portals of death's house, for love is always with you, and love is stronger than death is.”

Having quoted that it’s understandable that Yamamoto has a strong influence from Aubrey Beardsley and Edgar Allan Poe. Yamamoto has an interview with Yoji Shinkawa that can be found in “The Art of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty”, I’ll certainly be giving that a read since my brother and best friend are Metal Gear fans. For now here's some more of Yamamoto's work other than his Manga.

Consequential Art Practice (a time for film studying)

Am very much stoked on my current project, as a warm up I have to draw 18 frames from a movie so am going to take the chance to actually make something that looks like a comic book from a film that easily translates to that style. Being spoilt for choice I decided to work with the American Gothic gem ‘The Night of the Hunter’ since Roger Ebert listed it as one of the all time best and since the early 90’s it’s been in the national film registry. I use to stay up late at night taping films and this was one of the films that I recorded during Channel 4’s horror season in 2003, I was 14 back then. It’s going to be really fun for me to freeze and capture this film’s atmosphere but first I have to draw roughs, inking comes later (hopefully I may get time to play with standard comic tones more so later).

 If you haven’t seen this film but call yourself a horror movie buff then I recommend you watch the super cute Lillian Gish in her early movies, especially ‘Broken Blossoms’ before you watch this just so you can understand that her role is a response to her past in that she’s playing mother goose for the characters she herself use to play as. Just seeing her up against Robert Mitchum’s sick and twisted preacher you see one of the most beautiful depictions of good and evil in cinema history, Just look at this trailer if you need a reason to watch it.

It’s a well made love letter to German expressionistic cinema and economically shot too, there’s no heavy use of montage and it’s a film that whilst dealing with nightmarish and fundamental themes it didn’t try to be like its time and thus remains timeless because of it. It’s cheesy and hammy at certain points but once you see this visually striking film you never forget it.

Making Manga in the UK

I got in contact with Freelance illustrator Sonia Leong. (Through this link:  http://www.fyredrake.net/me.html  ) She works at Sweatdrop Studios which is known for making manga comics in the UK. I was surprised to find that she has no control over the translation of her manga comic work and leaves it to the ownership to handle how the product is seen overseas, she would still get royalties from any publishers outside the UK.

I believe she doesn’t have an agent, don’t quote me on that but she remains proof that having a strong inter-web presence does work well for job opportunities.   She told me that “Publicity is something that you have to peg away at on many fronts and it could take years for the results to roll in”.  She was also gracious enough to send me this very amusing link in regards to dealing with unpleasant clients and how it’s good to know the warning signs with experience: http://clientsfromhell.net/

I wish I'd done This

As a person who considers concept art for movies and videogames to be good revenue for art in general I’m glad there still is a love for traditional work in a modern world so use to pop prints and digital painting. This is a cover of the Castlevania: Symphony of the Night videogame released in the latter part of the 90s. Thanks to Ayami Kojima’s concept art it also documents a time where the famous game series strayed away from the self parody of its hero fighting classic universal movie monsters and underwent a more aesthetic and sensibly romantic style.

Ayami tends to draw with a conte crayon and adds volume by adding black Indian ink, the waterproof qualities of that ink makes it perfect to add glazes of acrylic, and on trying to imitate this style a few years back I was told how remarkably fast the process was.

The clarity of Ayami’s technique shows that she is well learned and highly practiced but she has an aesthetic taste to her work, her Asian-Caucasian complexion of her figures are her own trademark as well as her idea of a perfect face. It makes me think of what makes a face beautiful and for that matter what makes a face cute or scary? This may not be the standard of illustration quality as an imaginative illustrator but more so the standard of technique, the fact that this is a cover from a Japanese game, a country so full of commercial big eyed and loud manga games gives me hope that traditional art still is admired, especially when it is called for within a stylistically dark videogame.

123 - Things I've Learned (PDP)

1.)    “Do what you love”. Moby says it so well in this Big Think clip, most importantly you can’t please others if you can’t please yourself first and foremost. Sometimes people just want to see what you yourself think is beautiful. John Lennon once said “When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” Basically you may not have a successful career but as long you do what you love you’ll be happy for it.

2.)    “Nothing is original” so in the hopes of creating something new all you can do is broaden your research and vocabulary. I’m paraphrasing one of my tutors on that one. It’s important advice for me because I’ve seen people get bogged down into the myth of creating something original when the truth is that personal experience is what determines originality. It’s like when an artist gets obsessed with finding their own style when in actuality style is really there with them in that drawings and brush strokes already have a signature quality. Ted Brown said it well in by explaining that exploration is all about quantities. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&feature=relmfu

3.)    “Graduation does not mean you are at your prime”. In other words it is okay to make mistakes. I’ve been studying for so long that I didn’t realise how hard I was being on myself, I was rushing myself when really being a student is all about just letting loose and just swimming in the cool waters of education. It’s important not to rush that process and it also stunts creativity to do so.