25/03/2015
Applied Illustration My Bloody Valentine Initial Imagery
This is some of the initial work I did for a Loveless poster and album cover but I was having problems trying to make something unique and not just re-doing the album cover that already exists I think I might move away from doing this album and swap it to either Pinkerton or Daydream Nation.
Applied Illustration Runaway Contextual Research
To accompany the release of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Kanye released this short film based around the song Runaway but covers a lot of the themes of the album so it's almost like a gold mine for reference images so I screen capped key images through out the video and put them in issuu documents, and some these will go on to become key images for my final artwork.
Applied Illustration Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Contextual Research
This is my initial research into My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy which I think is a fascinating album especially with all the context around having been released off the back of Kanye making a lot of controversial statements which culminated in the incident at the VMAs with Taylor Swift, He then went into self imposed exile where he recorded the album, you can draw a lot of comparisons with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver who wrote his first album For Emma Forever Ago when he put himself in self imposed exile in a cabin in the woods. Justin Vernon features on this album as well most prominently on Lost in the World which samples his track Woods heavily. It also features the lyrics...
"You're my devil, you're my angel
You're my heaven, You're my hell
You're my now, You're my forever
You're my freedom, You're my jail
You're my lies, You're my truth
You're my war, You're my truce
You're my questions, You're my proof
You're my stress, You're my masseuse."
Which I think summarise the album well in that it's a very contradictory album as he went into isolation to write and record it yet the album is a lesson in maximalist hip hop and revels in the excess of the celebrity lifestyle but still questions what it really means. I think the album is really a meditation on the public persona Kanye has created and culminates in him questioning this with Lost in the World and Who Will Survive in America?.
Applied Illustration Pitchfork Research
After doing more research into albums that Pitchfork has given a 10 to I started to narrow down the list and pick 5 albums to work from, I was trying to avoid using any albums that are too iconic for example albums such as Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures or Bruce Springsteen - Born to run. I gradually narrowed it down to...
- Kanye West - My Dark Beautiful Twisted Fantasy
- Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
- The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
- Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
- My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
I chose these albums as I felt that hey didn't have too much in common in terms of musical style or visual style which will be interesting to see how I can make these work as a set. There was two other album that I really wanted to work on which were Weezer - Pinkerton and Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation, if I get enough time at the end of the module if I have enough time I could expand the set to 6 or 7 potentially from looking at the time I have at this point it's unlikely I'd be able to do this.
Applied Illustration Pitchfork Design Boards
These are my initial design boards explaining some of my initial ideas and contextual research for this module, I got some decent feedback on these but the general consensus was to just carry on with where I'm heading with this module which is encouraging.
15/03/2015
Applied Illustration Direction
At this point I felt that I needed to pick a direction I was going to go with my posters as I'm happy with the posters I've made so far but I think for my final ones I need to decide on a concept that links all the posters that I make from this point on. My initial idea is to pick one band and just do posters for each of there albums, though I feel this could become restrictive but it would definitely focus the direction of the work more and give it a unified approach. My other idea was to do a series of posters for reissues of albums that got a 10.0 from pitchfork media, at this point in time I need to do more research into both ideas and look at bands that I could possibly focus on.
Applied Illustration Jack White Set
These are my potential outcomes for the poster I did and could be turned into a full set. Each band Jack White is in has a different colour scheme which really lent itself to these posters, Also throughout his career Jack White had an association with the number three so I thought it would be fitting to have three posters as part of the set though this did lead me to having to leave out The Raconteurs.
Applied Illustration Jack White Poster
This is my poster I did for Jack White, I decided to experiment with the way I work for this poster by including vector shapes and contrasting it with some of my more heavily detailed work. I'm very happy with how it's turned out even though it's not completely finished though at this point it is looking unlikely that i'll have time to finish though it could be something I do in my own time so I can experiment with doing more than one colour screen prints. experimenting with shape and texture in this piece gave it a completely different look to my usual work but I think I still managed to keep my unique tone of voice.
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