Thesaurus Notes

In order to get my head around the brief I sat with a thesaurus and thought of all the word related to the three key words given to us. This helped me branch off into other ideas and find new starting points.

Three Ideas

Proposal

Conventions of the form

   

• Traditionally aimed at children
• Lots of bright colours
• Drawing and art style is simple
• Pop-out mechanisms are made using paper or card so the book is 100% paper apart from the ink

• Can be educational or fictional
• Most educational types use pop-out features to explain things better
• Most fictional types pick on key parts of the story or significant scenes and bring these to life with pop-out techniques
  
  

Research Pages

I decided to create pinterest boards to help me in my research of forms, subject matter and with anything that I found inspirational

Here you can see my similar forms board, on this I pinned lots of different 3D or fold out pieces of work to give me a better idea of the way in which certain pieces are assembled and the general style of this type of work

This is the board I made for subject matter, I included everything involved with the book I was thinking of making so cars, wallets, factory buildings etc. this then helped me greatly when doing subject matter drawings because I had everything in one place or at least some sort of reference point to go back to

And finally this is the board I created from all of the things which inspired me while I was looking through the internet and doing my research. I can now go back to this board whenever I am stuck for ideas to get re-inspired

Subject matter drawings

Here are some drawings of the kind of things I will be looking at when I go on towards my final piece, I just wanted to get a grasp of what drawing these things is like.

As cars are the hardest thing to draw out of my subject matter I decided to draw plenty of them so I used some phoeos from a car show I had recently been to and drew from them.

And here I just wanted to draw something a little more in detail so I chose one of my favourite cars from the show and really put my pencil to work!

Subject Matter Photos

To get a further insight in the forms I am studying I went out and took lots of photos of some more of my subject matter so I could get a real feel of the scale and proportion of what I am trying to recreate.

http://pinterest.com/jackpsmith/my-subject-matter-photos/

Research of Similar Artefacts

I bought the book 'Formula One Pack' because it has been made and illustrated by Rob van der Meer who is an exceptional 3D, pop-out and paper folding artist. I just wanted to see how these things are done professionally and the sort of scale these things need to be made on to work and function correctly.

some sections of the book fold out to reveal a changed version of an original picture.

other sections pull down to reveal hidden content. I want to include something similar in my own final piece maybe with pulling things out of a wallet.

There are also some more elaborate features such as this moving section which describes the motion of pistons in an engine.

And some just plain cool features like these x-ray glasses which show a different picture when looking through each colour of glass.

Initial Ideas

In order to keep track of my thinking I decided to document my initial ideas so I have something to refer back to when carrying out further planning for my final piece.

Adrian Bradbury Artist Copy

Here is a piece by Adrian Bradbury which I wanted to copy. I chose it because I have never produced a piece entirely on the computer before and wanted to have a go. So after stumbling across some of this artists work, I found  relevant piece of work which I wanted to replicate.

I chose a picture of a formula one car took from a similar angle so that I could have a starting photograph like Adrian would of had. 

I then worked alongside the original on photoshop using various tools and techniques trying my best to recreate each feature on different layers.

One of the hardest parts was the sections around the car as there were many many layers which all overlapped and inter-locked in different places.

But the finished product turned out very well indeed, I was amazed with myself at how close to the original I was actually able to make it. Aside from the car itself there are very few aspects which are noticeably different.

Adrian Bradbury Emulation

I enjoyed working in the way of Adrian Bradbury so much that I decided to do an emulation of his work also so I chose a photo which I had taken from earlier on in the course and this was my starting point

I then proceeded to work on the photograph in photoshop using similar methods to Bradbury's such as experimenting with the transparency of different colours and textures. I also tried to use bright colours which also contrasted well suck as the purple and yellow which are opposites

Here you can see me coming towards the finish of the piece. I used many layers to achieve my desired effects and the looks I was going for.

When I had come to what I thought was the finish it still looked a little flat around the car. As if i had made everything else in the picture the subject apart from the subject itself

So what I did was try and disturb the norm a little bit and add some effects to the car such as Inking the tonal differences on the top right of the car and using colour filters on other parts of the car. Another thing which helped was sharpening the picture of the car itself and tweaking the contrast. Overall I am very pleased with the end result and I think I have got to grips with Adrians techniques very well.

Brian Biggs Racing Cars Emulation

I have always been a fan of Brian Biggs' work so I wanted to try one of his different ways of working where he would only use three different colours and any new ones would have to be made by overlapping in the correct areas.

So I began by sketching a rough outline of what I wanted my car to look like.

I then started inking over parts of the car which I wanted in colour by using a light box to see my original sketch.

I then ended up with three different layers for the three colours I was planning on using, these layers overlapped in certain places, were left alone on others and not coloured in at all on selected areas. 

Once I had scanned all three layers into photoshop I arranged them in the same document ready to colour each layer separately.

relating back to the unit 3 work I remembered the DIY CMYK printing and decided that this would be a good colour scheme to go with because of the similarity in techniques.

Once all layers were coloured and layered into position, this is what they looked like

If I turned on multiply this then mixed any coloured areas which overlapped creating three new colours, red, green, dark blue and obviously black if all three layers crossed.

I then started experimenting with which colour was which on the layers.

and eventually some of my colour ways looked quite pleasing

And here we have my favourite three combinations of colour which I chose to take onto the next stage of the emulation.

I now needed to start developing a background for my work as I had seen other examples of these types of cars done by Brian with skies and roads in them.

I thought it would be nice to see the three different cars all together in somewhat of a race scenario so this is what I did

And here we have the finished piece complete with speed lines similar to some of the originals. I am very happy with these cars and the way that this experimental technique has payed off.

Brian Biggs Emulation / Experimenting with Intagllio

I selected one of my favourite subject matter drawings for this exercise where my aim was to create a car in my own style but with some of Brian Biggs' techniques and methods of doing things.

For the inked lines around the edges of the drawing I decided to use intaglio instead of standard brush and ink. I did this because I have enjoyed working in this way in the past and I wanted to take this style and develop it further.

Here is a little snap of my print plate when I had finished scratching it out.

and another of my inking up the print plate ready to do some printing with it.

I used a standard printing press to squash my print plate down onto some slightly dampened paper so that the ink would be drawn out of my scratch marks in the desired areas.

And this is what the result looked like. The line work was complete so I then needed to scan this into photoshop and begin colouring it.

by using the magnetic lasso tool I was able to colour each area on a separate layer by using the drawing itself as a guideline.

Once all the colouring was complete I wanted to set the car on a background and similar to Brian's work where he uses real life textures, I used a full on real life background to situate my car in. Also including a bit of shadow around the car which kind of roots it to the page a bit better.

Dummy Book

I needed to work out exactly where everything was going to go on my final piece so I began producing this dummy book to check that all my ideas and techniques would look good in practice. 

Here is page one, the opening view of the garage where the garage door lifts up and you can see the car inside.

this feature seems to work best if the car and internals of the building are on a separate piece of paper altogether and stuck behind the flap. But once this best way to do things was found there was no problems at all with this page.

Next was page two where you can see the car inside the garage, this was where the car was stuck down while the page was still partly folded so that the car came away from the page and a hole could be cut in the window to see the inside of the car drawn on the page behind.

This again worked very well except I would need to be careful about making the car to be stuck on slightly smaller in length than the car on the page so that the front and the back still lined up. You can also see the wallet on the seat of the car very well.

finally came page three where you see a view of the wallet opened up and are able to pull a photograph out of the wallet which is of the garage in the original picture on the first page.

This worked very nicely as all that was needed was a slot and a separate piece of card for the photo because the back cover acted as a back for the wallet. In the real thing I may include something to anchor the photo to the wallet so that you can't pull it all the way out.