Cloudburst

You can download my Prezi presentation here, and follow along below.

From the first time I pitched by ad campaign, I was all over the place. I had no idea if I wanted to do Banksy, or Banksy inspired pieces with political themes, or dancing, street movement, or sending out messages to those that live in the slums. In short, I was all over the place.

But one thing I knew was that I was going to spray paint all my pieces. Clean up the sketches in Photoshop, print them all out, and using an X-Acto knife, hand carve out shadows, reflections, patterns, and using these to create a layer on top for texture and lines.

When I was creating my final presentation, I was able to work my way by slowly questioning myself every step of the way. Which shoes did I want to focus on? How are the color schemes? What's the primary purpose of each type of shoe? Is it dance, aesthetics, or fitness? Who is the target audience? How are the color schemes related to each collection of shoes, and how will colors affect consumer base/profits?

I knew I still wanted something dance related, so I I kept the words on the sheet. As I was listening to Eric Whitacre's Lux Aurumque,, I remembered another composition of his called Cloudburst, and I thought, perfect! Jeremy Scott's Wings for Adidas! Clouds match the scheme of the general shoe colors as well!

I knew it'd be interesting when I was able to spray paint as well.

HOWEVER, when I went to Michael's, a can of spray paint in the colors I wanted started at $9/can. By the time I finished putting all the boards and cans in the cart, I realized my total would be close to $100. Dreams were shot. Sadness commenced, and alternatives had to be reached. So I chose to buy paint instead. The advantages to this would be that I could work with a clearer board, and mix my colors well. Collective damage came close to $40, and once I started mixing colors, I was able to get a feel of what I wanted. My workspace looked like below for several days as I had to practice with colors, mixing, and diluting acrylic paints.



To understand the process of how I reached the final, I included only a few of my relevant sketches. Below is one using Jeremy Scott's Iridescent Wings. I liked the bubblegum pink, but I also needed to add other colors, so I chose purple, mixed with silver. Since I was running out of black, I had to use brown for her hair color. I didn't like this color combination at all, so I scrapped it.



I began with the pink and purple again- this time, using similarly hued and saturated green and blues for a mood that's lighter and less serious because this piece wasn't as serious. After about 10 tries, every single one still looked sloppy, no matter what I did (thin paintbrushes, thicker paint, less paint, etc). I still didn't like this composition, and the way it turned out, so I scrapped this one too.



Here is an example of texture by paint, one of the biggest advantages to painting.



So at this point, I thought about dance. What I felt when I danced, what happens when I was performing for an audience, and the elation after finishing some difficult choreo. I'm always sweating, overjoyed, and unraveled after every performance I do well. The colors that came to mind? Red, black, and gold. I played around with red and black, and there was a lot of white space that detracted from the picture. There was no harmony, so my next question was, what could I do to fill this space?

I realized I didn't even have a company logo for Cloudburst! I devised one based off the waves of the girl's hair, and they are the initials "CB". It had to be huge, it had to be immediately visible. What better method than making a huge, trademark background, as well as a common theme on all the ads? Repetition is one of the most effective advertisement techniques, afterall.




In the end, here were the final paintings. Be sure to download the pictures to see the textures and close detail.

Some Ideas for the Pitch

All of these pictures are in my magazine layout, which I have unable to open or load in Photoshop or on blogspot on either laptops without instant crashing. I think it's because the image is 10,000 by 10,000 pixels.....so I'll try to reduce that this week...

Color Practice and Color Schemes

Evocative Object - Urban Shoes

300-500-word essay about your evocative object that includes art/design influences, style/genre, overall concept relates to what you’ve learned throughout this semester, target audience, and plan for execution.

My plan for the final project is an advertisement campaign for Nike Dunks (or similar looking shoes), which has always been tied to the urban street movement- graffiti, urban art, and the ever-so-changing styles of hip hop. (Thus my target is the youngsters on the forefront of the urban street culture movement.)

I’ve always loved to dance hip hop (GT’s only hip-hop crew is mine) and thus everything that comes with it- the street art, the music, and the culture. I love going underground and watching people battle it out, I love watching today’s top choreographers working hard at what they love the most.

The thing is, most of them wear Nike Dunks; the urban culture has evolved with these shoes. These shoes are the choice items for dancers, skate boarders, graffiti artists, and street artists.

Thus the texture often most associated with this movement is grunge, where the texture is reminiscent of the rough deterioration of a wall, as illustrated by many wonderful Banksy pieces. Another texture style is through the use of many colors to evoke texture, as demonstrated below.



The graffiti art is also perfect for the line assignment, as much of graffiti is dominated by sharp lines and angles. I will be able to incorporate lines, abstraction, words, and symbolic deconstruction.

Judging from Nike’s website (which heavily incorporates) graffiti and texture as such, I know I’m going to have to do a website layout/spread. I plan on making a real graffiti piece on balsa wood (or whatever large canvas I can scrounge up) and using that as a wall piece to take photoshoots with shoes and then digitally manipulating that. I also plan on making digital pieces, as Nike had wallpaper for their shoes as well.

Influences for me on my project will be: se7en’s music video, musician Nujabes and his philosophies, and the broken, deconstructed pieces of glass from the newest Final Fantasy. I wanted to be able to incorporate technology into this project as well, through the use of a dark, liquid, broken glass kind of theme.

Nujabes album cover art + lyrics

Light As A Feather
When I'm Floatin Through
Readin Through The Daily News
Measuring The Hurt Within The Golden Rule,
Centimetres Of Ether I'm Heatin The Speaker
Motivational Teacher With Words That Burn People
Seeing The Headlines Lined With Discord
It's Either Genocide, All The Planet In Uproar
Never Good But Rules Of Paradise Are Never Nice
The Best Laid Plan Of Mice And Men Are Never Right
I'm Just A Vagabond With Flowers For Algernon
The Average Joe Who Knows What The Fuck Is Goin On
It's The Hope Of My Thoughts That I Travelled Upon
Fly Like An Arrow Of God Until I'm Gone

(See 41 seconds in for what I’m talking about)

A perfect example would be the colors, textures, movements, and styles from the Black Eyes Peas music video, Just Can’t Get Enough, in particular starting at 2:48.


Here's the JabbaWockeez doing one of their more recent stunts. These are my inspiration for when draw certain poses.





Some Color Palettes:

Color Palette HW

Color Palette Practice
- the colors are according


1.


2.


3.

Final Bioshock Texture Project

When I first drew the draft, I knew that I adored the "little sisters" of the game, wanted to portray them, and that the setting of Bioshock was under the sea. However, I wanted to focus on the glamour that was previously associated with the city of Rapture, where the world's elite sought refuge to be free of the constraints of society and advance in their own mannerisms. The development of "gene splicing" technology that gave superpowers to the citizens of Rapture actually turned out to have a drug-like effect, and almost immediately the society inescapably deteriorate.



iDesign Worksheet Tool

Intention (Purpose)

My intention is to highlight both concepts of texture and collage (or at least using mixed media) through previous concepts of form and shape. I am aiming for a texture through colors, collage, and paper. The piece should imply an infectious, dystopic deterioration that is underlying a glamorous context.

Definition (Elements)/ Exploration (Concepts/Relations)

Liquid plasma- I used nail polish.

Collage- pictures and pieces from Rapture- flyers on EVE (one of the two drugs needed), and medical centers.

...and then paint. I bought metallic and silver markers because the nail polish ended up bleeding through the paper. The only one that did not, was my red polish, which I used to color the ADAM syringe and the little sister's bow.




Exploring





Suggesting

liquid plasma- part of the game, kind of like stuff you need in order to survive with superpowers

I hadn't anticipated on doing the ADAM syringe, but I did.

Innovation(Operation)

I first drew in charcoal to get my sketch. Then I inked over it, scanned it into Photoshop, cleaned up the sketch in Photoshop by outlining and erasing any errant pencil/ink marks. I then printed out the newly cleaned sketch and dipped them in coffee overnight. Then I let it dry before I crumpled it to give it texture. I still thought it was a bit plain, so I ended up cutting out the city

layer on the goodies

Goalgetting (Criteria)

I was thinking of doing a digital piece in Photoshop, but in order to successfully do that I would probably need some 25+ hours. I just think it wasn't going to be feasible given such a short time frame.


Knowing (Implication)

I thought the white paper was a little plain so I just dipped the piece in coffee and wrinkled it. It was an attempt to capture deterioration of a beautiful society.

Reaction Response

I really enjoyed this one, though it was a challenge because I was trying to limit my colors.