Music to accompany my Vis Com Typography Video

This is the music I will use which will feature alongside my 30 images I have selected from a range taken inside and out. It's from the french film, Amelie and is titled Comptine D' un Autre Ete and simply involves the sound of a piano.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7BRpmbfPk0

Inside/Outside

Y

i

Z

Information sign

Welsh/English

Direction sign

Advertisement from 1616 on a building in Low Town,

Bridgnorth

Information sign

Street sign

Directional post

London Underground

Letterforms used as candles

Shop

Road sign

Garden sign

Inside/Outside

The final brief for Vis Com is called Inside/Outside where I have to find letterforms within the interior and exterior environment.

Caption on a photo frame in my room

Keyboard

T

"Paris" Canvas

X

O

D

V

L

S

Y

Y

I

Cooker

J

X

Range of letterforms

Home Coat hanger

Y

F

I

H

Letterforms on wood

C

Final Piece for "Where I Live' Illustration

This is my final piece for my "Where I Live" project for the Illustrator module in Visual Communication. The appearance of the piece if very geometric and isn't actually what my room looks like. The places drawn within the window are places that I pass everyday on the bus. I have used all the skills that I developed throughout the weekly sessions and incorporated them into my final piece. I think the live trace worked well with the Coca-Cola can and the apple and the scale with the pencils in the pencil pot.

Illustrator Skills

Below are documented skills that I have learnt throughout the "Where I Live" module in Vis Com. 

Shapes

Speed Camera - This was simply created by using simple shapes such as Rounded Rectangle, Oval (but when drawn press Shift and this creates a perfect circle) alongside the line tool. Using the arrange option to bring things to front so that the yellow background was featured at send to back.

Pencils - The pencils were created after the Speed Camera task and I found that it was quite simple to create them. Gaussian Blur effect and rotation of the circle was used to create the white on the top of the pencil tip.

Bouncing Ball - Once again this involved using a Oval + Shift, as well as the same effect on the top of the pencil for the reflection. The shadow on the bottom is also the same process as the top of the pencil but a smaller oval shape and bigger blur effect. 

Blending

Smooth Colour - Blending involves creating two shapes that have two different colours as the fill. Then you go to Object -> Blend -> Blending options and the first step I did was Smooth Colour. Once pressed Make, this will appear on the screen the smooth transition of the tones between each shapes.

Specified Steps - This involves the same process but instead select Specified Steps and you can enter in how many steps of tone you would like to see between each of the originally drawn shapes. This example there are 4 tones between each starting shape.

Specified Distance - Once again this requires the same process as mentioned above but you can enter how much distance you want between each tone in cm. This example there is 0.3cm which is hard to see on the image. If a larger distance was created it would start to look like Specified Steps.

Web Icons

Speaker - Web Icons are the quick and easy option to use, however, you wouldn't use them if you were doing high-paid professional work. This speaker example involved me ungrouping the elements in the icon, then changing the colour of the lines and also removing the middle speaker line to create a simple low and high volume resemblance.

Website Button - The original website button (black) involved the same process as the Speaker but what I did extra was to add a shadow underneath the arrow. This was done by using the skills I had picked up from the previous Pencil and Bouncing Ball activity and then going to Object -> Arrange -> Send to Back for it to be underneath the main coloured arrow.

Where I live? First few stages...

The second skills module for Visual Communication is all about where I live. I have to create an illustration in repsonse to the title. My final work must be created on Adobe Illustrator - this will be a challenging task as I have never used this software before. I will also continue to keep my research and idea development in an A3 flip file rather than a sketchbook, so I can keep all my Vis Com work together in one file.

Firstly, I highlighted the main sections on the brief and began to brainstorm some ideas. I live in Bridgnorth, a historical town in the middle of Shropshire where we are surrounded by trees and the town is separted by the River Severn which leaves a High Town and a Low Town. My house and past schools are situated in High Town, whereas my work place is located in Low Town. Due to the river being in the middle, there are two bridges that connect the two together. The one bridge I commute over to get to university by bus.

Secondly, to get some ideas flowing I decided to do some quite drawings of some areas in Bridgnorth. The main attraction for tourists who come to visit the town is the Town Hall, situated in the middle of the High Street. I also did a quite drawing and tried to create tone of a bench that is along the Castle Walk where the whole of Low Town can be viewed from. To combine the two places Bridgnorth (Where I Live) and Wolverhampton (Where I Work) I did a very quick outline of the MC building that I can see from MK314 when doing work on the mac.

After doing these quick drawings I then started to look at artists who look at spaces around them. Firstly I started to look at Richard Billingham and the photographs he had taken of Cradley Heath in the Black Country where he had grew up from birth. I then started to develop some of my own thumbnail ideas in relation to his work but adding my own twist and using photographs taken by myself.



The second artists I started to look out was Storm Thorgerson and one of the album covers he had designed. The artwork was themed around things inside being placed outside. The sheep was inside a persons bed and the person was outside on the grass. I then related this idea to looking through a window and what I see on a day to day basis in Bridgnorth. So this would be my house, Town Hall, Church, trees and bridges. The main areas in Bridgnorth. I also started to think about signs that are associated with Bridgnorth and whilst on the bus one morning I noticed the Salop sign on one of the passing houses so started to think about how I could incorperate this into my design.

I found that the bottom thumbnail design with the trees either side of the Salop sign works well as it represents the fact that Shropshire is in the heart of the countryside where trees are visable wherever you look rather than a city scape. The clear sky and clouds also represent the fact that Bridgnorth isn't as air polluted as citys such as Wolverhampton due to there not being even half the amount of cars coming in and out of the town.

Thatcher the Cow!

Below is my final design for my silk screen print that I will be undertaking next week. The image featured above "Thatcher the Milk Snatcher" is a combination of two images, a cow and Thatchers head. After finishing this I turned it into greyscale then a halftone bitmap image ready to be printed onto acetate.

9th December 2011 Update

Today was the final day of printing and I found that precision definitely wasn't on my side and that I have learnt from this experience to always make sure from the first print to line up the paper correctly. The only two things on my image that printed correctly were the Sell by Date and the image of Thatchers face attached to the cow.