Personal Project - Music

First Idea Sheets:

These are my idea sheets for the ideas that I got when thinking about what I could do for this Personal Project. I liked the idea of doing clothing and I also liked the idea for doing an poster on Adobe Illustrator because I think my digital work is a really strong point for me. I do like the idea for a booklet for a band on a tour, but I don't know if I am capable of doing something that requires time to go through and use different techniques, however I am willing, if I have enough time, to combine all 3 of my ideas to create one overall idea that is all linked to one another. 

Mindmap:

This is my mind map that I have put together to showcase my different ideas and artists that I could look at to gather some inspiration from.

Project Brief -

This is my project brief and it has been done suitably for myself to follow and it outlines what I have been given to do, following from my idea sheets. I have chosen to do a Tour Book for Muse because I am interested in their music and I would enjoy creating something for a band that I like listening to. I hope to create something different, using inspiration from artists such as Miles Donovan and Jonathon Tran. I'd like to look at Banksy's work 

Heebook Lee - Shattered Effect

Heebok Lee is an interactive designer from Korea. He works with kinetic typography and design and he has gone forward with his career as a motion graphics designer and art director. There have been several media firms using Heebok Lee as an art director in LA and Pittsburgh, Pittard Sullivan, Troika, Wall to Wall Studios.  He is currently a creative director at the Method Studios. He has been awarded several different awards. His website is interesting and it's a separate link to see his Glass Of Light items here.

I think that his work is really interesting to look at as there are aspects that are really cleverly done, such as the shattering of the text to create this 'Glass' look to the work and also, the use of the light effect is really nicely placed because it looks like there is light shining through the letters 'G' 'O' 'L' (which is Glass Of Light, in short) This idea has inspired me to do something with Adobe Illustrator and creating shattered text to imitate music and the way that it splits up different things with the sound waves and as I want to use a band such as Muse, it could work quite well as they are a rock band and could be assumed to have a high level volume, therefore threatening to break through glass creating a shattered glass effect.

The colours used here stand out against the black background, helping the viewer see the objects and shapes on the page and therefore informs me that if I was to do something like this, then I would have to use light colours as Muse also use light colours against their black background on their website.

Vincent Rhafael Aseo - Screen Printing

Vincent a.k.a Aseo, started out as a designer in  BoNa Coffee Company in 2008 before focusing on web design in 2009 when he worked for various companies and many real estate firms. He has a passion for vector graphics and creates this vivid screen printing posters that are really interesting and this led to him illustration career in 2010. Since, he has been featured in different magazines and showed on various art sites. He is also a part of a sites Mod Group as a Vector CV and Designers of Asia.

This technique of screen printing is really interesting and the colours used in this vectored portrait of the guy who created Facebook. Also, the colours used are relating to the subject of the portrait, which is Facebook, using the different colours of blues to create a realistic portrait yet, relate it to Facebook.

The techniques used are quite simple as it could have been done on Adobe Illustrator using live tracing and expanding to get the spaces open to freely colour them. Also, another technique used could have been something that requires a graphics tablet and using both Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to trace around the picture and then colour it in, giving the freedom to add shading and lines to where he wants to add different lines. The use of the colour blue could not only represent Facebook, but also the person himself (we assume it's the creator of Facebook, from the portrait being a guy) Mark Zuckerburg. This could represent him being a cold person because of past events when it seems that he has taken credit for creating Facebook when really it was a group of people, Zuckerbug included. It also could represent the connection he has to Facebook and the word ‘Like’ underneath it shows a cold humor towards this sort of perception on the portrait and that it’s cold towards the way that Zuckerburg has, like, acted towards everybody who has dealt with Facebook.

There is a slight smirk on his face, showing that he knows what he has done but he knows he is worth a lot of money and he can afford to pay different people in court because it’s how much he owns and earns nearly every day.

Stage one: Primary and Secondary Resources.

I have to collect different pictures with my digital camera of various people in different poseswith different musical instruments because of the people that it has to relate to (Muse). The hard thing is thinking about what type of people that I want to photograph holding instruments because even though they are going to be digitally edited, it will be a slight problem if I don't have enough images to use throughout the booklet itself. 
Another thing that I have to get this week, from their website or from emailing the band themselves is the text information that I will need to put into this book about a previous tour. This way it'll be easier on me to create a tour book for a past tour as I could have much more access to things to say and different pictures can come of this and the different angles that I could use to create different ideas for the different pages of the tour booklet.

When I have got my photographs, I will then use them to experiment with different possible ways of creating an interesting and unique way of presenting the pictures. I also will have a look at possible book layouts to use for when I am combining text and pictures.

Secondary resources 

For my secondary resources, I am going to use Moodboards and possibly Mindmaps on what sort of layouts I have to use to create a tour book, or a book in general for Muse. This will help me make the correct decision and create a final outcome which could've been made for Muse a while back and that could have been sold at one of their concerts 

Moodboard One: Different poses of Muse and instruments.

1) Front man Singing, guitar round his neck 
2) In front of old power station, posing
3) Red guitar
4) Brown Guitar
5) Pose on Elevator stairs
6) Trio pose on the street
7) Microphone

This mood board will help me look at what sort of poses Muse do and the location. Most of the pictures that I have gotten are ones of them standing alone, as a band and I hope to incorporate this into my photographs that I take. There is one where the leader of the band is standing at a microphone with a guitar hanging of from around his neck. This helps me slightly because I can always get someone to use a guitar to pose with, but maybe not so outgoing but it would need to be as if the person I am photographing is playing to an audience.

Primary Source - Photographs

I asked a good friend of mine if he would bring in his guitar (Shown above) for the photos and he agreed. I took a range of photographs to see what the outcomes where of them. Following what I have on my mood board, I wanted to try and recreate some of the poses that the band have done or just use their poses to influence my choice of how my friend posed, both with his guitar and alone.

I chose to capture some shots of his guitar so that I could use that also for different parts of the booklet because I don't always want ones of him with a guitar or that he is standing alone and this way I have a variety of what I am doing to give more of a range for people to look at and it's not so repetitive. 

Primary experimentation with Stencilling.

Original Picture

Slideshow of many the different experimentations that I have done

These are my experimentations so far. I used stencilling.
I feel that these experiments are too controlled in the areas that have been coloured in but I do like some of the effect that they have in that they



Different types of Book layouts

Different layout ideas

This is my first idea for a book page layout and I have used a stencil idea, in the middle of the page to show of my art work and stencilling and have the text boxes based around the image, giving the image a border effect. I have put two lines where the Muse logo would go because I think I need to incorporate the logo of the band.

I like this idea because it showcases my work and I could use a range of different images for the middle. I also like the idea of having the Muse logo in the top left hand corner but having their two lines that are above and below the word Muse as text boxes, just to get some more text in on the page.

This is my second idea for a page layout, with an image split into 3 bits and put onto different sides of the page to separate the text boxes from each other. Also, the images are from different photos but they have been digitally re-done and placed together to add different colours.

I like this idea in the fact that I use different pictures to create one whole picture, like having a picture of a head who's looking either up or down at either the guitar he is playing or looking up at the camera, having the middle of the body separated and on the other side of the page and then having the feet doing something related to music.

This is my third idea for a page layout, where I have the three band members in the middle and one of my own pictures that will have been edited down the left side of the page. Just to add a bit of my own work to the page and then I would have the text box on the other side of the page.

I like this idea as I can use a picture of the instrument on it's own and the picture being edited it can be either in black and white with selective parts in colour and the idea of having the 3 band members down the middle show that it's still related to muse and I am linking both secondary and primary resources together.
This idea is interesting because it combines two pictures together and they seem to be the same because of the positions of the guy and how he's looking down at the guitar and having the text boxes seem to be interesting because with the first page, the look of him looking down at the text box and the idea of the arrow is pointing to the text box. This was unintentional but I like the way that it turned out and it helps the eye move onto the text box itself.

I could be likely to use this as a page for my booklet and I think that this would be a great way of showing of text and imagery and it doesn't give
away too much of the image anyway.
My final idea for a booklet page is one where I have a cut out of the guy in the middle or the picture could be edited and cut out to be just a silhouette. The idea of having the splatter around the picture came to me from when I experimented with stencils and I like this idea and I was to do the picture in a silhouette then I would be free to send paint over the top of the picture without fear and I think this would also add to the image and the fact that it could be representing the paint that is coming away from the guy playing music.

I like this idea and I think that it'd work really well with my ideas because of the use of the colour and I can combine the different colours together and use a lot of one colour to make it stand out.

Miles Donovan

Miles Donovan Stenciling

Other work of Miles Donovan

Miles Donovan is a successful illustrator and he is also a member of Peepshow Collection. His work has been used internationally for editorial clients and advertising clients including The New York Times, The Guardian, Wired and Qantas. Some of the clients include Vogue, Warner Bros, Penguin (who are a very successful book publishing company), Roundhouse, ITV and Inside Entertainment. There are many others, but these ones that many people would have heard of and are familiar with.

Donovan has had his illustrations published in books, such as "Illusive" and has worked on design, art direction and animation projects with Peepshow Collection for the BBC, Nike, Channel Four, Phillips, Toyota, Redbee Media, Diesel and The Victoria and Albert Museum.

His work seems to be really colourful and I like to look at it because of the colours and items that he seems to use in most of his work. I've looked at his work before and it seems to be that he does mainly photo-collages with different items that belong to that place, for example for London it might be a Red post box and a black cab with a picture of a policeman with a hard hat on with a white background to help bring the colours out that are within the small images. He also does Stencilling and this sort of imagery is really interesting to look at since he creates the image as if it has been created using paint because of the paint drips that come down the picture. Also, the colours used are quite bright but the amount of colour that has been used is 3 - 4 colours in one picture and this helps keep the image quite simple. This works well because if there were more than 4 colours then it would get busy for the eye to look at and there'd be no specific place for the viewer to look at therefore confusing them on what they are meant to be looking at.

Further Experimentation

This  image shows my development into using Adobe Photoshop to create this interesting way of using a paintbrush on the editing software to create this image, where I have taken the image and put it into a black silhouette, to hide the features of the person and the only thing that you can just about tell that is there is the guitar and I like this idea of having the image in black and white. This idea was taken from my hand done experimentation using paint flickers on the page to create outbursts of paint on the background to emphasise on the music aspect.

Since this is for Muse, I think that this idea would suit them, but I would have to refine it more to make it even better and get better outcomes from what I experiment with.






These two pictures are ones that I have taken myself and I found this tutorial online where it showed me how to colour in parts of the body (when the whole picture was in greyscale) and the picture on the left shows the picture when I took followed the tutorial step by step, using the fact and arms to colour in and I have used the triangles to create this weird, yet interesting look to it. On the right, I have another photo that I took but this time I have shortened the tutorial down and painted in the persons shoes and his guitar and therefore I managed to get this interesting look as if the paint itself is coming of the persons shoes where he is playing the guitar and letting the music take control. I really like these two sort of out comes and the fact that I am using the Hue colours that are on the front of the Muse Album - The Resistance - makes it feel like I am linking to the bands album and I think also, the use of the triangles helps relate to music in a subtle way.

These examples are the stages that I went through to get to the final outcomes up above. I gave up on the first photo I did (Left) because I couldn't quite work out how to fix the merging together and I think that I had to start from the beginning and I think I achieved a better quality outcome rather than if I had stayed with this photograph and worked out how to do it. On the right, I first had to check with some people if the colours were right and whether I should do it on the face, arms and shoes because I didn't know if it was going to work. In the end, I took all the colour away from the arms, face and left it on the shoes and coloured the guitar in a blue hue colour. This turned out to be more effective because it looks like the music is flowing through the paint as it's being thrown from the instrument itself. I like this idea and it represents music better than if it was coming of the person's skin.

This is the second step in the process, where I was deciding what sort of paint toss to put on the guitar and where I should position it because I wasn't so sure if I should put it on the neck of the guitar or have it on the body. As I have in the end photograph, I have it on the body of the guitar, even though you can't tell because of the triangles that are in the way of the splash.

The original tutorial had the shapes of the triangles and I think that I could experiment with other shapes to see what they come out like and this way I know wether to keep using triangles for any image that I do, or use a square or circle for final images. I personally prefer triangles but I will look into other shapes that create an interesting look to them.

 This is one of the pain splatters that I used to create the stylised images and I had to go through the process of putting the splatter accurately in the place that I thought that it worked best and then I had to get the colour of the area that I was putting it on and then fill a new layer with the colour that I have used on the persons body. This one I found easier to work with because of the large splatter and I can manipulate it when I need to add it to a specific part of the body and any other splatter that I used doesn't work.


The site that I found the tutorial and the link to get the splatters are found HERE. I found this tutorial really useful and I think that it's a really simple tutorial to do once you understand the concepts that they are showing.

More photo's

Digital designs

Outcomes

1st Page

Middle Page

2nd Page

Back Cover / Front Cover

Final Logo

Evaluation

My brief that I came up with was to do with completing a book for Muse as they are one of my most listened to Bands on my iPod. I came up with ideas firstly to do many different things, like creating a t-shirt design and a range of clothing designs for different products. Another idea I had was to create different types of posters that represented each band member because I thought it'd be a nice addition but I ran out of time.

The use of my friend was to create the shapes to have this interesting look and it was something that I wasn't aware of that had been done before. However, I think the use of the shapes worked really well and they added a sort of abstract look to it and makes the viewer think about what they are looking at and wether they can piece together that the shapes are related to the images on the same page opposite them.

The colours used are inspiration used from the Muse album Resistance and on this album cover it had hues of the same colour placed next to each other and I think that this was a really good link to music and to my chosen band Muse.

I chose to do a tour booklet because I wanted something different to packaging and I also wanted to try a new technique to use shapes. However, I kept it linked to my previous project of CD Packaging with just keeping it simple and saying that I linked it by the fact that I was once again doing music. I think that this is a clear link between my projects but I would enjoy doing this personal project again and possibly creating something as an extension task.