Unit Evaluation: Unit 2 - Covert and Obscured

Unit Evaluation: Unit 2 - Covert and Obscured

Brief

The brief for this exam was 'Covert and Obscured', which stirred inspiration with me. This brief basically required me to produce a piece which followed the theme of things which were unseen and hidden, or that were mysterious and enigmatic.

I responded to this by thinking of themes which fit a secretive or hidden dimension or environment, and eventually settled on three themes - Spies, Caves and Oceans. After thoughts and note taking, I eventually chose to follow an underwater theme - What is below the see is generally hidden and secluded, and also the ocean is largely unexplored. In making an Undersea themed Pinterest board (which I used to gather images of this theme), I gained a lot of inspiration from imagery of Submarines and similar equipement.

 I really liked the design of modern submersibles, and really wanted to produce something using a machine of this design, so I began sketching machinery and even produced a small stopmotion of a 2D vehicle of this design. Through personal preference, I decided I would produce a film poster, as in the past I have had much success and gratification in producing in this form. I created a second Pinterest board to collect images of Film Posters for inspiration.

From this, I thought up some designs for possible film posters, and decided on a fictitious title named League (harking back to 20,000 Leagues under the Sea). I produced a vector of the type of submarine I wanted to use in the poster, and placed it in a mockup version of the final design. While thinking about the final design itself, I figured that a vector submersible would not be good enough to capture the mood as well as I'd like.

So, with past experience, I decided to produce a second Mock poster that used a Submarine constructed using the CAD software LEGO Digital Designer (aka LDD), along with a rocky outcrop made in the software too.

I liked working with this sort of setup, so I settled on producing something very similar for my final piece, but with a further revised LDD Submarine and gloomier mood, and the addition of LDD built text also. This piece was produced in both Landscape and Portrait formats.

Influenced Piece

This piece is a interpretation of a piece by illustrator Scott Campbell, who generally works in a simplistic style, creating images of characters and scenes from various aspects of popular colour. I like this artist's style, as it is easy to approach. The piece I emulated suited my tastes - I am interested in science fiction and robots - so it caught my eye, and made me wish to emulate it to the best of my abilities.

 Here is my interpretation (left, work in progress) alongside a printed version of the original (right). The process Scott Campbell used was to sketch the piece in light pencil first, and then use watercolour to define and render the characters. It was simple enough in the beginning, but as I progressed through emulating I found that it was difficult to keep certain colours constant and also to control paint. As you can see in the finalized emulation, paint did bleed on the face of the larger robot, due to my mistake of having too much water on my brush. However, through this, I found that Watercolour was a simple method of work that I could approach, and I also enjoyed emulating this piece. I also found great comfort in working in a less intricate art style. I originally planned to use handmade elements in my final piece, produced using watercolours, but this was before I decided on using LDD renders, so that thought was scrapped.

Experimental Piece

This piece, which eventually transpired to be used as a Final Draft, was used as an experiment in melding together LDD renders and Photoshop work. This was risky, as this was the first time I had taken renders from LDD into Photoshops so they may be used in a more serious manner.

 

The main problem can be seen above - LDD's lighting is very bright, but cannot be altered within the actual software. Transparent screenshots must have this harsh, top-down lighting, which does not match the dark, moody aesthetic of the poster. However, through the use of Photoshop's abilities in filtering and gradiating imagery, I was able to achieve the lighting aesthetic I wanted with the original rendered images.

Through working in this method, I became very comfortable and keen to use LDD to create props for the final piece. I also learnt valuable skills that were needed to create my final poster, in the most effective way possible.

Refinement

The poster for League has gone through many iterations in it's time, but each iteration has held a similar theme - The submersible descending through the waters towards the rocky outcrops below.

When sketching several thumbnails of posters, the first concept for League was born. This very small image (approximately 5cm in height) shows the overall, continuous theme through all the iterations. This concept is different however, as the submarine is descending between two sides of a large undersea ravine, not toward undersea scenery. This submarine however matches exactly with the one in the final piece, no matter how rough this one may be.

This iteration was a very basic one, using a vector submersible, along with vector rocks surrounding it. However, this image dues not follow most standard movie poster conventions. Also, the submarine here is a lot more rounded and Sci-Fi than originally intended for the project. Components from this piece, such as the light beams and the ocean gradient, were borrowed when making the next iteration.

This version is the first of the two to use objects from LDD. Although this follows the original concept closely, and follows film poster conventions properly, it is much darker in tone than would be acceptable for a piece used to advertise. The mood it portrayed however was admirable to me. Also, the amount of Rocks has decreased far beyond what the previous two iterations had originally set out. Personally, I felt that this looked better, and conveyed a more mysterious feeling towards what the submarine may be approaching. Also, the submarine here does not match the original concept as closely as desired, but however suits the intended aesthetic better than the vector submersible from the previous iteration.

The final poster borrows a lot of design traits from the previous iteration, but in a brighter tone than before - colours of the submarine and ocean are a lot brighter than beforehand, so as to catch the eye of the audience with more effect. An extra rock was added to the outcrop, to make whatever the submarine is approaching seem larger and more impressive. This submarine follows the original design from the thumbnail very closely, almost being an exact copy. The addition of an LDD made title, a custom Billing Block and a slogan help to make this image into an effective, convention-following film poster.

Final Piece - Conclusion

The final piece (and it's landscape version) both fit the bill of what I intended to create very well. Peers who have looked over the piece have shown an intrigued and positive response to both the creative process and also the theme - The latter being the intended purpose of a Film Poster, which is very pleasing. I feel that blending LDD and Photoshop work worked really well in conveying the mood and image that I desired, and also turned out to be an enjoyable work process for me. 

One difficulty was that I had to work on two machines during the creation of the posters. Although I used the Macintosh computers provided by the College for Photoshop work and rendering, all LDD based work had to be done on my own personal laptop, as the College does not possess this software. But this simply meant moving the rendered images from my laptop to the Mac, which although is a simple and quick process, was slightly hassling.

Although I am happy with the final posters, I feel that the mood I conveyed in the final draft (the first using LDD elements) suited me more. However, shifting the mood to be brighter and more eye-catching helped to boost the poster's performance in it's intended purpose.

I am pleased with what I have created, and I am happy that my peers enjoy my work also. I feel that I could work in a similar fashion in the future very comfortably.

This Blog displays the work done throughout the project in descending order. Please navigate to the second page and work backwards through the Blog to assess it in the desired order.