Oscars Self Initiated Brief - Evaluation and reflection

It's the 26th of February, and I met my own deadline!


I printed all ten of my posters for the Oscars on Friday, they're all backed onto mount board and wrapped in acetate. I think the short time span I set myself for this brief was beneficial in making myself just go for it and work solidly this month to get these done.

In terms of my practice, I feel like this task has really been beneficial to my development. I'm trying to think more conceptually and focus on the strength of my ideas before moving forward. When I was talking to Ben about this brief, he said that I can often spend too much time developing roughs that might work, and then at the end of the project I realise some of them might not work and I have a mad scramble to come up with ideas. This is definitely something that I feel has been hindering me in the past and I feel has weakened a lot of my final submissions.
Because of this, I set myself this short deadline to force myself into being more confident in my own idea generation and making sure I have time to develop fewer ideas into good responses, rather than developing loads of ideas into sub-par responses.

I tried throughout the development for these posters to focus on the idea and the realisation of it, rather than dwelling on differing aesthetics. I settled on an aesthetic constant early on, I wanted all the posters to be digital, vectored and centred by a circle within a square. Keeping this simplistic approach to each poster helped me centralise my ideas so they would all work as a set in the final product. Working in this limited format created more of a challenge to adapt to, as real world commissions would have pre-set dimensions, requirements etc, so it was helpful for me to work within a format I had to adapt to each individual design.

In terms of my practice as an illustrator (still very much with the learner plates on I think), this brief has been beneficial in developing my ability to work in a short space of time, and be much more honest with myself concerning what works and what doesn't, due to the limited time for faffing about. Communicating thematic elements of film in just still image has been a much bigger challenge for me than I originally thought. This project has taught me that liking something, or disliking something, has no real bearing on my ability to engage with it on an illustrative level. I need to research more and understand the subject matter I'm dealing with on a level to which I can pull knowledge from different sources to build successful ideas and engaging imagery. I feel that this was one of my biggest downfalls during 504, as the length of the module made me stop paying as much attention to it, subsequently losing the interest I initially had in it, and weakening my responses.

I have also begun to upload the finished posters to Society6, so they will be out on the real world market able to buy if anyone in the world feels so inclined.

Overall I've learned a lot about myself and where I think I want my work to go from this point by completing this brief, and I think I've done a substantial amount of work for it and I'm happy that I managed to get them all done, printed, and begin to upload them to be sold. I think its been important for me to be independent within this module and take a handle of the issues I've been facing on this course, and have a real go at trying to improve and make some work I feel has made me start seeing my practice in a much different direction.
I still feel there's a lot I can improve on, some of my ideas could have been workshopped more to get a stronger image, so I'll try to balance the importance of that more evenly in the future.

Oscars final designs - Jackie

I really wanted to keep it simple for this design, as the themes and issues raised in Jackie are very complicated and I didn't want to overcomplicate and devalue my final imagery. The film tells the story of Jackie Kennedy coping with being a first hand witness to her husband's brutal assassination, and the aftermath of it coupled with her duty to her husband's legacy, her children and her country. The simplest way I could communicate that was through the collapsing circle behind her figure. I placed her figure in the foreground ahead of the object falling apart to communicate her solidarity and strength in the face of challenges. I wanted the overall mood of the image to be quite melancholy, and I think this dark colour palette works well to achieve that. I would change this design up in the future to maybe communicate some of the heavier themes more clearly, as this design doesn't stick in my mind as well as some of my others.

Oscars final designs - Manchester by the Sea

Manchester by the Sea was a real challenge for me to illustrate because, as a film, it deals with some very adult and intangible concepts, such as grieving, responsibility and sacrifice. Casey Affleck's character finds himself having to step up and take care of his recently deceased brother's son, and overhaul his life in favour of the teenager. It asks the audience the question of what it means to love someone selflessly, and put a whole other person ahead of yourself.
The way I visualised this was by using clouds encroaching on the characters frame, to show his life is being overtaken and changed, but in a way that is ultimately for the best and will benefit his family the most. There is an acceptance of his responsibility, so I wanted to use contrasting, but calm colours to represent this knowledge. I placed the figure away from the centre to communicate his initial hesitation and unwillingness to take on his responsibility, and behind a gate to suggest the emotional hurdles he's yet to overcome.
The final outcome of this piece is heavily dependent on metaphors and thematic composition, both elements I haven't always had to consider in my work. I'm really enjoying engaging with the content I'm creating on a much deeper level, it feels more engaging and really beneficial to my own development and understanding my practice and where it's headed.

Oscars final designs - Arrival

This poster for Arrival was one of the earliest I got completed, as I stopped trying to tell the entire story of the film in image, and focused instead on the iconography and visual themes of the film. Arrival is about a language expert trying to comprehend an alien force that comes to Earth with unclear intentions. It's a departure from classic films like this, as the solution isn't just firing the biggest gun at the problem. Because of this, I didn't want to make a cliché alien action movie poster, and tried to be more subtle. The circular shape is a symbol used in the film as a part of the alien language, which I used as the overarching visual anchor to show the nature of the film as focused on the relationship between two different species and how they interact, rather than on them horribly killing each other.
The cylindrical shape in the centre of the image is based on the alien ships that show up around the world in the film. As a whole single image, I used these two sections to resemble a reptilian/alien eye, as many movie posters use an eye to draw the audiences attention, as eyes convey a humanity and an openness that people can engage with, sometimes without even realising.

Oscars final designs - Hidden Figures

This poster is another that I am really happy with the visuals for, but could have benefitted from more time spent on the idea formulation and concept. Hidden Figures is about three African American women who served as vital components at NASA in the early 1960s, having a massive hand in kicking off the space race and having humanity set foot on a surface not on Earth for the first time in history. Being both black and female in the 60s gave these women a massive disadvantage starting out in pursuing careers as rocket scientists, as maths and science have always been perceived as "man's work". I used the image of the gaping view of an astronaut helmet to convey the broad horizons of these women, but also the lack of identity they faced and still sometimes today are denied in a lack of recognition. Using a simplified version of the NASA logo, I wanted to communicate the aspiration of the women, but this idea I don't feel was fleshed out enough. This is definitely a design I'd like to revise and strengthen the idea behind if I was to move any further forward with it.

Oscars final designs - Lion

This was a poster that I left until last, as I didn't feel I knew enough about the film to communicate it clearly in an image. But I enjoyed exploring it visually and I think the outcome reflects that. Lion is the story of a boy who ends up on a train by mistake and ends up thousands of miles away from his family across India, surviving on the streets until he is adopted by an Australian couple. The film focuses on him trying to return to his home and find his original family. There is an optimism about these ideas I wanted to capture in my poster, and I thought the playfulness of turning the circular frame I've been using into a magnifying glass to reflect the lead character searching among his memories for his origin.
The iconography of the train is really interesting to me, as they often represent adventure and new horizons in a narrative sense, but the train in this film could be seen as an ominous and unaligned, careless force that separates the young boy from his family. For this reason, I wanted to make the train the central focus of the image, as it plays such a crucial role in the narrative. This concept is really engaging for me, as the train is the literal thing that changed the child's life, but you can't blame the train because it's inanimate, there is no malevolence involved, sometimes terrible things just happen and there is no one to blame, and in a way that's worse, because emotionally it's harder to accept and deal with it, because there is nothing and no one to pinpoint the cause of the event on. This is a complicated theme, so the inclusion of the train portrayed against the day turning into night is my stab at grasping it.

Oscars final designs - Fences

This is the only one of my posters I wish I could have had more time on (I set myself the deadline of the 27th though, so I have become the architect of my own destruction), so I could develop it further and really finalise it in a way I'm happy with. Fences is the story of a man living in 1950s Pittsburgh, who once had big dreams of being a baseball player, but by the time black men were allowed to even play, he was too old. The ideas of missed opportunity, wasted potential, and frustration at the way the world works made me want to create quite a sombre image. I chose a dark colour palette to reflect this. I intended the different shades of brown to represent the different shades of skin in people subjugated in America as black people, as it didn't really matter how black you were, or where you were born, being black was the crime and there was no coming back from that. I chose to put these different shades as parts of the same fence to communicate that widespread ignorance.

I wanted to do more with the idea of a fence as a structural support and the protection of a house, as black slaves and their workforce largely built America into the titan it is today. However, I did struggle a lot with being able to communicate these complex historical and theoretical ideas into a small film poster, so I went for the simpler design. I've learned a lot about how to represent these kind of issues through my idea development, so that's something I'll be carrying over into my practical for COP, as I'm investigating similar concepts.

Oscars final designs - Hacksaw Ridge

This was the first of my posters that I finished, and at first I didn't feel okay about having it done. I spent a lot of hours on it and I feel that it communicates the message of the film quite well, but I didn't really feel that it was illustration, so to speak. I've been trying to be more subtle in my work and ideas, but I don't want it to become so simple that it doesn't mean anything. After having some feedback from tutors and people in the class, I feel a lot better about this kind of work, as what matters is the strength of the idea the image is based on, I don't want to become obsessed with aesthetics to the stage where it supersedes the importance of having inventive and engaging ideas.

Hacksaw Ridge is the true story of Pfc. Desmond T Doss, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour after WW2, despite the fact he refused to bear arms on religious grounds. Because of his beliefs he was treated as an outcast initially by fellow soldiers, branding him a coward or anti-patriotic for his lack of willingness to kill. However the film illustrates that just because a man doesn't take physical part in the killing, the toll of war is no less for him compared to the other soldiers. I wanted to incorporate this into my poster, using the red cross to represent both the role of Desmond as a field medic, and his religious beliefs. These two elements are the pillars of his character, and I wanted to show them here in this tattered state to represent the toll of war on everyone involved, even those who might be perceived by the world as not as brave, or not as important, as anyone else.

Oscars final designs - Hell or High Water

Visually, I feel this poster is one of my strongest ideas. Hell or High Water is the story of two brothers in very different places in life, but both desperate, robbing a series of banks that are planning to foreclose on their family ranch. The film deals with desperation, so I thought visually nothing conveys that in a more striking sense than staring down the barrel of a gun. I went through a lot of variation with the design of the central gun image, trying to make it look more realistic, or like a specific weapon, but I decided that the message is clear and the image needs to be simple and clear to communicate it successfully.
I have a tendency to overcomplicate some of my work, and I wanted this project for me has been both a challenge and a chance to boil my work down to what works and what works and being honest with myself about those aspects of my practice. Movie posters have to be immediately engaging while communicating to the audience what the film will be about, or some idea of what it will be like. Because of this, I wanted to really focus on the message first, and constructing the visuals around that, because I feel the message is the core of Illustration as a practice, and I don't want to be making work that looks nice but has no weight behind it.

Oscars final designs - La La Land

I had a lot of difficulty getting this poster finished in a way I was happy. The themes in La La Land are those of falling in love and the naivety that comes with that feeling, and the necessity that sometimes relationships have to be sacrificed for people's lives to progress. The film also explores the brutality of the world of auditions and art critics, people bare themselves and everything they feel often just to be rejected and crushed. I found these ideas really hard to convey visually as they are quite complex, and I didn't want to just cop out and make an image of the characters dancing on a hill, as most of the existing promotional art for the film is based around imagery like that.

This idea was taken from studying the soundtrack to the film rather than the visuals, specifically the song "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)" by Emma Stone, which is performed towards the end of the film and expresses her characters intense ambition while melancholically realising she needs to leave her current life behind in order to move forward with her dream. It's a very emotional song and I took the feeling and thoughts that the lyrics gave me to finalise the designs for this poster. I chose to encapsulate the two figures in a small circle to represent the finite nature of their relationship - its crucially important to both of them but it isn't able to last with both of them going different ways.
I used the two outer rings coupled with the dark blue to reflect water, as water is a running metaphor in the song. The song begins with the Emma Stone's character describing a story of her aunt jumping into the River Seine in Paris. This story represents to her the bravery and idealism she uses to take the figurative leap into acting.
Another line later in the song speaks of water in a metaphorical sense, describing the necessity of creatives and the dreamers in order to change the world for the better: "Here's to the rebels, the ripples from pebbles, the painters and poets and plays.". The imagery in this line really leapt out to me as encapsulating the message of the whole theme of the film, which doesn't suggest dreams will always come true and work out regardless of what happens, but the necessity of realising the limitations of the world and still having the strength to keep going and work harder to make your dreams happen, rather than waiting for the world to sort itself out. The imagery in this line was what inspired me to reflect rippled water as the basis for the poster.

Oscars final designs - Moonlight

I'm quite happy with the final version of this poster, I feel the themes I wanted to convey come across fairly clearly. Moonlight  a film focusing on the life of a black boy growing up in Miami, struggling with his sexuality and identity. Because of this, I wanted to use subdued colours to represent the introverted journey the character goes on throughout the film. I wanted the colours to become darker on a gradient within the image to communicate the changing attitude of the character as he ages, learns more about the world and how it perceives him, and loses innocence and optimism.

This image does have some problems with pixilation, a problem I'll have to deal with more so moving forward with digital work like this.

Further designs and development - Oscar brief

I've been considering the direction I want to take my self directed brief, and I feel that my work would be better served as more conceptually driven rather than based solely on the visuals of each film. With this in mind I've tried to move forward with ideas that focuses on thematic points rather than just images seen from trailers or on posters. I want to get started as quickly as possible so they're all ready in time for the week after half term.

Oscars designs initial ideas

Beginning on my Oscars project, I've begun by focusing on type and simple imagery rather than trying to conceptualise epic complex film posters at this stage. I definitely want to use a form of typography that carries across all ten designs. I've also chosen which ten films I want to illustrate:

La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, Hacksaw Ridge, Moonlight, Jackie, Arrival, Hidden Figures, Fences, Hell or High Water, Lion

COLLABORATIVE - further research - movie quotes

Going ahead with the collab project for MUBI, I'm taking charge of the video editing, which I'm starting today by gathering the movie quotes we need to make our idea work.

COLLABORATIVE - meeting 2

We met again as a collaborative group to discuss the development of our ideas and what we can aim to do heading forward:

List of past films featured on MUBI we can utilise:
Pulp Fiction, 2001, Godfather, No Country For Old Men, Seven Samurai, Big Lebowski, Blade Runner, Psycho, Fight Club, Dr. Strangelove, Citizen Kane, The Shining, Taxi Driver, Clockwork Orange, Fargo, The Dark Knight, Inglorious Basterds, Alien, Star Wars, Trainspotting
.A limited range of quality films is better than an unlimited range of trash

Possible ideas for advert:
Calendar of films, one per day, animate the sheets falling off
Re-do translation on foreign film subtitles to be comedic and advertise the service
Splicing clips together to have different dialogue arranged as if it's a sentence
Man in a restaurant being served loads of garbage food rather than just one nice thing
Find some instrumental electronic music
Write a rough script for an advert - utilising film quotes
Needle in a haystack imagery
"Less is More"
Cross platform advertising - still image, TV and YouTube

COLLABORATIVE - first meeting : first ideas

Me Matt and Connell met up as a collaborative group today for the first proper time to get some ideas flowing in response to the MUBI brief. It's good that we all have a communal interest in films and how they're marketed, as I feel we've got a shared contextual knowledge that'll work really well when generating ideas for this project.
We discussed advertising campaigns for other streaming services such as Netflix, NowTV and Amazon Prime, as we all agree that we want to do something different to those advertising campaigns but appreciate that they're popular for a reason, so they must be doing something right.
Our aims going forward are:

Start to research other streaming service advertisements
Look at past films that have been featured on MUBI
Brand backgrounds
Investigate film industry connections - Sundance, HMV etc
Think about where specific adverts are best utilised - inside cinemas, IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes
Pirate sites/films off the internet - how to motivate people to part with money and not just take off the internet for free

COLLABORATIVE - Creative Contract

BA (Hons.) Illustration/Animation/Graphic Design		LEVEL	05
Module Code	OUIL/AN/GD503
Module Title	RESPONSIVE

Name                   Connell Makepeace, Isaac Smith, Matthew Mercer

BRIEF TITLE: MUBI

What are you looking for in a creative partner? What are your aims?

Matt: Someone who I can work well with and reflects my views. Produce engaging work for an appropriate audience, and enjoy the process. Connell: Someone who can bring creative diversity to the group. Willing to brainstorm and bounce ideas off of. Also someone to work with in future projects. Isaac: Someone who is open to new ideas and a lot of different development ideas. To make a lot of ideas that can be filtered down into a few successful ideas.

What are your specific areas of creative interest?

Matt: Graphic forms of illustration, shape based work and advertising/branding. Connell: Film, motion graphics, editorial/publication design, learning fresh skills.  Isaac: Character design, colour consideration, figurative designs to communicate a message.

What specific creative skills do you have to offer in relation to a creative partnership? How do you intend to use them?

Matt: Quite organised, independent, skilled with textural work and adapting work into a digital medium. Connell: Motion graphics and design for screen (slide layout etc). Idea generation, development and critical analysis of work. Isaac: A good grasp on colour and composition, open to adapting myself to other people’s ideas and concepts.

What specific non-creative skills do you have to offer in relation to a creative partnership? How do you intend to use them?

Matt: Evolve my skills through collaboration, keep an open mind in terms of how I work. Quite open minded, not stubborn so I can adapt to different ideas, and organised. Connell: Organised, always willing to learn, problem solving, motivated. Isaac: Quite passionate about an idea once I have a strong concept, I feel that I can be confident in communicating how I feel about a concept and getting my idea across

What do you see your specific roles be in the collaboration?

Matt: Bridging the gap between graphic design and illustration. Not sure at the moment, don’t want to immediately dictate the direction of the project, want to let the collaboration drive my development. Connell: Time management, setting up meetings, consolidating work. Isaac: Producing lots of ideas to be considered by the group, adapting my work to the aims and needs of the group.

What will your individual responsibilities be in the collaboration?

Matt: Not sure at the moment, probably characters and textures for outcomes. Connell: Layout for outcomes, consideration of text and type. Consolidate ideas and keep the project moving forward and enjoy the learning experience. Isaac: Not completely sure, I think it will begin with a lot of roughing ideas and developing those.

COLLABORATIVE - rewriting the brief

The Brief
MUBI sees itself as the antidote to oversaturated choice and average film content. Instead of churning out thousands of films, they proudly present a choice selection of just 30 – each one handpicked by a human being with great taste, not an algorithm. So every film is guaranteed to be a quality watch. And there are no ads. Ever.

Here’s how it works:

• A new choice is added every day (the Film of the Day) and the oldest film is removed, making sure the selection always stays fresh.

• All 30 films are available to watch or download for 30 days.

• It’s available to try for a month for free. Beyond this, subscriptions are monthly and yearly

On average, people spend 4.9 days a year searching for something to watch. That means infinity scrolling until you eventually “settle,” and the ever present danger you’ll get 20 minutes in and realise you’ve settled for a dud. People are starting to work out that ‘more’ doesn’t always mean ‘better’.

We need to use this frustration and your creative powers and create a campaign to get film lovers to put their faith in MUBI and its curators. It’s up to you to usher them home.

Target Audience .

MUBI has already created a community of the most interested and interesting cinema lovers in the world. But it’s still very much a ‘those in the know’ secret. Your target audience is not just film lovers, but people who are interested in all aspects of culture: art, music, design, architecture et al. They are smart, interested and appreciative of like-minds. And they hate being let down or wasting time.

OSCARS - self directed brief

Now that 504 is coming to a close, I want to focus on another substantial chunk of work for Responsive to bulk up my submission. My secret7 brief is going pretty well in the background, but after talking to other students and tutors I'm aiming to complete another self initiated brief within this month. While illustrating songs has been a massive step in a direction I'm feeling more and more confident in, I don't want to become too comfortable so I've been advised to challenge myself with a film based project. A whole film is something that is difficult to sum up in one image, and as this is a field I am definitely interested in working in, this project will be crucial to my development as a more concept driven illustrator.

Aim:
Create ten visual responses to ten of the films nominated for Best Film at this years Academy Awards. These responses must convey the nature of the film more so than simply the plot. For reasons of copyright, imagery from the film's existing promotional material should be avoided and original interpretations of the material are instead encouraged.

Deliverables:
Ten printed film posters created in response to any combination of ten of the films nominated for Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards. All final responses should be documented on the blog with evaluation and reflection.

Deadline:
26th February, the date of the 89th Academy Awards