PRIDE
(image deleted)
Before going to any research, I wanted to test my current knowledge and interpretation on what I think “Pride” means and what pride month actually is. I started writing whatever words comes up to my head when someone says pride to me personally. I was writing so fast that I even forgot how to spell some words but that was okay. What I found most important was my view of thinking. I wasn’t thinking about designs or how I can use these words for designs. It was purely me writing a bunch of probably nonsense words down. However, after I ran out of words that I could possibly think can relate to pride and read what I have said, I began highlighting words that I either think is important to pride or I can make a design out of. I’ll definitely be reflecting back on my mind map for my initial designs later on, but hopefully after the research I’ll get a much bigger idea on what pride is and how I can interpret the meaning of pride within my art work.
PRIDE (research)
(images deleted)
The origin of the pride movement
Pride stands for “Personal rights in defense and education”. Gay pride or LGBT pride is the promotion of the self-affirmation, dignity, equality, and increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people as a social group.
On November 2 1968, Craig Rodwell and his partner Fred Sargent, Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes proposed the first pride march which held in New York. These march which ended up as riots lasted a couple of days with many violence and casualties.
Although it seems like a symbol so obvious it would have been around for generations, the pride flag wasn’t made until 1978. Before then, the pink triangle had symbolized the LGBTQ community. The triangle was changed because during Nazi Germany the image is marked as a symbol for”sexual deviants” in concentration camps. Many people felt that the triangle wasn’t hopeful enough or even appropriate. Artist Gilbert Baker created the first rainbow flag for a San Francisco march organized by Harvey Milk. However, Baker’s version which includes 8 stripes instead of 6 includes colours such as:
Hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony and violet for spirit.
There is also the black, white, gray and green flag. The black and white represents an absence of gender, the gray represents semi-defenselessness and the central green stripes represents non binary genders.
Pride advertisements and art
(Images deleted)
I have collected 5 different images that artists have made to interpret their view on Pride month. On the top left is a solider putting what looks like paint on his face. This may be to represent the camouflage paint that soldiers use to hide themselves in their surroundings. In this however, the paint put on his face is the pride flag colours. Instead of hiding himself, he is shown obviously slapping rainbow colours on his face as if he is fed up of having to hide from his surroundings or society. The artist has also cleverly used this metaphor of a soldier as a way to show courage and strength. It’s as if the artist is trying to put fourth that no matter which way you choose to “march” , you’ll always be soldiers and that you should take pride in whatever decision you make no matter what happens. This poster over all is a very powerful and meaningful concept and they really have put fourth a very particular but strong message behind it.
Other adverts such as the car advert from Chevy runs deep is more of a comedy view, but it works and is very cleverly done. This definitely grabs the viewer’s attention and make the company stand out.
Skittles on pride month have taken all the rainbows out of their packaging and sweets. Skittles have claimed that it’s to “honour pride month” . The purpose of this is to show that only “one rainbow matters this pride”.
I’ve chosen the last two images to a bit of cliche rainbows. When first thought on what colours I should used for pride the automatic thinking was obviously rainbows so I immediately went to choose rainbow images such as this two however, with further thinking I really do not want to use rainbows anymore. Although these two work are beautiful in their own way; The pride of lions and the grey scale girl with flowy rainbow hair, it is overused. I will definitely be using colours no doubt, but from the skittles advertisement and others, I see that there are other ways to show pride without being cliche. Just like the car advert, I really want to create a more comedy view on what I want my art work to come out as.
Sketches and Initial designs
(image deleted)
Final piece
(image deleted)
This is a final piece inspired by Pink Floyd’s album “the dark side of the moon”. I was really inspired by the concept of the design as well as the meaningful meaning behind Floyd’s album which talks both good and bad about life and mental illness. I thought that if I changed the concept just a little by change the triangle into a heart, this could also be a good concept for Pride also.
Originally I wanted to create something very comedic like, however thinking deeper I really wanted to be careful about accidentally offending pride month, so instead of being risky about being funny as the whole concept of pride is not funny, I decided to go down the more serious and meaningful path which isn’t cliche but clear enough for the majority to understand what is going on.
I have done two designs, one without texts and one with texts. I did not change the colour of the background for the text image by the way, I think it was to do how I’ve saved the image. I have screenshotted the first one and saved the one with text into a jpeg.
JOB CENTRE
Job centre plus is a place where people who are looking for work can go to get advice on finding a job, and to look at advertisements placed by people who are looking for new employees.
For this design criteria, we were asked to create a fun or inspirational design for the outside of the job centre. They believe that this will be less intimidating for those that needs help finding the job that they want. The designs must be 48cm x 48cm dimensions.
(image deleted)
These are the pictures that I was inspired with while searching through wall designs. The one that really inspired me the most is the post it notes pixel art of the superheroes. I feel that this is very cute and simple and gives of this friendly vibe. Everyone Likes colourful things, so I also feel that the vibrant simple one colour that they use is also effective to make the office area for the work centre more lively and friendly also. I might change the super hero to something more relevant to the criteria and job centre such as characters in job clothes.
Final outcome:
Evaluation
With the amount of time that we had for this project, I feel that this has com out better than I thought it would. I was inspired by the post it notes design for the wall of one of the research images that I have found. I felt that this met the criteria very well as it reflects on the friendliness and to fill the purpose, I decided to create a similar style but with pixel art however, Instead of the super heroes which the post its were, I portrayed the characters as wearing work clothes Such as the final piece above.
The thing that could be changed about this if I were to improve is to be more accurate with my placings of the character. A lot of the times I was guessing where the middle was so they all don’t look equal and can look off if they were to be printed off on the wall.
Introduction to Maya
Maya is 3D computer animation software with powerful modelling, rendering, simulation, texturing and animation tools for artists, modellers and animators.
Making R2D2 (Intro to Maya)
I started by getting getting one cylinder and one sphere. We were taught how to use boolean. What boolean does is cut shapes either within out another shape so It can become handy to make different shapes with one shape. To make the head of R2D2, I used a square, resize it, then use boolean to cut out half of the sphere to make this semi circle shape.
After that I began resizing the cylinder and using the move tool to move the semi circle on top of the cylinder to complete the body of this simple R2D2. To view all the angles to make sure that the shape fits on top of the cylinder, I used alt and either click the left side of the mouse to rotate, the middle to look move either left or right and right to zoom in and out. I’ve also learnt that if I want to view all of the angles of the shape, to press the space bar. This shows you all the side views around my shapes.
To make the legs of the R2D2, we were taught how to extrude shapes either inwards out outwards by right clicking and holding the mouse, going to faces and click on an area you want to extrude. To make this shape I have extruded outwards by going in faces, clicking the area and then going to the sides to make sure you’re on the tool that can manipulate shape. I did this again, however I extruded it inwards this time. I then pulled the now extruded shape by going into the move tool at the side, and using the green arrow, I pulled the shape down and this creates the leg shape.
Evaluation
Over all, although getting used to the controls was a bit puzzling, I definitely feel that the outcome to my R2D2 although it wasn’t highly detailed came out better than i thought it would. I would definitely use the skills I’ve learnt from this starter activity to further my outcome in the future. The thing that I enjoyed the most was being able to manipulate one shape to make a totally different shape accurately without having to do maths but just with singular buttons on the keyboard.
With more time, I definitely would experiment more on how I could make my model much more accurate to the actual R2D2 because at the moment it is very simple. The thing I would add are R2D2’s facial features such as the eyes and the extra leg coming out of the bottom. I’ll so would add more details to make it look more like a robot such as maybe colour and casting shadows and light to make it seem reflective and works like metal.
Chess pieces building
Spaceship building
Research
I have researched existing spaceships from the star wars movie. From my research I’ve noticed how most of the ships had similar designs however I wanted to pick out the ships that had more of a unique irregular shape that may need a bit of thinking to create on Maya. From these ships that I’ve gathered up from my research, I feel that the B-wing ship is challenging for me but at the same time not too out of my comfort zone. It is the only ship that looks like it’s standing up so I really want to try this perspective more than the others.
To start off building the B wing, I’ll definitely start off with the wings first using a normal rectangle and change the shape to match the shape in the picture. To add the guns I’ll definitely use the cylinder and circle shapes and attach them altogether once I’ve got them to how I wanted them to be. After finishing the wings, I’ll work downwards and make the longest section first. To create this section again, I’ll take a rectangle, resize and reshape it to the shape that I want using edge loop in Maya. To make those holes at the side, I’ll use another rectangle but resized to smaller and cut the shape within the long section that we’ve already created using booleans. to make the very last section at the bottom which is the guns. I’ll use a one big cylinder, reshape it the shape of the image, use booleans again this time using the donuts shape or squashed sphere to create the rounded hole where we can then copy and paste the gun we’ve already made for the wings and move it to the right location.
The top of this ship is probably the most complex part of this ship. The easiest way I can do this is probably get a sphere and squish and stretch it out to create the middle to top section and then somehow separate two sections to create the a separation and swish it further to create that dent in between.
Final outcome
Evaluation
Digital Design portfolio 