Thursday 5 November 2015

What If ? Metropolis OGR

1 comment:

  1. OGR 05/11/2015

    Hi Sam.

    I really liked the idea of your Bosch-inspired city being populated by former circus-performers! That's an inspired idea.

    Okay - the prime focus of my feedback is in regard to the sophistication of your approach to working with Bosch and deriving silhouettes and designs from his work. As I said previously, I think it's important that serve very purposefully any generic ideas/images about 'hell and satanism' (inverted crucifixes are banned!). Bosch's depiction of hell is much quirkier, and as your research should have told you, the original meanings behind all those strange symbols and activities have been lots to the mists of time. This isn't hell as we think of it - it's as it was imagined by Bosch, so don't superimpose cliches over what is an extraordinary fresh and idiosyncratic vision.

    In terms of your actual thumbnails and work inside Photoshop... I'm a bit confused, because Bosch's world is incredibly organic, and your silhouettes are always so blocky, geometric and look as if they've come from some other artist's world. I know you are inexperienced with Photoshop and you're keeping things this simple because that's what you think you can achieve, but I suppose I'm a bit worried that you're failing to really 'understand' Bosch's visual language, and so your thumbnails are bit odd in comparison. On Monday's Photoshop class with Jordan, I want you to seek his help proactively in terms of working with some alternate tools to create some more appropriate responses; in the meantime, I want you to try a particular exercise:

    1) Focus on one of Bosch's structures in his garden scene: so, for example:

    http://www.hieronymus-bosch.org/Triptych-of-Garden-of-Earthly-Delights-(left-wing)-(detail-2)-c.-1500.jpg

    2) Really look at the shapes/components/elements making up that fountain. I can see elements that look like plants, and like crabs and lobsters and prawns etc...

    3) Now, go and find some images of the plants and crabs etc. that share similarities with the elements in Bosch's fountain; for example:

    http://previews.123rf.com/images/bluestock/bluestock1103/bluestock110300121/9190495-Chestnuts-with-seed-pods-over-white-Stock-Photo.jpg

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/2e/55/ee/2e55ee5e9ec561a61efea75de6c760b9.jpg

    http://st.depositphotos.com/1776223/1929/i/950/depositphotos_19299551-raw-lobster-claw.jpg

    4) Once you've collected this image research together, turn elements from the images into silhouettes which you can combine in Photoshop to make your next set of thumbnails; use the 'mirror' tool to create symmetrical forms, as these will encourage a more architectural feeling...

    In short, you need to actually identify the forms that say 'Bosch' and the use them to work up some more appropriate and 'on message' designs for your city. Right now, the gap between what you're describing, and what you're able to produce as thumbnails is too great; put even more simply, nothing you're drawing as yet looks Boschian enough. Sam - you have got to get better at looking and noticing and identifying visual language or you're going to struggle always to actually design anything!

    I want to see a different approach to you working up thumbnails:

    Bosch > real world reference > silhouettes from real world reference > into Photoshop > create thumbnails.

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