Sunday, 15 July 2012
state of mind: progress ii
Starting was extremely hard.... My sketch seemed like a brilliant idea for dysphoria because I thought of it as a dark cloud that always above you and bringing you down sort of thing, so... you know... yeah. But then I had no idea how I would do it on Photoshop. It was so hard! I was like..... Should I just trace everything and then put some colors behind the layer? It seemed too... simple and it would probably look like I didn't even do anything... But hey I thought about it so that should count! Heheh heheh. But yeah I ditched that idea...
For some (incredibly) stupid reason, I started tracing out a dragon.... and started coloring it in... And then I stopped because I had no idea why I was even doing it.
{insert facepalm here}
So then I was like........ hmmmm I need to do something I enjoy doing rather than force myself to make something pretty out of conventional pretty things... (bahahahahahahahhahahah). I like to create pretty things out of weird, unpretty things (to other people) because I'd like to think I see beauty in what people perceive as ugly or stuff people go "i don't see what the big deal about this is" hahah, like masking tape! I am absolutely bonkers about masking tape, and like, any kind of tape... and receipts.. I keep so many... and the reason isn't because I wanna calculate my expenses... but it's because I think receipts are very very pretty! And mail stamps... Ohhhh I love mail stamps.
SO ANYWAY... Ugh severe ADHD....... Um... I started sticking tapes and tearing out receipts from my hoarder-stash... And one sketch of an eye (and I have millions of eye drawings... even on tissue paper, DARNIT I should have used those)..
And I scribbled stuff with um... watercolour... wait, is it even proper english to say you scribble with watercolor? Whatever. But yeah I did.. And I used markers and color pencils, too. And as usual, I scanned wrinkly messy stuff for texture-purposes.
Here are the stuff I scanned:
{don't mind the stupid file names}
And so my outcome was....... that!
You probably won't like it, but maybe that's the whole point (hahaha).
It's supposed to represent dissatisfaction so I used the scribble. Because most negative emotions would be nicely represented by roughness and scribbles are rough, I think? It's in blue because when you're down you're feeling "blue" hahaha but not that kind of blue I guess, but it looks nice in that shade so I used that shade. And um, kitchen roll because the person is not satisfied with toilet role because they're too small and you have to pull so much to get the right amount, but with kitchen roll, you only have to tear out one piece. Haha shut up, it makes sense to me. And then um, the drawing over this person's own eye with rough marker scribbles represents the dissatisfaction she has with her eyes, hence the other eye is replaced with a drawing of an eye, which is the person's ideal eye(s). And then I took the dripping black watercolor thingy I made at the beginning and put it on top of her head and the long drip is dripping down her face because..... it looks dramatic that way. It's kind of like.... blood dripping down her face cos her negative thoughts about herself is kind of killing her brain, so her brain is dying from all the dissatisfaction she is experiencing. Masking tape represents temporariness, because when youre using masking tape, you want to stick something to something, and you know it does the job, and it can hold for a while, but you know it's not gonna stick forever
The receipt bit is my favorite part because it's a receipt of this one time I bought vitamins... I think it was primrose oil or something.. but it just said health supplement on the receipt, so yeah! Perfect. I think it's cool because when people are dissatisfied with their body or something they would just keep buying stuff to treat it/prevent it/get rid of it. [sidenote] Oh mann I should've done a freak who loves make-up because she's insecure and unsatisfied with herself. That would have been good. [/sidenote]
With euphoria, I got inspired by these
To be honest when I looked at it I did not see the horses.... I am only seeing them now... Wow. Hahahaha but anyway, I don't know why but I thought this would've been suitable for euphoria because it's like.... your hair when its underwater (if you have long hair that is) and it's just like so pretty... So I kinda imagined a sexy mermaid having umm.... sexytime and how her hair would be all dskghsdghdksd like so nice...
And I liked this because of it coming out of the circle, and with euphoria it would look good because it's almost like an explosion of happiness, therefore going out of the circle.
So I attempted that hair thing and guess what? I FAILED. Hahahahah. I used water color and I wanted it to look like an splatter/explosion... But I wasn't willing to risk my white apartment, so I used that blowing straw thingy I don't know what that technique is called but it involves wet paint/ink/watercolor and blowing with a straw.
Yeah yeah yeah I know it looks horrible. Oh and look! There's a cheese wrapper trying to protect my kitchen counter. Heheheheheh.
And then I decided to draw flowers because to me, euphoria would be like this....
Haha so yeah, um, despite my extreme EXTREME love for flowers... I do not know how to draw flowers, ESPECIALLY my favorite ones: which is.. ahem... carnations and peonies. But yeah I just drew.... what I'd like to think is/was peonies but like deformed? Bahaha and I just used watercolor. Who loves watercolor? THIS GIRL.
Euphoria makes me think of flowers. Oh wait, did I already tell you that? Heheh heheh heh.
So then I started doing my stuff.. I scanned my manual work
Tried a lot of stupid things because I'm stupid.
Nothing would look good. I was on the verge of giving up with this one, I swear.
Then I thought about the text, how I would have it... bwahhahaha these are horrible.
I wanted to use birds, and specifically these kinds... but I had already scanned all of the stuff I was going to use and I was too lazy to go to the scanner and connect my laptop and yada yada yada... It would've looked great though I think. I wanted to copy it but it would be so wrong because this is by my new favorite artist hehehehehhe. And I think I'm in love with him, even though I think he doesn't go for girls.
Then I tried more ugly stuff... I repeated my ink-hair-splatter-explosion thing into 3 layers, or 4 and played around with the blending modes... and saturations and hues.. to make it look like they're not the same thing.
And then I added my pretty deformed peonies! And matched them up because I love the shades cos it reminds me of fire. Except it has pink.
So then I made a um.. diagonal stripe pattern by using DEFINE PATTERN (I am so proud of myself for that) and then used that as a background, and then I used this really cool font but I had to type all the letters individually because I wanted them to be scattered and in various sizes.
I used these colors because of fire, and I like fire. Fire is intense and hot. (Hahahah it sounds like I'm talking about something else.......) and with fuel, fire would make an explosion and explosions are a perfect representation of euphoria (at least I think so...) cos I used to have this friend from New Zealand and he would describe an orgasm as a volcano erupting and he keeps bringing it up so it's like stuck in my head now. And this was like 3 years ago. Darn that guy.
But yeah this euphoric explosion produced butterfly-like deformed peonies that fly out of the circle because they're free! I think animals that fly beautifully represent freedom, so I think butterflies are kinda really suitable I guess, because they start out as a caterpillar that's like walking/crawling everywhere and stuff and then the caccoon thing happens and then they become butterflies and they're free to fly wherever they want. Freedom makes you happy! Happiness = Euphoria! Yay?
The scattered typography represents something like... uncontrollable extreme happiness. Cos the person experiencing euphoria would be all like AhdsfhkdsjhfjSIUGSFKJHjkdfhskdjhfsjkdhvjkh, but like in a good way. Sometimes I use dgdfhgkdsjhgskdjhgkds for bad things but this time I'm using it positively!
For calm, the idea was to make an outline of a person, and then mask it with a nice gradient and stars. Perhaps purple-ish stuff with sparkly stars.... But then When I was doing the outline I was just like....... omg this isn't going to work (but I didn't keep going so I'll never know). Observe the stupid process...
I was inspired by two of those pictures on the bottom left. Ultimate prettiness! So um that's the part where I gave up cos I didn't think it was gonna work. The hair looks like intestines or something... H o r r i b l e with a capital H.... Capital everything, actually. And it looks so 60s/70s, which I like... but uh... no, just.... no.
So back to square one.... Um, this is the image I traced out to make my horrible first attempt for CALM..... If you fail to see the similarities, I don't blame you hahaha. Anyway, I really like this illustration and I wanted to capture that flow-ey-ness of her hair... (Whats with me and underwater hair?) so I just drew kind of like.... flowey lines and then filled them up with a gradient. Oh by the way, don't you think that's Flotsam and Jetsam from The Little Mermaid? I guess this chick is the mermaid.... Ohhhh so pretty. It has a Jem & The Holograms feel to it, too... somehow... probably the face or the eyes. Or the eye makeup. Mermaids wear makeup?! Oh my goodness..
Anyway here is my horrible process... attempt number 2.
Then I sacked this idea because it looked beyond hideous. I like the idea though and when I pictured it in my head, it was so beautiful, hahahahahahhaah I guess I don't have enough skills. Um so then I just used the same colors from the gradient I used before, and used it as the background. I think the colors I used in the background really does justice to this piece because its resembles the sky, but it at the same time, it resembles seawater. And those are both equally beautiful and pleasing to our souls. Ahhhh.
And then I kept the flow-ey lines because flow-ey lines, to me, represent calmness... relaxation, serene, bliss, solitude, freedom. Then I looked for high resolution, stock images of brains and I found this really delicious-looking one. Hehe oops did I just expose the fact that I'm a zombie? Sarcastic & emotionlessly says, "Oh no....... please don't kill me....... I won't eat you....... I swear....." Hahahah. K k no time for lameness. So yeah. I had to scale it to a smaller size because the image was THAT big! Super convenient.
Then I used my color rage tool to get rid of the white background because I didn't want to use the pen tool because I don't believe in the pen tool, I mean.... myself.
And more masking tape. I love masking tape.
I put it in a circle, too, because the negative space aids in the feel of being in a state of calm-ness. Also, because it looked super plain and boring when it just... like that. But in a circle, it looks nicer. Circles are good. They make me think of donuts. Donuts are good.
Unfortunately I didn't take much screen shots for the opposite state of mind. Seriously, I took one. SO STUPID kfdghsdlkhdslgds. This ones my favorite one tough.
So um I used one of the scribbles I made and scanned, and then duplicated the layer and tried to make them as one. I also took the scribble I made with a marker, and um a water-color-paint-stain thing on one of the papers I used for one of my watercolor artwork... I used it because it looked like some sort of animal. I also used um, crumpled-up paper on the background, and the burn tool for the circle behind the scribble, or was this when I used a grunge texture? If it is, I sacked that idea, too because... I don't know.
The scribbly-ness = the negativity of the state of mind. The crumpled up paper represents the messed up and stressed-out-of-nervousness mind.
When my friend saw this she asked me if it was a pelican. I didn't see it, but I was like ummm sure, if you want! Because I don't know what it is and I think the idea is that people would decide what animal it is... hahhaa not me. However, I keep looking at it as an ant-eater.
You decide.
OH MY GOD I THINK IT'S A HYBRID ANIMAL! Perhaps it is a Pelicanteater. Yes, it must be.
But um I can also see a penguin in it. So the fact that the animal isn't even a proper animal represents its nervousness because it doesn't even know what animal to be! So indecisive..
I repeated the word agitated in my final work because when someone annoys you, they tend to be repeating something and you don't like that something.
Labels: illustration, visual narrative
Thursday, 12 July 2012
state of mind: progress
Doing mostly research on Dysphoria because I don't quite get what it is, apart from the fact that it's the opposite of Euphoria, of course.
Attempted to describe it in my own words:
Emptiness/Hollowness
Dissatisfaction
An unpleasant imaginary friendA dark cloud above your headSomething you see in the mirror that you don't likeExtremely critical about self
Labels: illustration, visual narrative
Sunday, 24 June 2012
progress ii
First one I looked up was the real story.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland)
Chapter 1 – Down the Rabbit Hole: Alice is feeling bored while sitting on the riverbank with her sister, when she notices a talking, clothed White Rabbit with a pocket watch run past. She follows it down a rabbit hole when suddenly she falls a long way to a curious hall with many locked doors of all sizes. She finds a small key to a door too small for her to fit through, but through it she sees an attractive garden. She then discovers a bottle on a table labelled "DRINK ME", the contents of which cause her to shrink too small to reach the key which she has left on the table. A cake with "EAT ME" on it causes her to grow to such a tremendous size her head hits the ceiling.
Chapter 2 – The Pool of Tears: Alice is unhappy and cries as her tears flood the hallway. After shrinking down again due to a fan she had picked up, Alice swims through her own tears and meets a Mouse, who is swimming as well. She tries to make small talk with him in elementary French (thinking he may be a French mouse) but her opening gambit "Ou est ma chatte?" offends the mouse.
Chapter 3 – The Caucus Race and a Long Tale: The sea of tears becomes crowded with other animals and birds that have been swept away by the rising waters. Alice and the other animals convene on the bank and the question among them is how to get dry again. The mouse gives them a very dry lecture on William the Conqueror. A Dodo decides that the best thing to dry them off would be a Caucus-Race, which consists of everyone running in a circle with no clear winner. Alice eventually frightens all the animals away, unwittingly, by talking about her (moderately ferocious) cat.
Chapter 4 – The Rabbit Sends a Little Bill: The White Rabbit appears again in search of the Duchess's gloves and fan. Mistaking her for his maidservant, Mary Ann, he orders Alice to go into the house and retrieve them, but once she gets inside she starts growing. The horrified Rabbit orders his gardener, Bill the Lizard, to climb on the roof and go down the chimney. Outside, Alice hears the voices of animals that have gathered to gawk at her giant arm. The crowd hurls pebbles at her, which turn into little cakes. Alice eats them, and they reduce her again in size.
Chapter 5 – Advice from a Caterpillar: Alice comes upon a mushroom and sitting on it is a blue Caterpillar smoking a hookah. The Caterpillar questions Alice and she admits to her current identity crisis, compounded by her inability to remember a poem. Before crawling away, the caterpillar tells Alice that one side of the mushroom will make her taller and the other side will make her shorter. She breaks off two pieces from the mushroom. One side makes her shrink smaller than ever, while another causes her neck to grow high into the trees, where a pigeon mistakes her for a serpent. With some effort, Alice brings herself back to her usual height. She stumbles upon a small estate and uses the mushroom to reach a more appropriate height.
Chapter 6 – Pig and Pepper: A Fish-Footman has an invitation for the Duchess of the house, which he delivers to a Frog-Footman. Alice observes this transaction and, after a perplexing conversation with the frog, lets herself into the house. The Duchess's Cook is throwing dishes and making a soup that has too much pepper, which causes Alice, the Duchess, and her baby (but not the cook or grinning Cheshire Cat) to sneeze violently. Alice is given the baby by the Duchess and to her surprise, the baby turns into a pig. The Cheshire Cat appears in a tree, directing her to the March Hare's house. He disappears but his grin remains behind to float on its own in the air prompting Alice to remark that she has often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat.
Chapter 7 – A Mad Tea-Party: Alice becomes a guest at a "mad" tea party along with the March Hare, the Hatter, and a very tired Dormouse who falls asleep frequently, only to be violently woken up moments later by the March Hare and the Hatter. The characters give Alice many riddles and stories, including the famous 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?'. The Hatter reveals that they have tea all day because Time has punished him by eternally standing still at 6 pm (tea time). Alice becomes insulted and tired of being bombarded with riddles and she leaves claiming that it was the stupidest tea party that she had ever been to.
Chapter 8 – The Queen's Croquet Ground: Alice leaves the tea party and enters the garden where she comes upon three living playing cards painting the white roses on a rose tree red because the Queen of Hearts hates white roses. A procession of more cards, kings and queens and even the White Rabbit enters the garden. Alice then meets the King and Queen. The Queen, a figure difficult to please, introduces her trademark phrase "Off with his head!" which she utters at the slightest dissatisfaction with a subject. Alice is invited (or some might say ordered) to play a game of croquet with the Queen and the rest of her subjects but the game quickly descends into chaos. Live flamingos are used as mallets and hedgehogs as balls and Alice once again meets the Cheshire Cat. The Queen of Hearts then orders the Cat to be beheaded, only to have her executioner complain that this is impossible since the head is all that can be seen of him. Because the cat belongs to the Duchess, the Queen is prompted to release the Duchess from prison to resolve the matter.
Chapter 9 – The Mock Turtle's Story: The Duchess is brought to the croquet ground at Alice's request. She ruminates on finding morals in everything around her. The Queen of Hearts dismisses her on the threat of execution and she introduces Alice to the Gryphon, who takes her to the Mock Turtle. The Mock Turtle is very sad, even though he has no sorrow. He tries to tell his story about how he used to be a real turtle in school, which The Gryphon interrupts so they can play a game.
Chapter 10 – Lobster Quadrille: The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon dance to the Lobster Quadrille, while Alice recites (rather incorrectly) "'Tis the Voice of the Lobster". The Mock Turtle sings them "Beautiful Soup" during which the Gryphon drags Alice away for an impending trial.
Chapter 11 – Who Stole the Tarts?: Alice attends a trial whereby the Knave of Hearts is accused of stealing the Queen's tarts. The jury is composed of various animals, including Bill the Lizard, the White Rabbit is the court's trumpeter, and the judge is the King of Hearts. During the proceedings, Alice finds that she is steadily growing larger. The dormouse scolds Alice and tells her she has no right to grow at such a rapid pace and take up all the air. Alice scoffs and calls the dormouse's accusation ridiculous because everyone grows and she can't help it. Meanwhile, witnesses at the trial include the Hatter, who displeases and frustrates the King through his indirect answers to the questioning, and the Duchess's cook.
Chapter 12 – Alice's Evidence: Alice is then called up as a witness. She accidentally knocks over the jury box with the animals inside them and the King orders the animals be placed back into their seats before the trial continues. The King and Queen order Alice to be gone, citing Rule 42 ("All persons more than a mile high to leave the court"), but Alice disputes their judgement and refuses to leave. She argues with the King and Queen of Hearts over the ridiculous proceedings, eventually refusing to hold her tongue. The Queen shouts her familiar "Off with her head!" but Alice is unafraid, calling them out as just a pack of cards; just as they start to swarm over her. Alice's sister wakes her up for tea, brushing what turns out to be some leaves and not a shower of playing cards from Alice's face. Alice leaves her sister on the bank to imagine all the curious happenings for herself.
Then I read the story and sort of juxtaposed it with Disney's version of Alice -- Alice In Wonderland on Youtube... Yes, it was on Youtube. The whole movie. Hehehehehe hehehehe. Anyway, when I was a kid I only remembered the Unbirthday Party with the Mad Hatter and March Hare, and the flowers. Oh and the cat, of course, so when I rewatched this I was like oooooooooooooooh-ey! So I decided to use this as reference/inspiration.
I also recall a video game I played with my brother called Alice: Madness Returns. It's pretty cool. I didn't play the first one though, my brother did. It has pretty ugly graphics... or CGIs or whatever you call it. This one's definitely better. Way better. It's pretty dark so I liked it. I mean... it's pretty dark and I liked it.
I didn't do any research on who started the whole costume thing and why she has an apron thing. But I did watch the oldskool classic silent Alice though, she was going to steal muffins or quiche or something in the kitchen while her sister was baking? Or her maid? I don't know.
This one's an earlier version, in 1903, which I think was pretty awesome cos I think this is the very first Alice In Wonderland ever made. I think..
The lamest one I've seen is this animated one, I mean I think I recall watching it though when I was younger and I probably maybe liked it. Maybe. No guarantees. But I rewatched a little and I was just there thinking like ohhhh my god I can't even concentrate! Her dress is so ugly. And her voice is so annoying... It's just... horrible.
I got fed up with watching all these Alices and I downloaded Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland to rewatch it and I still loved it. And then I got distracted and went to watch Big Fish, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, as well as Edward Scissorhands. I needed some Tim Burton-spiration (or maybe I just wanted an excuse to get distracted). Oh and apparently I also watched Cat In The Hat. A little Dr. Seuss-spiration.
Are you THE Alice?
So then when I was starting to draw my characters, I started with the Cheshire Cat which I drew while I was listening to Nirvana songs. Which explains why my cat looks like this
If you see no resemblance, then... nevermind. Hahahahah.
So here's my different versions of Alice(s).
My color sketches? I forgot what these are called.
They're really bad so, I'm really sorry.
Labels: illustration, visual narrative
