Claire Smyth AAD010 Introducing Studio Practice : Animation (Character Design, Research, Concepts / ideas etc
According to Disney Pixar : A character is which what truly drives the story and breathes life into a film as the connection of the audience to / towards the character is greatly registered and considered as the primary goal when designing a character. Imbuing the characters with humanity and focusing upon it and their characteristics is vitally important to display this connection, as when designing the character, the artist will need to know exactly what to exaggerate / what to play down, what to add to give a hint of background / depth, along with what to do or incorporate to enhance and develop the characters personality etc.
The term character design is in fact mainly used in the context of animated films, comics and games in which there are one or more fictionalized characters with whom the audience is meant to identify. In addition to determining the character’s physical appearance, the process may involve fashioning his or her patterns of speech, body language, actions, and so on. Fully developed character designs are an important part of the production process in these contexts and may ultimately determine whether or not the final product is successful on the market. Character designers tend to utilise a variety of techniques, most of which are dedicated to figurative representation. For example, within animation, characters are designed using three-dimensional methods such as maquettes, character models and motion tracking. In recent years, as the rise of Internet has increased interest in the field, the definition of character design has expanded to include character-driven designs outside of the film, comic, and game into the likes of books, advertisements and branding etc.
In relevance / when designing a character, a character designer (or character artist) goes about creating the entire concept, style and artwork of a character from scratch. This often includes a deep look into the characters personality to develop a visual idea of the characters physical features. Creating a character from scratch (human or otherwise) generally tends to take a lot of creative energy, meaning the process of character design is in which very complex and is often one of the most sought-after careers for inspiring entertainment artists. Every artist has their own creative process, meaning that there is no right way to create a character. But typically, the character design process starts with a briefing of the character. The character could be a mutant turtle with ninja-like abilities or just some person who lives a simple workaday lifestyle. With this briefing there’s often a series of suggested traits be they physical or emotional to where the character designer uses those notes to start thumb-nailing ideas as rough thumbnails help to flesh out the many directions that the designer could take.
Once the artist chooses one (or a couple) thumbnail styles they’ll often paint more details and bring those thumbnails to life. This can include trying different clothes, different hair styles, facial styles and maybe different weapons or props if applicable. Then a final design is chosen and once the character is signed off the artist will create many different views of the character as reference materials. In animation this often turns into a model sheet for other artists to reference in their drawings. The overall idea of character design is to go on a creative dive into the unknown, and from that artists / designers pull out the best design that matches the character description.
Inspired by the BBC CBeebies little robots animator and digital designer / creator Bruce Husband and its contained characters, I took it upon myself to take great inspiration from the concepts, digital forms, structures, design features and colours from the various created character throughout the show and its backstory / contained surroundings / environment etc to go onto deign, create, publish and draw up an animated (hand drawn) character of my own taken from secondary source images of robots made out of scrap materials and general items taken and placed with a junk yard / skip that people tend to through with the main of using the shapes as different aspects of the figure / skeleton, such as eyes, arms, legs body etc.
As a result, to respond to the given animation brief and task set by Alec, I have in which created a fictional robotic character named scrappy, generally suited to children aged from 2 – 12. Living within the environment of a scrap yard / dump he is made up of various items commonly thrown out by members of the public, in which it changes from time to time due to the different items being brought into the skip. Scrappy is more or less a cute stumpy kind of character where within a junk yard environment he always welcomes each and every other animated characters, looking out for anyone especially when other characters are at risk of being accidently put into the skip to be recycled / crushed down when successfully attempting to hide from the tip / junk yard staff.
To execute, create and design my character, I took it upon myself to present a much more collage / abstracted approach through the use of creating features and shapes (body shapes / forms) through the use of materials including brightly coloured card, tinfoil, googly eyes, cable ties, newspaper and string etc. In relevance to this, the included scrap yard items to resemble scrap objects and make up part of my characters body where in which and included old, dented and worn down spatulas, a microwave / washing machine, bread bin, cables, and iron, rubber gloves, mugs, rusty nails / screws clothes pegs etc.
When completing this brief I decided to create a couple other character based on and inspired by other CBBC animated shows including the likes of ooglies, which is based upon general household items as funny but cute animated characters with googly eyes placed upon them to create a humorous effect within / throughout the programme.
Claire Smyth AAD010 Introducing Studio Practice : IXD / Interaction Design (brief / concept pages
Interaction design (IXD) is in which described and referred to as the efficient design of interactive products and services in which a designers focus goes beyond the item to include the way in which users will interact with it, meaning the close scrutiny of users’ needs and limitations etc truly does empower designers to customise output to suit precise demands.
To begin the interaction design workshop we took part in sketching / designing a number of quick products, items, objects and buildings under three different time limits / constraints (5 / 10 / 20 seconds) to get our minds constantly thinking about what design aspect work well together when giving something to sketch out in procreation for designing concepts within the set interaction design brief which I feel was really helpful to understand that design can be produced in so many different but intriguing ways, through how simplistic drawings can portray outstanding imagery that is still recognisable. As pictured below, the objects / things that we had to rough draw out included – The Titanic Centre, a watch, phone, radio, book and a laptop:
Within todays developing society, recent research has shown that we are in which becoming slaves to our devices, as while screens provide a window into the digital world they can also immensely begin to separate us from the physical as a result of relying too much on the workings of a device and its contained technology to get through each and every day. Whether we are conversing with friends through the likes of WhatsApp, posting photographs of miscellaneous things on Instagram or organising plans / a night out through Facebook, we now hugely tend to be constantly connected to our screens, through increasingly and more than likely experiencing the world through screens and filters, leading to lose of connection towards / with reality. As a result / for this interaction design workshop we were in which given the brief of developing concepts for a digital product or app that would in which encourage people to take time away from their screens with the aim of getting out and interacting more with their surroundings and areas / county of which they live in, meaning as a result I have created, put together and designed a digital app fitting this brief through the displayment of concept pages, research, ideas and explaining my concept / app in great detail.
Research shows that there are great amounts of people having lived in a specific area but have not fully explored it and seeing what it has to offer along with becoming much more educated on its history etc due to establishing set routines to where they visit, go to and travel as a result of sticking to places that they have liked and was best suited to them and their family despite living in that area for various years or most of their life. For example and in great relevance to aspects such as this when aiming to appreciate your surroundings and local areas, throughout this year of 2020, lockdown more than ever has taught, showed and demonstrated to us that the actual ability, desire and want to go out and explore (daily walks etc) the surrounding, urban areas that we live within or near / close by as a result of the governmental travel restrictions and social distancing measures. In correlation to this brief, I have in which now wanted to put together, research and design a digital interactive but educational app with the main aim and ability of exploring / widening your surroundings much more frequently. As a result I have given it the name of urban exploration in corelation with the aim to explore the local urban surroundings around you and within a small radius, including places, local businesses, environments and buildings such as museums, galleries, parks, loughs, beaches, toe paths, sculptures and national trust forests / parks etc including places within Belfast especially and its contained museums, the history of Titanic, Botanic Bardens, docks, towpaths and many more
Throughout this app and its contained concepts, it can in which give people / families with the opportunity to create memories in the outside world, learn and further educate yourself on the place where you live, with the ability to reflect on your experiences (highs and lows / peaks of pits of your day of exploration), whilst continuing to analyse your physical activity through the use of counting steps and being recommended various local places to participate in the likes of hikes, camps training / exercise camps and park runs.
To work / control this digital app of urban exploration, ensuring that you are getting the best out of it, once downloaded the user will in which begin with selecting, typing in and registering their postcode or area, meaning that it can bring up various destinations, places areas etc close to them within either walking distance or driving to along with a wide range of recommendations of places to visit, go for walks / runs / cycles or experience, to where they can then pick and go through all the suggested areas / places in their surroundings choosing what to actually visit and checking them off as they go along as a result of having the ability to visually look at pictures of the area / destination beforehand along with becoming much more educated upon it. This is because under each tab of a place / area recommended / suggested within the app there is in which a briefly documented fact file including information and key dates of the environment / place being visited. When a family, group of people or individual who is controlling the app chooses to visit a particular area / place, the app will give the opportunity to create a log of each time / day a particular area was visited. This then means that to increasingly interactive and gain more from visiting the suggested places, such as the likes of museums, parks and exhibitions a short quiz is available to be completed incorporating simple multiple choice questions regarding general information about and surrounding it, which allows the people on the app to become much more educated upon the particular place, creating the aspect of competitiveness of wanting to ensure that all questions are correct. Common questions can include: what year did the park open? Who designed the sculpture exhibition/ etc. Throughout logging your explorations and visits, there is the ability to create an almost diary / blog post of the day spent exploring aspects of your surroundings. This includes uploading any pictures taken and documenting the time spent there through highlighting both highs / lows (peak and pits), what you found interesting and in general just an overview of the visit for your personal memories whether it was spent with family or friends as all logs are saved in a calendar tab to where you can look through and reflect upon what you got up to on that particular you went and visited / experienced something new. Furthermore, as exercise is highly important not only for your physical but mental health, the app once logged on will continue to count your steps, along with recommending various local areas to exercise including the likes of park runs and exercise classes in nearby leisure centres
The benefits of this digital interactive app of urban exploration can in which be seen as:
Receiving the ability to be encouraged to go out and walk more, increasing and improving a person’s overall physical health through being recommend greater opportunities to participate in further aspects of exercise, along with tracking your physical health.
By reflecting upon your experiences, it allows the ability to work upon and consider your mental health and wellbeing, much more frequently than perhaps before
The app can further help the likes of local business with your area to boost its economy / hospitality through being recommend a variety of them, especially due to the recent implications brought by coronavirus including the closure of non-essential places / shops.
Claire Smyth AAD010 Introducing Studio Practice : Graphic Design & Illustration (Punk Vinyl Research)
Visual research and examples of images throughout the punk era (punk subculture) and vinyl records of their music / contained artists through the displayment of a Pinterest Board as linked below:
Punk rock (or simply punk) is in which a music Genre that emerged within and throughout the mid-1970s. Rooted in 1960s garage rock, punk bands rejected the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock as they typically began to produce short, fast-paced songs with hard-edged melodies and singing styles, stripped-down instrumentation and often political, anti-establishment of lyrics. In great relevance, the era / overall subject of punk tends to embrace a DIY ethic, as many bands throughout the year commonly go about self-producing their recordings and distributing them through independent record labels. The term punk / punk rock was in fact first used by American rock critics in the early 1970s to describe 1960s garage bands and certain subsequent acts. When the movement now bearing the name developed from 1974 to 1976, acts such as Television, Patti Smith and The Ramones in New York City; the Sex Pistols, The Clash and the Damned in London; The Runaways in Los Angeles; and the Saints in Brisbane formed its vanguard. Punk had become a major cultural phenomenon in the UK late in 1976. It led to a punk subculture expressing youthful rebellion through distinctive styles of clothing an adornment (such as deliberately offensive T-shirts, leather jackets, studded or spiked bands and jewellery, safety pins, and bondage and S&M clothes) and a variety of ani-autorotation ideologies. As a result, in 1977, the influence of the music and subculture spread worldwide, taking root in a wide range of local scenes that often rejected the affiliation with the mainstream. In the late 1970s, punk and its overall design processes had in which experienced a second wave to where new acts that where not active during its formative years began to adopt the style. By the early 1980s, faster and more aggressive subgenres such as hardcore punk (Minor Threat), street punk (The Exploited) and anarcho-punk (Crass) gradually became the predominant modes of punk rock. Musicians identifying with or inspired by punk also pursued other musical directions, giving rise to spinoffs such as post-punk, new wave and later the likes of indie pop, alternative rock and noise rock. By the 1990s, punk fully remerged with the success of punk rock and pop punk bands such as The Clash, Green Day, Rancid, The Offspring and blink-182
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, fashion and other forms of expression, visual art, dance, literature, and film. It is largely characterised by anti-establishment views, the promotional of individual freedom, DIY ethics, and is centred on a loud, aggressive genre of rock music called punk rock. The punk ethos is primarily made up of beliefs such as non-conformity, anti-authoritarianism, anti-corporatism, a do it yourself ethic, anti-consumerist, anti-corporate greed, direct action and not selling out. There is in which a wide range of punk fashion including and such as deliberately offensive T-shirts, leather jackets, Dr. Martin boots, hairstyles such as brightly coloured hair / spiked mohawks, cosmetics, tattoos, jewellery and body modification. Women in the hardcore scene typically went about where much more masculine clothing. Punk aesthetics tend to solely determine the type of art punks enjoy, which typically has underground, minimalist, iconoclastic and statical sensibilities. Punk has generated a considerable amount of poetry and prose, through having its own underground press in the form of zines, along with the making of punk-themed films, documentaries and videos
For a musical and social movement that snarled in the face of authority and wasn’t averse to spitting at its friends, punk has received a great many shelf inches in the last 30 years respectfully devoted to histories, reassessments and eyewitness accounts. Over the years and even from today, there is even an academic journal exclusively devoted to the pursuit of punk and post-punk studies, which has just published its second issue. All in all, there can’t be much left to say about the music, clothing, media outrage and legendary gigs, but the graphic expression of punk has received less critical attention. For example, within weeks of each other, two thick, illustrated volumes have appeared: Punk: An Aesthetic (Rizzoli) edited by Johan Kugelberg and John Savage and The Art of Punk (Omnibus Press/Voyageur Press) by Russ Bestley and Alex Ogg. Kugelberg and Savage have also curated “Someday all the Adults Will dir”, an exhibition of punk posters, handbills, record covers and ’zines at the Hayward Gallery in London.
An editor’s approach towards the punk era / style of music can carry / implement a number of various, styles, techniques, colors, texts or imagery etc. Kugelberg and Savage’s book is more of an album, with the images presented in an art-book style on a plain white page, which can be referred to as smart writers as Savage, author of Englands Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and beyond, is a key participant in the era, his punk archive is now stored at Liverpool John Moore’s University. But neither author / designers are a historian or critic of graphic art, design or visual culture. “The history of the punk aesthetic cannot be told, only shown,” claims Kugelberg, somewhat unpromisingly. Savage made punk collages with the artist Linder Stirling and he has some good observations about punk montage, in the act of dismembering and reassembling the very images that were supposed to keep you down and ignorant, it was possible to counteract the violence of The Spectacle and to refashion the world around you. Throughout his produced work, he often continues to point to the visual influences of the likes of John Heartfield, Martin Sharp’s work at oz magazine, the feminist artist Penny Slinger, the Beach Books 1960s pamphlets and Dawn Ades’ photomontage (1976). Bestley and Ogg go about writing / designing with a carefulness of phrasing and appearance of academic detachment that only partially masks the same devotion to punk as listeners and fans. Punk graphics was the subject of Bestley’s PhD and he curated the earlier exhibition “Hitsville UK: Punk in the Faraway Towns”; he is course director of the graphic design MA at the London College of Communication. Ogg is the author of No More Heroes, a history of British punk and an editor of the punk and post punk journal. “It is important to question the notion of a direct association between work by prominent early punk designers and the emergence of a radical new visual language of parody and agitprop,” they write. “To an extent, the techniques adopted by Jamie Reid, for instance, were already widely accepted as the natural languages of anger and protest.” Such a comment can only be addressed to readers who know nothing about the histories of graphic design and graphic protest. As Savage and Kugelberg point out in their exhibition intro, punk’s precursors and putative influences include Dadaist collage, the Situational International, the mail art movement, the graphics of counter-culture protest and the 1960s underground press.
When designing / producing punk records, the relationship between punk D.I.Y. design in its most basic or amateur forms and the later development of graphic design cannot be avoided for anyone who is both sensitive to punk’s impact and legacy (“the immediate implementation of D.I.Y. grassroots culture among the young” — Kugelberg) as it is committed to graphic design as a medium. Kugelberg and Savage say that the “anarchic upsurge in graphic creativity truly revolutionized design,” through the clear attempt to assert punk graphics’ significance beyond the punk subculture, yet this claim, too, can only be substantiated by a lot more detailed research. Within the UK especially, punk related designers that had most influence towards their produced records within the early 1908s were in which a handful of individuals such as and including the of Malcolm Garrett, who been formally educated as graphic designers (in his case at the University of Reading and Manchester Polytechnic), through designs mainstream was, in fact, slow to learn from and assimilate the lessons and styles of subcultural music designs. In any case, the graphic sensibility of Garrett’s work for Buzzcocks and Magazine, shown in The Art of Punk, has always seemed closer to post punk graphic design than to what is commonly understood as punk, even allowing for Bestley and Ogg’s precautionary advice that “there is no one standard punk visual language” and that “a notion of a pure or authentic punk style is difficult to justify.”
For example and in regards to famous worldwide record covers / albums from various punk bands, it is no accident that the stencil-based graphic identity of Crass, one of the most highly politicised punk bands, is so well coordinated and trenchant as a result and due to their use of simplistic imagery, text, stencils but highly effective and intriguing to the reader / listener through the approach of collating a set text, shapes, style and colour palette etc.
Throughout this era of punk and punk subculture there is an old slogan and rallying cry that insists, “Punk is not dead.” Bestley and Ogg certainly believe that. Their book ends with examples of more recent punk design. Punk over the years might, as they say, have employed a fairly broad set of graphic conventions, but they remain as consistent and constrictive over time as those found in heavy metal. Kugelberg deduces from punk a more general lesson for today: “Form a band, start a blog, become an artist, a DJ, a guitar player, an editor.” No one can argue with that, though many might see it as a stretch to claim that, in 2012, these possibilities derive from punk’s mid-1970s example — unless, perhaps, one was to view punk prophetically as a form of science fiction. Interestingly, this is just how Savage does regard punk: as a “jump cut” into the future. “People in Britain see punk in terms of social realism and rock music. It was pure science fiction and it was very informed by J.G. Ballard and by The Man Who Fell To Earth, among a lot of other things.
In the last few years, there has in which been a revival of interest in the music that came after the mid 1970s punk. As a result, bands such as and from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers to Franz Ferdinand commonly acknowledge their debt / debut to post punk original such as gang of Flour / The Clash. In relevance to this, the latest issue of The Wire magazine has an ad for a compilation of underground Brazilian groups citing the British post-punk bands Joy Division, The Slits and The Pop Group as influences. There have in fact been further collections of post-punk music, along with British music critic Simon Reynolds’ 500-page history of the genre from 1978 to 1984, with the invigorating title Rip It Up And Start Again. It’s a brilliant book. Reynolds, who lives in Manhattan, started researching it in 2001 and it has arrived at exactly the right moment to benefit from, and propel, the growing wave of interest. He argues that post-punk music’s explosion of creativity equals the golden age of popular music in the mid-1960s, but that it has never received its full due. Aspects of design has in which always continued to portray and be a key part or / within the record-savouring experience for many music fans and so it remains today, as previously noted in a recent Momus interview / article, within society towards the punk subculture there is in fact an immense continuation in the fascination with record covers of the post-punk period. For example, Dot Dot Dot has in which gone onto published pieces regarding / about the record sleeve designs of XTC, John Fox, Scritti Politti and Wire, to where its editors where in kids when these original records came out.
Seaming as quite inconsequential as they are only record sleeves, after all, but to me especially what truly makes post-punk so interesting and inspiring, even now, as Reynolds shows so well, is the exceptional range of cultural influences of that truly shaped the music, including its refusal to stand still, its disinclination to cede any ground, especially to commercial priorities, along with its intellectual energy and artists ambitions, where all of this is in which reflected in the most inventive, audacious cover arts of the time, through stating and mentioning that: the seven Post-punk years from the beginning of 1978 to the end of 184 truly did see the systematic ransacking of the 20th Century modernist art and literature as the entire punk period transcribes and looks like an effective / influential attempt to replay virtually every major modernist theme and technique via the medium of pop music etc. Commonly, most / any visual survey of post-punk graphics that concentrates solely on album covers overlooks a crucial part of the story. The discovery that it was possible to record, manufacture and distribute records relatively cheaply spurred the development of a thriving independent scene. The 7-inch and then 12-inch single with picture sleeve went through a great flowering. The year of 1978 saw the arrival of an advance guard of lo-fi synthesiser singles that heralded a new direction for electronic pop in the 1980s: T.V.O.D. / Warm Leatherette by The Normal; “Being Boiled” by The Human League; United by Throbbing Gristle; Cabaret Voltaire’s four-track Extended Play; Paralysis by Robert Rental; Private Plane by Thomas Leer. It can actually be quite hard to convey the excitement that various records generated among music fans at the time, as a large part of it was the feeling that the usual channels had been bypassed. Only committed readers of the music press were in on it. The audience had taken control of the means of production and anything seemed possible. It was a new kind of do-it-yourself electronic folk culture and the kitchen-table designs that gave this sensibility an image that were raw but thrilling. The photo of crash test dummies, borrowed from the Motor Industry Research Association, and use of the Din typeface to represent Daniel Miller’s Warm Leatherette underscores the cold, sociopathic lyrics about the eroticism of a car crash (“Hear the crushing steel, feel the steering wheel”). Listeners instantly registered the song as a homage to Ballard’s cult novel Crash. This Ain’t No Disco breaks its own remit by featuring a few singles, but it largely misses this side of post-punk music. However, one of the pleasures of Reynolds book is its excellent picture research with the assistance of British music writer Jon Savage.
Claire Smyth AAD010 Introducing Studio Practice : Graphic Design and Illustration brief / workshop (Graphic Language)
(Analysing, experimenting and discussing different types of graphic language including examples based upon – point, line, plane, balance and rhythm … through the use of both drawing, mixed media, digital and paper / collage compositions etc).
To / when completing this graphic design and illustration workshop and project we where in which formally instructed to create various graphic language sketches in response to 26 given words / tittles through the use of shapes, lines and a constructed / well balanced and consistent colour palette. From this we where to then make an array of the previous designs both digitally and with paper (collage materials) , with the ability to create a gif and experiment with the 26 tittles, through gaining a better overall enhanced understanding of graphic language and aspects within it including becoming much more familiar with working digitally as it was something that I wasn’t too aware of previously.
Within this graphic design and illustration workshop, the 26 words / tittles where in which : shape, rhythm, pattern, tone, proximity, align, ratio, repetition, contrast, scale, proportion, fold, type, balance, grid, glyph, process, modular, abstraction, tension, layer, texture, hierarchy, unit, space and random.
To begin these tasks / pieces of graphic design and illustration work, I took it upon myself to carry out a series of secondary source research beforehand to further familiarise myself with these various words and aspects of graphic design to where I was then able to make sure that I successfully attempted to meet all the set in place and required criteria when fulfilling the given brief surrounding graphic language and its contained techniques, developments, contrast, compositions, shapes and designs etc.
* Please find attached various screenshots / images via my personal Pinterest board (pins) in regards to inspired graphic language designs / secondary source research of relevant / intriguing graphic language design (geographic shapes / forms etc) both digitally and through paper (mixed media) including links to work created by graphic designers, which as a result created and developed great progress and inspiration / ideas when continuing to peruse this graphic design and illustration workshop/project:
Graphic language design experimental sketches (table / grid) and further developed drawings through a / the use of mixed media including and such as – pens, ballpoint pens, fine liners, newspaper, stencils, paint, letter stampers, Dimo label maker, highlighters and markers etc from the 26 given tittles:
Graphic language designs as digital forms through the use of both Microsoft Powerpoint and the editing software of Figma containing / maintaining the size of 1080px X 1080px (instagram size) :
Graphic language paper designs made from an array of collage materials including and such as – paper, card, newspaper, shape stampers, negative photo films and sellotape etc:
Graphic language Gif on loop made from / on ezigif.com : ezgif.com-gif-maker
Claire Smyth AAD009 Drawing in Practice: Alt. Means – Handmade Mark Making Tools and Collated Patterns
Various creative and crafty aspects where in fact required for the appropriate completion of this particular alternative means task / workshop, due to being assigned to create, design and make 12 handmade mark making tools / instruments out of various random natural and manmade items, objects and materials. As a result, throughout my 12 handmade mark making tools, I was able to include materials such as the likes of: sticks, string, leaves, flowers, toothbrush, nails / screws, stationary, bottle caps, cardboard, sponges, wire, bamboo, clips, plastics and cotton buds etc.
As a whole, creating the mark making tools was in which very intriguing and fascinating, as you had you had to especially think, take note and consider what type and kind of marks it may make or create on paper once dipped into paint / ink. In relevance to this, I feel that I was overly successful in making / creating a wide array and range of different / varied mark making tools using multiple type of materials both household and natural. Surprisingly, my tools ended up creating some very vibrant and bold marks and patterns as a result of using different shapes and sizes throughout to produce multiple experimental and expressionistic pieces and compositions as pictured below.
(Scale of patterns / marks: A4. Date work / task was completed: 29/09/2020).
