Evaluation

My brief for this project was to create advertising and promotion for a festival that I had made up that was related to the record company I created in the previous project, "Red Lion". So to produce outcomes like wristbands, posters, t shirts and flyers. The main target audience was young adults aged 18 to 25 but this would also include people that where interested in the festival and the music that it supports. I came up with ideas for this by thinking about all of the events that are associated with music and what would allow me to produce the best type of outcome as well as give me room to explore possible different outcomes and the festival idea was the best.

Initially I started looking at the products that festivals and music companies related to the music genres produce, sell and use to advertise their events or business. I found a lot of the posters that are usually used to advertise the events are very computer generated and have a very digital feel to them, but because my festival is suppose to be about the bass music culture even though the music is electronically produced, the music has a very earthy feel to it because of the very deep warm feel that it has. Using a lot of computer generated imagery draws away form that vibe so I wanted to use more hand made techniques but as it is electronic music incorporate a digital/ modern element into it. After making that decision I started to look for festival artwork that had been created by festival goers, paintings on walls that expressed visually the music and the atmosphere of the festival.. These images re usually quite abstract and include anthropomorphism. I believe this is because they are trying to to say that when you listen to the music you become more in touch with your primal self , you lose all desire for material possessions and the need to impress others or care what they think about you. It's just you and the music. I found some work by one artist in particular called Mr Penfold, used simple designs mostly shapes and block colours put create a uniquely stylised cartoony image but in a way which can still be appreciated by a mature audience. This style relates well to the music which is minimalistic in terms of what he artist puts together when composing the music. Other artists that I looked at where keith harding and Blek Le Rat. Keith Haring being on the for front in the creation o the street art scene. I looked at and explored the work of Keith Haring and the deeper messages that his work contains to see f I myself could give a more deeper political meaning to my work. Blek Le Rat was the inspiration behind the style o medium  that i used to create my piece. I wanted to use the stencilling technique as this would give the hand made feel I wanted but  also an urban minimalistic feel. Blek Le Rat was a major inspiration for he British street artist Banksy. In previous projects I have analysed the works of Banksy in the past but this time I wanted to go back to the roots of where the style came form in the same way that some of the music of the festival is about relating with your origins. Blek Le rat is famous for his black rat which in effect is like his tag, but what I like most is the how the colours and the choice of surface he applies his work to look rundown and deprived but also earthy and full of life. This makes me think of Cuba in terms of the fact that when you look at the country, the towns and cities, it appears to have been paused form the 1950's on-wards  It has remained in that state while the rest of the world has been left to grow and develop because of the rules of communism that prevented them form doing anything and as such it is starting to crumble and fall apart, yet underneath all of that the music that they produce is full of life and the people are very into carnivals and enjoy partying.So to me Blek Le Rat's work brings life and growth to places that appear to be suppressing it. With this in mind I began creating my piece by doing sketches relating to the artists that I researched and the type of artwork, themes and vibe that I wanted to involve in the piece. For the creation of the emblem I wanted to incorporate the panda. The panda is quite a big and lazy animal and in comparison to the  music; dubstep, dub, reggae which all have slow deep baselines, the panda is the animal represents this the best. I used the anthropomorphism by putting headphones on it and so allows people to relate to it. To give an urban/ ghetto feel to this I put a gas mask on the face so that the image has a "fallout", back to square one look, but also because the mouthpiece of the gas mask look like the mouth and nose of the panda. When you are trying to send out a message, using lost of colours can distract from the purpose so I decided to use two, black and pink as his would make one of the colours look like they where popping out depending on how I arranged them. In the case of the lettering down the side the black stand out more on the paper version but on the spray painted version the pink on the emblem stands out more. As an experiment I tried using yellow and blue as they are primary colours and this allowed me to blend them at points to make green as well and was a good contrast from the black and pink. Spray painting onto the wall brought the image closer to the effect that I was trying to go for, the uneven surface gives more of a ware and tare feel because some areas where raised more than others and so they would have got more paint on them than the others. For further experimentation I took pictures of the wall piece and put it into Photoshop. This allowed me to play around with the hue, saturation, the contrast and the colours of the images as well as warp one of them. I selected one of the edited images and chopped it up separating the different parts and put them onto a template and designed a t shit. I then printed onto heat transfer paper and placed the designers one by one onto a plain white t shirt  using a heat press.

I think that the best part of my outcome was the wall piece because of the different effects that I managed to create. The parts that worked the best where the emblem and the get lettering because of the 3D effect that I managed to create. I also managed to cut out the stencils quite accurately and I believe I have greatly improved my stencil skills. I could improve my outcome by adding more to the pieces and fill the spaces. I could have planned better the imagery that I used so that every thing I created linked together better. I enjoyed the project as it allowed me to explore something that I have a great interest in through my art however in the future I would like to explore other styles of street art as well as forms of mixed media and incorporate more texture into my work.

Outcome

Once I had created my stencils and decided the order and the colours that I was going to use for the posters I began to apply them to A2 Card.

As you can see this is a more refined version of the first attempt. I adjusted the positioning of the pictures and  used  another stencil that I created so that the section down the right hand side would come out clearer. The only thing that I am disappointed with is that it doesn't have the smokey effect on the emblem that the first did, but it is a lot clearer and there are no smudges.

I experimented further by mixing blue and yellow spray paint, layering it, letting it dry and then spraying over it again. This as caused and interesting effect on the right hand side where by the detailed part is faint and the lettering bold which makes it appear to pop out. The "GET" lettering  also appears to be jumping out as the blue and the yellow have mixed to create green with small areas off blue emerging.

I decided to take my design further by stenciling onto a wall. I was particularly interested in what  the textured background would add to the picture or not and it has. Again I used pink but using black as the base layer has made it darker and and more gritty. To give a weathered ware and tare effect I sprayed in diagonal lines over the stencils and deliberately missed areas a concentrated more on others. Spraying pink on black has created a 3D effect which was exaggerated more by off setting the the stencils.


I decided to add some thing extra as this was the first time that I had spray painted onto a wall. Free hand, I sprayed the word "Ruffneck" changed to "RUFnEK", which is a common slang term used in jungle and reggae music, usually referring to a thuggish, rowdy individual. 

Here are some further developments that I have created using Photoshop by adjusting the hue, saturation and colour.

To further develop and explore the possibilities of my final piece I decided to to put my work onto a t-shirt using heat transferable paper. Using Photoshop I divided the picture up into three different parts so that I could spread it over the t-shirt and make the most of the space. The paper was A4 size so transferring the design onto the back was challenging but the divide was barely noticeable.  

Here is a student from my class modeling the t-shirt, showing each design that I put on it.

Creating my outcome

These are the initial stages that I went through when in creating the imagery for my poster and in trying to come up with ideas. This contains random drawings of pictures I have found and developments into my own images.

To help to brainstorm ideas and get a feel for the style of artwork that I will be using, I drew some of that pictures that I had previously obtained like some of the work of Keith haring, Blek le rat and Finn from adventure time. I drew the head of the ape from the Deep Medi music record label and the image second form the right as I will be using a cartoon art style initially to develop from. In the bottom right corner I tried to create a panda head emblem in the style of the deadmau5 head.

These images show the development of the emblem which will be a panda head that I will use on my poster. some of these images where inspired by others that I had seen like the right most two on the bottom row which where inspired by the ape from the Deep Medi music label. Others where random images of pandas in a street art style that I have made slight adaptations to so that tthey suit my purpose better.

This is the final version that I have decided to go for . The other images where for inspiration and I decided that I didn't want the image to be too cartoon like. Gas masks are quite a commonly used its in street art as they symbolise the idea of a rundown, hazardous, urban environment. Bellow is also a style of typography that I will use on my poster, with a fractured, distorted almost digital theme.

On this page I started to plan the dimensions of the type face that I was going to use that would run down the right hand side of the poster. I measured the side of the A2 sheet and created rectangles that decided the space I would use into eight sections, one section for each character. For this style I removed all of the curves only using straight lines. I introduced diagonal lines to that the design doesn't appear to rigid and vertical when the viewers eyes run down the page and spell out the word.

Because of the number of letters that the word contains they ha to be made smaller vertically to fit into the space and to keep the letters in proportion this also meant making them smaller horizontally leaving a lot of white space. To fix this I filled in the rest of the space with jagged broken shapes that fitted to the space that surrounded the lettering.

I wanted the lettering to be a different colour to the shapes that surrounded them this proved a difficult and painstakingly long task. As you can see in the  picture to the left, there are black splurges of paint from where I had to continually move and cover the surrounding shapes, paper and lettering to separate the colours. To eliminate this I sprayed the design onto another piece of A2 and the cut out the lettering so that I had as stencil for the lettering as well, then all I would have to do was line up the words after spraying on the first stencil and spray over those in black.

Here I have used the style that I documented earlier which say dub instead of get. This would then form the Phrase "Get Immersed"

This will be the emblem for the poster or the main image that will be associated with the event which is a panda wearing headphones and a gas mask.


This was a practice run through that I did to make sure that the images lined up and that the stencil would work but also to test any possible experiments an effects that could be created. For example the get lettering where I spray painted the pink first and then the black over the top to get a 3D effect. I also like the smokey effect on the emblem that I created as it gives a more hazardous, rougher look.