Visual Languages project 1: Assignment 1 - Modes of composition

 Collecting visual material was the first step of this assignment. I was asked to 'create a pool of images'.

•     A group of 5-10 background landscapes (I found, countryside, beach, haunted house, seascapes, city, pyramids, space a kitchen and a living room space) 
•   Coloured shapes (I printed a few different ones off and on the digital images drew some on)
       
• 5-10 figures (I randomly picked whatever come to mind (Kate Bush, Indiana Jones, spiderman and batman, a dog, a ghost, some zombies, giraffes, bus and a car, my own cat cartoon, rubber duck, chair)
  
  Unfortunately, I could only work on an A3 size digitally as my printer only printed on a4 so My collages are firstly all physical and then I got created and merged digital with taken photos. I could be a lot more experimental on my Ipad with the sizes of the images and the colours cause my printer was slowly running out of ink.  
   
   

This one I soley focused on the use of shapes so of course the pyramids had to be the background for them. Luckly the triangles sizes were similar to the pyramids themselves. The colour scheme looks childlike and friendly in nature so naturally below I added the hungry caterpillar from the children's book as the colours and shapes are similar to the book. The fruit involvement is also relevant to the story.

The two images out of my collection that make sense together is the Scooby gang and a mysterious sheet ghost. Instead of using the obvious haunted house or dark scene the idea of a huge random sheet ghost roaming around a town in the British countryside takes the 'fear' out of seeing a ghost. For the composition, I purposely but the ghost in the center as a focal point and kept the Scooby gang in the corner as if the person looking at the image is seeing it the same time the characters.

I simply had no plan but to add any animal and creature into a living room.

I wanted to convey some sort of apocalypse happening in some of these collages this paper version I just used a old ruined house and two zombies to match the dark mood of the background. Later on I used my ipad to digitally create a better more detailed apocolyptic scene.

These two above I simply just wanted to introduce some images I hadn't used yet. I then moved over to work on some digital adaptions of my chosen collection of background and images. I found I could re size and play around with the print outs the way I wanted as I was limited because of my printers' capabilities and ink.


heres just another few I tried out physically before using my iPad.

Moving over to the procreate app I made some better versions of these images. Using tools such as blur, text, changing the saturation and hue as well as resizing option helped with the fluidity of each collaged scene.

I was thinking what to do with space and considering I had a black oval I thought it was perfect to use it as a black hole with something coming out of it, of course I picked a dog for a bit of humor and used the 'big bang' naming it the big bark instead and making God a dog. It's convenient how the dog is of a similar colour too. The simplicity of this collage and the use of text although not too exciting I think I could see this as a really big poster on a wall.

 

This collage is a recreation of the Dune series where riding sand worms in the desert is part of the stories, so having Indiana jones who has a whip on the printed picture you see he using it on the hungry caterpillar to ride as the 'worm' in this scenario. Grabbing the DUNE title from the internet I found a similar text and added part three underneath to make it a trilogy. This collage wads a mixture of physical print outs and digital to edit the title and offset the scene with a titled title and an uneven background image just to give a small change in perspective and provide some disorder for the audience.

Unintendedly following a movie theme using Indiana Jones with the pyramids in the background felt natural as he's often in such environment in the films. I hadn't used Emma Stone yet in any of the collages so what better way to include her then to have her name used as a play on words for the 'Indiana Jones movie title where an 'S' has replaced the 'J' . It has a parody feel to it with the random angle Emma is at and the J being cartoonishly knocked off as there is random triangles instead of pyramids.

Once again following the movie theme this collage is one of my favourites as it come together great. the original picture of pennywise his feet couldn't be seen so having a beach background I used it as sinking sand and added some shading to make it more realistic. The balloons too didn't really work as the strings were too thin to cut out so they are drawn on digitally. 'It' has an expression where he looks rather worried so with him sinking 'SHIT' with the use of the IT title and Stephen Kings name like the film poster seemed comically relevant to his situation. I also incorporated a quote 'hopefully I'll float' which was inspired by the famous quote from the movies/book 'We all float down here'. I like how I've put this scary character in a silly situation and took some of the fear out of him just because he didn't have feet when I printed him.

Moving away from the movie theme but keep the shapes I cut the head off my cat character and popped it on one of the statues guarding the pyramids. There wasn't much thought behind this other then just experimenting.

I did a few more collages then just 5 and one of them was this scene. What's happening is the very hungry caterpillar has invaded New York and is eating all the fruit in the street. Spiderman is going to save the city of course. Spiderman is well known for fighting monsters so keeping it light hearted I used the caterpillar rather than gruesome zombie. I didn't do too much editing other than shadows for the caterpillar.

By now you can tell I got carried away with different Ideas. Having an Alien and knowing that theres a conspiracy that only aliens could have put the pyramids the two had to be put together.

These two haunted scenes both include the sheet ghost except one is quite obviously used as an episode of scooby doo and the other is using Kate bush and some of her songs in a funny way.

These two are purely digitally created. The first is like the aliens are there to see Kate Bush in concert who is floating her way down of her own bus to perform in space. The second is strange looking fish as shapes, they match the colours of the ocean.

This background is concept art from one of my favourite games the last of us, the deer are already part of the image but all the other characters I added about the environment, manipulating some of the lighting and shadows so their presence looked a bit more realistic. The two zombie creature one on the right and one on the left are from the actual game. I think batman doesn't look as realistic; I think putting him in the light might have been the wrong choice with the lighting being off. spiderman on the building two looks a bit to 2D to look natural too, the image is a bit to flat for the perspective. If you zoom in too, I added little rubber ducks in the stream of water.

 

Not much thought into this it was just on the spot ideas, I knew I wanted IT in the trees and then I placed the black oval on the floor to look like a hole and decided the caterpillar would look good crawling out and with the clowns shocked expression I also put Indiana Jones in with his whip as if he's 'whipping in to shape' this creature coming out the floor with literal shapes.

 I did a lot more images then 5 but to narrow it down to just 5 I would pick these ones for their quirkiness and humor. Using my iPad to edit these pictures was much better the just physically arranging the print our because I had a lot more freedom to create new scenes.