A Partner

This is Jess, from now on she's my blog partner, her duty is to check my blog and stalk me, she's gonna tell me if I am on track or falling behind.

I think this is going to be a fun experience. 

Portfolio Website

WIX

This week in class, we were given the task of creating our portfolio website using the website creator called Wix.

I started by choosing the template and changed the website's title so it would match my personal standards and aesthetics. I also replaced the background strip into a really nice photo I took the other day within campus.

Initially, I was really inspired by Connor Franta's website - Common Culture (commonculture.co), from the concept to the aesthetics, everything to me is just appealing and I found myself really fascinated by simplicity of the 24-year-old entrepeneur/YouTuber's website.

Screenshots of commonculture.co

I was really inspired when I looked at this website as I really search and strive for simplicity and attention gripping materials. As it is known widely winthin the creative industries thesedays, 'Less is more', and I find that saying is extremely accurate. Audiences wouldn't like to look at things that are way too overwhelming, so I really want my products to deliver nothing but concept, elegance and clarity.

To be continued...

Re:flections

 

Comments and Reflection

Shortly after my group's presentation in Digital Arts, we were given a handful of comments and feedback on our advert. 

Most of the comments are really positive, which I am grateful for. They wrote that the presentation was really well executed, and so was the advert. Considering not having a really detailed blog to look at for the whole process of making the advert, we did quiet well. 

Personally, receiving many compliments about having confidence in my presentation really made me more motivated to also nail the upcoming presentations. And also I think that it is good to really practice and develop this skill as it is important to grab your audience's attention when you're explaining your art/product/outcome.

However, we have a few comments that point out our weaknesses. 

Firstly, we didn't have our process documented on a blog, which is a really important as we have to record and post everything we do on our blogs in order for us to be assessed. ( I posted the process of making the advert on my blog after having the presentation. )

Secondly, we also received a few comments that said that we needed to change the colours of the advert ( as the logo does not seperate from the background ) so that it would look even more eye-gripping. We we can do to change this, I think is to make the logo of our brand much darker, so that it would have high contrast, making it pop from the background. 

Advert project: Sprarrow

Adverts and misfortunes.

In class this week, we were given the task of making an advert that promotes a product, either an existing one or one created originally by us. As my group's (Nathan, Jessica and Khalid) progression routes are Game Art and Animation, we decided that it was necessary to promote something that would be useful to us and other artists, something like, an art tool.

Where it came from.

It was also at that time that we were just chatting in class about pencils called Blackwing, known to be the best pencils out there in the world (these pencils were in production from 1934 until 1998, right on the year when I was born, ouch!?). Then, it hit me. I thought what if we did something that would be even better than the Blackwing, and to mock it for stopping production on my birth year.

[source: https://blackwingpages.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/dscf00131.jpg]

I had this vision of this advert, where there was a pencil in the middle, its body made of a feather. An imagery, we were trying to say that the pencil was so light, that it would feel like we were to hold a feather while drawing. Khalid and Jessica were fully on board with my idea, which made me really happy.

After a while of debating, we agreed that the whole concept of the Sparrow pencil (originally named after our initials - KJN, spelled as Kajun) is to attack the Blackwing pencil, and I took it really PERSONAL as I still had an undying grudge towards Blackwing pencils for stopping production in 1998. Given that their slogan was "Half the pressure, twice the speed.", we took it further and decided that our slogan would be "One fourth the pressure, triple the speed.", just to attack the fossilized pencils. 

From our research we also found out that there was a company that was reproducing the pencils (obviously, they can't beat the OG Blackwings.) called Palomino, which is a horse. Then Jess, decided that it would be better to have our product called Sparrow as horses couldn't fly and horses couldn't be faster than birds (and lighter.).

The visuals.

As mentioned above, I had this vision of an advert where a pencil was placed in the middle and its body was made of a feather. We also looked at the vintage style as the product was at its prime during the 30s to 80s, and we wanted to make the advert look aesthetically pleasing to the people at the time.

 

[source: Fila Pencil]

Vintage posters/advertisements normally give out an old vibe, and they usually contain brown-ish colours with a little mix of yellow. Vintage adverts tend to have limited colours as using too many colours would make them more "futuristic", which was not what we were going for.

Jessica was in charge of making the logo and delivering our message in the advert, and I found myself really pleased with her work, despite having her computer broken and she had to sloppily create the advert by using the university's computer in the library, which didn't let her save screenshots. We came up with the idea of a bird silhouette, made from geometric shapes, and Jessica immediately put it that concept to work. Before making the logo, we also looked at a few existing sparrow logos for reference.

  

  

[sources: http://devfloat.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/sparrow_-_logo.jpg
http://www.brandcrowd.com/gallery/brands/pictures/picture12567680212963.png
http://www.sothink.com/page/logo-design/images/BlackSparrow.jpg]

This is the process of Jessica making the logo:

  

The outcome was what I thought it would be, but having way too many colours on the logo completely challenged our focus of making this advert more vintage, so we agreed to change it into more of a brownish coloured logo. These are the final prototypes for our official logo:

Moving on to the poster, we gathered a set of feathers to be the body of the pencil, and we finally chose this feather as it looked more like it belonged to a sparrow, rather than the other ones looking like they belonged to doves. Jess also chose a really fitting background for an advert, which looks like old paper and it has a really vintage-ish vibe to it.

 

The outcome.

After hours of fixing and editing, we finally finished the advert. 

Final thoughts.

We were all really pleased with our outcome, I personally think that we have delivered what we wanted to tell and share. I also think that we've stayed really consistent throughout the process of making this advert, not just dying while doing it, we also had a tremendous amount of fun as well as gaining important groupwork experiences. 

If there was one thing I could do to change this, I would only turn the sparrow on the logo black as it would make the logo pop out even more, and it makes people notice the logo more, which is a really important thing in adverts, they want their brand to be VERY visible to the audiences' eyes.

A CONVERSATION

I had a briefing in class with Carrie today.

Initially, as I started my course by telling a story about depression, insecurities, fears and doubt through sequential images, and I had found myself really attached and attracted to this theme of work. So for my major project, I want to get more engaged with the theme of mental problems, for instance, sadness, grief, depression, doubt, etc...

As far as my vision goes, I want my major project to portray mental problems as things that are physically real to us, for example, disproportionate humans, creatures, and monsters. I want to strip them from the concept of them not being physically attached to humans, I want them to be up in front of our faces, I want these things to be tangible hindrances.

Why is this?
In my perspective, by turning these insecurities into physically touchable monsters, it amplifies the the seriousness of them, then it shows how serious mental illnesses are, as nowadays, despite that mental illnesses are very real and they're a sensitive topic, many seem to be ignorant towards the ones that have to bare with these horrible things on a daily basis. As a result, people that are occupied with mental illnesses tend to not be able to open up to anybody in fears of being judged and perceived as being an "attention whore", which only makes their conditions worse.

I want to raise awareness.

My Vision?
I want my work to show girls being engulfed, strangled, hugged, and even kissed by these monsters, as they feed on their hosts' sadness, anger and fears to grow and evolve, so their hosts are precious to them, and they have every right to manipulate these girls.

To be continued...

Moodboard

"Ça va?"

"Bof."
"Pourquoi?"

"Laisse tomber..."

Featured artists: Loish, Krenz Cushart, Allen Toby, Bao Pham, Jurgen Klauke, Floris Neususs, Carsten Witte.

Artist Research: Jurgen Klauke

I looked at Jurgen Klauke, a photographer, as he tells stories by using sequential images. His work relates to me because his work, in my perspective, is usually really dark and unusual, for example, this piece called HEIMSPIEL shows a sequence of photographs of this woman in a really long black dress, then there is a man under her dress, to me this sequential work shows a story about death, and being consumed by death. Whereas death is not a tangible object and it is known roughly as a concept, it takes form as a woman in black in this series of images by Jurgen. This amplifies the image of death as now it takes form of something that is very real to all of us, a person. And it is coming for you,  it is not anymore just a piece of knowledge and a concept.

HEIMSPIEL, 1990/1992 - Photography

Additionally, I find Jurgen Klauke really interesting
as he uses really monochromatic and grayscale color schemes, which again, is very intriguing to my eyes. It gives his work a sense of mystery, fear and doubt. All these things mentioned above relates to my work as I am more directed towards the theme of mental health, grief, misadventures and mysteries.

From this, I have been tremendously inspired. I’m quiet positive about what I can do to respond to this artist, I can draw girls being engulfed in their doubts, fears, and insecurities, which can be portrayed as visible monsters, either with unclear shapes, forms and silhouettes or even just a human with disproportioned facial structures.

Sequential Images

This is a sequence of photographs demonstrating a swan expanding its wings.

Photographed with iPhone 6S' build-in camera.
I turned all these photos grayscale by using the filter called "Noir", the effect of this is that it makes the swan's movement more dramatic as the swan's colour is in clear contrast with the water's colour.

  
  












_________________________________________________________________________________

This is my story, made from sequential images.

This piece is called, Current Status.
Digital Art, drawn using a Wacom Intuos with Photoshop CC

Description: A story about a character who has severely damaged mental health who is being denial about her problems.


Backtracking, 15th October 2016

To be honest, I don't find myself really satisfied looking at this piece of work. Having a short amount of time working on this has left me really little room to refine this artwork. Ideally, I really want this piece to be more aesthetically pleasing, I want the images to be clearer, I want to express the pain as vividly as possible (though this art style works effectively as messy marks really shows confusion and indecision), all this just screams unprepared and unfinished to me. Coming back to this after two weeks of finishing it makes me really think, have I done enough?

Yes, I have delivered the message I wanted to share, but it just doesn't feel like I am having the final product that I wanted it to be.

Who is Nathan?

Hello friends and teachers,

I'm Vo Phan Gia Bao, personally I prefer myself to be called Nathan.

18 and a half, humour-directed, moody, religion is ART.

I sing, I draw, I play an awful lot of video games. I also have extreme love and passion for cooking as well as baking. I like humour, either light humour or dark humour, I'm all in for it. At times you will find me struggling with what I'm saying as sometimes my mouth processes faster than my brain.
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My art is very much about fantasy, mental health and some other dark themes. I really think that aesthetics really matter in art, composition is the jelly and concept is the peanut butter in a pbj sandwich, one can only succeed by knowing how to combine the two and using the right portions in order to feel heaven in every bite.

I specialise in digital art, illustration and animation. I hope to learn more and acquire more with my time studying at DMU.

My progression route is:

Animation BA(Hons) at DMU.

Cheers!

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