Workshop Week: Indesign

     In this workshop we were shown some of the basic properties of Indesign, and also how to use grids effectively when using images and text. I found the workshop quite useful and interesting as I have never used Indesign before. The first exercise we did was create a mood board using provided images of the outdoors. We then had to format some text and learnt about leading, kerning and tracking. These skills were then used in the afternoon when we were introduced to the brief which was to create a 4 page magazine spread for the magazine 'Kinfolk', formatting provided images and text linked to the outdoors. We had to create a mood board of design layouts based around a key word and that would fit the look of the magazine and it's target audience. My keyword was 'simplicity' and here is the mood board that I created. 

Next, taking inspiration from our mood boards we drew thumbnails to plan out our page designs. Here are some pages that I designed using images and text provided:

Workshop Week: Huddersfield Orbital workshop

    This was an observational drawing workshop exploring the area on and around the A62 in Huddersfield. We were asked to bring materials to draw with and to draw on; pens, pencils, paper, sketchbooks etc. The workshop was based on Iain Sinclair's book 'London Orbital' which illustrates a similar exercise to the one we carried out. I chose to work in pencil as I find it is the easiest medium for me to use and mistakes can be easily erased.
    The first stopping point at which we did some observational drawings and was a 'warm up' stop was a car park, and we were asked to do 10 quick sketches in 10 minutes. I found this quite tricky and only managed 4 sketches in the time as I spent too long deciding what to draw and was trying to put too much detail in to the drawings. Here are the drawings I did from this stopping point: 

     At the next stopping point we had about the same amount of time and stopped at the top of a street with numerous shops on one side, providing lots of different typography and an old-fashioned building on the other side. At first I wanted to roughly draw the whole street and outlines of people walking by but instead decided to focus on the clock that was sticking out of the old building as it had lots of detailed features. Here is the drawing: 

  After this stop we were asked to try and draw our surroundings as we walked (which was quite difficult!) and try to capture the movement and noise around the busy road. I did one drawing of the road itself and then drew a few different sketches all on one page:

  We then arrived at our next stopping point which was a tiled tunnel and we had to find something interesting to draw within that space, and I decided to focus on a ripped sticker that was on the tiled wall and had begun drawing the mouth of the tunnel when we first arrived there:

  Next we stopped at a disused building right by the edge of the road, which was on a higher level than the pavement, giving a good vantage point from which to observe the road and the buildings along side it. I chose to draw a set of terraced buildings as I liked the way they descended down the hill. 

  For our next drawing we had more time and were asked to focus on one area of interest and spend a lot of time developing the drawing. I took a while to settle on what to draw as I wanted initially to draw the view of the street from top of the hill on which we were stood as I was interested in the perspective of the buildings, but chose instead to focus on one building and look at the architecture, although I didn't get as far as I wanted with it. 

For our last observational drawing we were in the art gallery and were asked to draw a piece of work in the gallery that we were inspired by or found interesting. I chose to draw a 3D piece of art work - a chair seemingly made out of bricks that was inspired by Lowry's art of Huddersfield and all the chimneys featured in the work. 

I did not draw the whole chair and the lines ended up not being so straight so the chair looks slightly distorted. Overall the workshop was quite fun to do, but I also found the observational drawing quite challenging, as I usually work quite slowly, but here I had to try and sketch quickly as we moved from place to place.

Creating narrative and copy - Mood boards/Editorial Visual/ Mood & tone

                   For the second task of this physical studio brief we had to print off images relevant to our short stories, including pictures of the setting and characters so we could create a mood board on a3 card that would illustrate the direction of our story and quickly inform others of the 'feel' of our narratives. Below is my draft/initial mood board based on my story, but I feel changes need to be made as at the moment I am not sure you could grasp the story from the mood board. Also I am concerned with using too many images and it looking too busy, but also feel lots of white space will not look good. 

The City

          For the on-going City In Flux project I have decided to look at the urban landscape of the city and recently took some photos around Huddersfield of the signage and typography including road signs and graffiti, that make up a city. I feel I could use some of these photos for my experiments along with my other photos of the major cities, New York and London. 

Photoshop Tutorial

For our introduction to Photoshop we had to complete a fairly simple task, of creating a photo montage in a non destructive manner. We used various tools within Photoshop for this task. We were given a document with different images which were the elements to what would become the final image: a tree in a light bulb. 

                 

        




We used various tools including the clone stamp, transform tool, magic wand tool and carried out colour changes. The first thing we did was line up the screw image to the bottom of the light bulb, we then 'cleaned up' the light bulb image so the screw and the bulb looked right together, and the middle part of the bulb had been erased so the stick could be placed there. 

We then added the top of the tree to the stick and changed the colour to a green, by going to 'layer' then 'adjustments' > hue/saturation.




Here is my finished task: 

Overall I found this session quite useful as I learnt about some features properly in Photoshop that I hadn't considered before but can now apply to future work in Photoshop.

The Process of Creation

   As an initial post for this part of the module I was asked to find the process and creation of a piece of work that I liked or found inspiring. The piece of work I found is a short animation called 'After Hours' by animation director, Tom Rainford. Here are screen shots from the animation and a link to a short video called 'After Hours Sample 1.'

 http://vimeo.com/71899039

Creating narrative and copy

               The first task set for the physical studio part of the Process and Production module was to write a short a story/article based on ideas from newspapers and magazines.We had to bring in newspapers and cut out interesting articles/headlines/images to inspire our own story. 
               For my story I used an article from The Independent as inspiration. It was an article reporting that the last male white rhino in a Kenya conservancy had died and now the white rhino species had become biologically extinct. I then came up with the story that the last remaining white rhinos decide to take the fate of their species in to their own hands and plan to escape from the conservancy to find other species of rhinos. 
               Initially I was unsure about how to start the task and was unsure how to write the story, how I would format it and whether to write it in the style of a newspaper report or like a traditional story. Here is the story:


 The golden sun rose over the Kenyan Ol Pejeta Conservancy, just like usual, sending warm rays of sunlight on to the backs of the white rhinos. The northern white rhinos had been in the Kenyan Wild Life Conservancy for years and had grown up in conservation. Although this seemed like a normal day, bad news was on the horizon that would change the lives of Sudan, Najin and Fatu forever.

      Elodie Sampere, a ranger at the conservancy, had just began her usual morning checks making sure the rhinos were all fine when she was startled to find Suni, one of the male rhinos, lying on his side and apparently not breathing. She quickly asked the other rangers to come and check the rhino; “Not breathing?” one of them asked, his eyes wide with fear, while the others rangers exchanged nervous glances – if Suni died there would only be one male rhino left, Sudan, who was too old to be used in breeding programmes and the death would be devastating for the northern white rhino species.

     After around an hour tending to and looking over Suni, the rangers confirmed that he had died of natural causes. “At least Suni didn’t fall prey to poachers” Kirui, one of the rangers, exclaimed sounding quite relieved. “Yeah” another ranger replied, agreeing with Kirui. Then the rangers fell silent before discussing options on how to save a species that had just become biologically extinct.

    Even though the death of Suni posed a great sadness and difficulty to the rangers, the other rhinos at the conservancy felt even worse. As night fell, Sudan, Fatu and Najin met to discuss the day’s events. “I only spoke to him yesterday!” Najin stated, clearly distressed by Suni’s death. Sudan and Fatu looked at her then bowed their heads, too sad to talk. Then after a few minutes had passed, Fatu, the young female rhino spoke. “We have to escape.” She blurted out.

“What!?” Najin and Sudan replied, looking utterly perplexed. Fatu took a deep breath then repeated her sentence; “we need to escape – soon” she added.

“But where would we go?!” asked Najin who looked extremely nervous and on the brink of extreme panic. “I’m too old!” Sudan shouted, stomping his hoof on the dusty ground. Fatu sighed but continued to speak to her friends. “The humans act too slowly! With Suni gone our species will die out. We need to find the southern white rhinos if we are to survive!” Najin and Sudan stared at her, shocked by her drastic proposition. Sudan, the old male rhino, finally spoke up in a quiet voice, “I am too old to go..” his words were met with much protesting but he stomped his hoof and Nagin and Fatu became quiet again and he continued “.. but I agree that you two should at least try to escape. I used to know of a group of southern white rhinos but it may prove difficult finding them..” he trailed off. Fatu was happy her plan had been accepted by Sudan, but Najin was fidgeting and clearly uncomfortable with the idea. “Maybe we should just trust the humans to save us; they’ll know what to do!” Najin said while looking eagerly at her friends hoping she could persuade them.

“No. We trusted the humans and look what happened. I agree it will be dangerous with the poachers desperate for our horns, but it is a risk we will have to take”. Fatu looked determined. Nagin looked disappointed but finally agreed somewhat begrudgingly.

        The three rhinos were awake all night discussing plans of Fatu and Najin’s escape until finally they had a firm plan in place. “Good luck” Sudan said looking at Fatu and Najin- both of the female rhinos looked slightly apprehensive about their risky journey, whether or not they would even be able to find a way out of the conservancy’s boundaries. The journey would be a long one with the conservancy spanning 90 000 acres. They had planned to set off the next day, and as uncertain as they were about the plan, they were certain it was better than putting the fate of their species in to another’s hands, especially when those hands were responsible for the eradication of their species.