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Saturday 13 August 2011

Summer Project: Creativity 101

Well my first post on the blogosphere and I will say I'm both excited and nervous! I thought I'ld start off by sharing my summer task so far; managed to fill up my A1 sheet with lots of ideas and there is now roughly 101! However, me being excited to sketch everything out I lost count of how many exactly doh! Feel free to give me a virtual slap on the wrist. Well here goes...

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Above is an overview of my full A1 sheet of inital concepts to show how I worked through this part of the project.
Throughout I drew my concepts wherever I saw fit on the page to help me quickly take note of my ideas rather than worrying about life forms, structures, and machines being separated into their categories as I felt this would restrict my flow on the page and limit my experimentation.

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I started off my sketching out the ideas that sat in my head from the off and experimented with pencil and biro to see the different types of effects I could create.

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I then printed off some extra copies of the inspiration sheets and cut them up to enable me to closely put each object side by side and see what else I could create. This also enabled me to put mulitples of the same object alongside each other and see if the symmetry or pattern led to other ideas.

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I then tried out gluing the objects to my sheet and using them as a type of silhouette and base which I worked over defining and extending the lines I wanted to keep as part of my concept.

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The use of tracing paper let me use the objects' focal lines and rotate, flip, repeat and extend into more ideas.

Along with the inspiration sheets I looked at some concept books I have to see how different artists lay out their work. One book called 'The Skillful Huntsman' especially helped me with its different techniques including lots of silhouettes!
When thinking of life forms I started by limiting myself to animals but then thought about about life forms more and it led me to plants! I looked through some books to help me develop my ideas as this was the category I found the hardest.
With machines and structures I started off picturing some sci-fi/fantasy world especially after seeing the shoe and thinking of the fairy tales with the old woman who lived in a shoe mixed with the Burrow from Harry Potter. I also was reminded of the video game Mass Effect so used these sources as well as some others to inspire me.

The next step will be picking out my final life form, structure and machine and seeing how I can develop them into turnarounds.

9 comments:

tutorphil said...

Hey Emma,

Welcome to the bloggosphere! One of your classmates - Meg - arrived on the scene a few days back and benefited from a rush of advice and well-wishing from the CGAA community; start following Meg's blog - introduce yourself with a link to your own blog, and take a look at the comments; they might prove useful to you too! :D

http://meg-leslie.blogspot.com/

Molly said...

Hi Emma! I'm Molly, a soon-to-be second year on the course. It's really exciting that you've already got your A1 piece together. It's great that you're using repetition to try out new shapes, and using copies of the objects to draw from is also a really great idea.

I keep pitching this at the moment but if you're ever concerned about which of your creatures/objects is stronger, use a black marker to block out their silhouette, it's a super quick way to tell what works.

Really nice work so far, I'm looking forward to seeing your 'final three'! :D

Andriana Laskari said...

Hey Emma! I am Andriana and will be moving to second year like Molly! Welcome to the course! I remember I felt exactly the same a year ago. It's really good you already posted your work on here as you can get more feedback this way. I am really liking the effects of your experiments and your silhouettes. Creating silhouettes really is one of the best ways to generate ideas. Try overlapping the shapes too. It works for me :) Keep it going! I am looking forward to to meeting you in September ^^ Oh and most of all...Have fun!! :D

Charlotte said...

Hi Emma! I'm Charlotte and am about to start the scary 3rd year. Good to see you posting your work on the blog :-D. your sketches are looking good so far. Remember to never be afraid to upload whatever you do as feedback will help you improve. Also don't be afraid to ask questions :-D. Look forward to meeting you when we return.

Domantas said...

Welcome. :)

Placeholder said...

Hey Emma! Near 2nd year here, Jonathan :) You've taken a similar approach to the summer project as I did, using cut outs from the sheet and drawing directly on them, and its yielded you some fantastic results! I'm loving some of the structures you're beginning to develop! Looking forward to seeing more!

Paul Lavey said...

Hi Emma, i'm Paul, another soon to be 2nd year. Great work, you are really powering through and i'm looking forward to seeing the final 3. Just wanted to welcome you to the course and reiterate all of the above. Your blog is a fantastic tool to communicate and share ideas and watch them evolve in directions you may not think of on your own. Keep up the good work and look forward to meeting you in September.

Chrissie Peters said...

Hi Emma, I'll be another first year with you! I like the way youve cut the shapes out - I traced them which I think gave a similar effect.
See you soon!

Emma Foster said...

Thanks to all for the lovely welcome messages and tips! Have been working on some stuff with these in mind which I'll post asap. Look forward to meeting you all very soon! :)