In recent years there has been a growing trend towards introducing and incorporating hand drawn and handmade, rough elements to design and advertising.This intention has been clear to all of us from the beginning, as it is the title of the project. Nearing the deadline I think it is important to look at whether or not my piece fits this description. The focus here seems to be creating a piece that has the appearance of being handmade. This might often entail actually being made by hand and photographed, scanned or recorded as video. There are many examples of this on TV and online as mentioned in the brief.
First Idea
The first part of the project had us develop abstract pieces of art using traditional media. From this I began developing my first idea, focusing the work of abstract film makers from the 1940s. It was easy to see how these abstract pieces would fit in to my sequence as it worked well with the theme. After developing this idea with thumbnails I had doubts about whether or not I liked this idea, or thought it could work.
I had decided to drop this idea. Although the first step of the project focuses on an abstract ideal, I couldn't envision my work being an entertaining abstract piece. I then developed my current idea, which still uses abstract elements but much more tame and thematically linked with real world objects. I decided that the handmade aspect was the most important, as the abstract style seemed more like a suggestion and not a requirement on the brief. My piece still doesn't read in a completely tangible way, as there are words on a textured background and 2D sea forming a drink, so there are some slightly abstract elements left.
Second Idea
Starting out with this new idea I had to make sure I emphasised this handmade element using objects designed to look like handmade stage props, or styled in that way. As you will see in my sketchbook I have stuck in some of the props I made myself. Going along with the theme, I thought what better way to show handmade then for it to be handmade. These elements are comprised of materials and paints forming shapes that resemble objects (such as my pirate/cargo ship).
There was one major problem with my hand created pieces. They were bland. The waves I had painted were flat and boring. I had cut my ship out of cardboard, but the cardboard was very plain and uninteresting. I had experimented with making the cardboard rougher, making marks but this just made it look rough in a bad way. My pieces just weren't what I wanted. I could have brought these on to the computer and used digital manipulation to make them look better but I felt as though I couldn't achieve something satisfactory or organic.
Instead I had remembered and researched some textures from stock photograph websites and deviant art that were royalty free, and were far more interesting than what I had created. Although it would have been nice to use my own creations I felt that visually it was better to use these textures as the basis for my manipulations instead of trying to turn my hand made elements in to something more workable. My experiments with these textures turned out to be very rewarding as I got much more visually pleasing results and I could use my physical experiments as a basis so I did not waste any time or effort.
The decision to use sourced textures instead of my own crafted elements begs the question: is it handmade? Based on the requirements of the brief and the results I would say, yes. The brief seems to place an importance on the result, the aesthetics having the appearance of being handmade (even specifically mentioning rough looking elements) and I believe I have achieved that through manipulating these textures. They give the appearance of hand crafted, hand painted, or just looking rough (my background).
The main criticism I can see me receiving for this decision is that I have taken the easy way out. I am too lazy or untalented to produce my own work. It is hard for me to defend this as it has a point, but I just want to make it clear that my use of these textures is for the benefit of the finished product and not to hide any deficiencies in my own abilities or effort put in to this project. I explain these issues with faith that my decisions might be understood by someone other than myself.
If you look at my sketch book and at the PSD files it becomes clear that my digital creations are far superior. Even though I tried with my physical creations they just weren't good enough or what I wanted.