So Very Dark

I don’t know why, but my walk home today thrashed me.  It seemed especially cold today — it’s only 26 or so, but even through my jeans, my legs were freezing.  I don’t know, perhaps it hasn’t been this cold for my walk home before–last Thursday everything was covered in the previous day’s snow, and the week before it was raining ice, but temperatures could have been in low- to mid-30s, regardless.  Last week I wore a poofy skirt and leggings, and did not have to experience a thawing process like I am today.

Anyway, we got assigned our new project in Concept Development today — it’s our final, and it’s totally open, which, in a way makes it a lot harder.   I have about 4 weeks to work on it overall and can do pretty much anything graphic design related.  I’m supposed to bring in about 10 ideas and some thumbnail sketches next week.  I have a few, and would love feedback, and also further suggestions.

Some ideas I have so far:

Illustrate one of two poems I have written in a picture-book/children’s story fashion.  One is about a circus bear who gets tired of his shoddy treatment and goes on a rampage (lends itself very well to the style), and the other is about…well, hopeless lost youth, I suppose.  The second might be less ‘children’s book’ style illustrated.

Cute weather series — adorable chibi girls experiencing adorable forms of weather — raining cats and dogs, snowing fluffy bunnies (something like THIS, but…you know…better) …playing up very much the super cute, over the top saccharine Japanese cute style.  My main worry with this idea is that it is TOO simple, not making a great final project.

Architects of the seasons series –  Very different from the ‘cute weather’ idea, this would be in a much more classic, post-Raphelite inspired fashion…I had an idea this past autumn for a woman making autumn by going around with a pot of paint tied to her belt and painting the leaves.  To expand on that, I discovered since moving here that when snow falls (especially at night near a light source) it sparkles like glitter.  I had never known that…it makes sense, though.  For winter I would have a woman up on a cloud or the steeple of a tall church or something, blowing silver glitter snow down on the world…I have a few ideas for the other two seasons but they aren’t quite formed.

Circus Assassins — With my ‘The Assassin‘ picture, I was playing with giving one of the girls from my Cirque De Muerte a chance to show off her skills, and be more than just part of a group shot.  I liked these characters and had a lot of fun with them.  Since ‘Zombies Need Love Too‘ is the comic that got turned in, I never got to use my assassin picture for class, which I thought was too bad, since I had a bit of fun with it.  So I was thinking that it might be fun to make one of these for each of my circus characters — just a 4 panel strip, no words, black and white, showing them in a short sequence of events.  The two main drawbacks to this project are — 1) I wouldn’t get to use color…I’ve only had one color-friendly project in this class so far and I miss it a little.  2) that’s a LOT of characters…it would be a bit of a job of work.

Any other ideas?  I would love some more suggestions, as long as they do not involve multiple paintings of Brendan on a motorcycle from different angles, draped in various scantily clad and attractive women.

So, for our most recent project, we were to design an ‘unconventional’ greeting card. (i.e. no valentines/anniversary/birthday…something weird)

This was a two week project–during the first week we had to design 4-5 rough drafts of our ideas:

<–the main idea I was working with was sort of a ‘world conquest congrats’ thing. I was going to have it say ‘Congratulations…’ on the front in fancy script (white) and then ‘…on your world domination.’ on the inside, or something like that. I have some of my notes written on the front of this one–I wanted to have the starburst be a gradient (dark in the center) and the background be a turquoise, rather than royal blue (I only had one turquoise marker).

<–another ‘world conquest’ idea…the guy looks a bit constipated, if you ask me.

<–this is one of the two ideas that we decided to go with…I wanted kind of a ‘WWII propaganda poster’ feel to it…the final result looks very different than this…a lot because I didn’t really draw any of it except for some overpainting. My teacher made it very clear to all of us that we did not have to draw our cards–we were free to use images from elsewhere, and he discussed that with me as well–what I ended up doing was finding some period posters (online and in a book of soviet posters that I borrowed from work) and melding and collaging to try to get across the feeling that my teacher and I discussed. I’m not sure I’m happy with the end result…probably a lot because I feel like a cheater for not doing all of it by hand…but overall I think (hope?) it works okay…perhaps I’m too close to it and will feel better later…*fingers crossed*…but aside from putting many many man hours that I don’t have into this, I kind of had to jump in, collage my heart out and hope for the best:

<–on the inside, in fancy script reads: ~Congratulations~ (next line) on your recent world domination. The area where this took the most work is the guy with the red banner…this is originally from a poster for War Bonds with Uncle Sam holding the U.S. flag and wearing a suit including a blue starred vest and red and white striped pants, so I overpainted the flag and suit and added proper shadowing, took away his beard, overpainted his hair, spruced up his face to make him look younger… Anyway, I’m still really nervous about this one, but not a lot I can do about it now if it sucks anyway.

<–this concept was actually one that Briggs gave me when I was looking for more ideas. It was a ‘congratulations on surviving your parachute malfunction’ card. This card, in contrast to the other one, changed very little visually from concept to final. It was mostly just refined:

<–I drew this all except the anvil, because 1) anvils are complicated thing-a-magijs that I didn’t want to do a crappy crappy job of drawing, and 2) I liked the idea of the real anvil in the cartoon setting. This person has a nice stomach.

While the outside stayed mostly the same for this card, in contrast, my teacher though that ‘parachute malfunction’ was too specific (which is what I liked about it) and suggested that instead, is should say something like ‘oops’ and/or somehow suggest that the giver is responsible in some way for the very massive f*** up suffered by the receiver. I went with ‘…my bad.’

I like this card best. It makes me smile when I look at it. I like the bird, who was more than a little influenced by Mo Willem’s Pigeon.  And I really like that person’s stomach. I’m rather jealous of it.