CONCEPT : Blog entry 17
These are pretty rough, but just needed to get this out and down. I chose to do geese for this because I thought they would show what I'm intending quite well.
These are pretty rough, but just needed to get this out and down. I chose to do geese for this because I thought they would show what I'm intending quite well.
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| Experimentation in Photoshop - Canada Goose |
Here I took the image and broke it down into the simplest blocks of colour I could (thinking of how Matt Sewell creates his images)
There's a lot of experimentation to be done with this, even though it looks simple. I haven't added an eye to this (geese have a black eye any way so it wouldn't be visible) and that works here, but what with birds where their eye is visible? Do I use gradients? the chest on this bird is really all dark cream, but gets darker in places, this could be achieved with gradients, but should I? Will it take away from the simplicity of the block colours? The colours are taken from the photograph using the droplet tool, and I've added them as they key colours too look out for for the bird (was thinking of the pantone colours) does this work? Personally, I quite like it, and think it will work really well with some of the more colourful birds, but is it just me?
Also, how will this work with animals? (Say if I did do a booklet/guide for a nature reserve) Badgers, foxes, stoats etc. will work because they have a simple out line...but how the hell am I going to do a hedgehog???? And with the animals having a more basic colour pallet (mainly one or two colours) will that be as effective used with their images?
I need to do more of these basically...lots more, and see what I can come up with.
Butterflies! If I do do this for a nature reserve instead f a guide book, I can do butterflies!
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| Experimentation in Photoshop - Geese in flight, Silhouette |
Another idea for this simple identification was the flight pattern of the bird. I chose to do geese this time because of the signature V shape of the flock in migration, as I thought it would best display this idea...but not many other birds fly in flocks like this. I've though of using a combination the the silhouette and dotted lines to shoe the flight path of solitary birds, but again this may only work with some types (e.g birds of prey while hunting, or swallows and swifts)
I would like to add that this is really rough, as I did it quickly to show my idea - I will do more and they should be better.
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| Experimentation in Photoshop - Geese in flight, Silhouette (using feathers, as have previously done with text) |
I also tried out this same idea, but used the previous idea I had of using the plumage of the bird. I think this kind of works...I could do with another opinion really. Also trying different images of the plumage. I'm taking a massive zoom lens with me tomorrow so hopefully I can take some of my own instead of using found images for this.
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| Experimentation with text |
Another idea! Would like to try and incorporate typography into this, and also collective nouns as titles (possible in the information on the bird/animal?) Again, this is just a really quick example, I picked Georgia simply because it's favourite font. Not sure of its relevance other than looking nice; I need to work on it lots more.
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| Example of possible layout using experimentation from today |
I then combined all these things I've been working on to make a really rough example of what it might add up to, taking shape in the form of some kind of booklet/guide/signs (SIGNS! the kind that they have around nature reserves!!!) I used some from the RSPB website (The RSPB, 2014) to make this mock up, but I would hope to have something informative and humorous like the descriptions in Matt Sewell's book (because these descriptions are often boring as sin and do not compel you to finish reading them!)
I think this works quite well, although the composition isn't quite right, it looks a little bare in places, but I like the comparison between the feathers and the flat colours. I think the simple shapes would make identification really easy, and the flight pattern works really well here (but is that just because of the type of bird that I chose?)
I think this is quite a strong direction for me to heading in, for now. Tomorrow (as it's apparently the last nice weather of this week) I'll be going to the nature reserve to take some photos, gather information and maybe so some sketches, get some material to work with for the rest of the week.
I have lots to go at, with a tutorial in just over a week. I'd like to have lots of stuff to show around this idea and get some feedback on it.
I need to do;
- More birds, try out some animals in this style..butterflies!!
- Make a list of relevant collective nouns
- Research on boards at nature reserves (photographs tomorrow)
- Photos of birds (tomorrow)
- More experiments with typography (collective nouns)
- More experiments with silhouette birds in flight
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