...in the intellectual sense. Cor, talk about frustrated!
A Level Graphic Design : Exam Project : Evaluation
This examination project began with the decision upon brief question ‘Fictional Film Character’, with the interest of being able to participate and contribute to the industry of creative design within film and advertisement. Working directly from the brief proved difficult, as my exact understanding of how I could interpret and respond through a work path was vague. I found that trying to work by the brief’s exact words was uncomfortable and doubting in producing a strong body of work. Therefore, I analysed the question’s description, and broke it down to it’s most fundamental elements: Fiction, Film, and Characters. From this I made observation of what methods have been used to combine the three successfully, looking at promotional film material like posters, websites, and DVD content. Studying there designs, it came apparent (just like the brief’s description stated) that it is the characters/subject/objects in a film that promote it best, and the way in which audiences can recognize and com accustomed to specific/particular fragments of a motion picture. I came across the Watchmen website, which is dedicated to the movie, including trailers, images, character profiles, and additional exclusive information - all things that make the audience feel like they know they film a little better, like they are further in touch with it; a part of it even. Being a Watchmen fan, I couldn’t help but take notice and study the visual aspects of both the website and the film (which I had watched not 2 weeks before the project’s start), and comparing them to the likes of the 1980’s comics and graphic novels. I was interested in the shift and transaction of character representations between the paper and screen works, as the characters of the story were true icons in their own right - but this is 20 years ago, so wondered about how they will be depicted, portrayed and embodied.
From this, it was clear that my heart and mind lied in the exploration of Watchmen and it’s aesthetic values, with two eras over 20 years about, hoping to be able to improve my understanding of these things:
- The historic development of illustration and imaging within the realms of comics and films
- The importance and effectiveness of both the graphic novel and film’s visually constructed forms
- The ways in which anyone can create the jump/development of communication within the chosen area
I set myself brief, adapted to my chosen subject, which still compliments the Exam question’s information. I chose to try and create my own material for Watchman, to attempt and bridge the gap between the book and film - a pre-movie/post-novel design style. This would be a webpage design, one which brings the two audiences together, a form of equilibrium for fans of both the literal and cinematic kinds.
My journey begun with a brief look into promotional material to help promote a film, all in the website scene. Websites that were effective in creating anticipation and awareness for all to follow, a form of tease to the eyes of film-goers and the general public. My first ever find was the campaign-associated I Believe In Harvey Dent, a website dedicated to the character, with a cynical twist. Illustration and typography work of a sinister nature covered parts of the pages, where a seemingly legitimate profile on Batman character Harvey Dent has been created, tying in to the (at the time) upcoming movie The Dark Knight, where Dent runs as leader for Gotham City. All of the unfit, over laying scribbles of “HA” and smiley faces are constructed to have been in the style of classic Batman villain The Joker, creating ultimate suspense and attention from audiences as mystery lied within the website’s connection with the film. The fact that it was a more vintage style of illustration work motivated me to work in similar lines with my dedication to Watchmen, and bring visuals of the past to the modern world and study it’s effectiveness in complimenting the film (of course, it’s the comic that started it all, so the film must follow the story’s initial themes and elements, both in narrative and cinematography).
I began with making a brief study of the film’s visuals, from both movie trailers and the website’s promotional material. From here, I then made an intense and thorough observation of the two decade old graphic novel, and how the imaging and character depiction has developed/change for a more cinematic-appeal era; the jump from then to now. My practical work begun with taking particular pictures and scenes from the book, and investigate the variation and range of modification the illustrations could take via Photoshop (a tool which is highly credited for it’s power in the film industry for CGI and Special Effects).
My fixed intention was to try and bring the comic illustrations to a more appealing fashion for a more modern time - drag it up through the years and see how well it could fit in the pool of comics and animation from the later years of 1990 onwards. After various styles, experimenting with the power of colour and lighting (two key things in the comic book world, ultimate tools in character association), I came to the conclusion that in order to create mystery towards such a recognizable graphic work, it would be that the removal of colour would encourage the hidden identities of the characters - working in an exact opposite manner to how the makers of the Watchmen movie, website and even the book’s illustrator Dave Gibbons and colourist John Higgins, who have all used colour to their advantage in making each character as visually iconic and memorable as possible. Working in contrast to this, I favoured the likes of Film Noir, with the conventional use of silhouettes, darkness and greyscale/black & white nature to emphasize mystery within stories of crime investigations, murders and other dark/tragic events - all things that are in the Watchmen story, the focus drive even.
After much work on reviving the illustrations, I applied the use of image fragmentation and distortion to play with the clarity of characters and scenes, as it was in my best interest to only tease the viewer, the give away the story. This was all part of the exploration and discovering in ‘how much is too much’ in the world of hysteria in revival advertising.
Taking all of this into great consideration, and collecting all my pieces of work together, I then moved onto the designing of what my final piece was intended to be from the start: A teaser-page that does not show any answers or immediate information, leaving audiences dazed, questioned and unfulfilled - they are the ones who are wanting more from me, even without certainty to what they have initially found and viewed.
In order to keep in both reference and relation to the actual/official Watchmen website, it was needed for there to be colour, but of course this first came as a confliction with the greyscale illustration work, and so options were made and considered, to prevent there being a problem with the combination of a Film Noir/comic illustration hybrid and a colour coded webpage. Reflecting back on the beginning of the project, I was reminded and assured that there is a colour code to Watchmen, which isn’t exactly unique. With Edward Blake’s smiley face badge as (if there is one) an iconic figure, character and symbol to the story, it is the yellow and black combination that has been repetitively used in picture scenes, the comic and film’s title typography, and even characters Sally and Laurie Jupiter, also know as Silk Spectre’s I and II. And with this, it was made certain that if anything, this was the colour code, and one that would not give away the work like a red and yellow ‘S’ would for Superman (this is where the research points of Superman: The Complete History and Frank Miller’s Sin City books The Hard Goodbye and Hell And Back came I into play, studying their generic uses and independent rules of colour association) . I wanted to make sure that there was no (seemingly) significant jump from my webpage design (speaking in the sense that mine is intended to have existed first, to be deleted and followed by the official website later on and closer to the release of other promotional material such as posters and movie trailers) and the real website, so I made great observations on the existing designs, with professional experimentation on the elements of layout; and from here I worked closer towards my design.
The piece itself is intended to be in the style of a mysterious, slightly dark setting, with a fairly intruding feel, like the viewers are peeving in on something, with that ‘something’ being a pile of fragmented pieces of the historic comic, collected together like how a classic detective would pile up evidence and clues in a case or study (which is what both the project and Watchmen is - the revealing of events, all noted in drive-character Rorschach’s journal). The layered style was heavily influenced by www.IBelieveInHarveyDent.com’s overlaying illustration work as it hides particular words and important parts to Harvey Dent’s campaign in Gotham City, to help oppose the likes of The Joker. And so by having the collected and worked images piled on top of each other, with dimmed and slightly sleazy lighting making a dirty shine on some of the cuttings, it boarders impossible for audiences to see all and make definite of what lies on the page, bordered and held back (in reference to the context of Watchmen’s long sitting as a book alone, urged to have come closer to life through cinematic medium) by the same bold yellow strip that is used in the actual website.
Both my final piece and entire project are intense, progressive and coherent. If there were any future intentions, it would be to further expand the project, working on a greater time scale and more web designs, to fulfil my thought of having multiple WebPages that arrive and replace each other time; so just like what I done here with filling the gap between the comic and film, I would make developed designs to help smoothen the transaction made between my final piece design here and the website, gradually revealing more Watchmen material for further audience tease, greater awareness and stronger anticipation.
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Final Piece goes here WeHey! http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmo-ydargo/3471150948/in/photostream/
Now have a good day people, 'cause mine's bangin'! The Magical Legend of the Leprachauns, film!
Hope you like BANGIN'! too.
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