About the Author: Making that final thing Part 1. PREPARATION.

My photoshop layout file so far - I will be adding little "descriptions" of the beers underneath the labels but so far I am happy with it. It's a weight off my shoulders to see it all laid out. Obviously I will be creating positives from this - I am really looking forward to printing this even though I am very afraid lots of things will go very wrong.

I'm not sure whether to print the back of the book as well, as I am afraid of how it will line up - and time consumption. I feel like if I am going to print the back I should do the front first - as thats the more important side.

I think when I go to print my positivies, as the size of the overall book will be equivalent to an a2 piece of paper cut in half, I will print the images togther on A2. Like this:

About the Author: Photoshop smashing

Here I am creating the backgrounds of the labels, using photoshop so they will all be smooth as I doubted my abilities cutting these shapes from lino. So far I think this is going well I have been able to make some pieces I am really happy with - and digitally being able to fiddle with the colours really helps in making decisions. 

Some of the images that worked well when I painted them I realised would probably not translate well into prints - such as the heart. I wanted to do the heart pale but when I was changing things around in photoshop and thinking about it I realised it would be a better idea to do it black - as then all of the main imagery would be bold and black and the backgrounds would be the green colour. 

When adding text I struggled warping it so it would fit into the space - but as I had other images to sort out I decided to revisit that later, I don't know how I'm going to do it but I'm sure I will figure out a way. 

In my original lino prints I really liked how the green ink showed through the black on the 'Black Cat' print, in photoshop I experimented with levels and opacity to see how it would look. I think this will be achieveable using screenprint, as when I did my screenprint workshop the blue/turquoise colour of the raven showed through the black. Maybe the black could be not true black, but a dark grey.

About The Author: Artist! - Johnny Hannah

I think the tone of Hannah's work is really interesting. There's lots of stuff going on, and this above has a particularly dark, spooky, gothic feel about it. Which is appropriate in relation to my own work on this project. I love the build up of layers in these images it makes them really exciting to look at as I can keep looking and see more and more!
The fact that you can see that traditional processes have been used (in some part anyway) to create this pieces gives them a niche personal touch - as opposed to something that could be designed similarly but all done digitally. I think the handcrafted vibe is a good thing going on here.
The style also looks kind of vintage- styled to a degree. Not overly twee or commercialised vintage-isms but more of an influence that is there but not overpoweringly so.

I love the look of this bottle motif. I could imagine as a pattern print on anything really. The whole label / bottle design is pretty relevant to the themes of my publication and it's interesting to see how other artists have approached this.
I am thinking of doing a pattern of bottles, but not in this same way. Though this does look really cool and would make an awesome back for a book!

About the Author: Some Ideas Development

 This lino print I did in a workshop and hadn't planned out but just did spontaneously, I mentioned before I wanted this to sort of suggest the shape of lungs - as many women in Poe's life died of tuberculosis. In a crit this didn't come across without explanation, it was either interpreted as a tree or cracks. But the cracks got me thinking about "The Fall of the House of Usher" where in the end the house physically cracks.

Taking influence from my original lino print I did this painting, joining the "infected lung" branches into the crack down the house. I love how this painting turned out, I think the colours work really well - and very much influenced by choice to continue with this colour scheme.

For my final prints I decided to translate a similar image to lino! However I do not think that this came out as well as I would have liked it to, definitely one of the weaker designs - but I'm not sure I had the time to try and re-do it when I had 6 other designs to do! I think this could have been improved just by tweaking the shape of the house so it would be less square and more like the painting. Though I do like the reversal of the house and the girl, (as in fall of the house of usher the female character is put while still alive in the tomb under the house). So it's a sneaky link back to the story. 

About the Aurthor: Lino Prints

I will be making a concertina book that is (hopefully) screenprinted, to make the images for my screenprint I have made lino cuts of some components. A greatly long winded process of making prints in the end but I am hoping the amount of effort put in will translate into an obviously hand crafted end result.

I'm really enjoying a lot of the textures that are coming out of lino print and hope that I can transfer them into my screen-print positives too. I think the lino prints have a quality about them that resonates with Poe's work. As standalone pieces these aren't so great but as components to a bigger picture I think these are successful. 

I really like how the two colour black cat one came out, this was initially just a test but I thought if it came out well enough I could use it and save time on remaking pieces. The bricks are kind of messy but I really liken how the green ink still shows through the black - it suggests the story of the cat being bricked into the wall. 

About the Author: Sting Sound / Music

This improvised piano piece by Lennie Tristano is based on Poe's writing "Descent into the Maelstrom". The tone of the tune I think quite suits Poe's work, I think it suggests madness with the high pitched fast played notes and clashing sounds. Using a 15 second sample from this may be good for the sting, or part of it. I think the sounds of the notes can be found similar to the clinking of glass bottles (bottles will be a prominent feature in the sting), so I think if used right it could work well.

About the Author: Project Proposals

Project Proposal: Production and Presentation of my Moving Pictures

I intend to produce:

 A 15 second sting based on the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe. It will be created using After Effects and contain sound, be two colours, and contain some element of the print-work that will go alongside it. 

 The content will focus mostly on (identify 3 specific themes, texts or concepts):

 - Mostly on Edgar Allan Poe's life more than his work

- Somewhat based on his alcoholism

- Mystery, a main aspect about Poe's work & concerning his death, I think the imagery and feel should be mysterious

I will be aiming to communicate (specific themes and messages):

- A dark, gloomy, gothic atmosphere

- facts about Edgar Allan Poe (his alcoholism)

- Mystery (again) 

 

To an Audience of (Three characteristics): 

- Fans of Edgar Allan Poe

- Gothic Types

- Internet dwellers (as that is where the sting will be featured)

Project Proposal: Production and Presentation of my Printed Pictures

I intend to produce:

A two colour screenprinted publication, probably a concertina book, based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Turning Poe's stories and Poems into spooky 'beer label' designs, and compiling them in a book.

 The content will focus mostly on (identify 3 specific themes, texts or concepts):

 - Edgar Allan Poe's stories and Poems including The Raven, Lenore, The Tell Tale Heart etc

- Poe's Alcholism

-

I will be aiming to communicate (specific themes and messages):

-A list of notable works by Poe

- Kind of dark humour? There will be puns, but the whole thing being based on Poe's alcholism is a bit dark. 

- Cool gothic imagery. 

 

To an Audience of (Three characteristics): 

- Fans of Edgar Allan Poe

- Gothic Types

- Perhaps beer enthusiasts? - obviously the beer isn't real... but it could grab the attention of people who like the artsy labels. 

Responsive - Brief 1 - A Clockwork Orange

I've decided to do the penguin books "A Clockwork Orange" brief - to design a cover for the book. I wanted to do a book cover brief but wasn't particularly interested in the Folio Society's War Horse or the other penguin books so I've decided to do this as one of the "smaller" briefs, though due to the fact you have to read a book and I anticipate this will spark a lot of development work, I would consider this a distinctly medium sized brief.

Anyway I thought A Clockwork Orange would be fun/interesting to read, especially as I've not seen the film so I'm able to go into this without having much influence from the film (the Brief states they want to stay away from film elements/cliches that are often used on the front covers). The brief also said that the Typographic elements are important.

 I think that this is the kind of thing they're looking to avoid as the bowler hat and eyelashes have become a staple image of A Clockwork Orange - but are mostly related to the film adaptation.

I'm not particularly impressed by any of the covers I've seen so far for a Clockwork Orange. But obviously the book is very violent and you can't really put outright violence on the front cover of a book?

I have the copy in the centre and while it's not particularly illustrative I do appreciate the look of the text.  The middle cover though the milk relates well to the actual story I just find the whole thing bland. My personal favourite is the skeleton, I think it's just hilarious.

The image on the left of the screaming Alex I quite like - as it captures a well known, iconic scene from A Clockwork Orange. It's also probably as graphic as you could get for a book cover. While I like it, I'm not really sure if it fits the feel of the book - as the drawing looks more like it belongs in a graphic novel than on a book cover.

I think this cover communicates the dark humour of the book. The drawing is pretty lo-fi and fun to have a giggle at. I like the funky disjointed text too, it suits the tone of A Clockwork Orange.

I dig the minimalism of this. It contrasts with the utter chaos that is the storyline.

About the Author: Storyboards (aka screaming into the distance)

I put this to the back of my mind and totally forgot about the whole animation side of this for a while


A lot of the ideas I had in my head seemed simple... in my head but when I thought about how I would animate something like that I was lost. Luckily I spoke to a tutor and they gave me some better ideas on how to do something simply.

Some things that I thought I wanted to do involved a higher level of animation skill and or patience than I currently own.

Since I was planning on doing a bottle 'pattern' for the back of my book anyway - and had the lino prints available I thought doing a scroll of this as if looking along a shelf would be A. DOABLE, B. link to the rest of my project and C. probably look pretty cool. The climax of the sting being zooming in on a bottle with a label that says "Poe" and a shadowy figure of Poe writing. 

I'm feeling more confident about doing the sting now, as I know that it can be really simple and I shouldn't try and overcomplicate it with totally unachievable ideas. 

About The Author: The Raven (2011)

I watched this film on a whim and it was actually very enjoyable! Despite not being greatly biographical - obviously its not a documentary it's an action film meant to entertain, it did include certain biographical elements - that all the women in Poe's life had died and this had effected him, his drinking, and what has been implied of his general character - sass and confrontational with people he worked for. What slightly annoyed me is that after Poe's wife died he reunited with an old love of his, this could have been the love interest in the film instead of  a totally fictional thing.

I think the film really captured the feeling of a lot of Poe's work, and was a gripping mystery which gives a nod back to Poe basically being the father of detective stories. A lot of film adaptations of Poe's work were done many years ago and are either just funny - because they're basically B-Movie horrors, or completely changed from the source material. Though this is not an adaptation of his work there are snippets of his stories quite accurately presented.

About The Author: Lino

Based on the designs I've already done I have made some lino cuts! Some have turned out a lot trickier than others. I have realised that a lot of these would either have to be simplified or be reduction lino cuts as I wanted to use a couple of tones of the same colour. 

I really needed a much smaller lino cutter or to have done the one on the right much bigger so allow for the detail (even though there was only a small amount in the first place)

I am excited to print these and see how they come out. 

About the Author: Print Mockup

The change in tone has really stimulated me. I'm having a lot of ideas for the beer label route, as it's opened up possibilities to a different tone of work and PUNS! Looking back at a lot of the work I've done for this project so far, I'm starting to hate a lot of it. Now that I'm on a different track I can see how obvious everything I was doing actually was, and I'm not especially happy with the quality of anything I've done. However I am really enjoying making this new stuff. 

To go along with the theme my idea is to make a publication - a concertina book that is a mock beer guide, with the 'label' designs, and perhaps a short description of the 'beer' using quotes or themes from Poe's work instead of an actual description. Ideally I would like to do it double sided with a 'pattern' of bottles across the back, as I don't like the idea of leaving the back bare.

I am considering using screen print for this, although I will have to investigate this further and do some more tests involving half-tone and such. Ben suggested that lino may be appropriate too, so I will do more tests before making a full decision about what to do! Lino may be appropriate for image making but not for text so it could end up a combination of processes, if I make some good lino tests then I could use the imagery for  screen print positives or if time gets away from me, a digitally printed book. I am motivated and will definitely plan my time so I can get as much done as I need though.

About the Author: Post Crit Madness

After the peer review I got thinking about alcohol labels, as I put forward the idea of bottles having a story inside - which relates to Poe's alcoholism and it was suggested not to do bottles as someone else is already doing something similar, but to just focus on labels. 

I spent some time looking up various ye olde time alcohol bottles and novelty spooky parody ones, to give me an idea of what people have done here already. 

I stuck a lot of the images into my book so I could reference them. 

As part of this I looked at the Wychwood Brewery labels as all their products have spooky names and funky designs. 

Off the back of this I decided to design some images that looked like beer labels, based off Poe's work. I chose to use green on a whim, as I thought the feel of this should be more subtle - and the pale green still gives that eerie undertone without being upfront red+black = horror and such.

I really like how these turned out, I think the colours go really well and I feel like with green I can happily use different tones of the same colour and it still be "two colours"

About the Author: Screenprint Workshop

I love screenprinting! But at the time I didn't think any of the work I had done was appropriate for screenprint so since it was just for a workshop I cheated and threw some photographs I found online together. To make them suitable for sceenprint positives I used the "Threshold" option on the photographs.

I had been using red and black for almost everything so far and I was stuck in my way of thinking that that cliche colour scheme worked, but at this point I was pretty sick of it. Also I wanted to do something overlayable as the printing inks are translucent. Digitally making my positives allowed me  to see what the colours I chose would look like overlayed. I wanted to do the raven a colour that you would be able to see Poe's face through. In the end I decided on still using black, for Poe and overlaying a blue/green raven. 

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out and am thinking that this green/blue colour scheme works better than red and black. Also I dig how despite Poe being in black ink, the blue still changes the colour of it slightly! My printer was running out of ink when I printed the positives but I like the scratchy texture that gave. 

About the Author: Peer Review

These are some of the images I brought to the peer review, I felt like I didn't have a lot to show so I knocked some 'ideas' out pretty quickly - they're all of quite a poor quality. Along with my lino prints. 

At this point I am thinking of doing a series of prints but I haven't really got any idea of what I want to do with them. The only idea I has was things within things, like those hidden painting type images - or more detailed stuff within a simple shape something like that?

These aren't very good but I like how the ink drawings are looking, they have a quality that could easily encapsulate hidden images within a shape. I don't really know what I'm doing, I need to find an idea and explore it more. In the crit I've been given some ideas about looking at playing cards.

I put forward some ideas about bottles because of Poe's alcoholism, that got some positive feedback.

I'm not feeling great right now because I'm so unsure of everything, once I find something to stick with I'm sure things will pick up. 

About the Author - Music Insp.

This songs lyrics are comprised almost entirely of Edgar Allan Poe's writing. I have listened to this maybe 100000000 times since starting this project cause it just gets me in the Poe mood. If the narration at the beginning were only 15 seconds long I would definitely nab it for my sting. (Though as what I want to do also includes the silhouette of the author, it's good that the sound is not that length or my sting could almost definitely go down for plagiarism) ANYWAY. I really love the tone of the video - colour schemes and atmosphere and such.

Maybe for my sting I can use different narrations of Edgar Allan Poe works - most audiobooks of his work are public domain.

Lino & monoprint

< my scanner has wacked out the colour of everything so excuse these images I will update them with something better>

I quite enjoyed lino printing. I didn't have a plan for what I would do I just went in and did it though I really like whats come of this. (I know roughing is important for a lot of things but some of my best work has come from just going into something without planning). I've never really enjoyed lino printing before - the process is long and I'm not great at making things neat and precise no matter how hard I try - but I enjoyed it this time and I think I would really like to pursue it further as then I can explore and experiment with this technique. 

<insert more mono print scans here>

Monoprinting I think I would like to try more of. I didn't really make anything I liked so much but I can appreciate all the funky textures and stuff you can make using mono print. I wish I had done more prints adding things onto the plate and printing it rather than drawing on the back of paper so I could experiment with stuff using photoshop, but I just drew loads of creepy hearts for the tell tale heart. 

I've not made a decision on what print medium I want to use for my final images yet. I think I will have to do experiments with them all again to really decide but I'm thinking a mixture of mono print and lino print would be cool. 

After Effects Notes

Session 1:

Session 2:
Keyboard Shortcuts:
p- position
a- anchor point
r - rotation
s- scale
t - opacity
Shift + Shortcut adds it to the 'list'

o - moves time marker to the outpoint of the layer.
i - moves time marker to the in point of the layer.
b- moves the beginning of the work area to your time marker
n - moves the end of the work area

u - reveals animated properties of the layer
uu - reveals all changed states


Hold Alt while moving all key frames moves em all relative 2 each otha

Photoshop

<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/143717803" width="500" height="274" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="https://vimeo.com/143717803">Best Video Evarrrrr</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user45220925">Amber Kaplan</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

Session 3:

Importing a layered file as footage - there will be the option to merge the layers or choose a layer from the file. 

Import a layered file as a composition / composition - retain layer sizes. 

Double clicking the composition brings it all up in AE rather than having to move each layer in separately. (CHECK THE PRESETS)

Importing a file with many layers will crop the size of each layer to the size of the AE composition. 

Anchor points - Importing a file as composition, the anchor point is central, all the items move around the same anchor point

Importing file as composition - retain layer sizes, each layer has it's own anchor point as each layer is the size of whats on that layer. 

It's probably best to retain layer sizes as it is likely it won't be helpful to animate separate items around a common anchor point. 

Keep your after effects project in the same folder as your assets, or AE will lose track of your files and get a lil' wild.  If you lose your file the layer will still be there but full of coloured stripes. Right click - replace footage & add the file.

keep yo sh*t together 

- Shy switch allows u to hide layers from your timeline when your composition gets too complex, only comes into effect when you select the master switch at the top. 

- for comp layer, keeps ur vectors vecty - smooth edges to infinity and beyond

- Temporarily lower the quality 

-Motion Blur - can help to simulate an effect that looks more realistic, movement, change of scale etc. 

- Adjustment Layer 

- Fx switch temporarily turns off effects (for previewing and stuff) 

Storyboarding Workshop

In this task we had to choose one of the images we had brought and make a 9 panel storyboard from it, the image had to be the 5th panel so it was in the middle. 

As the image was in the middle I thought it was pretty hard to think how to get to that image and then away from it again as I had to think of story each way. 

I ended up massively overcomplicating the whole thing by trying to create stories rather than focusing on getting to this image and to a blank end. It could have been as simple as the character walks in, sits down, writes and walks off again. 

This task has given me some perspective about the final animation as a whole, especially that keeping things simple isn't lazy - it's necessary. Overcomplicating things will just lead to total disaster, and adding information/noise that is completely unneeded. 

Also 15 seconds isn't actually that long, so attempting really complex 'storylines' is not in my best interests, as I'd probably waste time trying to come up with a big idea rather than smaller, simpler ideas that can be combined into a final resolution.

About the Author: Visual Journal IIII

I bought a black sketchbook as I thought that working in white and colour on top of black would give a different vibe. Using a black background gives an impending sense of gloom and darkness and a very gothic vibe to the work. (Somewhat inspired by Emily Carroll's work being against black backgrounds). Plus it really makes the colours pop. 

Above are some sketches I did again investigating incorporating a skull into a dress instead of onto the face. I quite like how the one on the left looks as the character is in a relaxed pose, so it's more like she's been marked for death (perhaps with illness) but is not dead. It could still be subtler but it's less upfront than straight up having a skull face.

Some cat skulls. Drawn a lot of human skulls, and a lot of cats, but not any cat skulls. Links to the story The Black Cat and suggests death as a whole. 

I liked the idea of working with silhouettes, here a silhouette of Poe writing is illuminated by a light (intended to be candlelight) - I think this could nicely be translated into animation, with the light flickering like a candle.



This is metaphorical, nobody's face melts but a lot of beautiful women die in the stories (and in Poe's life). Usually they were loved so I thought imagery of a face being caressed but also melting off into a skull would translate the horror of loved ones dying prematurely. I'm sort of toying with an idea of seeing things in a first person perspective, as if you were a character or Poe himself. So the hands here are meant to be like a POV.