Value - Book Cover Art
Concept
According to what I absorbed, the intent was to take one image (which consisted of at least one subject and background with a good deal of layers) and duplicate it five times. Each one of the duplicates then would be shifted and altered, which a change in value being the primary modification, in order to change the implied mood of the piece. The title would also be changed, to help bolster the intended atmosphere, and as a result, each of us would have created five images with most of the same components but with completely different connotations. This helps us extend our knowledge of value and its applied uses, as well as how very minute changes can make a huge difference in how the piece is perceived.
According to what I absorbed, the intent was to take one image (which consisted of at least one subject and background with a good deal of layers) and duplicate it five times. Each one of the duplicates then would be shifted and altered, which a change in value being the primary modification, in order to change the implied mood of the piece. The title would also be changed, to help bolster the intended atmosphere, and as a result, each of us would have created five images with most of the same components but with completely different connotations. This helps us extend our knowledge of value and its applied uses, as well as how very minute changes can make a huge difference in how the piece is perceived.
Rough Drafts (Possible Concepts)
For all of these, the image was drawn first on paper, then scanned in to be edited with Photoshop CS6.
This one makes me feel kind of ill.
Definitely better.
Research and Development
Somewhere in America, a nameless scientist realized that a lot of beautiful human minds, namely belonging to the percentage of people restricted by physical ailments and defects, were being utterly wasted. That scientist created the MindSwap Program, a secret project within the confides of the government that was experimenting with technology that could allow one human’s consciousness to be implanted into the body of another human. The protagonist, Michelle, was a scholar at Yale University, studying hard to become a talented lawyer before suffering a deliberating car accident that rendered her entire body paralyzed, save for her lips and eyelids. She was presented one evening with the opportunity to join the MindSwap Program due to her impressive credentials and, left with no other options, she agreed. Her consciousness was extracted and put with a collection of hyper-compressed personalities to be injected into the bodies of volunteers, most of whom were homeless people or prison inmates who felt that they had nothing left to live for, and were content with submitting their bodies to science. However, due to a horrifying error when transporting the unconscious vessels, Michelle was injected into the wrong body.
Rather than being the pilot for a new, strong body with a passive mind lounging casually in the back of her head, Michelle has to combat the very aggressive and non-complying personality that originally owned her new form. The man she pushed into the back of her mind, Wes Sharpe, refuses to relinquish control to her, and despite the circumstances, he fights for his body within his own head while Michelle desperately attempts to complete the tasks that MindSwap has enlisted her for, namely espionage and collecting intel undercover. However, even amidst this internal chaos and discord, a new development is brewing--something terrible is going to threaten the fate of their town, and possibly the entire nation. Will the two of them be able to cooperate in order to save the world they hold so dear, or will the internal struggle between two intelligent minds eventually drive them both insane?
Visual Words:
Possible Titles:
URL:
http://www.yeshairstyles.com/wp-content/gallery/
natalie-portman/natalie-portmans-short-hairstyle
-from-mr-magoriums-wonder-emporium.jpg
Description:
Michelle, a young student managing a job and law school.
She’s young and relatively pretty, but also rather rebellious
and has a very headstrong, straightforward way of doing
things. She’s a real businesswoman.
URL:
http://data.whicdn.com/images/24741429
/tumblr_lzwrwuKEfg1qmianjo1_1280_thumb.jpg
Description:
Wes, a rather lazy, half-hearted sort of man who
never found his calling in life and decided never to
pursue it. He’s the type that’s good-looking when he
tries, but just doesn’t want to exert the effort.
Anything to keep from disturbing his casual apathy.
URL:
http://tompkinschiropractic.com/wp-content
/uploads/2012/10/Hard_rubber_Syringe3.jpg
Description:
The highly modern and technologically
advanced syringe used to transplant the
microscopic personality chip into the heads
of the Vessels is a huge and symbolic
object for the story.
FP: Michelle and Wes back to back, facing away, both looking worried and stressed, about shoulders-up
Clock Image: http://www.veezzle.com/photo/85857/Clock-in-the-street
Hardware Backdrop: http://www.veezzle.com/photo/164368/.PCB.-3
Metal Texture: http://www.veezzle.com/photo/460/Metal-texture-4
Somewhere in America, a nameless scientist realized that a lot of beautiful human minds, namely belonging to the percentage of people restricted by physical ailments and defects, were being utterly wasted. That scientist created the MindSwap Program, a secret project within the confides of the government that was experimenting with technology that could allow one human’s consciousness to be implanted into the body of another human. The protagonist, Michelle, was a scholar at Yale University, studying hard to become a talented lawyer before suffering a deliberating car accident that rendered her entire body paralyzed, save for her lips and eyelids. She was presented one evening with the opportunity to join the MindSwap Program due to her impressive credentials and, left with no other options, she agreed. Her consciousness was extracted and put with a collection of hyper-compressed personalities to be injected into the bodies of volunteers, most of whom were homeless people or prison inmates who felt that they had nothing left to live for, and were content with submitting their bodies to science. However, due to a horrifying error when transporting the unconscious vessels, Michelle was injected into the wrong body.
Rather than being the pilot for a new, strong body with a passive mind lounging casually in the back of her head, Michelle has to combat the very aggressive and non-complying personality that originally owned her new form. The man she pushed into the back of her mind, Wes Sharpe, refuses to relinquish control to her, and despite the circumstances, he fights for his body within his own head while Michelle desperately attempts to complete the tasks that MindSwap has enlisted her for, namely espionage and collecting intel undercover. However, even amidst this internal chaos and discord, a new development is brewing--something terrible is going to threaten the fate of their town, and possibly the entire nation. Will the two of them be able to cooperate in order to save the world they hold so dear, or will the internal struggle between two intelligent minds eventually drive them both insane?
Visual Words:
- MindSwap Logo
- Michelle
- Syringe
- Technology
- Wes (Michelle’s Vessel)
- Government
- Spies
- Hospital/Scientific Laboratory
- Compressed Personality Chips
- Scientists
- Internal Conflict
- Impending Danger
- Insanity
- Desperation
- Aggression
- Panic
- Entrapment
- Secrecy
- Confusion
- Helplessness
Possible Titles:
- MindSwap
- Mind Swap
- Reprogrammed
- The Pilot
- Compression
- Stalemate
URL:
http://www.yeshairstyles.com/wp-content/gallery/
natalie-portman/natalie-portmans-short-hairstyle
-from-mr-magoriums-wonder-emporium.jpg
Description:
Michelle, a young student managing a job and law school.
She’s young and relatively pretty, but also rather rebellious
and has a very headstrong, straightforward way of doing
things. She’s a real businesswoman.
URL:
http://data.whicdn.com/images/24741429
/tumblr_lzwrwuKEfg1qmianjo1_1280_thumb.jpg
Description:
Wes, a rather lazy, half-hearted sort of man who
never found his calling in life and decided never to
pursue it. He’s the type that’s good-looking when he
tries, but just doesn’t want to exert the effort.
Anything to keep from disturbing his casual apathy.
URL:
http://tompkinschiropractic.com/wp-content
/uploads/2012/10/Hard_rubber_Syringe3.jpg
Description:
The highly modern and technologically
advanced syringe used to transplant the
microscopic personality chip into the heads
of the Vessels is a huge and symbolic
object for the story.
FP: Michelle and Wes back to back, facing away, both looking worried and stressed, about shoulders-up
Clock Image: http://www.veezzle.com/photo/85857/Clock-in-the-street
Hardware Backdrop: http://www.veezzle.com/photo/164368/.PCB.-3
Metal Texture: http://www.veezzle.com/photo/460/Metal-texture-4
Final Drafts
This is the final and best of the five final designs I came up with.
Reflection
1. Describe the creative process and how your brainstorming, graphic design research and development of multiple of concepts helped you to create your final piece. Mention any alternatives you considered and why you went in the direction you chose.
My characters Michelle and Wes were developed off of a sort of mental perspective I have of myself (embodied in Michelle) and a character that has almost become like a conscience to me in the way that he sort of developed out of my lack of self-esteem (embodied in Wes). The idea of someone living inside of another person’s head fascinated me, so I wanted to do a story involving that sort of dilemma for my final draft. The cover design I initially had included a young woman and man that I drew standing back to back, but they came out looking a little morose, which ended up narrowing my options a bit. I could have made a couple of other possible designs depicting tumultuous love stories or tales of war, but sci-fi seemed best suited to the way the two characters appeared. I liked the drawing a lot for the intense, dramatic story that I had concocted, and it fit well with the technological backgrounds, but it wasn’t very flexible in mood when I was trying to adjust the atmosphere of the piece. Along with the value altering, I added in some other background elements when making my finals, and it seems I wasn’t really supposed to do that, but I found myself a little cornered with the moody drawing that was my artistic subject.
2. Make an artistic analysis of the final image utilizing design terminology. Write about composition, balance, repetition, flow, focal points and emphasizing elements, positive negative shape interaction, etc.
Balancing negative space was a big challenge with this project, especially because I wanted to keep the images simplistic but detailed, with Michelle and Wes as the focal point on every book cover. It was hard to keep a centralized flow around them, so I tried to use gradients and borders (such as the gears in my third final) to create emphasis around my drawing. The gears really created a sense of gestalt, due to their individually small size but heavy presence as a border when combined together. I think the compositions show a good deal of balance and things are relatively well-emphasized, but the lack of detail in some of them take away from the overall quality.
3. If used, identify where in the imagery the principles of Gestalt theory appear, and describe how it was utilized.
Gestalt is used the most in the gears in my third final; as I’ve said above, the are individually small and simple, but they together create a solid and heavy border. Besides that, the elements of gestalt aren’t really vividly expressed. I guess my images came out a little too simplistic to contain a lot of gestalt. After all, they don’t have a lot of individual parts beyond a foreground, background, and text.
4. Make a value judgment of the final image. Is it successful in conveying your story? Is it successful in capturing your artistic intent? If so, how? If not, what could have been better or different?
I feel that the images do a good job of conveying the science-fiction and drama elements of my story, but I’m not entirely sure which one does it the best. I think I can pin my dissatisfaction with the majority of my finals on my not entirely understanding the assignment, or at least not thinking very flexibly on what I wanted in my project. I wish I had been able to capture some more emotion in my images, and that my drawing hadn’t come out as grim-looking.
5. Comment on what you learned through this design process and whether you think it was helpful or a waste of time or a little of both. What would you do the same and what would you do differently?
I definitely think that formulating a design and doing rough drafts helped, and I was really pleased to get helpful reviews from some of the other students. On the last project, I tried to do something too ambitious and didn’t get done on time; on this project though, I think I tried to oversimplify myself and ended up displeased with the results. That, or I didn’t take the time to try and properly understand the assignment. Next time, I’m going to make a real effort to plan out how to do the assignment. That way, I know I’m doing it right and I can try to organize a timeframe for myself.
1. Describe the creative process and how your brainstorming, graphic design research and development of multiple of concepts helped you to create your final piece. Mention any alternatives you considered and why you went in the direction you chose.
My characters Michelle and Wes were developed off of a sort of mental perspective I have of myself (embodied in Michelle) and a character that has almost become like a conscience to me in the way that he sort of developed out of my lack of self-esteem (embodied in Wes). The idea of someone living inside of another person’s head fascinated me, so I wanted to do a story involving that sort of dilemma for my final draft. The cover design I initially had included a young woman and man that I drew standing back to back, but they came out looking a little morose, which ended up narrowing my options a bit. I could have made a couple of other possible designs depicting tumultuous love stories or tales of war, but sci-fi seemed best suited to the way the two characters appeared. I liked the drawing a lot for the intense, dramatic story that I had concocted, and it fit well with the technological backgrounds, but it wasn’t very flexible in mood when I was trying to adjust the atmosphere of the piece. Along with the value altering, I added in some other background elements when making my finals, and it seems I wasn’t really supposed to do that, but I found myself a little cornered with the moody drawing that was my artistic subject.
2. Make an artistic analysis of the final image utilizing design terminology. Write about composition, balance, repetition, flow, focal points and emphasizing elements, positive negative shape interaction, etc.
Balancing negative space was a big challenge with this project, especially because I wanted to keep the images simplistic but detailed, with Michelle and Wes as the focal point on every book cover. It was hard to keep a centralized flow around them, so I tried to use gradients and borders (such as the gears in my third final) to create emphasis around my drawing. The gears really created a sense of gestalt, due to their individually small size but heavy presence as a border when combined together. I think the compositions show a good deal of balance and things are relatively well-emphasized, but the lack of detail in some of them take away from the overall quality.
3. If used, identify where in the imagery the principles of Gestalt theory appear, and describe how it was utilized.
Gestalt is used the most in the gears in my third final; as I’ve said above, the are individually small and simple, but they together create a solid and heavy border. Besides that, the elements of gestalt aren’t really vividly expressed. I guess my images came out a little too simplistic to contain a lot of gestalt. After all, they don’t have a lot of individual parts beyond a foreground, background, and text.
4. Make a value judgment of the final image. Is it successful in conveying your story? Is it successful in capturing your artistic intent? If so, how? If not, what could have been better or different?
I feel that the images do a good job of conveying the science-fiction and drama elements of my story, but I’m not entirely sure which one does it the best. I think I can pin my dissatisfaction with the majority of my finals on my not entirely understanding the assignment, or at least not thinking very flexibly on what I wanted in my project. I wish I had been able to capture some more emotion in my images, and that my drawing hadn’t come out as grim-looking.
5. Comment on what you learned through this design process and whether you think it was helpful or a waste of time or a little of both. What would you do the same and what would you do differently?
I definitely think that formulating a design and doing rough drafts helped, and I was really pleased to get helpful reviews from some of the other students. On the last project, I tried to do something too ambitious and didn’t get done on time; on this project though, I think I tried to oversimplify myself and ended up displeased with the results. That, or I didn’t take the time to try and properly understand the assignment. Next time, I’m going to make a real effort to plan out how to do the assignment. That way, I know I’m doing it right and I can try to organize a timeframe for myself.