Lecture 4 - Chronologies 2: Illustration

What is illustration?

Strategic image making, used within the context of visual communication to convey meaning or concept.

It's formal qualities; media, composition, become just as important as the image, since the visual quality of the media changes the way we look at an image.

It was stated at the start of this lecture that this isn't a chronology, but rather looking at what illustration is and what makes a good image.

There are three qualities that make up a good illustration: Image, Context, and Concept. If you have an equal combination of all three then you're sorted.

An example of an illustration shown to us was the cereal box of "Frosties". This is because it has a purpose - to sell cereal, a target audience of children, a friendly, likeable character design, and a simple colour pallet.

This was compared with a drawing of someones face. Even though that is art, it isn't considered illustration, since it doesn't have a particular purpose.

The earliest signs of visual communications were pictures drawn by cavemen, which was the only way to communicate at the time since type hadn't been created. We are hardwired to intuitively respond to images.

I think choice of media is also important in communicating the right message in an illustration/advert, as different styles look better for different purposes. E.g. we were shown two different illustrations for two different zoos:

The one on the left is for the National Geographic Magazine, created by Jillian Tamaki. I like the use of ink, and I think placed next to text it would look really nice and stylised. 

The right is displayed at U.S National Zoo Washington, created by Lance Wyman; This simple silhouetted imagery looks better in this format at the zoo, as they're clear labels to direct viewers to the exhibitions, and they still look nice. Whereas the illustrations on the left would be too complicated for viewers.

We were shown loads of examples of illustrations, these are the ones that stood out to me because I like the styles that were used:

Malika Favre for Vogue Japan

Laura Carlin for The Guardian

Finn Dean - Folio Society Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Edward Bawden - The Titfield Thunderbolt Film Poster

Illustrations have also been developed into 3D models and other products, such as Mori Chack's Gloomy Bear:

Seminar 3 - Auteurship and the Avant-Garde

In our third seminar, the theme of discussion was the definition of Auteur.

This word is French for "Author", generally used to describe great novelists; so talking about an auteur in the film industry would be describing the roll of the director, because they are writing and creating a story, and turning that into a visual picture.

After we all realised what an auteur is, our class realised that it's harder for an animator to be lauded an auteur, since generally on feature length films the credit gets shared between a group of animators. However, straight away, we all thought of Tim Burton as an exception to this theory, since several feature lengths are featured with his name.
But the public generally views animation as being an audience to children, which generally doesn't produce many auteurs.

There is one company that creates animations that can be viewed by children and adults alike: Disney.

When Walt Disney first started making films, such as "The Four Musicians of B" and "Alice's day at sea", he could be seen as an auteur, since he made these films solely on his own. It was when Mickey Mouse was created that he took a back seat in production, to organise the team and keep his company running, for all the ideas that were being produced.

So when thinking about this, does being part of "Disney"'s ownership and vision take recognition away from the actual creators?

Once he was established, Disney started creating versions of characters from other authors, continuing the story and adding his ideas onto it, from Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", Carlo Collodi's "Pinocchio", A.A Milne's "Winnie the Pooh"... Disney's visions of these characters became the stereotypes viewed by the world today; so do Disney's interpretations take credit away from the original authors, because this is a more established company?

Another debatable auteur is Ray Harryhousen. He has been elevated by his use of special effects, which define his signature cinematic style.
One of his creations, Avatar, particularly created some debate as to how good the film is, since it's said he used too many special effects. Is it all style and no substance? If you take away the beautiful imagery does it strip away the narrative too?

The Avant-garde was originally described by the French as the section in the army that marched into battle ahead of the main troops; but recently it's become the English and French description as pioneering or innovatory trends in artists, especially musical and visually. Basically someone who's being original in their work.

A good example of this description is Caroline Leaf, since her technique is traditional, but she's making her own films, such as this one:


This is my favourite work of hers, since it has a good narrative and smooth transactions between scenes.

To sum up, I think it is harder for an animator to become an auteur since if you work in a big company, the credit gets spread between everyone who was part of the film making process, unless you own that company. I think for a freelance animator to be classed as an auteur their films would have to have a distinctive style so people recognise it as theirs.

Lecture 3 - Production and Distributuion

"The written word endures... The spoken word disappears" Neil Postman Amusing ourselves to death.

Type is what language looks like.
There are three definitions of typography in the dictionary: 1) The art and technique of printing with movable type. 2) The composition of printed material from movable type. 3) The arrangement and appearance of printed matter.

Having typography in our lives makes things much more interesting and memorable; as the quote says above - "The written word endures", so type has been a useful strategy for advertisers for centuries.

The first true alphabet was the Greek, which was adapted to Latin; however typography wasn't thought about much until 1450 where Gutenberg Press started being creative with their prints.

1870 was an important year for Britain, because the Elementary Education Act was enforced.

This meant that every single person between the ages of 5-12 had to attend school, so everyone received an education, including learning to read. Because of this, textbooks had to be printed to learn from.

Almost 100 years later, 1957, Max Miedinger created the "Helvetica" font. It's seen as a more general font that can be used on anything - or the definition of modernism.

25 years after that "Arial" came out. 25 years is the maximum time a font is protected before it lapses... If you look at how similar they are, most people would say that Arial is a rip off of Helvetica, created by Microsoft:

Arial

Helvetica

As you can see there are only slight differences between each font, so people claim Microsoft copied Miedinger... The tutor giving this lecture even said this is one of the reasons Microsoft is the "enemy" of type!

After many varieties of fonts served for all purposes, Bill Gates invented Internet Explorer in 1995, which was the first ever internet browser! This would go on to change the lives of a whole new generation...

The final quote given to us: "There is no single approach within Typography that applies to everything". This has proven to be true since so many styles have been used, since not one font can be used for everything.