None of this is REAL
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Mind Map of Ideas
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To help me focus on what my subject is, I have created a mind map of ideas that could possibly form my collages. This helps me think of what to include when making the process of collage. In the mind map, I have include the main topic, stereotypes, and the reason why I chose this topic is because I thought that it would be nice to show what contrast between two kinds of opinion. My main character for this topic is my dad- Keith Gordon. A full faced tattoo man who is a father to four children, a husband and a civil servant. However, that is not how others see him. They see him as a 'tattoo addict'; "a freak", and a "scary vision of weird". I want to show that that even though he has a full faced tattoo, that- he likes heavy metal, he is just a normal guy.
In compare, I have decided to add in another topic, culture, to show stereotypes within culture. In the mind map, I have included that country's such as China gets their product delivered late, that their products are cheap but not good in quality. However, still loads of people goes and buy products from China because it is affordable.
Stereotypes for Asian people are; they eat rice all the time, they do not like English foods such as boiled potatoes because it has no taste since it is plain. Filipinos eat with their hands and they get people looking at them whenever they do so, making them feel embarrassed to do it somewhere else. Japanese people bow to show respect so whenever others see people bowing, they immediately refer them as a Japanese person.
This is my first collage that I had a go with to try and see if the word stereotypes could be seen through it. I have used an image of Keith taking his two rottweilers out in the park and manipulated his environment by making an illustrated version of his clothes such as 'I heart Rottweilers' and his hat with a paw print of it. This then shows that he is not just only into heavy metal and rock but also with cliche shirt such as this. His surroundings was also manipulated by illustrating and adding colors in them.
I have decided to make this image because Keith is seen as a'freak' but to us, his children and family, he is just a normal dad taking our dogs out for a walk.
If I will be given another chance to re-do this collage, i would improve it by removing the green grass because it is irrelevant and I think that something else would be a better fit for a background or no background at all.
This is a collage that I have put together to show culture. I have used Japan's culture as the subject because I am quite knowledgeable about Japan's Culture as it is one of my favorite culture there is out there. I know that I shouldn't pick images online but I have no primary resources to show this culture therefore, I have mix and match this collage by using some people taken online and images taken from when I attended an event for Hyper Japan last year.
If I could one thing about this collage to improve it, I would use the process of crop and zoom to view more into the lady's section. If I was to do crop and zoom this section, it will leave the picture with the lady and the Hyper Japan images. We can then questioned why the boy behind the lady is hidden and why is he there.
This is another collage showing stereotypes- two babies dressed up looking cute while a text is imported onto the image 'I'm young so I must be NAIVE'. After thinking about this collage, I have come to a conclusion that I am giving to my audience what it is I am trying to show because the text 'I'm young so I must be NAIVE' says it all. Therefore, to improve this if i would be given a chance to re-do it, I would improve it by thinking more about the images before having it collage. Like, should the background be removed? Should I place the babies somewhere in where it would show them being 'naive'? Should I include to give as a clue?
This photography is inspired by an artist called, Kallen Hollomon. Her photography has inspired me to produce a similar style because the idea of putting and image on reality gives of the sense of past and present which then relates with my stereotype topic with Keith Gordon. The idea of black and white could show the past, from when Keith didn't have the full faced tattoos yet and the colored reality is the present time where Keith has completed his face with tattoos.
The cross hatch collage is inspired by an artist, Jiri Kolar. After talking about his work for my contextual study essay, I have decided to use his influenced to make a collage. Jiri Kolar involves the work of collages therefore I could use his style for mine. The two images that I used to cross hatch is an image of Keith back when he hadn't had any tattoos and an image of him with a full faced tattoo. The cross hatch works well with this two images because it shows that even though you can no longer see what he looks like before because his entire face is covered with tattoos, it shows that the old Keith is still somewhere living inside the new Keith. Furthermore, the idea of confused when looking at the cross hatch that I have produced is what his children and his family get whenever we are with him. This is because the tattoos had made Keith feel more confident with himself, and I recall him saying 'I look younger than when I was younger'. This is because before he had his tattoos, he looks older as though is he at age where he should be for when he has his tattoos now. Therefore, we are no longer sure whether of not the Keith that my mum met and married is still the same Keith of is he someone else.
This collage is influenced by another artist called, John Stezaker. John Stezaker's work involves two images of two different person, a woman and a man or a girl and a woman or a boy and a man. He's technique is simply by combining two images together, for example, a picture of a woman and a man, Stezaker will then fold or crop the two images to make it look like as though it is combined together. This technique is useful because it shows that the full faced tattoo man is living a normal life- attending a wedding in suit.
This is the work as a collaborative had produced. We had summed up what our zine would be, what the title we having and what kind of fonts and text it should have. We decided to name our zine as 'Orgasm' and it is about insecurity and sexual relation. We had decided that the text should be hand drawn using black paper and white paint to show this messy as a blurb. Since we can only have two different kind of colors to print at riso, we decided as a collaborative to have black and red to represent 'orgasm'. Our target audience will be those we know this zine would be suitable for and that is for ages between 17-24 years old, young adults. The reason why we chose this target audience because it would be a great idea to teach them more about what it means and what is it.
Each person including myself was given a job role in which we can focused on when making our collaborative zine.
Job Role:
- Art Director- Luke
- Designer- Jack
- Art Worker- Diana (Me)
- Copy Writer- Luke Ashman and Jorge
- Printer- Emily and Diana (Me)
- Illustrator/Image maker- Omar and everyone
Art Director:
An art director is someone who is responsible for the visual style and images in magazine, newspapers, product packaging and movie and television productions. They oversee and manage the overall projects and designs and direct others who develop artwork and layout. Art directors work for advertising and public relations firms, newspaper, motion picture and video industries.
Art directors determine the overall style or tone desired for each projects and articulate their vision to artists who submit images, such as illustrations, graphics, photographs, charts and graphs, on stage and movie sets.
Copy Writer:
Copy writer also writes other marketing materials like websites, emails, brochures, catalogs and more. They also write and reward and invent contents. They check the copy for spelling and grammatical errors.
Art Worker:
Art worker is someone who produces a print-ready product. They get a concept from a designer (wither in drawing or digital form) and use the appropriate software to create it. They also understands the basics of printing as well as design, typesetting, formatting and color correction.
As the art worker in the group, I have been given a workshop where it allows me to learn how to turn images into RBG mode. By choosing an image of which I wish to change, I learnt that i could change the color setting into grayscale by simply going to image-mode-grayscale. Before, I had to search on youtube how to turn images on Photoshop in black and white but now I know the easiest way and quicker way to do so. After changing the mode in grayscale, it is then needed to be change in RGB mode for preparing for riso printing. To change it to RGB mode is the same as changing it to grayscale mode.
From the feedback that I received I had gone and developed my collage and refining it. From the work influenced by John Stezager, I have edited a face of Keith with his full faces tattoo and placed it together next to the suit to look as though he is wearing it originally. On top of it is are text that I found about him from when he had a documentary on Channel 5 about him having a full faces tattoo. The background of this image is what Keith gets whenever he is outside, He gets people looking at him without making it obvious.
This is the refined and developed work that I had made for this particular collage. I have experimented with a new technique where it shows an image of Keith and words that describes him. This improvement is much useful and it works well with my stereotype topic because it shows what people say about Keith and that- that's not just him.
These are collages that I have experimented and put together. I thought that I should show my own opinion as well as the contrast words. And to do this, I had images of Keith showing that he is just a normal guy and the text behind are the words that describes him based on his looks.
These are another collage that I have experimented through collage. The idea behind this is to show what interest Keith has. Keith is a big heavy metal fan that likes Wasp, AC-DC, Metallica and KISS. He likes to wear what he likes therefore he purchase merchandise whenever he goes to gigs of his favorite band. These are the type of fashion Keith is in to. He doesn't wear normal t-shirt with prints such as "Friday's Coming", he would only wear ones that would make him look cool and authentic. The text is what we as his family would describe him 'A family fan', 'Father of four' and Civil Servant.
This collage technique is influenced by David Szauder's "Failed Memories". I used his influence in a way it would make Keith's old face start dissolving as he gets more tattoos. That- the more he gets tattoos every month, and quicker his old self starts to dissolve and we will no longer see his old self in him. This is a development collage for one the previous collage that I have created. I have re-used it and printed another copy to work with the copied version. If I would be given another chance to improve this, i would use a different image that is black and white and have the dissolving skin as the colored one or vise versa.
By putting all of the things that I have learnt as an individual and as an art worker, I have put my skills together to create and practice making a zine. I have experimented with different colors that would work for riso printing and the result is shown above. The blue and red are for the collaborative zine that we are making and the red and black is for my individual zine. I chose red and black as the two colors for my zine because Keith's favorite colors are black and red and these colors represents hi. Red- the pain he gets from having a tattoo and Black- the color of his ink.
Evaluation:
‘None of this is real’ is a project that I personally did
not understand what the meaning behind it. ‘None of this is real’ subjects such
as political, human rights, gender, human, sexuality, etc. are something I
cannot relate with as I have no understanding of what those term mean. I have a
few knowledge about it but it is not enough to support my point like for
example, for the sub-theme, stereotypes, I have a very limited knowledge of
what it is and the reason why I chose it is because I have the resources to
relate back to it. My personal understanding about what is a stereotype is that
you get judge or you judge people without learning about them. And that is
something I can understand and able to do for this project therefore I chose
stereotypes.
In the beginning, I did not understand what we are supposed
to be doing with our collages like, how are supposed to be making collages out
of the twenty images that we have? And should we be making collages based on
one of the given subjects or just any collages? It was towards the middle of
the project where I started to understand what these collages are for and
that’s how I started to focus on them by making collages that would show
stereotypes.
Stereotypes is a big topic that it could be anything such as
culture stereotypes however, I chose the type of stereotypes that I have in
hand and that is my dad, Keith Gordon. I have decided to use him as my subject
matter because I have the resources that I need that it could all be primary
more than secondary resource. Primary such as, the negative comments he gets
for looking what he look like now- full faced tattoo with Nazi and Hitler
tattoos and also the positive comments he gets as such being cool, his tattoos
are awesome. I wanted to show these two points in stereotypes way using my dad.
To make these collages, I have used a couple of artists that
had influenced my work such as Jiri Kolar, John Stezaker and Kallen Holloman. I
have used these artist’s technique because there method is a way to show two
kinds of opinion. Like for example, with Jiri Kolar’s cross hatching collage, I
could show the negative side of which others comment on about Keith and a
positive side of which we as his family and friends say about Keith. John
Stezaker- His two face montages shows that even though the person looks like
what they look like now doesn’t mean they have changed. I could be that they
just wanted a new fresh look and wants to look different that’s why they chose
to be that way. Also, Kallen Holloman’s picture on top of a real life situation
shows the past and the present time of that certain person.
Being the art director was a pleasure in a way I was able to
learn new skills through PhotoShop and the idea of being able to learn it then
teaching it to others is a great way to improve communication with others.
Learning new skills for digital work is a way to develop my learning and
abilities for designing such as getting ready for riso printing.
