Thursday 6 May 2010

Functions of Illustration - Idea Generation

Functions of Illustration

Our Brief was to chose our own topic and produce 3 illustrations falling under the categories, commentable, decorative and informative. I was spoilt for choice and found it difficult in the beginning picking a topic that i was happy with, here is are some of my ideas which didn't get chosen..

Iceland - volcanic eruption, monumental downfall (picture of Iceland with a sad face)

The great Spring gamble - the long, cold Winter hasn't necessarily been bad news for all out flora and fauna.

Social Issues - Survailance, Social Paranoia, Mental Health (statistics)

Free Parties and the War on Drugs - making a guide to partying (hard)

Home Surgery Parties - looking at people that like to inject themselves a lot with plastic and the people just at just a little bit gross, cutting open their heads when drunk for a laugh... (that was my very close second)

However all of this didn't attract me as much as an article i read in meat magazine and in the Vice magazine about Urban Foxes. There were 2 very different sides to each article - one a story about how London had benifited from have urban foxes and how people were letting them into their houses and feeding them by hand.
Whereas in the other magazine the article titled kill the foxes was about how some young boys in London were hunting the disease ridden foxes, (whose piss causes blindness and saliva that carries e-colia and meningitis) Not just hunting, but had dedicated their lives to torturing and killing urban foxes with cricket bats, pellet guns and snooker cues.

So how can this topic be translated into image - complying to my brief functions of illustration?? I began by producing a mind-map of all the ways i could do this:

Keeping a scrap book full of inspirational images (related to theme)
Do an animation on the wall (using Photoshop)
Spray paint my bin/ wall or floor
Photocopy one image in one colour and then put it back through and photocopy another image in another colour
Henna Tattoo
Make Stamps
Installation
Draw on /shave on an animal
Prints - screen, lino, mono
T-shirt designs - print on tees or just draw straight onto them
Draw using toothpaste
Draw on stickers and badges
Scarification/ Body Modification
Spinning disks,
Zoetrope
Leave your work black and white and get someone else to colour it in
double expose film in a darkroom
Pinhole camera

etc......

And it doesn't end there... I then went on to linking these ways of making images to ideas related to Urban foxes...

Spinning disk - Foxes like to eat cheese, peanuts, rice pudding, grapes, cat and dog food.
Zeotrope - Animals morphing




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