!!!! WELCOME TO THE NCC ART ROOM !!!! Hi there! This is a new experiment Mr.Craig is going to try as an even easier way of bringing you examples of student work and to keep his image set organized and useful. Let me know if you are using it, if you find any problems or dead links and if there is anything you would like to see!
We will be creating a Lino Cut print utilizing the forms seen in Pacific Northwest Coastal art. This will draw together many of the themes and artistic concepts that we have studied across this semester - abstraction, symbolism, contrast, positive/negative space, contour/outline, colour, repetition, and the synthesis of examples/influences/inspirations into original forms.
You have been given a great reading package describing the traditions and cultures of this region as well as a plethora of design related information. Read this.
Using our questioning hierarchy that we have been practicing across this semester create 3 questions based on the readings to submit to Mr.Craig. This may be submitted physically or digitally by emailing to nccart@gmail.com.
Complete the animal abstraction exercise using one of the photographs provided in class as the basis. Compare with your peers. Consider what parts are most successful in each of your works.
Choose an image/design to use as the basis for your explorations of this style. Subject is open and designs may be traditionally based or totally radical (meaning you can make pretty much whatever you want - have fun in your explorations!!!!).
Ensure that you really focus on Formline, Ovoids, "S" Shapes, "U" shapes/Crescents, and Trigons - these are the formal components of this style and need to be well represented in your design. Bottom line this is going to call upon you to really THINK and PLAN your designs (*GASP*). I wish you the best of luck and recommend a great deal of trial and error working through your plan and reworking/editing it until you are genuinely satisfied!
Use the process and references found in your reading package to help you work through your design - and use the internet and class books to inform your decisions.
Here are some videos to help you work through designs and forms:
This one is a little long (70 minutes) but SUPER good! I HIGHLY recommend taking the time to watch it.
Formline: An Evolving Art by Bill Holm - http://youtu.be/lQZPNbDRg_w
Character Design Sheet
– Please submit by email to
nccart@gmail.com or place in the Culminating Project Dropbox
1. 1. Describe the setting into which this character
fits. Include at least 10 images from your Visual reference file. 2 of the 10
images must be photos of your own transportation/habitation project and your landscape (or alternate where discussed) portions
of the project. Any other projects or designs you have that relate may be
included in this image file as well.
2. 2. Who is your character? What is their story? Are
they representative of the world in general or are they a particular exception?
Explain.
3. 3. What are the defining visual Characteristics of
the Character – how do they support/connect to the above story?
4. 4. What equipment/costuming/additional details help
to reinforce your context/characterization?
When a Pixar artist is designing a character there are a number of areas they explore to ensure a successful character design.
Research and evaluate It can be helpful to try and deconstruct why certain characters and their characteristics work and why some don't. Study other characters and think about what makes some successful and what in particular you like about them. Who is it aimed at? Think about your audience. Characters aimed at young children, for example, are typically designed around basic shapes and bright colours. Visual impact Whether you're creating a monkey, robot or monster, you can guarantee there are going to be a hundred other similar creations out there. Your character needs to be strong and interesting in a visual sense to get people's attention. Exaggerated characteristics Exaggerating the defining features of your character will help it appear larger than life. Exaggerated features will also help viewers to identify the character's key qualities.
Colour Colours can help communicate a character's personality. Typically, dark colours such as black, purples and greys depict baddies with malevolent intentions. Light colours such as white, blues, pinks and yellows express innocence, good and purity.
Conveying personality Interesting looks alone do not necessarily make for a good character; its personality is key as well. A character's personality can be revealed through animations, where we see how it reacts to certain situations. The personality of your character doesn't have to be particularly agreeable, but it does need to be interesting (unless your characters is purposely dull). Express yourself Expressions showing a character's range of emotions and depicting its ups and downs will further flesh out your character. Depending on its personality, a figure's emotions might be muted and wry or explosive and wildly exaggerated. Goals and dreams The driving force behind a character's personality is what it wants to achieve. TOften the incompleteness or flaws in a character are what make it interesting. Building back stories If you're planning for your character to exist within comics and animations then developing its back story is important. Where it comes from, how it came to exist and any life-changing events it has experienced are going to help back up the solidity of, and subsequent belief in, your character. Sometimes the telling of a character's back story can be more interesting than the character's present adventures. Beyond the character In the same way that you create a history for your character, you need to create an environment for it to help further cement believability in your creation. The world in which the character lives and interacts should in some way make sense to who the character is and what it gets up to. Fine-tuning a figure Question each element of your creation, especially things such as its facial features. The slightest alteration can have a great effect on how your character is perceived.
Video games are increasingly shaping our discourse on science and warfare by letting us explore worlds that may be decades or centuries off. For some titles, like the Fallout franchise, a series of video games depicting American society after a nuclear apocalypse, they can help us see facets of today’s conflicts more clearly.
Fallout offers a glimpse into an exaggerated 1950s-era pre-war culture, whose hokey facade is stripped away after a 21st century Cold War between the United States and China escalates into nuclear war. With its apocalyptic landscape and Cold War backstory, Fallout’s landscape is the chaos and political dysfunction of America as a war-torn failed state. The line between order and chaos is blurred as rival factions vie for control over the wastelands, battling for populations, resources, and technology. While some factions are holdovers of the past world order, others are born out of the power vacuum caused by a devastating war.
One of the most insightful titles, Fallout: New Vegas, was released in 2010. Through the game’s immersive open environment, which allows players to roam freely and learn about the expansive game world, game developers are able to create a narrative which contains incredible levels of complexity and layers of narratives within a simple storyline. It was, and is, a game worth playing for its narrative and visuals but it can also be experienced as an allegory for the Iraq War. While there is plenty of art that can fit into an occupier-occupied construct, many of New Vegas’ elements can be seen in today’s challenges with centralized power, insurgency and resource control in Iraq.
Image: Bethesda Softworks
Set in post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, New Vegas represents a caricature of its real-life inspiration: drugs, prostitution, corruption, and crime are rampant. The city has semi-autonomy within the New California Republic (NCR), which has stationed troops in the region to protect a vital strategic asset, the Hoover Dam, under threat by a burgeoning insurgency.
The NCR, which can be seen as an analogue for coalition forces in Iraq, controls the surrounding region around New Vegas through major military installations along the immediate periphery of the city. Meanwhile New Vegas’ local authority, representing more or less the Iraqi government, enjoys a wealth of NCR services, security, economic projects, NGOs, but is eager to utilize these services to its own ends. This cold tension between the NCR and New Vegas is contrasted with the active insurgency within the NCR, Caesar’s Legion, representing the guerilla warfare between the US and local, often Sunni, militias during Iraq’s occupation.
It is the nature of Caesar’s Legion that makes the game a prophetic analogy for the current situation with ISIS in Iraq. Caesar’s Legion does not fight a guerilla war against the NCR. Instead the insurgency has developed into movement warfare (see David Galula’s Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice) where the insurgency fields a regular army which takes and holds territory. Fundamental to their ideology are gruesome punishments, crucifixion and enslavement being their most common, which are dealt to criminals and civilian populations alike. Its battle over control of the dam presents a striking comparison to the importance of the dams in Iraq to territorial control.
Perhaps it is coincidence that the events of Fallout: New Vegas resemble those of current Iraq. The game does not depict a society characterized by hundreds of years of sectarian tensions, nor a government which represents those tensions so starkly. However, the similarities between the current reality in Iraq and the virtual reality in New Vegas gives insight into two key factors of war within failed states. Water And Order
As a geographic feature and necessity for life, water is both cheap to exploit and vital for supply and control of a population, and has been the focal-point of failed-state conflict, notably in Sudan, Darfur, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As seen in Fallout: New Vegas and demonstrated by ISIS in Mosul and Ramadi, preexisting infrastructure built to generate power from water and dispense it as a resource can be readily adapted to suit the purpose of the occupier. Even without a dam, controlling water as a resource ensures the occupier’s role as a service provider, the fundamental metric of victory in a failed-state. The impact of this resource can be further augmented quite cheaply, to the benefit of factions with means limited by internal strife: crude water purification and irrigation can be achieved cheaply and reap significant reward. This is also explored on film in Mad Max: Fury Road.
Providing order to a population is another essential role for the state. As such, in a failed-state, where law and order is compromised or has collapsed, factional competition will center on filling a security void. In Fallout: New Vegas, Caesar’s Legion and its ideology, centered on a brutal Roman-inspired rule of law, is shown as the inevitable outcome of corrupt management and insecurity within the NCR. Looking at Caesar’s Legion, or indeed countless other historical examples of this phenomenon, it is no surprise that ISIS’ interpretation of Sharia law has received support from Sunnis in a country where corruption, insecurity, and sectarian aggression dominate a Shiite-favoring judicial system.
Fallout is perhaps just a game, however it is also one of many titles that can offer policymakers and leaders, both civilian and military, a look at complex future worlds that are imaginative yet remain rooted in today’s security problems. With a new Fallout installment being released November 10, it will be worth watching to see what kind of post-apocalyptic fable the developers have crafted to discuss conflicts of the present, past, and future.
As the franchise tagline hints: “War never changes.”
Monoform projects are those where many artists take on a singular object/shape etc. and put their own spin on decorating and redesigning it. Some great examples of this include THE VADER PROJECT and the populist sculpture/Vinyl toys project done in Grade 11 here at NCC.
Examples of this type of thinking are not limited to the world of fine art - but rather can be found all around you on a regular basis. A great and creative example of this is in aftermarket wheel design for the automotive industry - custom and decorative wheels are all made of the same basic circles in standard sizes yet give a wondrous opportunity for creative decoration and design!
In this particular exercise you will need to work towards what is generally referred to as a concept drawing.
The sketchbook portion of this task is to take the simple circle (at least 4 inches in diameter) and redesign it to create a great visual impact as the custom wheels of a car or bike. Aside from simply designing the object concept, however, you will also need to give consideration as to the type of vehicle it will be attached to. You will have to explain how it relates to the design of the vehicle in terms of form, function, colour, shape, audience/consumer and your general design choices. In explaining I would encourage you to give some thought (and include notes/pictures or sketches) as to what kind of car you are designing for and how this wheel would relate to the overall impression of the vehicle. Does it subtly compliment the overall look? Does it use contrast to create additional focus and specifically draw attention? Does it rely on the vehicle having additional customization/colours etc? Does it add function or is it purely decorative?
Using our questioning hierarchy that we have been practicing across this semester create 3 questions based on the readings to submit to Mr.Craig. This may be submitted physically or digitally by emailing to nccart@gmail.com. 
