I’ve started doing my research tasks for this project; I have to make observations about light, shadows, reflections and movements, create an online scrapbook of visual inspirations for myself and take some pictures to experiment with mood and what kind of things change the atmosphere of a photograph.
ONLINE SCRAPBOOK
I started with the online scrapbook, as I felt it was the easiest of the 3 tasks, and I felt it would be useful to do the observation and photography one after the other. I created this giant moodboard on Pure Ref, filled with all the things that inspire me most as an artist;
(I had to include it as a screenshot, since it was too big to directly put it into the blog). This mind map is full of all sorts of images that I consider inspirations; Character designs from shows and games, art by certain artists and from certain art movements, art from games and fashion and stills from music videos, amongst other things. Generally I like things that are cute, colourful, lively and unique when it comes to art. I’ll zoom in on some parts to give an idea of what inspires me; Here on the top left is art mostly by artists I follow on social media. Namely, the main 2 artists are Ramdaram, a cartoon artist from south Korea, and RocketBoiArt, an animator and artist from south Africa. I’m a fan of Ramdaram art because it’s very distinct and recognisable, a quality that I admire in artists. It has it’s own sense of personality and it’s very colourful and expressive. Also despite having a simple art style, they experiment with a range of angles and ideas in their work which keeps it interesting. As for RocketBoiArt, I find his style of colouring and drawing really cool. He’s good at capturing energy and movement in still images, and his palettes are always well selected and bold. His art has been used for promotional material and album covers, and I like how he always puts a lot of consideration into the projects he creates art for. Further down are screenshots taken from K-pop music videos. K-pop is a personal interest of mine, but I often find myself looking to it for artistic inspiration due to the quality of the music videos; They’re always directed well to reflect the overall vibe of the song. In the examples on top from Heize’s ‘happen’ music video, directed by Digipedi, influences are taken from the work of Edward hopper to create a vibrant and slightly eerie looking set, which matches the song’s meaning well. I like how colourful the music videos are in general, and there are often small details that have large benefits and add to the videos a lot. On the bottom here I’ve included some fashion, Again mostly from South Korea and Japan. I personally think that the way you dress a character can say a lot about them, So I always try to carefully consider the outfits I put on them; a shy character would probably wear something that doesn’t stand out too much, while a confident character would try to enhance their look as much as they could. I like odd looking fashion pieces, like big platform shoes, abstract headpieces and baggy, puffy clothes, and I often try to incorporate them into my character designs a bit. Styling can also add an atmosphere to the image well; a colourful outfit adds energy and vibrancy, while a dark outfit or one with a lot of contrast can feel more intense. Shape also matters a lot; sharper and more aggressive shapes can pair well with more harsh colours to give off a strong and tough look, while rounder shapes with softer colours on an outfit makes the character look more friendly and cute. Clothing is self expression, and so the way a character dresses themself should reflect a bit of their identity well. Here, I’ve included some fine art; paintings from the Rococo art movement. This movement started in France with an emphasis on pastel colours, movement and theatrics. I’m not really a fan of fine art, but I love how full of life Rococo paintings are. They’re very colourful and looking at them feels like watching a scene from a movie even though they’re still images; the paintings always seem like they have a story behind them. I’ve also included some fun and creative architecture as it encourages me to think outside the box; even things like buildings can be abstract and colourful, and you don’t have to shy away from making things stand out. Here, I’ve included some character designs that are interesting to me. I like how with most of these images, you can get a sense of what kind of a person the character is through things like their facial expressions and body language. I also added some photos I’ve taken myself of artefacts from museums; In a way, some of the art pieces are like ancient character designs, and even back then they considered things like their stances and faces, and what this said about the characters.Lastly at the bottom, I included work from professional artists that I admire, such as Murakami and Daisuke Nimura. Again, I admire how unique and characteristic these artist’s styles are, and I thrive to develop a unique identity as an artist too.
I included other things here too such as album covers, creative packaging for various things and work that I considered interesting and inspirational. As I find other things that interest me, I’ll add them to the mind map. I can look back to this mind map for visual inspirations later on, so I think it’s a useful thing to have.
