Guest: Mike Lemanski

Mike Lemanski

Illustrator/Graphic Designer

JUST DO GOOD WORK 









That's about the best you can do.

Deconstructing My Self portrait

This lesson we took time away from having a direction and focused on the power of play and the process of 'doing' by making cut-ups based on our-self.

The first thing we did was get an A4 sheet black and white photo of our-self to deconstruct and re-create ourselves into an A5 format. My initial process was to cut it up evenly and try to mirror my movements for each piece I cut. e.g. if I moved one piece clockwise I would counterclockwise an alternative piece.

I also used visual intuition on what I feel felt 'right' at the time through colour, composition and style. While this image is clearly not 'normal' there is still the elements of a face which gives good insight on how our brain recognise faces and facial features.

The next task was to interpret our new Frankenstein creation collage into a drawing. I used bold sharpie; my go to drawing tool for quick and messy (mindless) drawings. I tried to focus on shade, shape and overall appearance the outcome was sketchy and odd.

Following on from this task we were given a new method to work with. We had to scan our faces into a scanner to use to create another cut up. I had previously done a project around scanography in college and while I may regret it, here is my post dedicated to scanography here. In attempt to make my scan odd I tried to move along with the scanner intentionally elongating and deforming my face. I intentionally used a red scalf as a method of getting texture into the scan.

After getting my printed A3 scan I got to work into once again deconstructing it. This time I attempted a more glitch inspired, sharp edged kind of look. I put most emphasis on arranging my scalf pattern in an interesting manner, seeing it as a focus point to my overall image, my final outcome can be seen below along with other students outcomes.

 The final task of the workshop was to re-create a self portrait using textures. As someone who is often afraid to use textures, I was both excited and nervous to implement them into my own work I found the task surprisingly easy using the patterns as shades of grey like tones and even playing around with more 3D inspired aspects such as crumpled paper to represent my wavy hair more visually. Below is the image I used for reference and the outcome of my work.

To continue playing around with these textures I decided to replicate one of my more cartoon-ish art styles out of  the patterned paper. I thought it would give my style a cutesy pop-art and visually stimulating style. It was really fun to see my usual cartoony sketch made more textured, something I would have probably avoided if I hadn't done similar work in the workshop.

The reason these tasks are so enjoyable is the lack of thought that needs to go into it, a true free flowing process. Each task was fast paced to disconnect a sense of sentiment to the images and force a 'just do it' attitude. These activities reminded me of dadaism and the fun of random acts and oddness that can happen during a process.

Playful type - Nozaki Azusa

I recently came across this fun illustrative type by Nozaki Azusa. I love the multi-lingual aspect to the visuals of the type, even without an understanding of the word, you can take a good guess through the style and approach. The pastel colour schemes also give a sense of unity to the pieces together.

拉麺 or ramen

電波悪い or bad connection.

元気 or energetic.

 

早起き or get up early.


http://designtaxi.com/news/396359/Fun-Experimental-Japanese-Typography-Brought-To-Life-Via-Geometry-And-Color/

80's glam

Made a poster from iconography and doodles inspired by radical 80s style

Boiling technique

In this session we were taught more about the process of the boiling technique. Having previously used this technique before here and here I felt relatively confident with this process and the possibilities of what I can do. This process works best with hand drawn material as it gives the sense of movement. The more frames you add the more messy or fluid the animation will become.

I did a few sketches of ideas and shapes I want to implement into my work and came up with the theme of childhood video games. The gamecube console is by standard a dark purple. I intended to use that scheme in my own work.

 

nostalgia from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.

I decided to make an animation related to my project to play around with the themes of the project in an animated way.

apple of my eye from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.

Creative Exchange Week - C4D Xpresso

This session was an extended understanding of the potential of C4D. We delved into the more complex aspects of the software mostly focusing on the uses of the Xpresso tool.This tool works like a very simplistic visual coding layout with input and output formulas. Depending on the different inputs and outputs you put into the software determines the outcome for your work.

this tool allowed us to time music beats to shape movement, have objects follow set paths and group animate objects together.

Music is sharp from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.

Ball bot following a path from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.

ufo from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.