Arthouse

MY PROGRESS - FROM BRIEF TO FINAL IMAGES

After receiving this brief in the post I set about finding out what the meaning and definition of Arthouse really is. I had some ideas beforehand but I felt in order to make a well informed decision as to which films to pick I needed to do this. The great thing was that I instantly knew which films I was going to pick.
I have been a fan of Studio Ghibli films for a long time and this was an obvious choice for myself as soon as the option “World Cinema” was mentioned in the brief. The company is Japanese and after just returning from a trip to Tokyo myself I was full of inspiration from what I had seen and experienced there.
I felt that this was perhaps jumping the gun a little by instantly picking a set of four films to make posters about. So after some research and a little mind mapping I had come up with two other ideas that I felt were worth exploring. These were; a hammer horror night, which would showcase films like the original Dracula and Frankenstein etc. who were made by the company Hammer and the second idea being a film night called ‘Kaiju’ which would show films like godzilla and Gamera.
I made mock ups of the Hammer Horror night and the Kaiju night posters. For the Hammer Horror night I experimented with minimal imagery and type e.g. for the Dracula film poster I placed two upside down white triangle next to each other which symbolised the fangs of Dracula and so on and so forth for the other posters. I also put together some posters using typical Hammer Horror typography which is iconic of the original posters. Even though the development was going well I really didn’t enjoy making these posters and I didn’t feel they truly depicted my style of work.
I then moved on to look at how I could explore the ‘Kaiju’ film night. These were all Japanese films and the name Kaiju means monster in Japanese so I began by trying to make the perfect lettering which lent itself to Japanese typography used in the original poster for godzilla etc. After asking a number of people if they could read the word Kaiju I got a mixed review, some people could see it and some could not. Due to the mixed reaction this immediately put me off wanting to continue with this idea. After coming away from it for a while I decided to push on with making visuals in hope that marrying the text and visuals together it may look better. At first I tried to draw each poster and quickly moved to collage as I seem to have lost my ability to draw. Using patterns to create a new and rather modern looking Godzilla I was quite happy however the same effect didn’t carry through to the other posters. I really didn’t feel confident in advertising and designing posters for films I had only got a glimpse of. So I went back to the drawing board.
I came back to my Studio Ghibli idea and as it so happened I came across and image of spirited away in which someone had drawn the bath house from memory in a block colour of red and then an overlay of a girls silhouette. This immediately spoke to me as a creative. I had previously been struggling in how to produce posters using Studio Ghibli images because they are so unique and stylised that I thought it would hold me back but this image showed me that it didn’t need to be that way.
Looking at the DVD boxes for the Studio Ghibli films I realised that to most other people the covers look like they would be aimed at children due to their animated style. However, the stories within the films and the meanings behind the animations give enjoyment to both children and adults. So, as the DVD covers only really appealed to children and may be overlooked by anyone older yet knowing that they would still find enjoyment in the films I felt I needed to create posters that advertised the films to an older audience while creating posters that still put across the unique style of the Studio Ghibli animations.
The choice of red and white was to try and hint at the Japanese backgrounds of the films. I also wanted to the focus to be upon the drawings. I took stills from the films and put them straight into illustrator. I picked object or characters from each film that weren’t central to the plot but were there in key parts e.g. the sweet box is used throughout GOTF by the older brother, he gives it to his younger sister as a pick me up or a treat. When his little sister dies he realises the sweet box is empty also. People who have already seen the films would also pick up on the subtle references and perhaps get a slight enjoyment in recognising such images. The typeface used was a similar typeface used on the covers of the DVD boxes and I felt keeping such a simple colour palette and using the same typeface on each poster unified them as a set and drew attention the images.

SUMMER PROJECT REVIEW
Together in our tutorials we reviewed each other’s posters. I was a little worried beforehand that they were too simple and that made them boring. They were well received by my group and having put them up on my own blog I have received a couple of good comments about them. My tutor lizz made a good observation that a couple of posters needed working on so that they worked a little better as a set. She also mentioned that I could make each poster work a little harder which is what I was expecting to hear. She suggested changing the typeface of each title of the film. I believe this would add more character and would take away and fears about the posters looking boring or plain.

National Museum of Modern Art -Tokyo

While on a trip to tokyo in the summer i managed to visit this gallery, surprisingly it was really easy to find as it was right next to the Imperial Palace and hosts a number of stunning sculptures outside of it. At first glance they looked like wooden archways that you could sit under yet they provided no shade or cover and then with closer inspection I could see that they were meant to (or what I think they were meant) to look like dinosaurs as the reached up to the balcony yet they were without heads or features.
Once inside I realised it was a fairly small gallery (in comparison to the size of tokyo) and we were unable to take pictures inside which was a shame because the first room was of stunning paintings and sculptures from the Meiji (1868-1912) and Taisho (1912-1926) periods and gave me an interesting insight into the Japanese art of that time. 1907 saw the launch of the annual Bunten in Japan (or the Ministry of Education Exhibition). It was established as a part of the Meiji Government’s educational policy the government-sponsored painting and sculpture competition had a great influence on subsequent developments in the Japanese art world. The art from these periods is unlike any other and is now recognised as traditional Japanese art. At the time this style broke from the conventionalities in various aspects including shading, perspective, and colour composition, establishing itself as it’s own genre of arts.
There was one particular painting that caught my eye, it was so stunning and interesting and some what different to all the other paintings in the collection. It features Kannon a Buddhist Goddess described as the Lord of compassion, goddess of Mercy who is riding a dragon with a willow branch in one hand and a water cup in the other. Having later researched into the painting I found that the Artist Harada Naojiro had studied in Germany and made this piece by referring to European paintings of religious figures and at the same time referred to Japanese pieces featuring Kannon. He utilzed his references by applying realistic representation of oil painting to a traditional Japanese subject. After further research it seems to have caused quite a stir and generated fierce debates about his work. Overall to look at the piece is really striking yet breathtaking and due to the size of the piece it really would take over any room no matter how big or small.
Progressing through the gallery was a progression through time getting more and more modern and innovative nearer the end. There was a striking difference to the first and final pieces in the collection. The next piece that really caught my eye was in the Art of Pre War Showa Period. The pieces in this area related to the mostly to the feelings that were floating around Japan at the time. For instance one piece that really grabbed me was a globe made of blackboard material by the Artist Kawayguchi Tatsuo. By making a globe from blackboard material the artist is suggesting that national borders are as trivial and erasable as lines on a blackboard. I did however wonder why this Artist had such a view yet I didn’t have much knowledge about Japan’s History but after researching the Japan Time’s said that “This attitude may have something to do with Kawaguchi’s experience as a child in wartime Japan, then growing up as part of a generation disillusioned with nationalism. So, then, what does he place his faith in?” Cultivating a way for egoless Art, by Marius Gombrich, Japan Times 6/11/09.
Going through the gallery and looking at the more recent pieces of art I didn’t find them as interesting as the earlier pieces I had seen this was mainly because a number of these pieces were by already famous artists and spoke nothing of the art scene or art movement within Japan which was really quite disheartening. However what I had already seen made up for the anti-climax of the final rooms. They gave me a great insight into Japanese Art history and I got to see original drawings and paintings at first hand.

The theme of the books is all about control and then the character tries to break and go against this control
the bar code is a way of controlling books and often overlooked i wanted to make it the focus of my design and i wanted to break away from the usual conventions of book design
each book cover is blank apart from number on it and the reader much follow each line the number is on on the box in order to find out which book is which, therefore the reader is being controlled by my design.