In today's first session, we tried to establish a initial theme that we would tackle for the rest of the two-week period. My chosen theme was historical posters because I found the subject interesting and it allows me to have a definitive focus from the start instead of being too vague and not developing an idea in time for the end of the project.
I first drew an initial mind map of the all of the areas that I could explore within this project and additional notes for further inspiration. I think the mind-map helps me to process all the potential of this concept without trying to remember it all in my head and it also allows me to shake off any early ideas I might have had so that I could possibly use them later on in the project. At this moment in time I am leaning towards the idea of propaganda for my theme, since I could portray a lot of messages about war, politics, and social issues with just one image.
From looking at the different range of propaganda posters, I can very quickly get a feel for the style and culture of it, so much so that I could probably tell where the posters are from without visual clues like text, or flag identities. For example, the American style of propaganda is very grounded in traditional oil on canvas style of artwork with caricatures of enemies depicting them as ugly and spiteful. They also have a knack at stylising the human characters like the artist Norman Rockwell, who influenced a lot of American commercial artwork, in that they always have that painted/cel-shaded look that was a big part of his style. It's quite interesting also that they play the same tactics in trying to scare the viewer into whatever the government wants you to think, like dramatic scenes, symbols of patriotism, shock value, and a lot of bright vivid colour that makes the piece stand out to the public viewers.
I first drew an initial mind map of the all of the areas that I could explore within this project and additional notes for further inspiration. I think the mind-map helps me to process all the potential of this concept without trying to remember it all in my head and it also allows me to shake off any early ideas I might have had so that I could possibly use them later on in the project. At this moment in time I am leaning towards the idea of propaganda for my theme, since I could portray a lot of messages about war, politics, and social issues with just one image.
From looking at the different range of propaganda posters, I can very quickly get a feel for the style and culture of it, so much so that I could probably tell where the posters are from without visual clues like text, or flag identities. For example, the American style of propaganda is very grounded in traditional oil on canvas style of artwork with caricatures of enemies depicting them as ugly and spiteful. They also have a knack at stylising the human characters like the artist Norman Rockwell, who influenced a lot of American commercial artwork, in that they always have that painted/cel-shaded look that was a big part of his style. It's quite interesting also that they play the same tactics in trying to scare the viewer into whatever the government wants you to think, like dramatic scenes, symbols of patriotism, shock value, and a lot of bright vivid colour that makes the piece stand out to the public viewers.
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