Paradise

I listen to most kinds of music, but my core competency is symphonic metal. The style is usually big, powerful, and absolutely unapologetic about its "hugeness." The general aesthetic of this particular scene usually follows the same guidelines, but when it's presented in a visual rather than an audio medium, the results can easily end up looking like a Hot Topic clearance bin. There are many bands and albums that I love, but who honestly go overboard with the whole "metal" persona (think bad fantasy novel covers).

Epica - The Divine Conspiracy

Nightwish - Oceanborn

Now, I love the honesty and confidence of this aesthetic. (Both these albums are great, in my opinion.) It's not a guilty pleasure because I have absolutely no guilt about it. But there is a better way, I think. I wanted to talk about a music video I've been really into lately:

Within Temptation - "Paradise (What About Us?)" ft. Tarja

It's hard to explain just how huge this collaboration is; for the symphonic metal scene it's like Beyoncé and Britney deciding to collaborate. This video has pretty much everything I love all rolled into one: two great symphonic metal voices, a great song, and a sci-fi premise. Two women saving the earth after humanity has destroyed itself is a really beautiful idea too, I think.

The video is, of course, fairly over the top, but here it's obvious that the band has a lot more money/resources than they had for previous releases. That makes all the difference sometimes when the idea is so large; it can't really be executed in a small-scale, more "gritty" production. It just wouldn't fit in.

In addition to Illustrator, I also downloaded a trial of Photoshop...

and let's just say it might be a good thing it's only a trial.

(I made this for a friend who really loves Leonard McCoy. It was a hit.)

Cranky in Space

Someone take Photoshop away from me.

My Boyfriend's Sister is an Awesome Artist

It's not really "new media" but I wanted to share some of her work anyway, especially because she makes this area's scenery look stunning (which is really difficult, IMO).

"Northwest Canyonlands"

"Rowena Sunrise"

"Dry Falls Winter"

Illustrator Trials

I've downloaded a trial of illustrator and have been playing around with it just for kicks and giggles. Most of the things I end up I wouldn't want any human being to see, but this one I actually like quite a bit. So here it is:

The Passion of Alexander McQueen

Illustrator

My first Illustrator attempt! This was a lot of fun (I liked it more than Photoshop, actually). I was also sort of overwhelmed with all the options; it was way too much power for one person to have. The three original letters were K, S, and M (all capitalized). I know why I chose those letters, but I'm not going to talk about it. Take your guesses. I'm not particularly art-oriented, so I usually choose things with which I'm already familiar or really like to work with.

Manipulating text into something completely different was really awesome. Hopefully I'll have enough experience to successfully complete the project.

Teamwork

Illusion of Motion

While reading the textbook section on the illusion of motion in 2-D art, I was really glad to see a page from a comic used as an example. While I haven't read that particular Marvel work, I was reminded of all the fantastic examples of motion in graphic novels in general.

I took a course a few years ago on graphic novels, and motion is an absolutely essential part of the finished work. One of the most compelling titles I read was Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa. The art style showed motion without excessive lines and shading, which I often see in a lot of manga titles (my eyes just aren't able to pick out what, exactly, is going on in some of those panels!).

Here's a great example of the use of lots of clean lines and negative space:

from Barefoot Gen #1: A Cartoon Story Of Hiroshima

Another title on the class list was Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's Watchmen. I'd never seen the movie or read the novel, so it was a surprising, depressing journey all the way through. Unlike Barefoot Gen, which is all in black and white, Watchmen is overflowing with bold, vibrant colors. The image I remember most from the latter is actually an example of an image expressing stillness rather than motion. It depicts the aftermath of the destruction of New York (hopefully I don't spoil it for anyone). 

from Watchmen, chapter XI

Time stands still here. The crowd is moving, but seems to freeze when you look at it because of the bloody doomsday clock in the center of the picture. The clock in particular seems like such a stroke of genius to me; it perfectly portrays the seriousness, horror, and scope of the event. Its detail is used as the cover for chapter XII as well:

from Watchmen, chapter XII

Well, it's been much too long since my last post, so I figured I'd dive right in and talk about some of the reading. The section on color was really interesting, especially since color relationships are one of the more difficult visual concepts for me to understand. I just don't instinctively know which colors should go together in a given situation. My sister, however, knows instantly how to do this. She recently re-painted one of our bathrooms, and picked a light, pinkish orange. She then used purple as an accent color. It looks fantastic, but there's no way I would have ever thought to combine those two colors!

My first instinct is just to stick with black, white, grays, and maybe some accent color. That's a simple combination I can understand and am aesthetically drawn to for some reason. I recently bought an album from one of my favorite bands, and one of the pictures in the inside booklet uses color in this way:

From Wild Card, by ReVamp

The red of the bleeding heart really stands out, not just because it's gruesome, but because red is a very strong color, and it's made even more noticeable by its dingy grey, black, and white surroundings. It's a pretty gross image, but I like the jolt it gives on first viewing.