The audience for this illustration is will be the fan base of whichever artist that the track belongs to. I can choose any fuck artist that i want to although the illustration must relate to the brief and not go off subject or become offensive.
The illustrations must show relate to 2 different tracks from the same artist and it must be clear to see what tracks are being shown by the fan base of the artist or band i have chosen. Also once I have done my illustrations i also need to include the two MP3 files of the songs so they can see if they relate well or not.
As The brief says explore this and be stupid and don't be afraid to take risks and try new things so thats exactly what i plan on doing.
Moving on.. i think the first thing that i am going to do is have a little look into different artists/bands etc that interest me to try and narrow down what artist and songs i am going to choose to illustrate.
Possible Artists I like:
Devlin
Brainwashed
Runaway
London City
Prodigy
Firestarter
Girls
Out of Space
Eminem
Ass like that
Sing For the moment
Toy Soldiers
Cleaning out My Closet
Without Me
My Name is
We Made You
Ludacris
Get Back
whats Your Fantasy
Cadilac Grills
How Low
Stand Up
Dizzee Rascal
Fix Up Look Sharp
Bonkers
I Love You
Stand Up Tall
Holiday
Old Skool
Chase An Status
Smash Tv
End Credits
Hypest Hype
G-Unit
I like the way she do it
Straight Outta South Side
Rider Pt.2
50 Cent
Best Friend
How We Do
What Up Gangsta
In Da Club
Candy Shop
21 Questions
Kanye West
Monster
Runaway
Diamonds From Sierra Lione
Robocop
Kid Cudi
Pursuit of Happiness
Man on the Moon
Lethal B
Pow
Pow 2011
Missy Elliot
Badman
One Minute Man
Nelly
Over and Over again
Party People
Drake
Over
Fireworks
Best I Ever Had
Giggs
Open up
Talking the Hardest
Dont go There
Jay Z
Hate
On to the Next One
Venus Vs Mars
99 Problems
Wiley
From the Drop
Wearing my Rolex
After looking at various artists and listening to more a less my whole I tunes I have decided that I am going to create my two outcomes on Missy Elliot with her two songs Badman and One Minute man I have chose this artist mainly because She is one of my favorite all time female artists and I have listened to her music since i was about 15 and I think her lyrics and heavy baselines will work great with this brief especially the two songs I have chosen as there is a lot I can use from them like the beat and also the lyrics etc.
As for the style on how i am going to create my outcomes I was thinking to do something that will literally illustrate the two songs word for word. To do this my outcomes will have a lot going on but I want to create it in a way that is slightly different because if i don't al i have done is just write the words down to a song which will be rather boring.
Sooo i was thinking something more along the lines of a cartoon comic strip ? This way i could have a little fun with the two songs and also i could mix the lyrics of the songs with imagery etc which i think if its done right it could really pull off well.
I decided to look at different ways that I could illustrate my two tracks one idea I was thinking of doing somebody else has already done on You Tube and i think it works well. The idea is basically to draw various items or visuals that are made through the song. The tricky part is picking out the right visuals to draw as if they aren't the right ones they wont have a strong representative of the song and nobody will get what song it is so they have to be strong. Usually drawing the obvious first thing that pops into your head from the song works best as this video below shows.
I would not be videoing my drawing as the song is going but the outcome is what i am thinking of doing. As you can see from this video more a less everything mentioned in the song lyrics has been drawn down even the name of the track "Electric Fence" was added in which i didn't think they would include but they proved me wrong.
Other than that another idea I had was to make a kind of " Wheres Wally" theme.
I would just have literally everything that's happening in the song happening with a wide number of mini illustrations but i am not too sure about this idea. I think that it would work i just think to make it work and also look a high standard its going to take a lot of time i think it would be fine if i was just doing the one but with doing two of them and the deadline is drawing not too long away i think i would struggle time wise, so i don't really want to start and get one done to realize i will not have time to finish the other. However we shall see how things go as i am still exploring different ways on to convey my outcomes.
As for the comic strip idea i spoke about earlier I was looking around on You Tube and managed to find an example of what i am thinking of doing. Never heard the song in my life and don't know if i ever want to again but the idea is there.
I think this would work well with most of the tracks that I have been looking at and i think that if i kept it quite simple and didn't go over the top i will have the time to create it. Plus mine would not be a moving animation like the video above but more like a page of a comic book running from left to right and then underneath each other. I like this idea its definitely a potential.
After looking at the various ideas and trying some out I have decided that I am going to go with the Idea of having a blank canvas and drawing certain images from the song or lyrics etc in a sort of vector/ cartoon like feel to illustrate the songs I have chosen like the Wire Fence music video that i showed you earlier. apart from it wont be a moving production.I think instead of just drawing a lot or random vectors and placing them in the middle i am going to take a slightly different approach and sort of lay my images out as they are said in the song so i will have a time line of images from the song. This will give it a quite a abstract kind of look to be honest and something different which is what i am wanting to achieve from this. I think by doing this idea along with little phrases from the song in a comic looking typeface it should hopefully pull off quite well.
I have chose to do this idea because after a bit of trial and error I think that this one will work the best and it will be a little more challenging getting the song across as apposed to creating a comic strip that wil tell you word for word the song and i do like a challenge the main challenge being that i have never really used Illustrator to create vectors so its going to be a kind of new experiment for me and should help my along with my illustrator skills and techniques which i think is important. Always up for something new and different.
I also think that this stlye of vector and typo will appeal well to the target audience of Diesel as its more aimed at younger people than it is to the like over 40s so it should fit the criteria well and can be used in different applications with it being vectors like in stores, posters, CD covers, basically anything really its a flexible application
I did try the comic book idea briefly on Illustrator and after working out how many captions i was going to need and how many images it was obvious that it was not going to work as i needed a lot of illustrations along side a mountain of text so i decided against this idea.
As for the "Wheres Wally" idea I decided against this idea more a less as soon as I thought it up. Don't get me wrong i think that it is a great idea but i just think that its going to be an incredible time consuming task especially after I was looking at different Wheres Wally ideas. They are extremely detailed and in my opinion that's the only real reason that it works so I would need a lot more time in order to pull off two completely different outcomes. Plus I don't think i would be able to get the songs across with just using figures etc so this idea unfortunately is going to end here. R.I.P Wally.
Back to my main idea I am going to have all the key things from both songs that I think are relevant to my illustrations. Below I am going to create a list of key words or lyrics for both of my songs chosen.
Missy Elliot-Badman
- Haaaaa
- Trombone
- Drums
- Woop woop
- Shoot
- Deadman
- Badman
- Smashing place
- Bad girl
- Knock them out
- Drums
- Vybl kartel and missy
- Yeah
- Poke
- Crew
- Back Hand
- AK47
- Handgun
- Shots
- Bulletproof
- General
- Metal heart
- Metal hand
- Badman
- Smash the place
- 45 Huskel
- Pay
- Fuck em all
- Its not easy
- Rude on road
- Took to the floor
- Hurt more
- Drums
- Fire
- Don't die
- Bop them in eye
Missy Elliot - One Minute Man
- Minute
- Time
- Ooow
- Love
- Up all night
- Break me off
- Show me what you got
- Its been a long time
- Clocks back
- Maintence man spanner
- Milk carton no reward
- Overflowing
- Big dawg
- Sheep
- All-nighter
- Be a man
- Take my hand
- 1 min 2 min 3 min
- Play hard
- Say God
- Cherry
- Eat it up
- Clocks
- watches
Right now I got all of the words I need for my illustrations I can start thinking about how I am going to lay it out.
Also just so there's no confusion not all of the words from my list will be represented through images. Some of the phrases etc will be included in a relevant font and will be mixed in with my illustrations so that i will end up with both images and text. I have had a few quick goes in my sketch book and I have got the general idea of how it might look and I am happy with it. Once it all comes together it should look great. Hopefully!!.
I am not sure yet if i want to include colour in my illustrations or keep it quite raw with just the drawings and text black and white sort of theme. Although by adding colour to it in the right way it will give it more of a visual edge. Well theres only one way to find out guess I should make a start.
Right then I think that I am going start with Badman track. One of the biggest things about the track is the beat which consists of drums and trombones so I want to include these and probably replicate them to show there importance to the track. I will also need some guns in there and various different vectors. At the moment though time to create the Drums and Trombones.
Right after quite a long time spent in the world of Illustrator I managed to to get my first illustration done for the Badman song. I was going to include my individual images on there own first to show you more of a development side but as there all on one document i thought i would include my finished piece and then evaluate it.
On the whole i am pleased on how it turned out. This is the first time that i have actually created vector work in the illustrator program and I have more a less learned how to use all the features of the pen tool s i went along. At first it was a bit of trial and error but after having a fiddle around and watching some tutorial videos on You tube i was soon on my way and got the hang of it. Basically what i did was to create an image for key words out of the lyrics. These images are some of the words i wrote on the list earlier.
I set the illstration out in the order that the images come along in the song. So the trombones and drums is the very frist thing you hear when the song comes on hence they are first to appear on the page. The images are basically in a timeline of the song. I thought this would be the best way to illustrate the song as if anyone knows the song or is listening to it they will clearly be able to see the relevance to what appear to be quite random images.
Along side the images I have text wrapped small phrases or verses from the song to give it a quite a typographical feel to it also. At first i was just going to have the text in straght lines in a normal font but it didnt look as good. I then found out how to make the text follow custom paths that i created, again this is the first time i have used this in my work so it was kind of a risk and an experiment but i think that it has worked quite well. I think some times its better to take risks and try new styles or you will end up with very simular looking work with no variation.
One good thing that has come out of this piece is the fact that i have no broadened my understanding on Illustrator and it opens up more oppatunities to me when i come to do my future briefs. I think the new skills i have learned will deffinatly be useful in the future.
I also decided to colour in the images but to keep a bit of diversity keep the background pure white. I thought the colour would work well as i said earlier in my development of the idea and i think that it has. I kept the outline of my vecotors black to give it a litle contrast and make the images lift of the bacground.
The overall piece i am pleased with it was a bit of a risk but i took my time with it and stuck it out even when i got stuck and im glad i did its something a bit different not everyone will like it but i suppose thats the case with any design work.I do think that it meets the requirments of the brief. It illustrates the song well in my opinion and along with the key phrases dotted here and there it really finishes it off and also gives it more of a structure.
I am glad out of the several different ideas that i had that i choose this one as i think it worked out the best and i am happy with the end product and i am sure anyone that is a fan of old school Missy Elliot will like it too.
Right moving on. Here is the second illustration that i have done this song being One Minute Man. Again i applied the same method as i did with the first song by picking out all the key words and phrases.
Here it is:
Again i have done the same timeline layout of images to go with the song including the all the little key phrases etc.
For this piece i also went for some slightly more challenging shapes to create using the pen tool. I am very pleased with how all of my images turned out especially the Casio style watch which i added quite a lot of detail. All of my illustrations are either have a 1or 2 point thickness in stoke applied to them so they are nice and clean cut and dont come over to chunky.
As went for the comic book sort of style i decided to go for a matching relevant typface which i think fits in along side my images suberbly. The font is called Que_Fontita. I have never come across it before but when i was looking for a relevant typeface this one worked perfectly for me. Also you might notice that some of the words are larger than others this is because i enlarged them to add emphasis on the word because there was emphasis on the word in the song so i thought it would work well if i did similar for my illustration.
I am very pleased on how both of my final pieces turned out to be honest i tried something new and different what i havent done before and learnt some new techniques and took a risk and i think i manged to pull it off.
I am glad that i chose to go down the route of drawing my own vector images and i am pleased on how it all came together with the colour and the type. I think to look at they both look quite abstract and it also interested my by what images are being represented throught these two songs its made me listen and see them in a different more deepened way now. I also listened to some other songs and just jotted random words from the songs and its very interesting what sort of imagery you get from that once its been broken down. I think by breaking the song down to its bare words and just including a line here and there it really just displays something really diferent and the look that i got from both of the songs is deffinatly something different and i am really happy with how they have took shape.
until next time that's it for now thanks for following my progress of the Diesel design brief.
