Gregory Crewdson, Blue Velvet

Crewdsons photographs look like stills from a film. He employs a whole crew of people to create sets and work behind the scenes, much like a movie set would.

Crewdson has admitted he is heavily influenced by David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. He knew the ideas of David Lynch and went from his ideas to create new ideas.

'Lynch is Crewdson's most obvious source of inspiration. When he was a graduate art student in the mid-1980s, the photographer says he was struck by Lynch's masterpiece, Blue Velvet. "I had the distinct feeling it would change me," he says. Lynch's vision of a dystopian world beneath the suburban idyll of Lumberton - in particular, the unforgettable 15-minute scene in which Kyle MacLachlan hides in a cupboard while Dennis Hopper acts out his S&M fantasies with Isabella Rossellini - left a lasting impression: "I love everything about it - the set, the attention to colour, light and mood."'

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1887082,00.html

The scenes in Blue Velvet are set in the suburbs of America. There is a lot of mystery and disturbing behaviour hiding underneath the town. This is something Crewdson suggests in his work, the darks and lights that he uses and the colours he chooses for his photographs.

There are a lot of browns and plain colours in Blue velvet as there is in Crewdsons work, there is rarely any pattern on walls, he opts instead for a plain wall, or if there is pattern it is old and faded. His colours are not bright and modern.

Comparing the street scene in Blue Velvet (top image) and a photograph from Crewdsons Beneath the Roses (bottom image)you can see how Crewdson may have taken elements of Lynch’s work to create his own image.

Gregory Crewdson Desperate Housewives

Crewdsons work reminds me of the TV show Desperate Housewives, I haven’t really watched the programme that much but seeing his photograph (left) Untitled photo from Crewdson's series Beneath the Roses (2003-2005) reminded me of the snippets I have seen of the TV show. The fact that Crewdson is so heavily influenced by film sets is perhaps a reason why I am instantly reminded and the fact that it is set in an American suburb. Desperate Housewives was first shown in 2004 so it was right in the middle of Crewdson photographing his Beneath the Roses series.

After looking into the TV show a bit more I discovered a character who was quite dark and had many secrets and was played by Kyle MacLauchlan. He also played the part of Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet ( a film said to heavily influence Crewdson) and he also played the detective in Twin Peaks (another David Lynch film/TV series).

Gregory Crewdson Edward Hopper

Gregory Crewdson is famously influenced by is Edward hopper.

"Hopper has been profoundly influential to me as an artist," writes Gregory Crewdson. "Emerging from a distinctly American tradition, Hopper’s work deals with ideas of beauty, sadness, alienation, and desire. I think it is now virtually impossible to read America visually without referring back to the archive of visual images created by artists who found inspiration in Hopper’s paintings. His art has shaped the essential themes and interests in the work of so many contemporary painters, writers, and, above all, photographers and filmmakers."

http://www.wcma.org/press/06/06_Hopper_Crewdson.shtml

Hopper was born in 1882 and died in 1967 and Crewdson was born in 1962. Despite so many years being between them they both deal with the same subject, the American Suburbs and the American way of life. Crewdson is so heavily influenced by the lighting Hopper uses and the sense that what is being shown is only a part of a whole story.

Shown above (bottom image)is a painting by Edward Hopper. It is called “Morning Sun” (1952). It is just filled with so much light, illuminating the wall and the thigh of the woman sitting on the bed, yet you wonder what has just happened. What is about to happen? This is just part of a whole story. What is she looking at? What is she thinking?

Crewdson has obviously taken these ideas on board in his photography. Shown above (top image) is an untitled staged photograph from the book Twilight by Crewdson. A woman is kneeling in her kitchen surrounded by a garden full of flowers.

The light is so important here as it floods into the room. Like with Hoppers figure the woman is sitting staring into a nothingness. You wonder what has just happened. The character has been captured just before or after the climax of the scene.

Gregory Crewdson, Philip-Lorca diCorcia

There are other artists who work in similar ways to Crewdson or who have the same views and ideas. Crewdson did a show with eight other artists in October 2006 called Twilight: Photography in the Magic Hour.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia is a photographer who participated in this show. His work combines a documentary tradition with the fiction that is advertising and cinema. He creates a link between reality and desire.

"It might be said that twilight is a muddled form of clarity. The warm glow that suffuses the ' golden hour' in Los Angeles acts to filter the grim realities, the outright lies, the self-deceptions, which allow Hollywood, and by extension, America to flourish. 'Twilight' provides the rose-coloured glasses that make it possible to see out but not see in.' "
Philip-Lorca diCorcia

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/photography/twilight/diCorcia/index.html

diCorcia also uses artificial light to carefully stage his photographs. He finds random people on the street and pays them to pose in his photographs. In the photograph above he has used Brent Booth, a 21 year old from Des Moines, Iowa. He paid him $30. He puts all this information in the title of the photograph. Ifind it interesting that whilst he stages the pictures the work is also has that element of truth in it as he is using random people and not a model that has been carefully selected.

Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer born in 1962. He studied photography at SUNY Purchase and also has a Masters in Fine Art from Yale University where he has been a member of the faculty since 1993.

Crewdsons photographs are said to be the fine line between phtography and cinema. His work is heavily staged and each photograph requires a whole crew much like a feature film would. Crewdson employs assistants, technicians, make up, wardrobe, and a post production team. He also uses large format cameras and he has a whole selection of lights.

The photographs he stages are about the moment of transition between the before and after of a scene. You know something is about to happen or has just happened but what? Crewdson has said he is not intereted in the before and after and prefers to leave the story untold. It could be said that his photograph can tell the whole story anyway, as the viewer could look for clues as to what has happened or what may be about to happen.

Light plays a very large part in Crewdsons work. It streams through windows, it glows from the sky, it even shines up from the floorboards. The light is worked out in a very technical way. It is used to create a narritive code, different forms of light tell different stories.

One photograph that I do like is of a man on his hands and knees surrounded by streams of lights shining up through holes in his floorboards. (above, bottom image). It is from his Twilight series 2001 and is untitled. The man does not look mad just confused, he is looking suspiciously at these floods of light. I am wondering why he has made the holes. I can only assume he made the holes as there is a toolbox and tools next to him. Why is there light shining through? Is that what he is wondering too? Aliens spring to my mind

Crewdson is good at leaving clues in his photographs. In this photograph the cupboard door has been left open. It looks very neat inside and this may have been where the toolbox is kept. I can see into another room where the light is much brighter and the coffee table next to the single chair has two glasses on it. Was there somebody else there?

These are all clues that Crewdson leaves for us to look at and think and wonder. What even made this man start to saw holes in his floor? Is he looking for the source of the light or is he possessed by whatever is making the lights, again aliens spring to mind.

Animation

When I began the animation project I was reading a book called Burton On Burton, Edited by Mark Salisbury. It is a collection of interviews with the director Tim Burton about every film he has done in his career as an animator and movie director. One film that struck me as sounding quite quite fascinating was a little animation he did called Vincent. Burton had originally written the story to be a childrens book but then he got the oportunity to make a stop motion film. "I wanted to do that kind of animation because i felt there was a gravity to those three dimensional figures that was more real for that story. That was realy important for me , I wanted it to feel more real" This is something i took on board and is part of the reason i made a stop motion film too with 3d chracters.

Burtons story is about a boy called Vincent Malloy who fantiscises he is Vincent Price. Burton is heavily inspired by the Vincent Price/Edgar Allen Poe films. They had quite an effect on him as a child. I was originally going to make my animation in black and white like the Vincent movie is as i felt my tale was quite a dark story. I found it was strange that a small girl could become 18 by wearing a fur coat. I began to think what dark magical powers she may have had that enabled her to do this. Was she a normal girl or was there something witch like about her? Could she cast spells on people? I also thought what dark secrets the coat could have. Where did it come from? Was it possessed? After all this I decided to keep the story simple and not go off on too much of a tangent. I decided to keep the colour to a minimal as it was a cute little story about a little girl and I didn't want the sets to be too fancy. Most of the sets are in black and white, the most colour is in my characters shoes.

I did take a few tips from the Vincent animation, for instance the use of an animal to go from one scene to the other. A section of the film I really liked was when Vincent was walking up the dark stairs to his room. I tried to recreate a similar theme in my animation as my character walks up the stairs to a scary world of her sisters bedroom.

Before i had even seen the animation of Vincent I had seen pictures and had read all about it. I really liked the sound of it and it inspired me to think of all sorts of scenes and chracters.

It wasn't just Vincent that inspired me. Some of the drawings in the book that Tim Burton had done were so good I just had to try and base my character on some of them. In the end my chracter developed and did not look like a Tim Burton character but this was certainly the starting point for the main chracter Flossie Teacake. I also looked at some Quentin Blake illustrations as i found my pictures were beginning to look like his drawings. I then noticed that there is quite a simalarity with some Quentin Blake pictures and Tim Burton. Their characters tend to be tall and lanky, an idea i liked.

I studied a few story boards that Tim Burton had created for his films and this led me to see how I could get my story accross by using story boards.

I then began to look at other story boards and I also refered to some comics to see how the story could be put accross with still images. I looked at the book "The Fundamentals of Animation" by Paul Wells and the story boards and pictures created by people that were in that book. I saw how it was a good idea to document everything and have a plan as to how to make sets or what was to happen next in the animation. This made my life a lot easier when shooting the animation as I didn't have to waste time coming up with new bits for the animation as I went along. All the timing and lighting and angle of the shots had already been worked out.

Some other animataions I also looked at for technical ideas and story lines included Fermant by Tim Macmillan. I liked the way this had been shot, it was like the camera moved so fast that the images just didn't have time. I do not know how this was made but perhaps I will find out and one day try a similar technique. The film is shot in a city and follows peoples lives as it goes along. It winds through streets, parks, and through peoples homes. It was more the technique I was fascinated with with this film, it was so intriguing to watch!

Another animation I really liked was The Littlest Robo by Richard Kenworthy. I really liked the technique again here. It is a much different style and technique from Ferment or any of Burtons films. This animation uses flat colour and it is drawn rather than 3d. As I was looking at film it was more the techniques I was looking at as I was more researching the best way to shoot my animation.

I was looking at different animations and realised sound effects were a good tool as was some comedy in the story. It can really draw people in and allow the audience to interact with the piece. The charcaters didn't have to be human form, or animals, they could be shapes that move and have little chracters of their own. I also noticed colours can represent a lot, good or bad, happy or sad.

I took all these things into account when designing my characters and drew inspiration from all my research.

Amelias Magazine

Amelias magazine has had at least 6 issues out to date. The lastest issue has a glow in the dark cover and previous issues have had spy holes and different paper folds. Some issues have also included scratch and sniff, just another way for the reader to interact with the paper.

Video Game Art by Nic Kelman

I have chosen this example as the front cover immediately appealed to me. It is a 3d cover so when you move it from angle to angle the image moves around. Is makes you want to touch, feel and play with the book even beofre you open it. The images inside the book are so detailed that the reader could spend hours studying just one picture. they really draw you in.

Emily The Strange

Emily The Strange - Seeing Is Deceiving by Rob Reger.

The audience can interact with the character as she has different books each with a different tale. Emily the Strange has a incredible personality and very striking distinctive look. Her hair is long and black, her eyes dark and she is all dressed in black with big white shoes. There are always four black cats with her too.

There are art shows dedicated to Emily The Strange. As there is such a following of the character audiences can really interact with her.

Seeing Is Deceiving is the fourth book. I have chosen this as it jumped out at me inthe book shop. I noticed it straight away as it was a lot smaller than the other books and the plain red drew me in as did the stare of the girl on the front, Emily.

As I flicked through the book for the first time I noticed images used glossy shapes to enhance the ghostlyness. For example Emilys eyes at the beginning have images of herself in them with gloss varnish. This is also the same on the cats collars.

Emily is showing the world how she sees it and how deceptive sight can be. Parts of some pages are cut out to reveal the next page but still allowing it to be part of the previous page. My favorite example of this is on one page the image is Emilys face but the next page the image is actually spiders. It makes the reader look twice, touch the page, turn it over again, interact.

The Anatomy Of Design

This book initially appealed to me because of the soft spongy cover and the bright red colours. The text is very large as is the square book and it is a pleasure to feel and hold.

Inside the book is not simply a two page spread. The page on the right is all pictures and on the left the page is text. The left page then opens to reveal more images. Each page is like this and it is nice to be able to play around with the paper. It is a shame each page is the same. Even though it is interesting to explore through the book, it might be nice to interact with it in different ways.

Myrtle Street

As you walk along Myrtle Street tere are several images on the pavement of a little character. As you walk along the street you see the character change, he does little things like poking out form the pavement giving you a thumbs up. As the majority of people walk looking atthe ground it is the great place to put a little story. as you walk along you become pulled into the images and you wonder what will happen next.
The images remind me of Andre Monsieur, a tall figure outlined in black.
The drawings on Myrtle Street are drawn in black felt tip outline. on some drawings it looks as though the charcater is coming out from undert he paving slab, as he is half hidden. This effect really draws you in.

NON-FORMAT

Non-Format is a creative team who work on a range of projects including art direction, design and illustration for music industry, arts & culture, fashion and advertising clients. They also art directed the monthly music magazine The Wire between 2001 and 2005

Summary Of Research

Whilst looking into Neville Brodys work I came accross an image involving a lot of text typed very densely on a page. There was very small text and within it a larger word. I really liked the dark text and the sheer amount that was on the page and I liked the fact it was on a light background. I decided to try something similar using the words from the songs I had heard so put large volumes of words on the page and recreated the one word in a larger size. I did like this layout so decided to add images. After a few trials I decided to keep this layout in mind and I moved onto looking at Edward Gorey.
I found the books of Edward Gorey very fascinating. I debated whether I should write my own story in a similar theme but instead opted to just look at his visual style. The dark spooky shapes have influenced some of my pages quite heavily as has the work of film director Tim Burton.
The dark spooky trees that feature in the Burton films have surfaced in some of my work. I really like the spindly shapes of the plants.
I also came accross Non-Format, on the internet and I really did like their work. It seems a lot of the work is playing around with text. Swirly spindly shapes feature a lot in the designs and this was something I spent a great deal of time playing around with.

Futurist Typography

In 1909, Filippo Tomasso Marinetti's Futurist Manifeso demanded new artistic forms, in all media.
Painting, theatre, sculpture, music, architecture, cinema and literature were targetted by this manifesto and typography also played a major role. Marinetti's manifesto called for the destruction of outdated theories and assumptions about vision and language, demanding new ideas and forms.
As opposed to Cubism the major artistic movement at the time, Futurist typography found it's roots in poetry and language rather than Cubism's visual basis. The manifesto called for a breaking of the main rules of conventional writing. Marinetti himself is quoted as saying,
"banish punctuation, as well as adjectives, adverbs and conjunctions".
In 1914 the book Zang Tumb Tumb was published and is seen as a futurist masterpiece.
Futurism went on to influence such writers/illustrators as El Lissitzky.


http://colophon.com/gallery/futurism/

Us And Them by Paul Davis

Paul Davis' book is a collection of humerous caricatures from two different perspectives.
On one side you have the American's view of the British, where the American Illustrator shows his observations on the British way of life. Flip the book over and you have the opposite view, that of British observations of American society.
Davis shows the inanity of the human condition in his well observed cartoonlike pictures.

Us and Them by Paul Davis

The Comic Strips Of Posy Simmonds

Posy Simmonds draws with great detail and acuracy. In Gemma Bovery Simmonds has a blend of text, illustrations and comics. She has some of the story telling in the text and some in the illustration. Panels and balloon bubbles are used for speech and the page seems to be designed as a whole.
The drawings have a very smooth flowing feel to them and the gray scale makes it look like a newspaper comic strip.

Gemma Bovery by Posy Simmonds
Indy Magazine
Artists and Illustrators
http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/gemma1.html

El Lissitzky's 2 Squares

2 Squares is a book that opens with "To all children". It is a large book that for the English version uses tracing paper over the underlying pages to allow the images to show through and keeping the Russian words still on the page as part of the design. The tracing paper has the English words laid over the Russian words and they are written in exactly the same style and angle.
Lissitzky does not use a lot of text on the page but the words he does have there are normally at an odd angle and on some pages the letters are even placed the wrong way round.
The two colours used are black and red and these colours along with the story about two squares crashing to earth is how Lissitzky communicates his ideas.
The slanted letters emphasise the idea that the words are part of a tv or radio announcement. The images are also quite angular yet still very simple. They have been drawn in such a way that they convey the action and drama, for example on the "cRash all scattered" page. The words hardly seem necessary yet all seem to be designed carefully to give the full effect.

El Lissitzky About 2 Squares
http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/el/pro.html

Neville Brody's Stupid Face

Neville Brody was the Art Director for "The Face" magazine, a UK fashion magazine he helped to revamp. It was through "The Face" magazine that Brody made his name in the world of Graphic Design.
He experimented widely and so pushed the boundaries of design to extend visual languages. In the August 1984 issue of "The Face" Brody expressed that one did not have to be inhibited by the page and he challenged why the page had to end just because the lines said so. He strived to show how the minimalist style could create great pieces of work and he used a colour theme that was continuous and a simple lettering form.
When Brody began at "The Face" magazine he did not really know about typography and it is said it was this that made him so successful as he would combine existing type faces. He seemed to revolutionise magazine design and "The Face" was seen as the "style bible" due to his input.
Brodie experimented with trying to guide others on how to work and did not simply present them with a solution.

www.bbc.co.uk
The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 2

The Books Of Edward Tufte

Edward Tufte's books get you thinking about the meaning of the words and images. He has written several books including "The Visual Dispay Of Quantitative Information" in which he discusses the use of overhead projectors, computers and videos to give presentations.
The book takes you through some of the best and a few worst graphics and charts ever printed and had over 200 illustrations of statistical graphics. Tufte gives advice for presenting information in a clear and easy to understand way. He shows how to design and edit displays and improve on the graphics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_tufte
https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan The Smartest Kid On Earth

Jimmy Corrigan The Smartest Kid On Earth is a graphic novel. It is visually stunning with simply drawn characters juxtaposed with highly detailed backgrounds, compared with other comics which use more character based drawings. In some other comics the charcaters are the more fantastical elements with their super powers whereas Jimmy Corrigan is a normal person.
The colours used are pale and tend to be blocks of colour rather than shading, this adds a dull element to the storyline about the everyday and patheticness of Jimmy Corrigan.
In places a traditional comic book layout is used with squares and panels showing each scene. However this is not always the case as full page pictures are also used.
The book uses these illustrations rather than text to tell its story.

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware

David Carson's Raygun Magazine

The key visual attributes of David Carson's "Raygun Magazine" was the fact that it abandoned the usual conventions of magazine design. Headlines, columns and page numbers were not used as standard resulting in a more chaotic style than that of its contemporaries.
Carson questioned the role of type in modern design, and his abstract style was admired by others and often copied by the advertising industry. Carson played with the theory that type should go unnoticed and often experimented with multiple fonts.
The layouts featured fonts and images so distorted they were sometimes impossible to see.
Carson communicated his ideas by using devises such as light text against dark background, dark text against dark background, text running accross pages and horizonally printing accross all coloumns. Even photographs would sometimes be placed upside down on purpose. He seemed to like experimenting with alternative layouts.

http://joeclark.org/davidcarson.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carson_%28graphic_designer%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Gun_%28magazine%29
http://www.benitabrewer.com/class/history/images12/raygun3.jpg

The Title Sequences Of Saul Bass

Saul Bass was the motion picture industry's pioneer as far as title sequences were concerned. He was probably best known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock.
The title sequence for Hitchcock's "Psycho" showed how Bass' simple techniques could be used to maximise desired effect. The combination of Bernard Hermann's dramatic score and Bass's moving lines and simple block text give a frenetic almost psychotic feel setting the scene for the events to come.
The lines appear in time with the intense music bringing the words onto the screen and in turn pushing them off from all angles which is a very dramatic effect. This is complemented by the block text which distorts and fragments perfectly in synchronisation with the music.
Bass used the same techniques for the title sequence of "The Man With The Golden Arm" but this time the lines are used in a more laid back manner in sympathy of the films content but still paying attention to the rhythms and pace of the jazz soundtrack. He only uses what he needs rather than overwhelming the screen with unnecessary images.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Bass
YouTube.com (for the film clips)

The Books Of Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey has written and illustrated many books. Despite not having a fondness for children his books were very popular with the little ones.
An example of his work is the book "The Insect God" which is about a little girl named Millicent Frastley who goes missing. It is a very dark morbid book with no happy ending. At one point the parents ask "Is there any hope she is still alive?"
As with other Gorey illustrations the pictures are in black and white and are line drawings. They make the already depressing story seem all the more bleak and dismal. The illustrations are so vivid that even without the words the reader can gain a sense of what is happening in the story. The use of black in this makes the images and stories seem dark and sinister.
The Insect God displayed on the front cover is drawn with a skull as its face like the Death's Head Hawk-moth which has a clear skull shaped pattern on its head. He has his wings stretched out giving an air of superiority. It is a creepy image setting the tone for what is to come within the book.
The dark subject matter and illustrations is the same for Gorey's story "The Gashlycrumb Tinies". Here as in "The Insect God" the children perish in various strange macabre ways.
Gorey's work is highly experimental. He tested producing books that were pop up and wordless and even matchbox size. He also used pseudonyms that were usually anagrams of his name, for example Ogdren Weary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gorey
The World Of Edward Gorey
The Insect God
The Possums Book Of Practical Cats

The Designers Republic

The Designers republic was founded in Sheffield by Ian Anderson. They are well known for designing CD covers for the likes of Aphex Twin, Pulp and Supergrass. The Designers Republic seem to have a close relationship with the music industry as they also have designed flyers for the club Gatecrasher and Warp Records. They were originally created to design flyers for the band Person to Person and have grown from there.
The Supergrass CD cover for "Life On Other Planets" is a little playful as there are lots of sections to the design. It uses symmetrical imges of the band members faces showing different emmotions. These are all in black and white and appear to all come from one source. There is one face at the top of the image that is not symmetrical. It is a stern looking image and seems to be looking down upon the rest of the images.
The only colour on the CD cover is a rainbow which sits above the stern face. The Designers Republic are interested in the effect their design has upon the audience. Perhaps by including a rainbow on the CD cover as the only bit of colour they are using a visual language not only to catch the eye of the consumer but also to show the two sides of life on this planet and presumably LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS too.
This CD cover is quite straightforward compared to others they have done. For example the Aphex Twin cover for "Windowlicker" seems more daring and bizzare and catches the eye in a far more effective way. The Supergrass CD does not seem as experimental as this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Designers_Republic
http://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/
www.fusedmagazine.com
www.littledetroit.net