CRITS
There was another mini crit after our first week of development. This time I didn't find the crits as helpful as before. There wasn't as much criticism as I'd have liked only that none of my ideas felt very connected in their style which I did agree with. It was suggested that I try using borders and drawing inside boxes and narrowed down my ideas. I joined a second crit group and they were a lot more helpful, saying that they really liked computer games as an idea, that the triangle playing was good and the the musical notation could go somewhere. They also picked out that mid summers night dream was a play within a play and that made it good to quote from. They agreed on me needing frames which is something I did try to take from the crit (not very successfully though).
DEVELOPMENTS
As I felt confident with the idea of space invaders computer game as my image only and musical notation with thread in as my type only it only really left type and image to develop as I felt the 2 other ideas were more defined and could be made more or less straight away.
For the space invaders idea I just looked at the original game and the aliens, I decided to paper cut these out after I decided to make paper cutting the medium that brought all the three together. It didn't take very much development and I think it works well on it's own without too much embellishment.
As for the musical notation, I picked one of my favourite classical pieces (Clair de lune by Debussy) and used quink and painted it onto watercolour paper (as I decided that was the nicest quality and colour paper and would work well as a background to all three), I then threaded over the bars with red so it looked more like musical notation. I also painted the word play into the notes but I didn't feel like it was prominent enough, so I cut the word play into the paper and used the black as background.
I reread a mid summers night dream by Shakespeare and outlined the plot and picked out the 4 main characters (Helena, Lysander, hermia and demetrius) and drew them. I enjoyed the characters I made and decided that this was definelty the idea I wanted to go with. I just wasn't sure how I would tie all the ideas together.
I started playing with mediums, ink first followed by paper cutting. I preferred the ink characters over the paper cutting but liked the craft of paper cutting so kept that in mind as I developed the idea. I used ink splatters to show the fairy glitter and magic.
I had a go at cutting the scene out (only a small bit) and using thread in it to try to use bread as a running idea through all three pieces however it didn't work very effectively and I decided against it. But liked the idea that paper cutting could be the thing that tied all three together.
I drew up mini versions of what I had started to put together in my mind, i was imagining a stage with curtains either side and the main event in the middle but instead of curtains making it into the forest which most the play is set in. I also drew puck because i thought it was important he be there as he's the most recognisable thing out of the play. I soon decided to cut out the shapes opting for black paper on top of white watercolour paper (as it had the nicest texture)
I then decided to ink in the middle of the circle and draw out the scene. I also added a border which I thought helped the three work together.
This is the final for midsummers night dream, on reflection I think it is quite busy and maybe it might have been just as interesting with just puck the donkey in the middle with a quote from the play. I was pleased with the overall look for this but wish I had been slower cutting out the borders as they are not as neat as they should be and ruin the overall neatness of it.
This is my space invaders finished, I think it works well as image alone as it's clear what it is. Again the border on this is wonky and I will be buying a new ruler next week so this doesn't happen again.
This is my finished type play poster, out of the three I think I'm mostly disappointed in this one. I think the last minute decision to cut out the word play wasn't the best one. I think I should have thought through the placement better and thought through that the threads would corrupt the type (the y is funny because the threads were too tight and pulled it in). The border was almost perfect on this one but the threading pulled it in and I was forced to stick it down awkwardly and it ruined the outline. The positives pulled from this is that I really liked the ink and thread working together and I will probably use them together in the future as well as the water colour paper as it really absorbed the ink which made for a speedier production with less ink smears.
The feedback for these were really mixed
The positives;
"didn't even realise this was paper cut, so detailed."
"Great use of different mediums"
"Nice paper use"
"What could have been perceived as obvious ideas have been really well crafted into interesting and intricate pieces"
"Seem nostalgic"
"Fun and calming"
The negatives/ critical;
"Borders a bit carelessly cut"
"Change your blades more often"
"Use black for all three"
"Text is abit squished on midsummers night dream"
I was quite pleased with the feedback because it reflected how I felt about my pieces and I didn't feel any of the comments of the negative side were wrong and all were justified. I felt like there were things that I could take away to work on and feel like it's the best feedback I had so far.
Overall I was pleased with these 3 pieces because I think I've tried different things with them and that I experimented a fair bit within the brief to come out with a result that I feel is satisfactory and I can be proud of to an extent (obviously not proud of my borders but that's something to take away for next time - buy better blades and a better ruler).
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