contextual practice
18th november
A narrative might be really clear or cryptic and abstract as shown in many mythological tales and stories. Narratives have been used for many years to visually display the history of a particular area.In ancient Roman architecture the intricate designs and details would imply a clear narrative. The lack of words can be substituted with actions, implied movement and clear directions with narrative.
Today I worked on building a narrative for my chosen story and translating this into a clear visual storyboard. Originally i had taken a more detailed approach to designing the storyboards, but I realized that working roughly was quicker and more efficient for processing ideas. In the end I had 9 story board panels in a variety of different styles.
19th november - developing story board and ink drawing
Today we developed our ideas and stories by seeing how we can depict and translate the characters and aspects in our stories into simple black and white shapes so it will translate into print nicely. Initially my natural instinct was to do detailed studies, but after focusing less on the details I filled in the shadows with block colour to create a more impressionistic depiction. I used reference photos from stills from the 2016 movie "The Glass Fortress" which was a modern rendition of Zamyatin's book. I wanted to capture the idea of monotony and humans carrying our autonomous actions, stripping them of their humanity, as explore in the novel.
20th november - finishing the design
21st november - inking the panels and preparing for screenprinting
After finalizing the design and details of my panels, I did the outlines in black ink. Since my design was quite detailed and had a few elements to it, I though that going for a high contrast appearance with block shading would give it a very strong graphic element. I have yet to decide exactly where the colours will go, however some of the white space I left reserved for halftone shading which will give my design a bit more depth and hopefully will make it easier to pick out the details. In terms of the narrative and sticking to the original plot, I have changed and sacrificed a few details in order to make the final story easier to read visually.
22nd november - preparing the positive
To prepare the positive I had to edit the scans that I did since they were not perfect and didn't actually line up correctly. I went into illustrator to clean up these imperfections to make sure that my final result was as accurately aligned as possible. Once I did this I vectorised the entire thing to get it as clean and sharp as possible, and then traced the sky with the pen tool and added a halftone effect to add a bit more detail and to help the sky contrast against everything else.
25th november - cutting the stencil
With my design decided to go with a simple colour scheme where the colour would be used sparingly and not too much as i didn't want to make the already quite detailed design any noisier than necessary. I stuck to using the colour consistently and so that meant only for certain elements, i.e only for the floor or only the sky. After considering the options, I went for using colour for the floor and the wall since they are shown in every single panel and therefore wouldn't be used inefficiently. This has a few exceptions of the blood that is shown in the last panel, and this is also why I chose to go with using red as a base colour since I can only use one colour, and also to reflect the dystopian environment. After the cutting the stencil carefully, I printed three prints. all using the same colour. Looking back on it, I should've tried some other colour options and placement for variation.
28th november - printing the positive
the main concern with printing the positive was the alignment with the stencil. Two of the prints turned out fairly well but one of them was really misaligned. This is inevitable with the screenprinting process especially without the help of registration marks
research
WE
"We" is a Russian dystopian novel written in 1921 by Yevgeny Zamyatin. He was inspired to write this novel as he was deeply disturbed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the book actually was banned by the Soviet censorship board. The novel focuses on the conformity on a totalitarian state, where there is an inhumane level of surveillance and control over the public and their private lives. Everything is run by logic and reason rather than ethics or morality, including the justice system. George Orwell claims that it was one of the books that inspired him to write 1984.
We Summary
- A futuristic dystopian dictatorship called the One State is building a ship for defence against other planets.
- The main engineer D-503 journals his days on the ship.
- In a world that monitors and controls people’s every action, he meets 1330 who breaks the rules and challenges the system and becomes attracted to her.
- Dreams are considered a mental illness in this world and D-503 starts experiencing these dreams and he learns that 1-330 is in an organisation that aims to bring down the One State.
- 1-330 becomes pregnant and attempt to leave the One State and breaks out of the Green Wall.
- D-503 end up getting a lobotomy because of the “dreams” and his imagination is removed, to forcefully making him conform to the One State. I-330’s plan is discovered and she’s sentenced to death.
- The story ends with parts of the green wall being removed and society begins to rebel, nature begins to flourish and the One State is unlikely to continue.
the glass fortress (2016)
The Glass Fortress is a modern adaptation film of Zamyatin's We. Shot in black and white, the dystopian environment captures the bleak lives of the individuals who are under the rule of the One State.
Gerd Arntz
Gerd Arntz was a German Modernist artist born in 1900 who was mostly known for his woodcuts. The woodcuts often have themes of different social classes and their struggles depicted in these abstract woodcut scenes. His style is typically quite blocky, geometric and high contrast. At first he was not aware that his graphical work could play a role in the political struggle at the time, and his work was used in political publications and magazines.
final outcome