Fiction records | Unit X

The main things that I developed in this project was my digital drawing skills, use of After Effects and animation skills. However I feel I have spent more time doing digital drawing than the other areas, so for that reason I feel I could have improved my animation and After Effects skills had given more time. However, my digital drawing skills tie into animation as I did all of the animation drawing digitally and my drawings can be further animated. After doing my guitar illustrations I decided to draw some other instruments and while digitally drawing a Saxophone I decided to keep the drawing as just outlines/linework and play around with changing the line colours on different coloured background. I especially like the ones with the black backgrounds as the Saxophone's look neon/lit up. However my favourite would probably be the yellow background and red and blue Saxophone's overlapping as it reminds me of a Jazz poster, similar to the w...

We have decided to run with the idea of celebrating the 40 years of Fiction Records in a narrative response featuring all the bands they've worked with in different eras and taking inspiration from how their design and aesthetic has developed and changed over the years. Collaboration in the creative industry is extremely important as some artists/creatives may need some work created for them that they don’t have the skills to do themselves. For example, a musician would like help when creating their music videos and tour videos. So their label would also have a say in this. But a musician would also need an illustrator/graphic designer/photographer to design their album artworks, tour posters, logos etc. They might have multiple creatives doing different things therefore they’d have to collaborate and get rights so they can all create work together. In this project I collaborated with my group by trying out animation doodles over film and video that the filmmaker came up wi...

I thought it would be useful to look at some of the creatives that came up with the artwork for some of the bands on Fiction Records. I first looked at Crystal Castles' albums. Their albums are often photography more than artwork/design based. The album cover for III was by Samuel Aranda, a photojournalist. This shows that photographers also have their work used as album covers, not just illustrators and graphic designers.  In contrast to this, Kaiser Chiefs often use illustrators and designers for their album covers. I particularly like the album cover for their latest release "Stay Together" as it ties in with my other research - show by bold, bright colours and funky shapes and patterns. It was created by Salvador Design  who also helped create some music videos with the band.  I also looked at Tame Impala's album "Currents". The album art and its accompanying singles were by Robert Beatty.   Kevin Parker has said  '' ...

I decided to look at some of the music videos by bands/artists on Fiction Records to get some inspiration and ideas from film rather than posters/artwork. I particularly liked ‘The Amazon’s’ video for ‘Ultraviolet’ as I enjoyed the different lighting effects and the animation work of different shapes and patterns that bounced off the musicians at different points throughout the video. I thought that this would be a fun thing to try in my own work so I would like to try out some animation like this, maybe some over our own videos. As I go to a lot of gigs and festivals I thought maybe looking at some of the advertising/promo videos would also be useful. I decided to look at some Download festival promo first as it is a festival I am familiar with and regularly attend. I like how the video includes the logo and general aesthetic of the festival.  I wanted to also look at a different festival so I can compare the different promo videos for different kind of festi...

After looking at music posters/advertisements I decided to do some digital drawings of some musical instruments, starting with guitars. I decided to use a realistic approach to the guitars but give them contrasting bold backgrounds. I also decided to add some shapes inspired by watching some music videos, and I like the abstract feel combined with the detailed guitars.  I plan on doing some illustrations of other musical instruments, and I particularly want to try overlapping outlines of instruments rather than spending a lot of time on giving each instrument an entirely finished outcome. I also plan on doing some poster designs and gifs with these outcomes.

I decided to look at some music posters to get some ideas of how music is advertised and for some artistic inspiration. I noticed a lot of music posters have bold colours, shapes and font and want to explore this in my own work. I also noticed the aesthetic of many music posters go with the genre of music. I plan on doing some illustrations of musical instruments with bold colours and shapes inspired by these posters. While researching music posters I came across the work of Craig Frazier . He has been an illustrator and designer since 1978.  “I like to think that one of the explanations for Craig Frazier’s expressive and memorable illustrations is that he has been—and still is—a designer. The search for a concept—and not putting anything down until a concept is found —is what makes the end product great work that communicates, often about difficult subjects.” -  —Ivan Chermayeff,  partner, Chermayeff & Geismar I like his illustrations and the simplici...