Holography

Surprisingly there aren't many artists working with holographic plates, although not surprisingly it is very expensive, so it's no wonder. The process requires a laser, the actual holographic plates, a dark room, some development chemicals, and of course the object or thing you want to holograph. It's amazing what can be done, and I could think of many applications for this process, however, it's greatly limited by the availability of large enough holographic plates or space to holograph the object. There is essentially a 1:1 ratio on size of object and the holographic plate itself, which obviously results in a scaling of price. However there are a number of artists working with this medium, here is a small list of artists and some of their work.

http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kagan/holo_pics/holo_artists.html

Candyland Brief

Design Brief For Candyland


My overall concept will be elemental, in reference to the actual confections
themselves and the scenerey I will use, such as volcanoes, mesas, islands.
There will also be an underlying theme of the elements of the universe,
such as fire, earth, air water, metal, stone, wood, etc. I considered
using actual products such as Snickers or Reese's in the board, however I
didn't want it to feel like an advertisement since that diminishes the
spirit of the game. Instead I decided to focus more on ingredients and
generalized forms of candy such as mallow, chocolate, peanut
butter/peanuts, caramel, ice cream, licorice and sugar. Included with each
of these representations there will be references to where the ingredient
comes from, or part of the process of how its made, or who helped create
it. For example, a character I have representing peanuts and peanut butter
will be Sir Carver of Castle Le Gume. Sir carver will have an impaled
peanut on his sword in front of a castle full of peanuts. I want the
representation to say "Peanuts" while also giving way to curiosity about
the name Carver and Le Gume. I want to provide insights where possible so
that adults and children can learn something from the game. Instead of
trying to push people to eat more candy I wanted to provide a neutral
ground where it doesn't feel aggressive in it's advertisement of candy,
but also provide some minor educational benefits.

My game will have a lot of soft, animated and mostly cartoonish imagery.
However I will include a lot of shading to create more 3D elements
throughout the game to reflect our current standard of minor realism. For
example, the Taffy Factory will not be a flat 2 dimensional object, it
will stretch according to perspective. Many of the elements I will use
will be perspective based, will have shadows and shading to create a
slightly cartoonish viscera. As the pieces move through the board, they
will encounter areas such as the Sticky Fields where they will get stuck,
or the Licorice Copse/Forest where the player will get lost. There will
also be the traditional bridges between parts of the track. Also, I had a
chance to look at the newest Candyland, and was almost shocked to see how
insanely busy it is and how it almost reflects the ADDism of recent and
contemporary generations. My board will be less visually cluttered than the
current board as a result of seeing the messiness of the newest board.

Overall my intent will be placed on appealing to a large demographic, and
I am borrowing the idea of cartoon style with adult content from such
companies as Pixar and Disney, who offer entertainment that is simple
enough for kids to follow, but provides some sort of insight into wisdom
and understanding of the origins and processes of candy.

Comic Book - Candyland

For my Candyland design I am going for a comic book theme. Rather than the traditional comic book style however I am going to try to make my designs more kid friendly by adding vibrant colors to my hand drawn characters. So far I have developed a color scheme (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) along with the CMYK numbers to plan out the pathway for the base of the game board.

As of now I am working with a combination of ideas from the 1990's version and the latest 2010 version to come up with ideas for candy choices along with the character ideas to go along with them.

- cupcake castle (princess- goal)

- fire ball (devil- villain)

- mint mountain (fairy)

- freeze pop forest (raining gum balls, frog)

- lollypop land (lizard)

- ice cream creek

- gummy bear lane (bears)

- gingerbread house (grandma's cookies)

My playing pieces are going to be a children in simple outfits two boys and two girls. (yellow, green, blue or red)

Halloween Candyland

My Candyland game is going to be Halloween themed. The board will follow the traditional path with an altered color scheme consisting of dark, but vibrant, shades of yellow, teal, purple, orange, magenta and kelly green. They will be on a dark, "almost-but-not-quite-black" grey. My illustrations are going to be friendly and cartoony, without being too heavy or boldly outlined. They are inspired by the work of Alberto Cerriteno, as seen in this piece here.

My gamepieces are going to be children wearing iconic Halloween costumes: A witch, a ghost, a clown, and acprincess. They will be done in the existing style of the gamepieces, a solid piece of plastic (large enough to not be a choking hazard), but I will be updating the colors to match the scheme I have. On the board, the candy spaces will still be candy, only a bit more "Halloweeny" (like candy corn, gummy worms, fun size candy bars, taffy, lollipops, and possibly caramel apples and pennies, which are clearly not candy but still popular halloween "treats") The accompanying characters will be either adults in goofy monster costumes or actual friendly monsters handing out candy from their homes (I've been wrestling with this idea all week, any feedback would be great. Real monsters or adults in costumes?)

The "villain" in the game is going to be a crotchety old man (who happens to be a retired dentist) that doesn't believe in Halloween and refuses to give you candy. You will waste a turn asking him for some. The goal of the game is to return to your "home" (the final space) and eat all your candy! YUM!

MOMOTAROU

I chose an old tale story call ‘MOMOTAROU’. There are several reasons why I chose ‘MOMOTAROU’ are: my target range for this product is for Japanese kids, the story has seven different characters, and I could combined Japanese Candy into each characters.
Firstly, this is a very famous old tale in Japan, ususally, some story is more related to girls, or some story is more related to boys, but this one is for everyone. Especially when we are child, our mother or the teacher will read to us. The details of this story is very simple. A boy call Momotarou(means a peach boy in english, because he was born from peach) decide to fight with an red ogre, and a dog, birds, and monkey also decide to go with Momotarou. However, I found that I should use some kinds of Candy for their item instead of sword.
I made two modern kindergarten kids for the bigining is because I would like to make then seems like into the fairy tale. Just like my young brother always dream he could enter the storybook. I feel like this idea will be interested for 3 years old kids.
The color I picked are earthtone color or light color. Because Japanese candy is not that colorful and I want to match with the candy, but I still used the color which the children will like it. Such as pink, and blue.

Dr. Seuss Candy Land

The theme I chose for the candy land project is Dr. Seuss. I want to take all the best known Seuss characters and place them around the board. I want the kids that would be playing the game to feel as if they are walking around in one of the books. I want the colors to match the ones found in the books, and the works and names used to sound as if they were made up by Dr. Seuss himself.

For the game pieces I will be using Thing One and Thing Two. The players will start out by passing Yertle the Turtle. They will them travel through the land of the Sneetches and the Fox in Sox. They must them tread carefully around the Grintch. Next they will encounter Sam I Am, with his Green Eggs and Ham. Finally they will pass by the Lorax and Horton the Elephant. At the end of the game they will end up meeting The Cat in the Hat.

The reason I chose Dr. Seuss is because I feel that it is a something that anyone of any age can recognize. Even children to young to read will still enjoy looking at the colors and interesting shapes and characters. I thought it would be appropriate for the age range that this game is geared towards.

The History of Candy Land

Click here to go to Hasbro's website and see the history of the board game.

Alice Melvin

I was reading through the Communication Arts website and Alice Melvin was featured on the home page. I quickly went to her site to see more of what she does. She is a great illustrator. She uses many different patterns and repetition in her designs. You can look at her work at her website.

Unique.

This photograph really spoke to me. It is interesting because It looks like an abstract painting, but it is really just the aftermath of a car leaving a parking spot. It amazes me that such a simple act can create such a strong image, and I love the fact that you can really understand the process that created the piece.