this weeks... yay!

Just an ad I found that I really liked...

Candyland Design

Unfortunately I was absent when we were told to do this, so it's a little late...
When I was first given this project I honestly was coming up blank. I didn't know what I wanted to do... I just kept thinking of how bright the newer version is and how over done it is and so loud and way too much is going on on the bored. I didn't like this one bit, so my first thought from the beginning, was bringing it down and bringing it back a little to when it wasn't so bright and loud but still playful enough that the kids were attracted to it and wanted to play with it.

I was having a hard time coming up with character ideas, due to characters not being my forte I really didn't know what I wanted to do. After actually talking to my 8 year old sister and doing some research of course I came up with the idea of bringing back mr. mint, I wanted to change lord licorice to lord sour (making all candy sour tasting). I wanted to have an ice cream man ( like a snowman, but ice cream) I also wanted to keep lolly and princess frostine cause those were characters that have always been consistent... other candies I wanted to bring in was marshmallows, cupcakes, a really big cake, donuts and all other different kinds of treats that kids always love to get.

I changed up the board spots using originally a gumball idea but looked more like the dot candy and that circle, instead of the original square. I then wanted to use different pieces of candy and instead of just making them the same and just different colors I wanted to try to incorporate the different places as my pawn pieces instead of just one item a different color.

Fax Show

Cat in the Hat

For my candyland project I am doing a Dr.Seuss theme. While I was going through some images for the project I found this one. I like it because it's clearly the cat in the hat, but it's almost like he is from some alternate universe. He is nothing like the real character. He is dark and a little creepy, especially with the eye in his stomach. I'm not really sure why that is there but it is very strange. Also the sceene in the background is something from one of the books, but it's missing the cheerfulness of the real thing just like the cat it.

Candy Land

When first presented with Candy Land many ideas started going through my head. I looked into Candy Land further to see if any of them were possible. When I saw that there was a Dora the Explorer I realized my idea was possible. I am making Rocko's Modern Life Candy Land. As a child I would watch Rocko all the time. Though it is not "educational" I feel that is kid friendly through the different "cartoony" characters. My color scheme derives from different colors within my main characters.

My pieces that move around the board will include;

• Rocko
• Heffer
• Filburt
• Spunky

The places to go around the board will include:

• Mr. & Mrs. Bighead
• Peaches
• Chameleon Brothers
• Mr. Smitty
• Hippo Lady
• Really Really Big Man (to win the game)
• Dr. Hutchinson

Each character will have some type of candy. I am modeling mine off one of the older games which has 3 spots where you get stuck (Gooey Gumdrops, Lost in Lollipop Woods, and Stuck in Molasses Swamp). My locations will all relate to the candy that is with each character in that general area. My colors are more of pastels instead of the more vibrant primary colors.

design brief

So my idea is to have a holiday version of candyland. I want to focus on all the holidays during the year, using the characters to represent the figures throughout the game. It is candyland, so each character will have candies or sweeties around them, ones that are usually around during that holiday or time of year. The background will be scenic settings, each season will be shown throughout the game board. The pathway will be the same design as the original candyland games, with different colors on each block. I'm still thinking about my game pieces, but I believe they will be children or elves.
My characters will be Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus representing christmas time and their sweeties will be cookies, milk, and candy canes. During the fall season of the game, I will have a turkey character for thanksgiving with a candy corn mountain. In the original candyland games, one character is usually a villain that can send you backwards in the game, so to represent Halloween, I will have a scary pumpkin as the villain. My other characters include Cupid, Easter Bunny, maybe a groundhog, an american flag character for our independence day. We talked in class about other holidays represented by different cultures and religions, so I may also have other holidays such as Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Chinese new year,or cinco de mayo. I related to these characters when I was younger and I think kids will have fun with the game and it could also be educational.

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.

The fax machine ate my homework

During the process of this assignment I couldn't stop thinking about the 1999 movie, Office Space. Having been stuck in a cubical for two years selling insurance it is a movie that I can relate to. In the movie, one of the main characters was constantly having issues with the office's fax machine. He was continually receiving the message "pc load letter" from the machine. During the climax of that plot line three co-workers bring the fax machine out to an empty field and take out their aggressions with a baseball bat and a series of loafer-laden foot stomps. All of this is done with a 90's gansta' rap song for a soundtrack.
It was with this scene in mind that I came up with my idea. What would my art, and in this case my homework, look like chewed up through a less than user-friendly fax machine? To play on this concept I chose one of the worst designed Chinese restaurant menus I could find and renamed all of the items with a paper-based theme as if the fax machine itself was ordering off the menu. I also placed a spatter effect on the whole page to make it grainy. I played with a gradient to make it appear as if it didn't print out evenly. I made a logo with a fax machine and chopsticks and made my piece's title the restaurant name. I gave the appearance of a torn corner on the bottom right and topped off the page with the phrase "pc load letter" in large letters across the page.

My theory on this "fax" project, was to create something that looks like it has been deconstructed and put together as a whole. I went with the look of a bunch of Polaroids creating my face.

I believe this fax show is about the beauty in change. Since all of the artworks are being created and sent to the show through a fax machine, some details of the images are being reduced due to some information being lost each time the piece is being sent. It is hard to determine the way my final piece will come out due to the fact that it is in color, straight off the computer, and is going to be sent using an out-dated form of communication.

When I first entered the FAX show, I wasn't sure what to think. A fax machine is used to send documents to different places, in a quick and convenient way. I would never think to use this form of technology to send pieces of artwork, let alone create a whole gallery exhibit based upon this idea. But it is interesting, in a way we are creating art through the use of a fax machine. The original composition is changed when it is turning into a fax, and with whatever pieces of information that is transmitted, we get an image that becomes it's own work. This image is than reproduced again and again, changing each time. The use of the fax machine also allows many people to become involved as well as challenges the question of what art really is and who can produce it.

For my submission, I was interested in how the fax machine changes a colored image. I wondered if the work of art would effect the viewer in the same way, how the mood may change and so on. The first image is a photo I took of the Eiffel Tower that also has a strong color contrast. The second image is an impressionist painting I did of a scenic landscape. I'm also interested to see the effect that a painting has vs. a photographic image when it becomes a fax. Overall the FAX show is an interested way to communicate art in more ways than one. This show also opens the door for many people to submit different forms of art and it will be interesting to see how this exhibition progresses.

FAX

So after viewing this FAX show i was very confused to what we are calling art but this is a great way for someone to grind out work and have it be shown in black and white. It amazes me what people will fax into a show even if it's not that great. After all we don't really know what people are trying to represent with there work it's just put up by the curator and how that person wants to set it up. To think that something is in color to be turned into black and white is surprising because you don't know how things will turn out on the other end unless you go down and figure it out. The FAX show puts a whole new side to art since there is more than just images since we can use other topics and media as art. Poetry, music, dancing, the show helps me realize that there is more an art show then there really is.

For the work i put it was done in color but when it was printed out that went right out the window. There wasn't much color but the color that was there represented school colors. So i guess having this piece as a fax show changes it up with a representation from where i came from. Self portrait and portray different feeling at one moment in time.

Fax Submission

The FAX gallery really pushes the limits of the traditional views of a gallery. In place of framed paintings or prints lies a lone fax machine, and from it spews a medley of artwork that can be deemed nontraditional to say the least. The idea of a fax machine to me is something that is of little utilitarian worth now. With advancements in file sharing technology, as well as an increasing drive to have everything computer based, fax machines have become obsolete. Putting one in a gallery is breathing new life to this played-out machine, giving it a home in a world where practicality has cast it aside. There is an almost nostalgic, blast-from-the-past feeling behind it, like watching an old cartoon or finding a toy from you childhood. Granted, there is a different, much less "fun" association with a fax machine, but there is still a feeling that is hard to ignore.

For my submission, I wanted to explore the obsolete nature of the fax machine. Nowadays, if you need to share something with somebody, typically we will just upload the file somewhere and share a link. This is what my piece focuses on. It is conceptual, challenging the artist's expectations of a typical gallery visitor. I first created several graphic representations of a fax machine and posted them to popular image sharing sites (photobucket, flickr, snapfish, and dropbox), all under the title "Nostalgia." Then, for my actual fax submission, I laid out the url's for these images in a simple, straightforward manner. I also made them look weathered to illustrate the fact that, whether you are faxing or file sharing, information always has to go through several channels and pass through several hands before it gets to its final destination. My hope for this piece is that the text will be recognizable as a url and that someone will take the initiative to follow it to find the true "artwork" of my submission. However, I am also aware of the effort needed to copy an entire url by hand, and, in this day and age of copy-and-paste gratification, I am curious as to whether or not anyone will be willing to take on that task.

Here is one of my links:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32305004@N07/5178091850/

(Gallery visitors won't have this luxury of course.)