University/College

Analyzing Chairs…

…doesn’t sound like art? Probably not, but it sure sounds like (product) design 🙂

Last week in Fine Arts we got a little surprise when we entered the auditorium:

lined up chairs

a bunch of chairs lined up in the lecture hall

The professor enjoyed our puzzled faces for a moment and handed out evaluation-sheets. We were supposed to form small groups and pick a chair to analyze within 20 minutes. My group decided to go for the most inconspicuous model:

SE 68

SE 68

The SE 68 was designed by Egon Eiermann (D) in the 1950’s and is distributed by “Wilde + Spieth” (D) for 270 Euros apiece. I was surprised to find out it’s a designer chair since you can see it in many educational institutes and big halls. It’s nothing fancy!

But let’s sum up the evaluation-sheets:

  • Basic data: Name-SE 68; Object category-furniture/chairs; Function-sitting; Materials-light wood/metal/rubber (bottom of legs); Manufacturer-Wilde+Spieth; Designer-Egon Eiermann; Price-270EUR etc.
  • Form analysis: Main Parts-back rest/seating surface/legs; Color-black/metallic; Surface Character-flexible back rest separated from seating surface/ergonomic design
  • Function: Practical Function (ergonomics, handling)-parts are rounded/tilted (ergonomics); Symbolical Meaning-nope; Overall Effect-harmonious etc.
  • Context: Target Audience-big groups of people (events, educational institutes); Comparison with Competition-relatively unflashy, simple; Communication (marketing strategy)-“This chair is meant for everyone (short/tall, overweight/thin, young/old), who needs to stay seated for a longer period of time, but nevertheless he/she is not able to fully relax (no bolstering) so attention is kept on a high level.” etc.

Most of the information could be gathered by simply observing the chair. For the function-part we just slipped into the role of a random student looking for a place to rest his/her exhausted body (and mind) 😀

After a few groups presented their findings the professor too analyzed some prominent chairs. Now I know chair≠chair!

in Theory  by Savina 0 comments

Modules – A better Understanding of Dimension

Right now everyone is working on modules in the Design Foundation Course. After creating more or less flat 2D reliefs this was the next step in understanding dimension. It’s really quite different from simply drawing something on paper.

There are a lot of new things one has to consider when going 3D! First of all you have to design your object with modular attributes. In this phase I made many quick sketches and made some modules out of paper on the fly to test their functionality. That’s were most mistakes can be found (and should be since it’s really time consuming to do everything all over again because you overlooked something). The second step is creating the construction draft. It’s best to use the computer for this part. It’s much more precise. Step three is choosing the right material (I used 250 g/m² copy paper and regular glue). In order to test the full range of combinations you’ll need at least 20 modules.

In my point of view the most important part is the designing phase. If you make mistakes here everything you produce later on is meaningless in the end. That’s why you shouldn’t miss out on the testing phase! Although you can’t find every possible flaw you sure can avoid making major mistakes making all your efforts worthless. When I created my modules initially they did look sturdy but after constructing a few bigger units I realized the connections were too unstable. Therefore I had to redesign everything and start all over again 🙁

But now everything works out just fine 🙂

module1module2

in Design Foundation  by Savina 0 comments

From Flat to Relief

There is one step between the 3D emphasizing patterns and creating actual 3D objects: Reliefs! In class we were given the following limitations:

  • use thick paper
  • nothing is to be cut out and excluded from the relief
  • format 18×18 cm
  • no coloring

I used some of my patterns for the reliefs without creating new ones especially for this task. This way I really had to find ways to cut pieces without cutting the whole thing apart. I advise you to print out your patterns and draw the cuts with pencil before actually cutting! This way you can prevent mistakes later on, which happened to me a few times and it was really awful having to start all over again 🙁

This is how two of my reliefs look like:

relief 1relief 2

And here are the corresponding patterns:

pattern 1pattern 2

in Design Foundation  by Savina 0 comments

Typography – Back to the Basics

Over the past centuries thousands of new fonts have been designed. Some emerged out of new means of production others had the purpose to please certain aesthetical or cultural needs. All fonts are organized under the DIN standard 16518 although it has to be mentioned that this classification isn’t very accurate (example: Group Nr. 6 refers to the sans serif fonts which form about 80% of all fonts, hence this group is very imprecise and ought to have more subdivisions) . Unfortunately currently there is no official replacement.

Every font has its own distinctive features, sometimes very obvious ones and sometimes on a rather subtle scale. The best way to memorize some of the basic differences is to actually write some of the key-letters down (with a pen, not digitally). In typography class we were given four pages, each with a different font example, which we had to copy. The fonts were:

  • Garamond (key-letters a, P)
  • Times New Roman (key-letters a,b,g,A,G)
  • Bodoni BE (key-letters e,g,o,R,k)
  • Clarendon (key-letters a,g,t,R,G)

Additionally a short historical background was included to every font (which really helps you memorize the features better). If you want to try it out too you can open any program that can process words in different fonts like Word/OpenOffice/InDesign etc. and type the key-letters. Then you just get your pen and a piece of paper and start copying. Nevertheless it’s a good idea to print out the letters really big and organized in line-grids like this:

line-grid

example font Clarendon

in Typograhy  by Savina 0 comments

Starting to learn Digital Painting

I recently started learning to draw digitally and I have to say at first it’s really not that easy to handle the pen tablet 🙁 But luckily I could afford a pen tablet at all!

If you consider using your computer you’ll need good graphic processing software and a pen with pressure feature. I think most digital artists use Photoshop and some specialized in comics/manga use Manga Studio. As for pens, I suppose I’m on the safe side saying almost every professional uses Wacom pen tablets. At the beginning you can work with an average tablet without a screen but if you consider going pro you should really try to get your hands on a high-end tablet with a screen to draw on directly (although it’s not necessary once you get used to the different hand-eye coordination you get with conventional tablets).

Here’s an image of one of the characters I had to design for drawing classes, Harald – I didn’t choose the name ^^;

character design: Harald

Harald profile draft

As you can see the line-art is really bad sometimes…Well that’s exactly the biggest problem most artists have (at least the ones I know). Line-art is very time-consuming and can give you a hard time. Manga Studio seems to be better than Photoshop for the work because of its line-correction feature (which can be a curse if not used correctly). Nevertheless, there are a lot of artists relying on Photoshop alone! I used Manga Studio to try out the toning but at the time I drew Harald I didn’t know I had a line-correction tool  -_-

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Bitmap Font Design Homework

In Typography we were assigned to create our own bitmap font from real life objects.

If you’re not sure what bitmap fonts are here’s a short explanation:

Bitmap (also known as raster graphics image) is a term used when referring to computer graphics and it describes a data structure compound of a rectangular grid of pixels. Every single pixel has exactly one color-value assigned to it. Bitmap-based formats (like BMP, GIF, JPEG/JFIF, PNG und TIFF) are best suited for displaying complex images like photos, which cannot be processed as detailed with vector graphics.

So basically, our real-life bitmap font needed a raster and objects to fill in the space describing the character. Some students used burgers, playing cards, candles, bottle caps or Lego. Everyone was really creative 🙂

My idea came to my mind really quickly and spontaneously: LOTTERY!

bitmap font homework

part one

bitmap font homework

part two

I have to confess, I didn’t fill in the crosses in every single box…Actually I just scanned one lottery ticket and 5 different crosses, saved and scaled each cross on a single layer and copied as many crosses as needed on a cropped box. This way I could try out different combinations and spare some lottery tickets (not that I would ever win anything) 🙂

in Typograhy  by Savina 0 comments

Typography Homework Results

Last week everyone in typography class had to present their homework. We were supposed to search for 25 different versions of any desired letter or number and take frontal pictures documenting our findings. Additionally the cropped pictures shouldn’t be much smaller than 4×4 cm (about 1.5 inch) and a black and white version should be included. We didn’t get any grades but the professor commented on the results.

So here’s my contribution to typography 🙂

1.Typo Homework WS2010

Category 1: "G" with a spur and lowercase "G"

1.Typo Homework WS2010

Category 2: "G" without a spur

I really looked for as many different versions as possible and picked a rather simple categorization. It seemed the professor liked it 🙂

This homework was also a test to see how we are going to present everything on paper! Most students printed their results on A4 sheets without any headlines etc. I went for A3 so I used only 2 sheets. It seemed quite logical for me since I had two categories. It would have looked stupid on more than two pieces of paper! Additionally this way I had enough space for headings. Oh and I went against the professors advice to keep every picture the same size but since it wasn’t too distracting I went through with it quite well 😉

in Typograhy  by Savina 0 comments

Illustrators Cheat

My drawing class professor is working as a professional illustrator for decades now and he gives us some general tips time to time. But there is one thing he continues repeating almost every lesson: “Try cheating as much as possible!” Now that really shocked me at the beginning. Up until now I was told to give my all in learning to draw out of my own imagination, my own creativity, and now I’m supposed to cheat?! The word itself implies that it’s something wrong, something bad. I really had a hard time adapting to this new attitude…

I attended some other drawing classes at the beginning of the semester and the other professors always stressed the point that we should really, sincerely try to learn drawing the traditional way meaning we should learn drawing from real life, learn everything on perspectives before actually applying the knowledge, learn the human hand’s anatomy and proportions in order to draw hands “the right way” and so on. So basically one has to learn all the theory first than use only real world reference and then combine all the knowledge and create art out of one’s imagination. One professor even referred to the illustrator’s cheats as “dirty little tricks” 😀

But what are those dirty tricks? Here are some examples I learned about concerning comics/manga (our current topic):

  • when drawing a background image, simply find a picture and use Photoshop (or any other image processing application) to trace it and color it
  • when you can’t draw some particular subject than don’t (the example our professor used was to draw horse legs, we were advised to draw the horse standing in tall grass or just cut the image so the legs aren’t visible)
  • try using perspective in order to create a view of the image where you need to draw as less as possible  (like when you draw a crowd of people from a low angle as opposed to a top view where far more individuals would be visible)
  • additionally I know of some professional concept artists who don’t even bother applying perspective on their own but use computer programs like Google SketchUp instead
  • and of course cheating with digital painting is a well known practice (for example line correction or texture application)

Well, some of these “dirty tricks” turned out to be actually really necessary for professionals since there’s no way one can know every aspect of drawing theory or know how to draw every subject. This would be too time-consuming, and time is the one thing illustrators apparently don’t have.

At the Comic Action exhibition a few weeks ago I saw a lot of artists using their cell phone cameras to use pictures of their own hands as reference material. And I really thought professionals don’t need to…

As a consequence I started asking myself “What is the right way to learn drawing hands for example? Should I learn the proportions and anatomy thoroughly first and then start drawing following those rules or should I simply make a picture of the hand I need for my image every time?” I’ve already read a lot on hands but I have to admit that didn’t help me dramatically drawing basic gestures. I came to the conclusion that the pure observation way is quite good for general drawing improvement but as soon as you want to draw a subject really convincingly, realistically and perhaps even without reference you’ll probably need the theoretical knowledge.

Considering both, the traditional and the illustrator’s approach to drawing, the perfect way to go would be to build up a solid basis of minimal knowledge which you should expand whenever you’ve got the time to combined with “cheating” in order to save time and/or achieve better results. So in my point of view trickery should be the ace up your sleeve. You’ll need to learn when and how to use it. And don’t be afraid to do so like I was.

in Illustration / Personal  by Savina 0 comments