Hip hop is my favourite music genre and I listen to it basically every day. I have recently been listening to a young rapper named Joey Badass from New York and I stumbled across one of his music videos called 'UNORTHODOX'. The second I seen this video I knew that I wanted to pursue my narrative from a different angle. The animated video that has inspired my project was Directed by Coodie & Chike from Creative Control, the video takes the audience on an illustrated journey through the cold streets of Brooklyn. The way that the video has been animated is by using hundreds of still images over the original scenes, and filled in with random shapes and textures of the people and objects from the video.
All of these images below are screenshots I have taken from the unorthodox music video.
The characters look almost like demons in some of the still frames.
The way the characters (Joey and his friends) have been illustrated in some of the scenes are sinister looking figures and would work perfectly with my narrative, the story I am trying to tell and its setting. I also like the black silhouette shapes of the figures with the white and red eyes. It gives the video a very gritty atmosphere which is exactly what I am trying to achieve with my book. It gives the impression that they are ghoul-like people/creatures.
After watching the music video, I immediately decided to try and create my own scenes within the same style but instead of doing it all digitally like how it is in the video, I wanted to play around with some cut out paper and card to see if it would get a similar effect. I think that it was quite successful and I think the black shapes work very well with the red eyes. I now know what media I will be using to create all of my book which is quite a big deal for me because in previous projects I have always just accepted that I will be doing it in black and white using only pen and pencils. Thats about to change.
This is another test I did for the characters in my narrative using black ink and posa paint pens. I think the paint pens work well with creating the coloured shapes behind the figures and the red eyes with the drips. But it also looks quite flat and still when compared to the cut out paper version. I used a dry brush with black ink to get the grainy texture for the background which I thinks work quite effectively so I may use this technique in some of the scenes of my narrative to create a texture which has a gritty feeling.
This is one of the characters drawn onto a table using black ink and post pens. The table itself is filled with lots of illustrations done by me and a few of my friends, its like our own group task. I thought it was necessary to put one of the characters from my narrative onto it. Also it was nice to draw on something that isn't paper or card, the table is wooden and has a rough surface that works well with certain styles. I left a part of the characters afro the texture of the table and I think it works well. It will be hard to achieve that kind of approach in my narrative as it will all be done with cut out paper. but I intend on experimenting with different textures like this in future projects.
This was a collage piece I did as part of a visual language task and I think it does relate to my narrative in the way the eyes of the characters have been coloured. I am now starting to try and link the things I do in the visual language tasks with my main projects. This is a good step for me because the visual language tasks help me to break out of the usual way I work, put me out of my comfort zone and pushes me to experiment with more media.
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