So my project 2 was pretty crazy exciting! I picked Aleksander Rodchenko as my inspiration. He's a Russian photographer/painter from the 1920s and 1930s and he's amazing; I can't believe I've never heard of him before. He does a lot of work with perspective, using angles and shadows to make the ordinary look new again. He's a great guy and inspiring is a great word to describe him. He manages to make simple ideas very interesting.
BALANCE
My balance composition was originally going to be my movement composition, actually! It's crazy how life works like that. This is actually a cropped and slightly modified version of one of Rodchenko's more famous works, a woman shouting happily. I like the simplicity of it, but I wish I could have redone the lines - make them straighter, stronger, all of that stuff. That said, it still conveys happiness and excitement with nothing more than the mouth and chin. That's pretty awesome.
REPETITION
My repetition piece. Look at all those lines! I was trying to make something more playful, that takes a moment for you to identify everything in the piece- like how in many of Rodchenko's pieces you don't recognize that a certain shape is really a person at first glance. There probably was a better way to do it, however - I don't like how every line is the same width. I wish I used a better way to hide the human shapes within the background rather than having the series of vertical lines. However, I'm a fan of the interplay between the arms of each character and the legs of the character behind them. It makes an interesting non-human shape out of human characters, and that's what Rodchenko's all about.
MOVEMENT
Of my four pieces, the movement piece was my favorite. In its first revision, this piece only had the man in front, no bars in the background. However, the bars add a lot - they help reinforce the movement going up and to the right, and they also look like volume bars, which gives a 'raising the volume' look to it all. That could be a little cheesy, but because it's not super-obvious and it's paired with the man in his really dramatic pose looking skywards, I like how it works. I wish I had another chance to cut the man out, though - I think the muscles on his arm look a little cheesy. Craftsmanship with an xacto knife turns out to be incredibly tricky! I don't know how everyone manages to be so precise with the thing.
EMPHASIS/ECONOMY
I was a huge fan of this at first, but the more I think about it the less I like it (although I still think it's pretty good - but it definitely could have been made better). The idea was to create something very Russian propaganda-style - so we have a person working hard (with his nose down), and the top of his head becomes a rising sun. I know, super propagandistic, right?! In retrospect, I think this design was overly simple. I like the face that it's symmetrical, but I can't help but feel like this would be better if we had a profile of the man and there were more sunbeams.
REPETITION
My repetition piece. Look at all those lines! I was trying to make something more playful, that takes a moment for you to identify everything in the piece- like how in many of Rodchenko's pieces you don't recognize that a certain shape is really a person at first glance. There probably was a better way to do it, however - I don't like how every line is the same width. I wish I used a better way to hide the human shapes within the background rather than having the series of vertical lines. However, I'm a fan of the interplay between the arms of each character and the legs of the character behind them. It makes an interesting non-human shape out of human characters, and that's what Rodchenko's all about.
MOVEMENT
Of my four pieces, the movement piece was my favorite. In its first revision, this piece only had the man in front, no bars in the background. However, the bars add a lot - they help reinforce the movement going up and to the right, and they also look like volume bars, which gives a 'raising the volume' look to it all. That could be a little cheesy, but because it's not super-obvious and it's paired with the man in his really dramatic pose looking skywards, I like how it works. I wish I had another chance to cut the man out, though - I think the muscles on his arm look a little cheesy. Craftsmanship with an xacto knife turns out to be incredibly tricky! I don't know how everyone manages to be so precise with the thing.
EMPHASIS/ECONOMY
I was a huge fan of this at first, but the more I think about it the less I like it (although I still think it's pretty good - but it definitely could have been made better). The idea was to create something very Russian propaganda-style - so we have a person working hard (with his nose down), and the top of his head becomes a rising sun. I know, super propagandistic, right?! In retrospect, I think this design was overly simple. I like the face that it's symmetrical, but I can't help but feel like this would be better if we had a profile of the man and there were more sunbeams.
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