Spring Heeled Jack 1905

Here is a piece from a comic book from 1905, with a character looking shockingly like Batman. This comic book is called Spring Heeled Jack - The Terror of London. The piece depicts a Batman like villain on a tombstone scaring a group of men. 

I love this piece, the faded background and colours used clearly point towards victorian London and also the clothes used. The use of light from the lamp that illuminates the tomb stone and the man in the bat suit fits very well, showing the clear pinnacle of the piece. 

Your Vice is a Locked Door and Only I Have a Key (1972)

I love this poster! I find it very capturing, it calls for the audience to look closed to decipher what exactly we are looking at. The way the faces have been painted and smudged down, showing only the bottom faces terrified expression. We can see that the colour palettes of giallo film posters all hold similarities such as mainly black, then reds and yellows and some with a hint of green or blue in highlights or reflections. 

This is probably one of my favourite posters I have seen as of yet, due to the clean cut woman's face looking down in a soft beautiful manner displaying calm in the keyhole against the messy bright blood spatter that sprays out from under the keyhole. Once again the limited colour palette is seen here, with the main black with the accompanying red and yellow. Dramatic!

Here is a photography based poster for this film, as dramatic as the illustrated ones, the half naked woman once again with the calm expression but edgy eyes draw in the audience. Along with the red eyed cat, the poster leaves a lot to the imagination and makes the audience want to watch the film to see what happens. I love the over saturated colours of the background, bringing forward red as a main colour with black once again. 

Death Walks on High Heels (1971)

'Death Walks on High Heels' or 'Le Morte Cammina con i Tacchi Alti' from 1971 is another Italian Giallo film that I have looked in to, I have found three different posters for this film, so I am going to look at each of them and compare.

This first poster has a limited colour palette, I like this effect it clearly portrays that the film is a dark thriller and gives it a dramatic edge. I like the lack of detail, how it only shows elements of the woman in the foreground, choosing to focus on the shoes and a patch of ground they walk on, I think this is very interesting and the colour of the red against the black creates a hard edge. The clear central element of this poster is the red eyes of the man in the background. The eyes take the concentration of the audience straight to them, I love the clear harshness of them and how wide they are, creating an unsettling atmosphere.

Once again we see a limited colour palette even though it is not as limited as the previous. I love the roughness of this poster and the shock of red blood around the woman's neck, the mystery of the person in the suit as his head is turned creates a will in the audience to watch it to find out how and who. 

This poster is much different from the previous two as it is made up from photography or maybe stills from the film. The photographs chosen are perfect for this genre of film. I love the dramatic eyes of the woman, looking right past the audience, creating a tense air of fear. The close up of the leather gloves compliment the top photo well, mimicking the atmosphere and adding a darker edge. 

A Blade in the Dark (1983)

This poster is the promotional poster for Italian Giallo film called "La Casa con la Scala nel Buio" or "A Blade in the Dark". I love the movie poster for this and it connects well with the style that I have been asked to emulate in the pieces that I create. I love the detail in this poster, it has been hand painted by and artist and shows their talent. So, to achieve this sort of skill I must practice painting female faces, hands and so on. 

I like the blue glow and bright highlights that contrast against the shadows an darkness, I think this give so well to the genre that the film is and suits it down to the ground. This is something that I need to take notice of also and try and bring it in to my work as I have notices many of these posters have these techniques in common. 

Italian Giallo Horror

Since I have been asked to base the art created of Itallian Giallo Horror style I want to have a real look in to what it is and what connotations come with this genre. 

" Giallo (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒallo], plural gialli) is an Italian 20th-century genre of literature and film, which in Italian indicates crime fiction and mystery. In English, it has come to refer to a particular style of (typically Italian) murder mystery films which includes elements of horror fiction and eroticism (similar to the French fantastique genre). The word "giallo" is Italian for "yellow" and comes from a series of cheap paperback mystery novels with trademark yellow covers. " - Wikipedia (Giallo)

"Spaghetti thriller" is another phrase used for Italian produced Giallo films. These films are gripping thrillers with bloody, gory scenes and dramatic posters.

Change of plan!

I have had change of plan with my choice for this project, instead of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu I have decided to go with the Live Student Brief, for a film students film called Ripper. It is about Jack the Ripper and has an appearance of a Batman inspired victorian character in the film. I absolutely love horror films, especially the type of direction that the student wants to go with his film, and I am obsessed with Batman and I love to read anything about crime, especially Jack the Ripper. So the whole concept of this film is right down my street and I cannot wait to get working on it.

Today I have managed to talk to James Campbell, the film student creating the film, and managed to ask a few questions and understand the direction that he wants to take the art in. James said that he wants the art to have the appearance of a 70's Italian giallo horror posters, focussing on a woman, gloved hands and a silhouette. He also mentioned that he likes the idea of a puddle with a reflection or ripple showing the Ripper. James also told me to keep to the giallo type colour palette, so mainly black, with red, green and yellow highlights and make the poster like a typical painted horror poster. James also specified that the Batman should not appear on the poster that is going to be seen before the film, this is so the twist is kept secret, but the Batman can be hinted as subtly on the vinyl cover.

So, my next step is to refer to all the main points given and research each one to get a real feel for what I am going to create for the film.

The reason I decided to change my idea was that once I saw the Live Student Brief I found that I related to this one a lot more than the one previously chosen. So, I think that I would create better work for this brief as it has a lot of my favourite concepts in it.

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu : Nintendo Advertisement

On October 11th a new advertisement for Nintendo 3Ds was released and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu was featured in it, the whole advertisement matched her cute and childish style. Kyary touches each character and they change their clothes in to a style that matches her style. And then some characters do the same to her. I love all the random background elements, they all match her and the 3Ds perfectly joining them both seamlessly, there are very kawaii and decor objects around her in this video such as cute stars and buttons.

Yumeno Hajima Ring Ring music video

I have decided to sit and watch every music video that is a part of this album so I can get an idea of how Kyra Pamyu Pamyu is wanting to be seen by the public eye, I need to do this so that I can take from them and use if to my advantage, creating album art that ties in seamlessly with her music and style.

Yumeno Hajima Ring Ring is a very sweet song about her being sad and having to leave the ones she loves to achieve her dreams.
The beginning of the video is her on her knees, portraying a child and holding the hand on a large polar bear (I will be keeping the polar bear in mind when creating art work for this album) and she meets her older adult self, high fives and the older self walks away. Leaving the child like Kyra crying an anime tear. I LOVE the idea of adding things such as tears with animation, so I will also keep this sort of concept in mind also.
Through the video we see her meet older selves and saying goodbye to her younger selves, I see this as her growing up and moving on filled with sadness of leaving her old lives.
The whole video is filled with wonderful colourful randomness, all sorts of objects seem to appear and float about, everything seems to be very overly decorated (mimicking the decora and kawaii style)
Here are some stills from the video...

I love the massive bows and eye ball gloves. I think I want to definitely use bows and eye balls all over my designs.

I love the background dancer outfits, they are a scary cross between cute and utterly terrifying. 

Metting her older self, I love the wide range of clothes she choses to use, and how they show the age differences.

I am all over this awesome ghost design and I would like to take that as a concept and use it in the artwork that I create. Even better, this ghost design appears in another video so it is a running concept in the album. 

I love this scene! With the dark room and hanging light bulbs and tv, its the more grown up part of the video, showing her growing up. 

Floating cutesie letters floating around seem to be a running concept through all of her videos, so I think using this on the products would suit the artist well. 

This still is my favourite part of the video, I love the anatomical heart, eye and skull and the colours and patterns chosen to be put on them. I am going to run with this concept and play around a lot with the concept of cute disembodied body parts.

This still shows the sort of patterns that have been used through the whole video and through the other music videos by her. I love the colours and types of patterns, I must look closely at these and emulate them in such a way that will work with the artwork. 

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu

As I am researching in to the look that I want for the album I have decided to firstly look at Kyary and how she dresses and styles herself.

I see in most of her pictures that she chooses to use a lot of pink so this is a must for the colour pallet.

Kyary is very cute and girly and seems to use the body language commonly seen in the community that use this style also. 

The randomness of her music videos give me a lot of ideas to work with and this means that I can make it weird and strange, drawing in the attention of the audience. (I love the eyeball thing!)
The colours seem to revolve around many pinks, baby blues and other cutesie colours. 

Kyary has a very young appearance and atmosphere surrounding her and her music and style.

We see here more playful and childish concepts to her styling.

I love the make up chosen here, mimicking and cute little monster.

I am loving Kyary's whole look and style, I think this will be very easy to get in to and run with. My next move is to look at more of her videos and costumes and then at other artists that would relate to and fit well with her album.

Pika Pika Fantanjin

This is the existing album art for this album, as you can see it is extremely colourful and cute, with anime looking hair and a sweet girly feel. Although its very different to the style I currently go to I think that it will be very fun researching back in to these styles and playing about with what I could do for the album. 

This album is her third and the title is a mash up of the Japanese words for "fantasy" and "person", the genre is labeled as J-pop, electropop and dance-pop. It is overwhelmingly upbeat and happy music, very cute and charming. 

New Brief!!

I have just received my new brief, and it has instructed me to pick an album from a list;
William Onyeabor - Who is William Onyeabor
Ivor Cutler - Dandruff
Patti Smith - Horses
Robert Johnson - King of the Delta blues
Nick Cave - Murder Ballads
Kraftwerk - Trans Europe Express
King Krule - 6 Feet beneath the Moon
Iggy Azalea - The New Classic
First Aid Kit - Stay Gold
Kate Bush - The Hounds of Love
Agnes Obel - Aventine
SBTKT - Wonder where we land
Jungle - Jungle
Royal Blood - Royal Blood
Mozart - The Marriage of Figaro
Childish Gambino - Because of the internet
Kyary Pamyu Pamyu - Pika Pika Fantajin
Jerry Lee Lewis - Great Balls of Fire
The Amazing Snake Heads - Anphetamine Ballads
Children Bedtime stories
Live Student Brief - Jack the Ripper Soundtrack

The first ones I considered were Kate Bush, Robert Johnson, Mozart and the Jack the Ripper soundtrack. I would normally go for something dark and creepy as that is what my style seems to lean towards. But when I looked in to Kyary Pamyu Pamyu I saw that her style was very cute and based on Japanese popular styles just as Kawaii and Decora. I love these style and I was very in to researching it when I was younger and mimicking the style slightly and drawing characters that relate. So I thought that this would be a fun one to pursue.

Right now I need to get a feel of her style and genre so I have been listening to the album and looking at her style and the styles that relate. This will help me underpin the whole concept of the art work I am preparing to create for the brief. I have been asked to create artwork for either a cd or 12" vinyl, and a product (apparel, home ware, ceramics, greetings cards, stationary or a toy) and an advertising poster.