Tuesday, March 13, 2012

SAlberini final

Project Title: "Stay Vital"



This illustration was created entirely in photoshop, with some preliminary sketches done in sketchbook pro. The images that are used to construct the 3d orb were taken from the internet and are real advertisements.

The subject of the piece is how my life relates to advertising; I've always felt very critical and paranoid about overwhelming influence of ads and their power to sway my feelings. This piece is aimed at materializing this idea, whilst stressing the value is see in remaining critical in order to atleast stall the omnipotence of advertising in our culture... I don't hate advertising by any means, but I feel like we should all keep a watchful eye.

I worked to create an abstract, cyber-punk illustration, but also used a 3d photoshop object mapped with ads to maintain some photo-realism in the piece. I tried to lead the viewer's eye into the orb with most of the angles that take place around the edges of the piece.

This work is particularly influenced by Johnen Vasquez, the artist behind Invader Zim. He has alot of cyber-punk type of artwork, and his use of strange and engaging perspectives, mixed with a soft, pastel color palette have always caught my attention. I tried to drape the entire scene in the ambient blue light emitting from the orb, and moreover tried to use this light to create believable spacial relationships.

A large contributor to my feelings prior to this piece came from a philosophy class on Marx. We talked alot about how our fetichisms toward products have no real connection to the material at hand, and I came out with the realization that I am very much a participator in this phenomenon - so I became much more critical of the things I like; I tried to figure out if there was any real reason why I love Audis so much, or why I insist on buying Nikes.

I think the tagline I chose is the weakest part of the piece. It feels forced, and in truth it was forced, because I didn't have enough room to write something more clever. So I went with "Stay Vital"... I guess you could morph it to fit my intent by saying that staying "vital" implies that you keep a conscience and are not led around like a drone.... Still, I don't like the tag line at all.

Otherwise, I feel like the image is trippy and successful in terms of creating a compelling image that would catch the attention of people walking by, simply because of its ridiculous nature.












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