moxitellsstories-blog-blog

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The final artwork(s)

The final concept

The design of cover artworks has really faded into the background. Nowadays a huge part of all the music tracks that are produced just get uploaded to the cloud. So when they are finished, you open soundcloud or youtube and start the upload. Then you realize, you need an image attached to the track. Within a few minutes, Google delivers one, that kind of fits the track and here is your finished cover. That’s how it goes most of the time (I did it this way too very often).

But the design of cover artworks once really was booming branch - with really unique and also famous approaches and results (just think about the artwork of Sgt. Pepper’s designed by Pop Art artist Peter Blake). Now that’s the idea behind it - fading the design of cover artworks back to the foreground and maybe trying to give them a meaning again.

Narrative structure & technique

I focussed on the exquisite corpse technique which is a networked or distributed narrative. I like this idea very much because from the beginning I wanted another approach as the usual linear narrative.

The idea of a kind of evolving cover artwork came to my mind. What if you can combine many artworks to create a big one? In order to achieve this I created a template within I drew the individual artworks. Now because of the templates the particular artworks merge to one big artwork. And this big one again depends on how you put the particular ones together because they have no top or bottom and no left or right. So everybody can create his/her own story out of the artworks. There also isn’t a kind of fixed order of the tracks on the EP I’m working on at the moment, because this order would influence your perception of the artworks and their order - the EP is a kind of pool, which you can create your own individual (audio-)visual story out of. This story is very abstract though. But for me this fits the medium music perfectly - in a way it’s a visual homage or a remediation of the medium music (as far as this is possible anyway), but also vice versa. It can also be seen as a remix, because it doesn’t just remediate music but the visual content adds information to the audio which you wouldn’t realize just based on the music.

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Final cover artworks.

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Work in progress. The artworks colored with crayon.

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Sgt. Pepper's Artwork

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (kurz: Sgt. Pepper’s) ist das achte Album der Beatles. Es gilt als eines der erste Konzeptalbum der Popmusik und erschien offiziell am 1. Juni 1967 in Großbritannien. [...] Das Cover des Albums wurde – in Zusammenarbeit mit Paul McCartney – von dem Art Director Robert Fraser, dem Pop-Art Künstler Peter Blake und dem Fotografen Michael Cooper gestaltet. Es ist heute eine Ikone in der Geschichte der Cover-Kunst. (Source: Wikipedia)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgt._Pepper%E2%80%99s_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band

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Work in progress. The final templates rendered with the ball pen.

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Work in progress. The final inks and the pencil version which I traced on the tracing board.

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Work in progress. More sketches and the first attempts with ink. Besides I'm already thinking about the 4 music-tracks, that may belong to the artworks. The tracks will be released 2015 on my soundcloud.

http://soundcloud.com/mbray

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The cover templates and first sketches with them.

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First sketches for the main project. I'm thinking about stuff like exquisite corpse, experimental cover design, MOXi etc.

http://twitter.com/CaptainMOXi

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Magnolia

Trailer: http://youtu.be/QYTqhmzROko

Great movie and good example for nonlinear narrative.

Director, writer and producer Paul Thomas Anderson was listening to and inspired by Aimee Mann's music while writing the script.

http://www.aimeemanninprint.com/1999/ts121699.htm

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Exquisite corpse

Exquisite corpse, also known as exquisite cadaver (from the original French term cadavre exquis) or rotating corpse, is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. (Source: Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse

Bernard Dumaine "The Great Starfish Escape"

4 panels exquisite corpse with Zachary Cain (USA) I started on upper right and lower left panels, only half inch borders showing for him to complete...

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=465350820642&set=a.10154157760955643&type=3&theater

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The Complexities and Possibilities of Visual Storytelling in Graphic Novels

Investigative Study by Anja Uhren (BA (Hons) Illustration)

Abstract

The graphic novel has increasingly become subject of critical and academical debate and is finally starting to be recognised as a literary genre in its own right. There are however still lingering misconceptions regarding its form and content. This paper aims to demonstrate the complexities and possibilities of visual storytelling and how these can be exploited to their fullest effect in graphic novels.

http://anja-uhren.blogspot.co.at/2015/01/the-complexities-and-possibilities-of.html

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Image Analysis

One Piece 73 - Operation Dress Rose SOP (Carlsen Manga)

The grammar of the image

As usual the front cover of this issue of the One Piece manga series is very colourful. In the background you can see the typical ocean chart - this time held it's orange. On the top there is the big illustrated "ONE PIECE" lettering (which often is read as "NE PIEC" because people sometimes don't get the idea of the O with the Jolly Roger skull inside and the anchor-E). On top of this lettering, we find "Eiichiro Oda", the author and illustrator as well as the issue of the book. Title and publisher are noted on the bottom of the cover. The rest of it is filled with some main characters of the story and especially this issue. Two of them are fighting each other, the others just stand there and look kind of astonished and/or scared. One character is placed in the background. All of them have different facial expressions, are drawn really dynamical, have different sizes and thus try to give some hints about what's going to happen next in the story. It's all about making the reader curious about it. The drawings also give some insight, about how the overall look of this comic book is like. It is, of course drawn in Eiichiro Oda's typical manga drawing style.

Semiotic

Icon: The sword of the fighting character on the right is an icon. It illustrates a sword but actually isn't a real sword, which you can cut things with.

Index: The Jolly Roger skull with the straw hat is an index. We know that it is a skull but it also reminds us of death. Therefore the skull was used by pirates on their flags, because pirates are dangerous and bring death with them. In this case the Jolly Roger is wearing a straw hat, which additionally delivers the message, which pirate crew this Jolly Roger belongs to, namely the crew of the main protagonists of One Piece, the Straw Hat Pirates.

Symbol: The tattoo on the shoulder of the girl in the bikini with the long orange hair is a symbol. Nobody could tell, what it is unless we get to know the story behind it (it's an abstract illustration of a windmill and an orange which both refer to the background story of this girl).

Image anchor, moviated/unmotivated & denotative/connotative image space

The two guys in the foreground are seriously fighting each other. The other guys are looking kind of astonished and/or scared. There's also this crying guy held in cyan. All of these hints indicate a lot of action scenes but also dramatic scenes that are told within this issue.

In general the image space is less motivated, because it doesn't use any photographs and it all is drawn in Eiichiro Oda's typical manga drawing style. That as well as the dynamics and excitement of the characters is connotative. The one refers to Eiichiro Oda (if you know his drawing style - I think it really is unique) and the expressions of characters give us a kind of excited, thrilled and maybe curious feeling about what's going on.