#they're out of their element and its a little bittersweet and in that sense its Complete | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

artg211che · 8 months

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Illo-4 Human Body

Topics of Interest

Vanitas. Sombre, Ubiquitous, Varied

Primitive Figuration. Effective, Symbolic, Communicative

Provocative Gestures. Emotional, Relevant, Commentary

Final Selection, Provocative GesturesBecause when I was choosing a topic I was drawing a blank. So I picked the most emotionally charged category and started researching.

Provocative Gestures

Provocative gesture refers to depictions of people designed to evoke an emotional response from the viewer. The emotion can be anything. What slots a design into this category is that it's a person, and what they're doing carries emotional weight and relevance.

Works in this category often pull on preconceived imagery and tropes, but place them in a new light that gives the viewer a new idea.

Creative Concept

I wonna make a poster to help fight depression, negative intrusive thoughts, self-loathing, all those mental health issues. At the same time, I want to make something that gives credence to how scary that can all be. It's a relevant concept to any demographic and can never use enough support.

I’ll depict the struggle of it all but imply progress or finding a way out. In my sketches, I kept returning to a simple, hunched, panicking figure, he’s almost a little icon. I stretched his shins so it looked like he was standing on stilts, or taking off. My plan is to depict him in the sky hiding from a murky and chaotic scene below.

The provocative gesture will come in with the figure's obvious vulnerability contrasted with its powerful place in the hierarchy of the image.

Keywords

Emotional

Body

Frightening

Relatable

Bittersweet

Design Decisions

I made the figure a lot smaller, and more muscly than I originally intended. When I first thought him up he was an emaciated waif, but making him look sickly rendered him too sinister. Drawing him tiny also helped him seem like an underdog fighting against the odds rather than looming over the viewer. The scene… works. I opted for a forest of decrepit telephone poles and added a circling vulture. I added depth with dozens of chaotic, unclosed, overlapping, and terribly anchored paths that make for interesting patchy shadows. I was trying to depict a setting that exuded uncertainty and anxiety. But to be honest, I think it probably would have worked better with a much simpler background. Drawn more attention to the subject matter.

The caption “Fly If You Let Me” is minuscule at the bottom of the composition. I wanted a phrase that wasn't optimistic but wasn't only doom and glume. A little microcosm of the wider image. It's small to give a sense of both powerlessness and intimacy. Im hoping it talks more directly to the viewer after they've seen the other elements.

Programs

Adobe Illustrator

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tomyo · 4 years

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The 10 year change of JK and Anime style

My latest watch in my quarantine marathon has been KyouSougigi, a 2011 anime that's bombastic and quirky. The world was so hyperactive, I thought it was a gainax (the trigger part) project.

But as the main character Koto had pulled out her weapon decorated with two big plush mascot straps, I was suddenly catapulted into a hyperstate of nostalgia. I never thought a phone strap would be nostalgic.

I'd like to pause a minute just to show off my beloved phone that I used at that time:

Granted, I didn't use these accessories yet. I desperately wanted anime phone straps since 2005 but bizarrely I didn't get one until 2011 when my pucho included a small dragonfruit character who didn't make it very long. However, in 2012, I was a new city living college student with no limitations and I. Went. Ham. Fake food, squishy bread, and stuffed plush, I had it all. My phone was now properly twice it's weight in charms. I was living to the then dream of every JK Gal wannabe.

The world changes so unexpectedly in only 7 or 8 years.

Life does, that's not a boomer complaint. But the 180 in Japanase High Schoolers is something I don't think an 18 year old me would have considered. The image I had grown alongside was that of was short skirts, bleached hair, tons of accessories, bright colors, cardigans, long statement nails and as previously talked about, excessively decorated (flip) phones. Excessive is a good word for it. Even though the looming influence of smartphones phased away the strap loop, bags were still prime keychain holders and decoden phone cases where a trending style. Things did change with tech changes but this had been a general look for nearly 15 years. And yet, here we are now.

First of all I'd like to point out there's very few High School centric anime out right now. Especially not many in the last 3 years (albeit I refreshed myself by skimming Crunchyroll). This isn't so much that anime doesn't use high school age protagonists going into high school, but that school has little in effect of the story. The only notable example of HS anime in 2020 have been Fruits Basket, A Certain Scientific Railgun, Kaguya-Sama, and Eikouken, the first two happen to also be visually cemented in previous eras. So let's look at the other two as well as BNHA since it technically is also a school anime. Character design isn't uniform but it's pretty subdued. In all three of these, nearly every character wears their uniform to dress code standard. Out of the whole BHN cast, Bakugo is the only one to wear his uniform differently, aside from that I'd only consider Denki and Kirashina to have flashy hair. Now this isn't to say that characters don't personalize themselves but rarely is it in focal ways. Style seems to has been delagated to exclusively footwear, backpacks, and sometimes headwear. Again, no one really does a flashy design for hair. There isn't a lot of curling or dyed hair (even if it's colorful, it may still be their natural hair color) and styling is kept to simple ponytails. Every so often a character my wear an alternative pair of shoes or tights instead of knee highs but the only really expression is their backpacks. In some ways that's funny because it was previously one of the uniform elements. The school standard duffle seems to have been replaced by stylish bags, something that could be overlooked depending on how often they're worn (not that often).

If I had to describe how high school life is portrayed now, it's mature. Minimalism is, well, a big thing. When I see JK life, it tends to have a clean look, class president like almost, the appeal seems to be a contrast in the white of the blouse against a dark blue or black. Shows don't seem to want to break a jewelish natural pallette. Also track, track seems really big right now in high school stories, don't ask me why. I think another part of this is that the shoujo norm of light hearted stories focused on fashion and boyfriends seems to now be more about bittersweet dramas. The full blown pastel romantic comedy has a lot of niche focus, wotakei for example. Where naming all the 'I'm a high school girl with one major quirk and this is my wild romance with my boyfriend with wacky hijinks and extreme reactions' shows would be hard to do during the era I was in high school, it's hard to think of many now.

In a similar way, I feel the atmosphere of animation has evolved. Let me start by saying anime is gorgeous now. Backgrounds are paintings, sakuga is everywhere and it's been so long since wispy hair detail meant garrish lines. That being said, my one boomer comment is maybe that it's too good. The statement that "Anime looks amazing but also seems to always be in the same style." could be applied to both ends of the 2010s. Kyoto animation had been the studio, popularizing school girls doing cute things, their style of moe character design, and a style of referential that had to be seen (this also was something brought to further focus by makoto shinkai). Anime almost seemed to suddenly elevate with more carefully drawn backgrounds and honed use of lighting effects. After effects in the digital of anime used to go absolutely unused or where extremely forefront. You can really feel the differences in series like Toradora, Gurren Laggan, Anohana. They were just so polished. Unfortunately, we kept trying to polish. Every major series sans shonen has gone deep into polish but it's removed a lot of the edges in the process. Fruits Basket had a distinctive style that was kept through to it's first anime but is completely gone in the remake for something that's more generic.

I'm applying some tunnel vision to this but anime has veered more mature and graceful. Like the inverse of the JK girl from the flashy gal look to the mature and uniform, anime has flipped from bombastic and expressive to gorgeous but retrained. It wasn't just the plush straps that was so nostalgic in Kyousougiga (remember when this was the whole point?) But the cartoonish designs and secure personality of the characters. It's hard to fully put my finger fully on what it is but that loud personality doesn't seem to be around much anymore. The spectrum seems stuck to very distinct flavours of Deep Introspection or Comedic Dumbassery in terms of personality. The majority of the former can almost be stressful, the character is almost always troubled by the state of their situation. The early 2010s almost felt unburdened in their burdens. For instance, Koto is trapped in a magical world, all she wants is to get home and the world is kinda hostile to her. Even still, she is smiling, goofing, and even has a friendly relationship with her foes. It's a 'This sucks!' not as much as 'This isn't good..'. Studio Trigger, the part of Gainax that popularized that rouge-ish goofy cast has been somewhat of the only one to keep that up. Even then they lost that energy a little bit with Kiznaiver and Darling in the Franxx. Of course, this is also all processed through my experience now as an adult who has a lot more concerns. The taste of nostalgia is so sweet, I can almost feel youth flow back into me at the sight of a feature phone. Even as I try to finish this long detour from my anime watch, the urge to recapture that feeling of being 17 is a powerful drug. Its a mixture of a lot of senses, the feeling of wearing my mock school uniform and using a big purse like a school duffle, learning pixiv, becoming a little more stylish but still keeping an eye on Japanese fashion, becoming a little more independent and active in my interests, and the untroubled comfort of my desires. It's funny that 17, a defining year in my life, happens to be the same year this came out. All in that year, I took piano classes, learned how to use a DSLR camera, started to cosplay, and began to learn Japanese. It was the year I stopped being an outcast without trying to be someone, the year I saw my first concert, the year I learned about Boba and BB cream, the year I was really infatuated with this guy but probably also my female friend, the year I became to determined to get dual citizenship (goodbye to that chance), the year I started on tumblr, it was just a year that I knew who I wanted to be. I've actually come near around to that feeling again recently so I won't let the nostalgia haunt me too much. But man, I'm really for late 00s fashion to come back. I want the cute accessories back, the cheesy photos you'd take and share for fun, and for thrown together looks.

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