Screenprinting Illustrator Work

So this was the first time I properly screen printed some of my own work, the overall process was extremely satisfying, although there's clearly a lot of things I need to work on. Because I chose quite a specific palette of colours, I thought it best I mix them and print them as spot colours - clearly this was a bad idea. I love love the way the colours came out but the process was incredibly long winded, and this piece was the first in a series of three (and the one with the least colours). The most tasking (and soul destroying) part of the process was the final part, the wafer thin black outline, of course because I'd already printed three colours some would be slightly off from where they were supposed to be exactly. As a result it was extremely frustrating attempting to line up the black lines with the rest of the piece and I ruined several of the pieces as a result. The Vernon Street print room staff were really helpful so the last few came out pretty much perfect. What I reckon I'll do in the future, and on the other pieces is either use different tints for the spot colours to lessen the amount of layers or (and it would be worthwhile to try out anyway) just go with the straight 4-layer CMYK and see how the colours turn out, cos trying to screen print every single one of these separations??!
What was suggested I could do to combat the problem of jaunty layers was using Registration Marks when printing them out from the computer and maybe having the colours slightly wider than before so they fill the black lines more easily. 

I definitely feel more confident using the print studios now and the beauty of having a kind of triptych of work is that I have three similar pieces to progress with and address different problems I come across, the only problem maybe that the third and final piece will be ten times better than the first. Considering I'm starting with quite complex work to begin with I reckon working in the studio will be a lot easier with less complicated prints.

Pixia, Inkscape and Other Freeware

So the web is like totally awash with freeware and open source software for creating, editing and manipulating computer aided art. Above is Pixia, a PC only software, which was actually pretty fun, I went crazy with the drip tool, started by creating some vector triangles and diamonds and generally messing with all its different tools and filters. There wasn't a huge range of them but enough that you could probably create some decent work with. It is developed in Japan and was created for manga/anime style illustration - not completely relevant to me as a graphic designer, but there are some things I could work with none the less. It's similar to Corel Painter, and from just playing with them both I've realised I really need to get myself a graphics tablet if I'm going to fully utilize the possibilities of more freehand drawing software. Stuff like Illustrator and other Vector Software such as ArtWeaver which I've also been playing with on PC is totally workable with a mouse or touchpad - although with ArtWeaver that couldn't be achieved through similar means on Illustrator.

Above is Inkscape, one of the first bits of vector art freeware I downloaded. Rather than BitMap like most of the old paint programs, Inskcape uses SGV (Scalable Vector Graphics), which is good for exporting in and out of other vector based software and is supportable in most web browsers without plugins. It wasn't really appropriate for anything I wanted to explore at the time I started playing with it, it seemed kind of constrained in comparison to similar programs, although I liked certain tools such as the kind of 3D cube thing pictured. The problem is with time constraints, I don't feel I have to really properly explore every aspect of every program I come across, and this didn't feel like something I should spend too much time on. 

Plotter Drawings

"My artistic interest is centering on the adventures arising from the difficulties in mastering the plotted line as a means of artistic expression. Three fascinating aspects contribute to my interest:

1. The fascination of the mechanically guided pen.
2. The fascination of the monochrome line.
3. The fascination of the generative code.

The technology of mechanical drawing is almost extinct. It has been supplanted by other print technologies in the course of technological development. As a metaphor, the moving pen in the grip of a plotter in action resembles relatively closely the process of the hand engaged in drawing. Interesting consequences of artistic concern arise from this observation. Historically, drawings have been around since the beginning of art, and drawing is an enormously rich domain of art. It is a universe, indeed, that is complemented by the equally rich universe of machine-generated drawings, also a universe in its own right.

It is a big artistic challenge to work in this universe, to invent strategies and code them into programs from which drawings can be generated that possess identity and uniqueness and that demonstrate with great clarity that they belong to the machine universe."

-Hans Dehlinger

Source: http://www.generativeart.de/main/index_eng.php

A Visual Reference

An example of how technology allows us to 'see' the 'unseeable'

'Narrative As Virtual Reality'

So I've been reading 'Narrative As Virtual Reality' by Marie-Laure Ryan, its basically a discussion of the social/cultural influence of various electronic media with reference to people like Baudrillard and Pierre Levy. In one of the earlier chapters Ryan talks of the "quasi-human" language that computer programs are written in - a kind of binary code translation for non zero one zero zero people-brains. I think it's funny when you start looking at the software we use, how we need all these reference points to understand what certain 'tools' are for, like how you can turn your 'paintbrush' into a 'magic wand' in a single click. In some ways these are reference points in others, computers are programmed in order to simulate specific tools of the 'real world'...
"As a machine a computer has no intrinsic function. Through its software however, it can simulate... existing devices and human activities, thus becoming a virtual calculator, typewriter, record player, storyteller, teacher, bookkeeper or adviser.."
I like the idea that we need a visual reference point in order to understand how something works, that programs have to be 'designed' with complete human accessibility in mind. I think this extends much further than the computer world, for example in the science world, in textbooks we are given diagrams of what atoms and protons 'look like', of course they don't look like anything we could ever imagine, just as in the complete opposite end of the spectrum trying to picture the shape and size of the expanding universe, or what lies outside the universe, what 'nothing' looked like before the big bang etc.
"We live in simulacra because we live in our own mental mode of reality. What I call "the world" is my perception and image of it."
In this case we need a 'virtual' depiction to understand what these things are, a necessary simulacra. Our view of an atom is not "reality", as humans we cannot "see" atoms but we can envision them only by use of a referent. This is not necessarily unreal, just our interpretive model of the real in order to understand "genuine" reality. With this view in mind, the progression of technology in creating 'virtual' learning environments, is a positive one, it allows us to be creative in ways we couldn't possibly be before, a greater sense of accessibility and interactivity in world's of virtual film editing and design studios, paint buckets and swirl tools. Through these visual reference points artists' with no knowledge of coding or computer programming can use various creative means to explore our view of "the world" as we see it.

All quotes

Ryan; Marie-Laure, 2001. Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

Tux Paint

So this is like free software for kids to mess with in school, so it was kind of just fun messing with it, no REAL work could really come out of it. The software in itself was quite a well put together piece of work, the rainbow tool was cool as hell (see top pic) and there was a lot of fun little 'magic' tools along with a helpful, albeit slightly demented looking penguin. It also makes sure you when you quite that you definitely, DEFINITELY don't want to save work, and I know that when i was playing with stuff like this in primary school I would quite by accident all the time and go crazy over it, so thats gonna be helpful for kids. You also can't save/export any work as any kind of useful format. So anything that I may use from this has to be screenshotted.

I guess this kind of made me think the whole 'hyperreal' concept of virtuality (see post above), in terms of arts and crafts classes I remember getting in primary, you know, finger painting, making pictures of fireworks by scratching black paint of crayons, that sort of thing. I'm not sure how much virtual painting and creative software for children is used in primary schools, nurseries etc. but it's interesting to think that this could perhaps replace the 'real' hands-on kind of creativity. Whether there will be a development in more accessible children's computers rather than just software, and whether A-Level/Higher Art teachers will have to have experience in digital arts such in order for stuff like Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to be taught as part of the basic education curriculum?

Blenheim Print Room Induction

I haven't heard that many good things about the Blenheim Walk print studio, but they seem to have a really good range of facilities, as far as I remember they've got pretty much the same deal (maybe less?) with screen printing as Vernon Street, but it's a lot more textile orientated. I don't know much about screen printing so it was good trying out the vacuum and just kind of seeing how it worked. We practiced doing a CMYK screen print which seemed pretty easy but I can imagine it going wrong if I was left to my own devises. We were shown general safety etc. before we got to have a go at flock and foil printing. The example ones we were shown were pretty lame, but I can imagine them being of use in the future, it all seemed quite simple in process but you could easily produce some really interesting work. I'd definitely like to practice the multi-colour screen prints and peel myself away from the computer a little.

Adobe Illustrator // Design for Print

I thought it would be best to start with technology that was most easily accessible, Adobe Illustrator. I'm familiar with a great deal of Adobe software but have never actually fully engaged in the possibilities of the different tools available in Illustrator. In all fairness the Adobe Creative Suite has so many crossovers, I wasn't sure - being pretty comfortable with Photoshop - if there was any point in using Illustrator until attending the workshop/tutorial, where I was made aware of the possibilities, particularly the Pen Tool. There is clearly a great deal more freedom in creating original graphics rather than feeling like you're just kind of 'tinkering' with old work on photoshop. I used the pen, elipse, rectangle, line segment, warp and slice tools, used the pathfinder and a host of other tools and options & generally explored and experimented with the possibilities in creating graphic work. I found there was a sense of rigidness when working with illustrator, its more obvious you are using computer software whereas with Corel Paint you can kind of get lost in drawing - especially when using a graphics tablet - and forget your just sitting at a screen sending commands. Not that this is a bad thing - I like the result of the rigid vector graphics I used to create the little fantasy world of triangles, diamonds and complex linear structures.

I exported the images as png's into Photoshop, adjusted the levels slightly and started messing with different swatches, initially, it seems the Pantone coated pastel swatches worked nicest, but this is before I've attempted any 'real' printing

Once I'd finished adjusting all the colours, I used the colour seperating tool to print my silkscreen printable copies, splitting them into the necessary CMYK components. I felt that there wasn't much point in attempting a spot colour with this version so i created an alternate colour version to see how that could work. Next stop Print studios!

So I've been reading 'Alter Ego: Avatars and their creators'. It gives a really interesting insight into the reasons people immerse themselves in virtual worlds, some of the people featured in the book made money of purely playing games in order to up the level of other peoples' characters'. Others found it as an escape route from the problems in the 'real world'. This was quite a poignant quote from the books' introduction by Julian Dibbell;

"We fall in love there. We lust for power and for wealth. We seek adventure and escape from the tedium of our more enduring, realer lives. We say they're only games, these little worlds, but often we end up devoting more time to them than to any other realm of our existence, until it starts to make less sense to think of our avatars as fictional characters than as our second selves..."

It's kind of daunting thinking of the possibilities the future holds for this kind of immersive gaming culture, like what sort of level of virtual worlds will people 'play' in in years to come. However, I think its important to add that there is the more accessible, interactive, kind of more passive gaming offered by the Wii, PSP etc.

Concept

Although this brief focusses on the process and exploration rather than a particular concept, I thought I'd lay one down in order to give me a little bit of direction...

I plan to explore the world of 'simulations', whether this be gaming culture, the digital versions of nearly every aspect of creativity and our progression into a 'virtual reality'. In order to create work that reflects this concept, I plan to look at, and work with artists and communicators involved in this industry and explore appropriate technologies and software to create relevant visuals.

I don't want to get too tied down to the concept so I want to keep it slightly open so that it can be used in a way that allows me to explore communication technologies important to me as a graphic designer.