Our Presentation

Here was our group presentation we recorded-

Final work!

Our final piece involved a series of images of our figures in context. In total there are 8 pictures, 4 in perspective as you saw in the previous post,  and 4 photoshoped- 

Commuting

Fast Food

Shopping

Smoking

Idea development- taking photos

Me and Tom were discussing our project one evening when we thought about placing the figures in the city and taking pictures from the correct perspective to give the illusion they are full sized. Originally we planned on taking pictures of the figures separate and editing them in. Below is our pictures of the figures in perspective.

Location for our models

Picking the locations is crucial, we need to confirm what these figures are showing. We all sat down and had a chat about it, but realized the best way to decide was to take a walk around town. Here’s our chosen locations- 

Finished Models!

Here our final figures. The first is Toms, then Gareth’s, then Ellie’s and finally mine. I think Gareth’s worked really well! I think Ellie’s is quite cool as well, however, it’s a little unclear what’s being shown, is it alcohol or is it shopping? I think Toms could have been a lot better, he used all the right packaging but my method could have been better. I think mine is quite flat, as in not quite fat enough!

The idea of these pieces is not to attack people who like to indulge but illuminate the situation at hand. Making people more aware of the waste they create in day to day activities. I really enjoyed creating these little men, and overall don’t think I’d do anything differently, maybe using mod-roc instead of paper mache as it would harden faster, but other than that I think the creation of this little figure was a complete success!

Creating our Characters

Today we played about with demographics and clothing ideas for a good while before deciding that most of the fashions of the characters should be generic and have a fairly simple style. But of course the materials we were using would probably have an effect on how the people turned out. Of course we took material properties into account, but wanted to separate the design from the material to make it easier for us to choose the appropriate material.

We planned out our ideas in our group sketchbook-

Wire skeletons

We decided to develop on the recent ideas and decided we would like to continue using out idea of reusing things we had collected over a few days. We decided to make some little skeleton figures out of modelling wire and spot welding together to create a structure we could build on to. Our idea was to create a human form as simple as possible with only a few bits of wire, to create a basic frame we could work from.

I cut the wire for the back first to get the general height of the model, I then cut wire for the legs, arms and head and spot welded together.

My model is the one leaning against the can, my idea is that I would like my model to be leaning against a wall in a casual pose.

One of my group members, tom smee, created the sculpture shown in the picture with the phone showing the skeleton structure on the phone. He based the frame of the model on the skeleton; Unfortunately the hip structure was complicated and fragile and broke quite easily. He decided to make a structure more like a doll to make the human structure, it was an unusual experiment and a contrast to our wire figures.

Furthering Our Ideas

As a group we decided to think of some further development ideas and note them in a sketchbook to document all our ideas in the same place. We came up with the idea of doing some public art! This excites me, I can’t wait to create something to place in a public area and get reactions off people! We looked further into how we could do this but realised scale would be an issue, considering the little time we had, so we decided to scale down. We decided we could make smaller pieces and place them in the city and use these as our presentation piece.

Recycled works by Leo Sewell

We continued looking into artists who create sculptures out of old materials and recycled objects and discovered Leo Sewell.

His works are similar to Bradford’s works in that they both create large sculptures out of recycled materials. However the difference is that Sewell uses a much broader material use, ranging from car parts to children’s toys. I also feel like Sewell takes more into consideration the colour of the sculptures and the material used, sticking to one colour to create a more pleasing and less hectic sculpture.

I really like his sculptures as they recreate a more natural and ‘realistic’ shape and form. The one colour makes it more sophisticated , and it looks more ornament like.

Recycled Works by Robert Bradford

As part of our group research we began generating ideas by starting to look into artists who create works out of old, unused artists and recycled materials.

Robert Bradford is known for his sculptures created out of rubbish and old children’s toys. He takes children’s toys that are no longer wanted and recycles them to create large sculptures of toys. I feel like his work represents the way children grow and develop, learn and change but still carry little things along with them. The bright colours represent the fun of childhood and the imagination and fun children have as they live, grow and play.

It could also represent how children hold on to things, and struggle to know that letting go could create something different.

I like how it also shows the amount of toys the average child has throughout their childhood growing up, and how the toys are wanted for a whole and then thrown away.