Persons of note : Douglas Adams

I decided to choose Douglas Adams as my person of note because i have read the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy as a child and watched the series and movies.

So at first it went really slow, i wasn't really sure what to draw. I drew some space things and some weird creatures.

Spent ages on this epic DNA strand. Douglas Neil Adams: DNA. Pretty cool. Well he thought so, he was pretty proud of those initials

Next i just started drawing machines and technology because its sci fi.

Now i actually had a think about what i wanted to say with my work. Douglas Adams' work has been something i've grown up with and loved and instead of representing him as a person i wanted to represent his fiction because thats whats important to me. I feel his books are like stepping through a portal where anything is possible, a whole new world.

So i started with some portals to draw.

This didn't spur on a great deal of work but i like those sparkly rocks, i'll be keeping those to use again later.

My next idea, carrying on with the whole the book is a gateway to another universe, a portal as such.

I decided to add a character who would read the book then fall in through it.

This i s some wacky universe stuff that will be inside the book. I really like the wiggly lines, going to be using a lot more of those.

This one is what i imagined it would look like once he fell through the book, the wiggly bubble of goo around him protects him in space.

Really going for these wiggly lines. Them themselves represent Douglas Adams because their crazy and playful. also on here i started trying to draw the babel fish, starting to think i may incorporate that and other characters maybe into my postcards.

                                               

I started to not like this idea as much though and wanted to eliminate a story line and just have it all on one poster. So i've decided i like the child sat reading and i like the planets and wiggly space lines.

I was trying to think of a way to make it instantly recognisable and thinking of things that make him recognisable now, which means the most recent thing; the movie adaptation of hitchhikers guide. So i decided to first have a whale with a big plume of water shooting out of the top but to give it Marvin's eyes. The reboot gave him big blue triangular eyes and i think they are one of the most instantly recognisable parts of the movie.

This first one i drew with loads of ruler lines, if i could measure it i did. I did this because i wanted the images on the poster to sit straight. because it wasn't in my usual comic format that i'm used to there was a lot of negative space around my object. With that much negative space i think accuracy and balance are key. during this run i decided that the boy didn't really fit in with the aesthetic of the rest and also i was having a great deal of trouble getting the angle of his head right. So i decided to give it more child like fun character by having the  box on top. I played with ideas of having childrens writing on saying spaceman or words to that effect, but it all seemed to obvious and in your face. Then i decided the best way to make it linked in is to give it a direct link to the story. So i put him in the position of deep thought.

                                               

Here is a negative i made to screen print with. I found once i painted this one that in fact i didn't like the large amount of white space that there was. so I decided to inverse the colours so that the black would frame the image better than the white did.

Unfortunatly when i went to go screen print i was told my paper was too thick and i'd have to scan and print again but since I've left it so late by bad organising skills i didn't have time for that so i took my favoured negative and decided to neaten up the edges then add colour. The colours i chose were a green and purple I got them from the pictures of nebulas and galaxies i found. These were quite common colours and i feel they go well together.

For my postcards i decided i wanted to have bottled elements of my poster. The bottle just came from previous play with this subject.

Final Pieces.

Evaluation:

Weaknesses:

1. the poster is a different paper type to the postcards and stamps because i was intending them to be used as negatives. This breaks down the congruity of them all, they work less well as a set with this mistake.

2. blotchiness of some of the ink is apparent. I painted over most of the ink as it did not leave a matt finish and instead showed where every stroke of the brush had been and every bleed. 

3. The stamps don't represent Douglas on their own, they more just support the poster and postcards in a set.

Strengths:

1.Colour went well which is a first, i usually do worst with colour but i think having something related to reference from helped. And just that the colour had a purpose, it wasn't randomly chosen.

2. Line as pattern is working nicely here, it helps with the limited colour pallet as it can be used to separate different blocks of white.

3. Composition, i think it went well this time there is a balance of negative space and everything is centred around each other. I think the negative helped most here as originally i had intended the inverse colours. With a mainly white background the piece seemed to float undecidedly. But with the black border it feels secure and strong.