I noted your OGR wasn't embedded into your blog? Maybe you forgot the way to do that - by selecting the HTML mode in the Blogger window and then pasting in the embed code from Scribd, before reverting back to the Compose mode...
Anyway, Diomira then... Your visual concept doesn't tell me 'why' you think your city has this Egyptian feel - or rather you don't fully explain the logic as to how you've arrived at this idea via Calvino's text... I'm sharing here my OGR feedback for Tia, who has also chosen Diomira, because much of what I articulate here relates to you... principally working more closely with the clues in the text in order to establish a more concrete concept for the character of your city:
You'll see from my feedback that I'm asking Tia (and indeed Ciaran, who is also exploring Diomira) to think more imaginatively about those 'Gods' - The Egyptians, of course, were polytheistic - they believed in multiple gods - so it is indeed possible to hypothesise that maybe Diomira is based within that culture and ethnicity, which suddenly gives you lots of real world reference and rich sources of inspiration by which to think about your city as a 'real place'. It's so easy with this project to just draw 'stuff' or just draw 'buildings' -when remember, your actual job is to design a world that makes sense. You're not just painting this place, your designing it, and you need to design it in accordance with a set of rules or principles, and those rules and principles need to come from a solid, logical concept.
Just a word of advice - people can be the death of this project - i.e. filling your compositions with stick figures or 'blobs' - our general advice always is that unless you're an expert at the depiction of crowds etc... just show us the environment, places and spaces - we'll imagine the populations ourselves.
So - short version - Diomira is obviously a city with a belief system - hence those bronze statues. Exploring polytheistic belief systems will give you ideas about place, ethnicity and culture, and these in turn will give you specific visual reference (architecture, colour palette, surface pattern, related forms, objects and shapes) from which to design from. I also think giving more thought to the specificity of Diomira's culture will help you think about some of those more difficult shots - the interior for example - what's inside those domes, I wonder? Are they shrines, are they libraries, are they prisons, are they monasteries, are they palaces? And that crystal theatre... why is 'a theatre' so important to this culture? Why does Calvino make such a big deal about it in his text? Maybe those bronze statues are 'not' gods, but states of celebrities - maybe this is a city - like Hollywood - where entertainment and actors are regarded as deities and are worshiped - and those domes are like stadiums or venues or...
So, I think Diomira has even more to offer you as a designer - I want you to know this city and I want specifics, and I want to be able to see how you've moved from the ideas in the text to the design logic of your three paintings...
OGR 05/09/2017
ReplyDeleteHey Frankie,
I noted your OGR wasn't embedded into your blog? Maybe you forgot the way to do that - by selecting the HTML mode in the Blogger window and then pasting in the embed code from Scribd, before reverting back to the Compose mode...
Anyway, Diomira then... Your visual concept doesn't tell me 'why' you think your city has this Egyptian feel - or rather you don't fully explain the logic as to how you've arrived at this idea via Calvino's text... I'm sharing here my OGR feedback for Tia, who has also chosen Diomira, because much of what I articulate here relates to you... principally working more closely with the clues in the text in order to establish a more concrete concept for the character of your city:
https://tiawhitehead.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/invisible-cities-online-green-light.html
You'll see from my feedback that I'm asking Tia (and indeed Ciaran, who is also exploring Diomira) to think more imaginatively about those 'Gods' - The Egyptians, of course, were polytheistic - they believed in multiple gods - so it is indeed possible to hypothesise that maybe Diomira is based within that culture and ethnicity, which suddenly gives you lots of real world reference and rich sources of inspiration by which to think about your city as a 'real place'. It's so easy with this project to just draw 'stuff' or just draw 'buildings' -when remember, your actual job is to design a world that makes sense. You're not just painting this place, your designing it, and you need to design it in accordance with a set of rules or principles, and those rules and principles need to come from a solid, logical concept.
Just a word of advice - people can be the death of this project - i.e. filling your compositions with stick figures or 'blobs' - our general advice always is that unless you're an expert at the depiction of crowds etc... just show us the environment, places and spaces - we'll imagine the populations ourselves.
So - short version - Diomira is obviously a city with a belief system - hence those bronze statues. Exploring polytheistic belief systems will give you ideas about place, ethnicity and culture, and these in turn will give you specific visual reference (architecture, colour palette, surface pattern, related forms, objects and shapes) from which to design from. I also think giving more thought to the specificity of Diomira's culture will help you think about some of those more difficult shots - the interior for example - what's inside those domes, I wonder? Are they shrines, are they libraries, are they prisons, are they monasteries, are they palaces? And that crystal theatre... why is 'a theatre' so important to this culture? Why does Calvino make such a big deal about it in his text? Maybe those bronze statues are 'not' gods, but states of celebrities - maybe this is a city - like Hollywood - where entertainment and actors are regarded as deities and are worshiped - and those domes are like stadiums or venues or...
So, I think Diomira has even more to offer you as a designer - I want you to know this city and I want specifics, and I want to be able to see how you've moved from the ideas in the text to the design logic of your three paintings...