Lost&Found in Digital Age

LOST & FOUND

IDEA BOOK 2012 - 2013 Qianliu Chen

Content Intro

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Searching back Having fun with traditional techniques Sketchbook Project Image Harvest Project Workshops and three-workshop reaction piece Publishing Project 3D Lettering

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Moving forward Seeking for directions in digital age Art market Project Hand Lettering Words On Wheels Pattern workshop Made & Sold Stop Motion Animation

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And more Lost & Found Group Show Sketch Book Show FranknPoetry Show Alpha book illustration Zine for MOCCA Independent Project Lightroom & Archiving

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Intro

Why am I here? Why did I choose to attend graduate school?

What are my goals? What are my expectations? All these questions have been asked over and over since I started to apply to school. As time goes by, all the experiences here at MICA have made me thinking beyond those initial questions. When I look back at my earlier digital illustrations, I feel that I could have done them better. But how can I improve my drawing technique? How can I get a better understanding of color and texture? How can I bring a natural feeling to my digital illustrations? I’m still searching for the answers. What I’ve done for my entire first year of graduate study, is to mainly focus on exploring in traditional technique and blending those discoveries into my present digital illustration. I think this process of looking back and moving forward definitely helped me to spot my weakness and develop a unique style in illustration field.

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Searching Back Having fun with traditional techniques I still remember that I used to doodle on cheap papers in class when I was a kid. However, since I got my first digital tablet in 2005, I found it was liberating convincing digital image in program like Photoshop and Corel Painter. With all the shortcut and hotkeys, drawing and making changes became so easy. I can barely remember the last time I drew on a piece of paper. However, drawing is origin on paper. If we start to lose the ability of hand drawing, we will get lost the on the way to improve the aesthetic of digital illustration.

In the following sections, I looked back at my first year projects. I had a great time trying traditional methods. Though I got frustrated at the very beginning, as long I practiced more, I felt more confident about what I was doing. Pencil sketching, watercolor and crafting, making things in three dimensions and feeling the brush textures on the products: the experience is richer than I expected. Fun!

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Sketch Book Project Sketchbook Project is a collaborated project we did for the Brooklyn Art Library. Each sketchbook was assigned with a theme. We did illustrations based on txhe themes and exchanged sketchbook each week.

This is the project that completely took me out of my comfort zone.

There was no way to sketch digitally, so I had to go back to paper and pencil. It was a little bit frustrating for me, but it was also a very good practice for me to experience traditional hand drawing.

Cover illustration & Details

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Working In Progress

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Image Harvest Project Image Harvest Project is a project that helps us to looking back at our old illustrations and then brainstorm ten ideas to bring the old works a new life. Since I came to MICA with a game-design background, I took my cartoon-building ideas and made new products.

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Workshops and Three-Workshops Reaction Project

This project is to utilize what we’ve learnt from the workshops and to creBookbinding

ate something new using these techniques. There were four interesting workshops in the 2012 fall semester: letter pressing, bookbinding, sewing, paper engineering. These workshops provided a great opportunity for us to search beyond what we are used to doing. For the three-workshop

Sewing

reaction piece assignment, the skills of paper folding, bookbinding, and sewing contributed to my little popup book called Journey.

Letter Pressing

Paper Engneering

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Sketches for Three-workshps Reaction Project

Pop-up Card

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Pop-up Book: Journey

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Publishing Project I used watercolor for a book Travelogue, which illustrates the famous food and the local architectures of different places in China, it also represents the unique culture of the erea. It was created in a travelogue format, with a folded cover at a size of 5x7’’, and a small book inside. It was a challenging project, not only because of lack watercolor experience, but also because of the hand-making process. After all the hardworking, someone bought this book at MICA Art Market and told me that he likes my illustration; he said it reminded him of the days he was in China. That was the best moment, and I believed all my efforts were just worth it.

Travelogue

Ilustration of TIbet

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Publishing Project Pitch This 12-page picture book is about traveling. Most of us have a desire of traveling deep in our heart. This book will show the audience several amazing spots in China, leading them into the ancient country and enjoy in its beauty.

In this book, it will illustrate the famous food there and the local architectures, which represent the unique culture. There will be four to five scenes of China, including Phoenix Ancient Town, Wu Zhen, Old Town of Lijiang, Wuyuan Jiangxi and Tibet. It will be created in a travelogue format, with a folder cover at a size of 5x7’’, and a small book inside. This would bring this product more nature and interesting.

The audience will be mainly focus on people who are interested in travel experiences and Asian culture.

All the things shown in the book are close to the residences’ daily life. It represents a different life style to the audience, and also delivers a relaxed emotion in the “trip”. Then, the audience would get more organized and move back to the daily life.

Working In Progess

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3D Lettering

This was a fun project we did to welcome the visiting artist Tomi Vollauschek. I made the letter “L” with wood, pushpins and spray paint. This was something I’ve never done before, but came up with the idea and constructed it in three dimensions. It was really exciting.

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Moving Forward Seeking Unique Directions in the Digital Age I appreciate that I was able to immerse myself in hand drawing and also meet those amazing digital artists as well. The development of software and equipment provides artists with various approaches as their style their artworks. Some of these artists scan their pencil drawings and apply color digitally, while others make their own textures that could be used as overlaid layers or preset brushes. After communicating with them, I started to realize that digital illustration could also be as organic as hand-drawn illustration.

As for me, the projects in this chapter were more like an experimental process. I explored with different ways to bring in hand-drawing elements into my artworks. Instead of starting with line work, I tried to work on silhouettes first, and then use textured brushes to render the picture. Beside this I also applied light sketch lines, which are very subtle and hard to detect. It helped to break the digital feeling, and I think it worked. Maybe this was the direction I was searching for.

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Art Market Project

My market project was combined with the Image Harvest Project. The idea of architecture illustration was applied to my calendar product, called Travel Around the World! This product has 12 different cartoon images assigned to each page, at a size of 11x8.5 inches. The target audience was young adults and businesswomen who usually work under the pressure of tight schedules. Writing a creative brief for the product also so helped me to develop a better understanding of the market and identifying unit cost.

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Working Digtially

Details

Binding

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Illustration: Reykjavik

Illustration: Lake Laurence

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Illustration: Santorini

Illustration: Deer Valley

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Hand Lettering

In this project each of us was assigned about ten words to illustrate. I was able to experiment in different ways to approach the final product. Most of the words were done digitally, but I started to add more textures to reduce the digital feeling. I also tried to use something new, including light painting, googly eyes, and tea.

Working In Progess

Illustration: Delusion

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Words On Wheels

Poet Yasmine with the poster

We had the chance to participate in 14th annual “Words On Wheels� project, which is supported by Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) and the Maryland Department of Transportation. We illustrated posters for the poetry written by students from Baltimore City Public Schools. We also had the chance to meet our little talented poets at the celebration, and we worked together to put up the poster on MTA bus. Then we could see our posters displayed on MTA vehicles throughout the year!

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Words On Wheels Poster Design

Sketches

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Pattern Workshop

Every illustrator loves patterns!

Applying our illustration to a pattern format and to preview it on practical products: What can be more exciting than that! In this set of patterns, I designed five pair of patterns carrying a theme of “morning at the lake house�, which conveys a relaxed life attitude. But it was tricky to design the patterns because it required very careful consideration for the pacing and color matching. Actually I redid some of the patterns several times to get the final result and finally I chose limited color palettes to get the best result.

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Made & Sold Workshop

This was a three-day workshop with the visiting artist Tomi Vollauschek.

The entire workshop was divided into three sections; for each section, we explored new ideas and came up with something fun. TADO doll in Tomi’s book Made & Sold inspired me. I developed my own character and applied it to buttons and other artwork format. The print I made for the third section was a little bit different than other prints. It’s just an ordinary print with an unhappy bunny on it, however, but if the audience looked at it through a light source, the bunny becomes very happy.

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Day 1: Sketches

Day 2: Button Badge

Day 3: Application

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Stop Motion Animation

We had a four-day Stop Motion Workshop with Melinda Beck in our class. It was fun but also very intense. We needed to finish all the production in about three days. I including the design I illustrated all the puppets digitally, then printed them out and made the paper doll. Though I have a animation background, I have never made any stop-motion animation before. Each

Workshop with Melinda Beck

frame took me about three to five minutes to place every object to the right place. So the production process was really time consuming.

I spent a whole night finishing the shooting part, then anther couple of hours to edit the video and match up the sound track.

Watch it on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/64050242 Shooting

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Story Board

Dragonframe Workspacae

Vedio Edtiting

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And more What else we have done for this academic year? Exhibitions, group work, and more! I’m really proud to be in this community and create new work with my friends. We help each other and get inspired by each other. I’m sure for next year, we will come up with something even more spectacular!

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Lost & Found Group Show

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Sketch Book Show

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FranknPoetry Show

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Alpha Book Illustration

Zine For MOCCA

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Independent Project

For this project, I was able to explore something I’ve never done before. I decided to make this mininature with wood, metal wires and air dry clay, dipicting a small bunny hidding in his closet.

Hiding In the Closet

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Working In Progress

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More bunnies!

Lightroom & Archiving

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