SAUL BASS / OLLY MOSS / EDWARD HONAKER
IS IT POSSIBLE TO TELL A STORY WITHIN A SINGLE IMAGE? CONCENTRATING ON ARTWORK WITHIN THE LAST TWENTY YEARS.
INTRO This essay tends to explore if it possible to tell a full-on story through a single image, the artists I am going to speak about are ‘Saul Bass’ and how ‘Bass’ compares to ‘Olly Moss’; Moss’ work feels like it has evolved from Bass’ work as Moss has a very similar style to Soul Bass. Additionally, I am also going to research ‘Edward Honaker’ and how his work uses sequences/series of images to create a story as a comparison to only using a single image. I have chosen these artists as I feel they all have a unique style to their work and bring a certain flavour to images; this is important as lack of creative direction won’t make the artwork as powerful as it is.
ARTIST 1: OLLY MOSS ‘Olly Moss’ is an English graphic artist that was born on January 24 th, 1987 in Hampshire, England. ‘Moss’ graduated from the ‘University of Birmingham’ where ‘Moss’ he studied literature. ‘Moss’ got contacted by Marvel to create a movie poster for ‘Thor’ and a video-game cover artwork for ‘Resistance 3’. I have chosen to look at ‘Moss’’ work as it can be argued that he has perfected story-telling through a single image; as an artist specialized in film poster your goal is to create a story in the viewers head from only one image. One of ‘Moss’’ best film poster artwork has to be the “AN AMERICAN WEREWOLD IN LONDON” artwork; the way he implemented the werewolf to blend in with United Kingdom islands, quote by ‘Moss’’ saying “I’ve always considered illustration and graphic design (along with photography, animation or any other creative discipline for that matter) as tools in a toolbox. The more tools you have, the more versatile you are and the more things you can build. Why bother trying to confine yourself to one specific tool? You’ll only hobble yourself with limitations”. You can defiantly tell the time ‘Moss’’ takes into the creative direction of his art, the fact he doesn’t specifically focus on graphic design/illustration; ‘Moss’’ clearly explains that to become a better artist you must learn other arts. This is a perfect example of a single image telling a story, straight away you can tell the focal point is the wolf between the islands also the use of red is very prominent as it is bright and great contrast to the black and makes the outlined wolf more visible. Also, it is fair to say that this explains much of a story, the title can sometimes be misleading as a “werewolf” can be interrupted for something else and the fact the art itself shows a werewolf just makes it clear and emphasises the fact that there is a werewolf in the story. ‘Moss’’ is very minimalistic and
SAUL BASS / OLLY MOSS / EDWARD HONAKER
doesn’t add any unnecessary things into his canvas as ‘Moss’ finds no point, a story should be to the point. Moving on to another great example of single image storytelling is an updated version of “Star Wars return of the Jedi” movie poster artwork. It is fair to say that undoubtedly ‘Moss’ gives more life to his updated work and expresses the story in a more concise way; moving back on the minimalist view, less is better. ‘Moss’ only adds what is needed and nothing more. Compared to the previous ‘Star Wars return of the Jedi” artwork, you can clearly see too much is thrown out to the viewer unlike ‘Moss’’ piece it’s very to the point, it has all its factors which are “Darth Vader”, the infamous “Ewoks” and the “Scout-Walker”. If a Star Wars fan was to look at this artwork never watching the movie they would clearly understand what is going on, the name itself explains the main point in the movie which is a return of a Jedi, the double exposure of “Darth Vader” clearly reflects that “Darth Vader” has a big role in the movie also the scenery looks to be in a forest which portrays the movie will be set in the planet “Endor”. Adding onto that the way ‘Moss’ uses negative space to enlighten and make the focal point the double exposure, it can also be said that this piece of art is aseptically pleasing to look. The use of colour is very sombre and easy to look at, you can easily tell what is going on in the image, it is not over-whelming. To conclude it is fair to say that ‘Olly Moss’ knows how to fit in a lot and how to portray a story through a single image.
ARTIST 2: SAUL BASS ‘Saul Bass’ was born in ‘New-York, USA’ to be specific in ‘The Bronx’ on the 8 th of May, 1920. Bass was a High School graduate who also attended the ‘Art Students League’, part-time. In the 1940’s Bass began to work in the ‘Hollywood’ industry working on print adverts for films such as: ‘Champion (1949), Death of a Salesman (1951) and The Moon Is Blue (1953)’. The reason I have chosen to look at ‘Saul Bass’’ work is because ‘Bass’ has similarities to ‘Moss’’ work but the techniques used are very different as they both are artists from different generations. It is fair to say that ‘Moss’ is clearly inspired by ‘Bass’’ work as you can tell the similarities between two of them, one major similarity is the approach they both have to graphics which is the minimalistic approach. A clear example when ‘Moss’ payed homage to ‘Bass’ by creating an inspired piece from the movie ‘The shinning’. The techniques that ‘Bass’ used were very hands on for instance a lot of physical printing also a lot gluing, to be a graphic designer in that time you would need a very steady hand and good eye to make perfect artwork. The movie ‘Anatomy of a murder’ was made completely by hand, back then they did not have any computer programs they could just use whenever. Every project took a long
SAUL BASS / OLLY MOSS / EDWARD HONAKER
time to finish as it involved a lot physical tools and man-hours. Compared to now, if you was to recreate the work ‘Bass’ has made; it would take you half the time it did back then. Story-telling and graphic design has evolved a lot, now everything being so much more accessible and easier to learn. ‘Bass’ had a unique way of looking at design as he lived by a motto he made which I quote “I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly things. That’s my intent” his mentally was to make art which he enjoys rather than focusing on art people will like.
ARTIST 3: EDWARD HONAKER Edward Honaker was born in California, San Diego and is 21 years’ old. Honaker studied photography in college (collage not stated), he is now a professional photographer who was been featured in many A-list magazines such as “Moustache-magazine”, “HOFAP-magazine” and “New York-magazine”. This is one of Edwards most famous pieces of artwork, Edward suffers from depression and he shows this through his photography. Edward documents his emotions through understandable photographers, the artwork to the right is a photograph of how he feels day to day. Edward creates a narrative out of multiple images, this is very prominent as two focal points are created. You can argue that both images are a form of juxtaposing each-other however they you can also say they both link together at the same time. It is fair to say that if you don’t know the background of the images and who the artist is, it will be very hard to decipher the images. However, if you do you can clearly understand that the focal point is Edward is feeling lost. This is enhanced by the balloons this as they’re a metaphor, loose balloons float wherever the air takes them so overall Honaker is trying to express that he feels as if his mentality is not stable and is all over the place. This could also signify a loss in Honaker’s family as floating balloons is a metaphor for a loss of life. The idea of metal stability is reinforced in the second image as the person in the image has a puzzled like face and is scattered around and mismatched to create a distorted image. This is the opposite of an aesthetically pleasing image as it is very difficult to understand what is exactly going on. The is very subdued in colour as Honaker’s idea was to show how dark the brain is at times and how it plays with your emotions on a day to day basis; this is very powerful as Honaker creates this picture in your mind. It can be argued that Honaker’s work links to Olly Moss’ work as they use images in an image to create a story, for instance Moss’ “Return of the Jedi” he technically uses an image in an image. The outline of Darth Vader could be classified as an image itself and the fact that there is another image placed in his silhouette of something else. Comparing this to Honaker, it can be said that the image of Honaker with a puzzled face is two images as it tells more than one story depending on what you’re focusing on. However, comparing Honaker’s
SAUL BASS / OLLY MOSS / EDWARD HONAKER work to Saul Bass’ work which inspired Olly Moss’, both Honaker’s and Bass’ work do not link. The styles are very far apart as Honaker’s work is of actual subject matter and very sombre unlike Bass’ work is very prominent as he creates a clear focal point. Bass does this through minimalistic designs that is very easy for the viewer to decipher unlike Honaker uses complex edited photographs which makes it extremely hard to decipher yet they’re very powerful and prominent due to their complexity.
CONCLUSION There are many differences between the artists I have chosen to look at for instance ‘Edward Honaker’ uses several images to tell a story however the way ‘Honaker’ does it, it is almost necessary for him to do that as the images link well together. ‘Honaker’ shows his emotions through his images so it is a must to display a story through multiple image as emotions change over-time so he does this to create a time frame in between his images instead of including all emotions into one single image. However, my twoother use. LINKS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Bass http://www.azquotes.com/author/22866-Saul_Bass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olly_Moss http://www.edwardhonaker.com/ https://www.ignant.com/2015/09/24/photographer-edward-honaker-documents-hisown-depression/