Leland McConnell: Design Technology and Concepts Process Book

Design Technology and Concepts

Process Book

McConnell

Leland

Meet the Artist

I’m a self taught artist who has been wanting to go into the comic or animation industry since I was a young child.

Growing up with Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and different kinds of children’s anime from Japan would do that to a kid. My family at first was not supportive of my dream, thinking that it was a phase, but once they realized that it lasted more than ten years, their opinions changed. I am excited to see what the future holds for not just me but for the art and cartoon industry in general.

Project 1 Process

Overall, this project was very interesting to work on. The first hurdle I needed to get past was coming up with my stories. Admittedly, I was having trouble doing so. I ended up taking a line of lyrics from two songs by the Talking Heads for each story. Once I played around with said lyrics and got them to my liking, my mind couldn’t stop coming up with ideas for the concept. I was able to process my thoughts into word maps pretty fast after that.

Story one was a little tricky, but I thought that I could achieve what I wanted with a picture of someone looking past the camera. I set it up against a club scene as well. Bright neon lights contrast with the monotone girl. The only portion of her that isn’t monotone is her eyes, which I changed to a bright cyan to help integrate her with the scene while also “lighting them up”, so to say. I didn’t have a super clear message to convey, I just wanted to show what I thought up concerning the lyrics I edited.

The project where I realized i did NOT know everything about photoshop.

Story two was very simple, it needed to be about someone’s experience with water. A bathtub would be perfect, as it is represented perfectly by the lyrics. Adding in a beach as the background adds a personalized layer to it, as I grew up right off of Sullivan’s Island, and the waters of the ocean soothes me just as a warm bath would anyone else.

Project 2

The Challenges begin

I slowly realize that I have trouble using adobe illustrator.

A man or muppet?

The purpose of project 2 was to create portraits of characters using three typefaces of the artist’s choice. I used Futura, Noteworthy, and SignPainter as my typefaces, mainly because they looked the most interesting to me. By allowing myself to choose freely among the fonts, I did not feel restricted in my process whatsoever. Typically when I create portraits, I try to think of what part of the character stands out the most, and build the design around that. For example, for the piece using the Noteworthy font, I realized almost immediately that the uppercase “U” looks like a nose, and I built the entire character around that. For my SignPainter piece, I knew I wanted to make one with a lot of hair, and I saw that the lowercase “z” character looked a bit like curls.

So, I built the character around that. For the Futura piece, I saw how the lowercase “m” looked like puckered lips and tried to make the character look sickeningly sweet. I have three other pieces that I adore, and it was difficult choosing only three for the final draft.

Project 3

Work inspired by another

Definitely not my favorite kind of project to work on, but we made it through.

Project 3 Process and Details

I started with the iconic quote from Paula Scher. It was the only quote from the ones we could choose from that really inspired me. Her work has a lot of bright yellows, oranges, and warm colors, and I wanted to implement those accordingly. During my thumbnail phase, I landed on a theme of sunflowers and pocket watches. A figure that has extreme angular features popped up on my third sketch, and I wanted something similar in my final. I wanted the figure to look finished but not quite right, in a sense, just to mirror the quote.

I used Procreate to create my rough draft, which was mainly a color study for myself and see what things need to be adjusted and tweaked. Finally, I used my drawing tablet and photoshop to create my final after critiques, which included writing in the quote myself with my own handwriting.

First “Abstract-esque” character

Final Sketch

Final Poster (Left) Poster Mock-up (right)

Elephant

Jazz Elephant Music co.

Jazz Elephant Music co.

Elephant Music Co.

Co.

Elephant Music Co.

Jazz Elephant

Jazz Elephant Music co.

Jazz Elephant Music co.

Final Mark B

Elephant Music Co.

Jazz Elephant

Jazz Elephant Music co.

Music Co.

Jazz Elephant Music co.

Jazz Elephant Music Co.

Jazz Elephant Music co.

Jazz Elephant Music Co.

Jazz Elephant Music Co.

Jazz Elephant Music co.

Jazz Elephant

Jazz Elephant

Jazz Elephant Music co.

Jazz Elephant Music co.

Jazz Elephant Music co.

Jazz Elephant Music co.

Project 4 Process Detail Pages

Project 4 Thumbnail Sketches

Being Inspired from Grief

Once I drew the word “elephant”, I knew I had to make designs that would make my grandmother proud, as they were her favorite animal. Automatically, I wanted to fuse elephants and instruments together in my design, as “Jazz Elephant” is such a good name for a music company. My first design came pretty fast, an acoustic guitar already has a similar shape to an elephant, and I added other elements accordingly.

The second mark took a bit more time. I wanted an elephant that had a clarinet or a saxophone as his trunk, but I had trouble stylizing it in a way that looked coherent. I ended up looking at some of the doodles that my Grandmother would draw with me when I was little, and landed on a design that had a similar feel to it. The outcome is something really different, but I am happy with it nonetheless.

Project 5

Syntax (Visual elements & Relationships)

Stainless steel body with black-colored power chord and handle. The beaters are stainless steel with black covering the ends. The product is trapezoidal, excluding the beaters, which are a spiral shape. The product is curved and has rounded edges.

Semantics: Denotation (Specified)

Electronics > Kitchen Appliences > Baking > Hand Mixer

Semantics: Expression (Feelings)

Mature and Homey

Semantics: Connotation (Associations)

Baking, Cooking, Family

Presence (Contextual)

Little:In a kitchen or cooking competition

Lots:In a Library

Syntax (Visual elements & Relationships)

Completely silver in color. It is forked on the end that comes into contact with food. It has a straight handle, however the thickness is varied to make it comfortable for the user to hold for a long period of time.

Semantics: Denotation (Specified)

Kitchen and Dining room > Table Setting > Eating Utensils

Semantics: Expression (Feelings)

Boring, Non-emotional

Semantics: Connotation (Associations)

Eating, Cooking

Presence (Contextual)

Little: On a plate of Spaghetti

Lots: In a bowl of icecream

The Syntax, Semantics, and Presence of mixing utensils

While this project felt short and sweet, I ended up putting more thought into it than I thought I would.

Syntax (Visual elements & Relationships)

Salmon-colored silicon spatula head extended with a long wooden handle. The spatula head is rectangular, with a raised portion in the middle and rounded edges. There is a small hole at the bottom of the wooden handle.

Semantics: Denotation (Specified)

Kitchen and Dining room > Utensils > Cooking

Utensils> Spatulas

Semantics: Expression (Feelings)

Nostalgic and homey

Semantics: Connotation (Associations)

Baking, Cooking (Scrambled eggs)

Presence (Contextual)

Little:Next to a mixing bowl or frying pan

Lots:In a classroom

Syntax (Visual elements & Relationships)

Completely wooden. The cylindrical handle flows seamlessly into the more flat and concave spoon head. It is a very light-colored wood.

Semantics: Denotation (Specified)

Kitchen and Dining room > Utensils > Cooking

Utensils > Mixing Spoons

Semantics: Expression (Feelings)

Rustic and Cozy

Semantics: Connotation (Associations)

Cooking, Baking

Presence (Contextual)

Little:In a kitchen

Lots:In a livingroom

I was having trouble deciding what I should do this project on. At first, I wanted to do only hand mixers, however during the second item I realized it was going to be a lot of copy and pasting text with the descriptions and some of the semantics would be the exact same. So, I revised the hand mixing idea and ultimately decided to broaden it to mixing utensils. That is, kitchen utensils that can be used to mix ingredients while baking or cooking. It was a lot easier to put together that way, and made the document more interesting to look at as well. I decided to organize the document into four corners, mostly so that all of the photos can be in each of the corners. It also helps that it is easier for me to read it like that anyway.

Colophon

Leland McConnell

ARTS102: Design Technology and Concepts

University of South Carolina

Sophomore

Spring 2023

Self Portrait

Personal Artwork (left)

Preliminary Cover sketch (Right)