Typo Lessons

We've had a couple of lessons focusing on playing typography recently at school.  I used them to play around with subjects from my CD Cover.

The first lesson was based on one word.  I had Wind, taken form the song Wind & Geige.  My experiments/sketches weren't particularly succesful as they didn't capture the free natural movements of wind.  I also don't have digital copy of everything I did during this lesson at the moment so you're only seeign part of what I did.

The second lesson we had to do a whole sentence.  I took a quotations Faun had put in the sleevenotes in reference to the song Unda. It speaks of a stag by a well so I made a watery stag with a circular text.

I was happier with this result than the wind ones as it does have a watery feel to it.  I'm not sure if I'll be doing any typography like this though in my cover.  If I do illustrate the text I think I'd sooner only do the titles of the songs because there's a lot of text.

Stags and Circles

To start off my sketching for my CD cover I wated to play around with some Dry-Needle Point Etching.  I did this in relatively thin plastic which allowed me to cut around the stags head which I etched into the plastic.  I wanted to use the edge of my plate to form the shape of the stag instead of having the usual dominating frame created by etching.

Along with my stag's head I also made four spheres with trees inside them.  I wanted to print these seperately and over the top of my stag.

 I ended up colouring in the tree with Ecoline (liquid watercolour) because the tree wasn't really showing up very well.  This was partially due to printing it at home and I haven't bought proper etching ink yet.

 I also tried printing my spheres on wripped paper I particularly like the spacey kind of feel of the one on the left.

So here's how the stag head printed, pretty cool I thought.

While I was printing the back of the plate got a bit dirty with the printing ink.  When I was printing the above stag head I saw on the protective sheet against the back of the plate that that was actually making a pretty cool print too.  So I printed a mirror-image stage together with the full-on face stag print.

I then tried printing my tree spheres.  They weren't great to be honest, you can't really see the trees.

So  then instead I flips the spheres over and used the other side to print.  I decided to go for a bubble effect because I think they are such magical things and that they fit in with the "Licht" theme of "Other Worlds".

This result I was very happy with.  I think the plates combined well together and the contrast of the coloured bubbles and the black and white deer gives it a more dreamy effect. 

I also really like the circular shapes, they feel kind and wordly opposed to other shapes.  It also seems to be a theme which pops up in the cover now and again: A Well, A Circle Dance, Will-O-the-Wisp orbs and potentially Rune Stones.

After having done a couple of sketches for song "Wind & Geige" (Wind and Violin) I also did a print for this, but I still have to make a good print of this one.

All the Songs

I felt it was important to start by making some moodboards for the indivual songs.  Each song has it's own little story and history, each which I want to include in my cover.  These way I was able to make a good overview for myself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'll be adding the lyrics and band comments later on when I need to type these up for in the album cover.

Costume Templates

I tried to start sketching for my costumes today but I couldn't quite get into it.  Instead I traced out some template characters so I can easily use those over and over again when trying out different ideas at the beginning stages.

Uenuku

 I selected a stocky template for Uenuku as he is a hunter and would probably be a broader man opposed to slight.

I also made a javelin throw template to see what a costume could look like in a more physical pose.  The Spear was probably the mostly used hunting weapon in Maori civilisation.

Hinepukohurangi

 

Hinewai

 

I used the same poses for the two sisters. I made Hinewai broader the slight Hinepukohurangi as she seems more mature and emotionally steady than her sister.

 Village Women (extras - I've written out that there will one Head of the Women and six extra in my Costume Crossplot)

 

This is just a basic start for the village women, I'll get a couple of extra poses when I've done the first sketches for the three main characters.

Where to start...?

I've was originally a bit stuck on where to start on my costume design project and not feeling particularly motivated.  But now I've got into the swing of things again and I'm really enjoying my projects.  I've started (skim) reading Costumes 101 and as mentioned before it's very useful.  I've decided to basically run through the proces a costume designer working the field goes through.

First of all I mapped out the scenes that are in the film.

Since I took this photo, I have added a scene in between 12 and 13: Hinepukohurangi arrives.

I decided to skip the chronological script breakdown as there is no real script for my project and I felt I didn't need to do this as it seemed very similar to the Costume Crossplot.

I then made a Costume Crossplot to make out which characters are in what scene, when the sets are used, Interior/Exterior, Day/Night and what happens in each each scene.

I then started what the is called the First Concept Presentation to show my general ideas for each character with examples of clothing, colours, concept references and swatches (material samples) for some.

You can click on the images to read my notes and thoughts on different character approaches.

 leather, wool and hessian swatched for Uenuku costume

I plan on making one real costume and I've decided on doing Uenuku.  He is the main character and I am very excited about my discovery of embossing into leather with lino cuts so I really want to tackle this one for real.

I haven't made one for the Gods as I think those characters would sooner be CGI characters which makes them more for the concept Design Department than the Costume Design department, but that still remains to be seen.  I want to get these characters done first and then based on time left and estimated time I'll need to make Uenuku's costume see whether I design the Gods as well.

Reading - Costume Crossplot Examples

As mentioned before I've started reading the book Costume 101. I only have handwritten notes at the moment so here are the scans.  I'll be typing it out when I start processing my information more.

I wasn't quite sure on how to make a Costume Crossplot after having read this so I looked it up on the internet.  I found one example:

 I then later discovered that there was actually an example of a Costume Crossplot in the Costume 101 book which the writer hadn't made a page reference to in his text. 

A very cool discovery!

After having lino printed my material feathers I thought I'd try something out.  I soaked a piece of leather in water for about a minute, set my etching-press to a tight print and printed the kiwi feather onto the leather without any ink.  And yes, it did what I had hoped, it embossed the leather.

I certainly hope to use this for my costume project and I think it will also be very helpful with making my music merchandising for Faun.  Embossing like this is certainly a lot more practical than hand carving or burning for merchandising as it can be easily used for small-scale mass production.