Pixabay.com
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Thursday, March 3, 2016
M3 Awareness Poster - Landfills (Pollution)
Being a little older, I
remembered the iconic images of the 70’s and 80’s for awareness programs, campaigns, and
commercials. This was the era of the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign, R.I.F.
(Reading is Fundamental), Schoolhouse Rock, and the likes of Smokey the Bear’s “Only
you can prevent forest fires… only you.” Initially, I narrowed my ideas to the ‘Crying
Indian’ anti-pollution commercials and Smokey the Bear's campaign against forest fires.
I ran starter searches on Pixabay.com (a free-to-use
image site) for Smokey the Bear, forests, woodlands, landscapes, lakes, rivers,
fire, forest fires, garbage, trash, pollution, & landfills to find some
inspirational images that might fit my sketched ideas. I found the image of the
deer with the dirty cup in its mouth and I was sold. I narrowed my searches on
Pixabay, finding all but one of my images used from the site. I had to do a
Google search to get an image o the ‘Crying Indian’ character ( http://www.longisland70skid.com/tag/crying-indian/
).
I deliberately decided to use some contrast in my poster,
taking the prettiest landscape I found, with a beautiful sunset in the distance,
and adding a landfill atop it. Besides the obvious refuse, garbage trucks, bulldozer,
& scrap metal, I put the deer image to the forefront, deciding that since
it is 30+ years removed from the original commercials, I would use the ‘Crying
Indian’ image as a ghostly background. For the final changes, I added better
tears on the Indian image (using icicle images) and then a flock of birds
flying off into the sunset. I thought the last part would add a bit of irony,
since normally a trash-heap is a meeting spot for hungry flying folk. It is
almost as if the image says that our landfills have become so horrendous that
even the scavengers do not want any part of them.
I remember as a child, how drawn I was to the image of
the Native-American crying over the polluting of his ancestral home. The original
commercials would show the Indian in from of a polluted area, he would turn
with a tear in his eye, and a narrator would say, “People start pollution,
people can stop it.” I decided to bring this concept into the present, updating
the social comment by advancing the problem from just pollution to full-scale
landfills. Beyond the power in the single image of the ‘Crying Indian’, I feel
the combination of the beautiful landscape with the environmental effect on
animals, creates an overall effective awareness campaign image about the effects
of our increasingly wasteful lives on the world environment.
Saturday, February 6, 2016
M2 Project-"Altar of Sacrifice"
"Altar of Sacrifice"
As I began this project,
I had a number of ideas, each in turn revolving around the image of a band or
artist, centrally. After searching
Pixabay.com for images, I settled upon the metal band in a church concept. As a
former member of numerous thrash and death metal bands, I know firsthand the
attraction/repulsion relationship between extreme metal and religion. I decided
to capture this relationship on an album cover for the fictitious band “Altar
of Sacrifice.”
I believe this image
works for a band in either of two separate styles of death metal … First would
be the contrast in the picture, as used for a black metal band, who would be
the “haunters” conjuring evil in an area normally associated with good and
peace – playing in a place no normal black metal band would be welcomed. Second
would be for a Christian death metal band, being the voice of religion, along
with the girl praying, driving away the haunting spirits – for them playing in
a church would be normal fare. The band name works for either interpretation or
use of the picture and the combination of the individual images should be
appealing to either of the metal audiences.
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