Once our stories from English were concrete, we started our design project- the book jacket. The book jacket was fairly similar to an early project we created during our Junior year, which was the Documentary book. We were all familiar with using Adobe InDesign, but it was fun getting to work with that particular program another time. Our design aesthetic was challenged in this unit. This was the first project where a visual representation had to derive from our unique stories. After may attempts, I realized I wanted my story to have a cartoon-like effect. I drew my characters, and implemented them into my book jacket. Because my story incorporated ice cream I decided that this element would be fun to play around with. I ended up using it wuite a bit in my book jacket and website. This project was difficult for me because I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. I wanted the imagery to fit my young audience but also apeal to the older generation. I had a lot of fun challenging myself and feel even stronger working in the InDesign application.
Surrealism Artist Statement: In my surrealist piece I started to transform my focal point, which is corn, and morph it into a rocket ship. I wanted to keep an analogous color structure, so I stuck to yellows, blue greens, and yellow greens. I used a smoke effect on the end of my corn to make it look as if the rocket ship were taking off. I decided to take a beach photo for my background. I altered the color scheme, and hue saturation to stick with my analogous colors. I then rotated the photograph so the corn looked like it was shooting out of the sky and up into the land. I added people aboard my corn-ship to add more detail. I chose to focus my surrealist piece around food. I like the idea of traveling to new places and seeing how food in other cultures is so different, unique and important. I thought by morphing my corn into a rocketship I was not only showing how corn can take you places, but how much it has evolved over the years. One day kale is the new rave, and the next day it’s quinoa and acai berries. I decided to keep my corn in its natural state by keeping it yellow and vibrant. This decision helped me as an artist because I was able to choose my analogous color structure.
Book Jacket Artist Statement:Using Adobe Illustrator, I was able to create a book jacket that was colorful, playful, and age appropriate for my audience. I wanted to use simplistic elements that children would easily recognize, yet give them a sophisticated twist. I added fun colors to my ice cream cones, and stacked them up extremely high. I kept the background color soft to tie it all together. I also used other elements of ice cream through my use of an ice cream scooper and the melting or dripping effect.
