Digital Collage
Title: A Cartoon's Onlooker
Size: 91.44 cm x 60.96 cm Medium: Digital Collage on Photopea. Completion Date: October 17, 2022 Exhibition Text: A Cartoon's Onlooker is meant to showcase how much cartoons have affected how I am and my life overall. My piece was inspired by August Macke's The Hat Shop and one of my personal favorite cartoons, "Adventure Time" by Pendleton Ward. I chose to be inspired by the art movement of Expressionism to try and show off my intense feelings towards cartoons and animation. In the piece you can see a younger me looking at a television showing a random cartoon like drawing inspired by "Adventure Time." |
Background Essay
When I was younger I was often very happy and energetic. I would run around for so long, but after I became tired, I immediately sat down and just watched some cartoons. I would watch all kinds of cartoons on Cartoon Network but my favorite of all time was and still is Adventure Time. My younger self watching Adventure Time was the main piece of media that I would consume and I would continue to do so for so long. I have watched so much that it affected how I act as a person. I would watch the humor and words used in the show and reflect it into my own life. I would remember some kind of joke used in the show, and then the next day I would go to school and share it with my friends to try and share the joy and happiness that I experienced. Eventually, I became so entwined with the cartoons that it made me want to be a part of something like that. I grew up acting like an out there cartoon character to hopefully make other people laugh or smile or just feel something like cartoons did to me. I was so inspired by these shows that I would watch and try to replicate what they did to me. For the most part it worked as well. Seeing that I had the ability to do the same thing that these cartoons did for me was and still is an amazing feeling.
Nowadays I still do similar things. I still watch all kinds of cartoons, I still take the energy, vibe, and jokes from the cartoons and use them for others' happiness, and it still allows me to give happiness to other people. Now that I have gotten older and have more materials as well, I am able to actually try and create some kinds of animations myself. Doing so allows me to be happy. It just shows how much cartoons and these “moving pictures” affected how I can experience joy. I am able to take what I have experienced as a child, and turn it into my own. If it weren’t for me being so interested in cartoons from such a young age, I probably wouldn’t have gotten to experience the feelings of happiness that I do from art. Doing so changed my life and how I live and how I want to live in the future in so many ways. My awe and early love for cartoons have really affected and changed who I am.
Nowadays I still do similar things. I still watch all kinds of cartoons, I still take the energy, vibe, and jokes from the cartoons and use them for others' happiness, and it still allows me to give happiness to other people. Now that I have gotten older and have more materials as well, I am able to actually try and create some kinds of animations myself. Doing so allows me to be happy. It just shows how much cartoons and these “moving pictures” affected how I can experience joy. I am able to take what I have experienced as a child, and turn it into my own. If it weren’t for me being so interested in cartoons from such a young age, I probably wouldn’t have gotten to experience the feelings of happiness that I do from art. Doing so changed my life and how I live and how I want to live in the future in so many ways. My awe and early love for cartoons have really affected and changed who I am.
Inspiration:
Artist in Focus: August Macke
One of the artists I used on this piece as inspiration was August Macke and his painting The Hat Shop. Macke was a German artist in the Expressionist period. He was inspired for this painting by activities citizens would be doing around him. There were multiple times in which he captured people on shopping trips. This specific painting was made in 1914 and showcases his personal style of small use of detail with bolder colors. Many of his paintings of shoppers would show them looking in on stores from the outside rather than being inside the store and looking around. I wanted to use his painting for an interesting style of collage and for the overall layout of it. He uses people onlooking in like stated earlier and I thought that would work well for what I wanted to show off as well. Seeing his painting inspired the entire layout of my piece to the way that it is. |
Artist in Focus: Pendleton Ward
The other artist that inspired me for my piece is Pendleton Ward. He is the creator of the popular Cartoon Network show "Adventure Time." Ward created a short for the show in 2006 and originally pitched it to Nickelodeon. They rejected the show which then caused Ward to turn over to Cartoon Network. There, he worked on "The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack." Due to that experience, he gained knowledge on how to run his own show when he could. Eventually, "Adventure Time premired in 2010 and became a Cartoon Network hit. After 5 seasons he stepped down to become a writer and storyboard artist for it, and then eventually just giving input on the show as an executive producer. I chose to use the stylee of "Adventure Time" as it is a pesonal part of my story of how I became interested in art and animation. I thought that I could try and draw some kind of visual in that style to put on the tv. Of course I would fit it more to the Expressionist style, however it provided a good basis for what I wanted there. |
Planning:
First starting this project, I was not sure what to make my topic about. I decided to brainstorm for a bit and eventually came up with 5 different options. I eventually narrowed down the options to two that were really tough to decide over, however, I realized that since I talked about animation connections in my first piece, a continuation of similar themes could be a good idea. With that being said I chose a theme and then wrote out my essay. From there I did some research on some art movements and found that expressionism could be a good tie in as I wanted to show that cartoons are a big impact to me in a visual way. I eventually also found August Macke, and the perfect art piece for inspiration being his "The Hat Shop" piece. I then started to take down some observations on what is going on in his work such as the solid colors with little detail. It can also be seen that there weren't solid black lines separating images or parts of the drawing so making it all color that would be smoothly transitioning from one to the next would be something I could try and do. I took note of it overall to then later explore in photopea to see how I could emulate it.
|
After getting that all down along with a little quick sketch of what I wanted it to be laid out as, I then put my focus towards what would actually be played on the tv. I knew that I wanted it to be some kind of cartoon, so I listed some specific cartoons I could connect it to. I eventually narrowed it down to "Adventure Time" since it is probably my favorite cartoon I have ever seen. With that knowledge in my head, I decided to try and do a quick draw of one of the main characters, Finn, in the normal "Adventure Time" style. After getting it down, I started brainstorming what I could actually draw and decided to take inspiration from a costume I made in the past which was just a bunny cloak. I took that and made my own character in the style. I figured that since the cloak had the bunny ears on it, it would make it easier to get the style down with how there are characters in the show that have animal hats on that have stubby ears. I then looked toward how I would make the background and did some background research on "Adventure Time." I looked at pictures of the background and did a sketch of how it would look. I drew it out and it looked pretty similar to the normal environment in the show. It probably helped this entire process that I have seen the show multiple times which got me used to the looks of it fast.
Process:
After getting my research done, I went on to gather my pictures. I started by finding a picture of a younger me looking off in the distance in the exact pose I wanted. I eventually found one that was perfect. After that, I took many pictures of my tv from different angles. I had to make sure the pictures included exactly what I wanted without extra. Then I started to put together the drawing that would be on the tv. I combined my character and background research to then create an image that would then be colored digitally in Photopea.
After I finished drawing out my final image with the “Adventure Time” look, I started to edit it in Photopea. I noticed that there were tools on the side to draw with or fill up with the brushes/bucket tools. I took my image and outlined different areas that were going to be one color. After boxing in the areas, I filled them with the corresponding color to give it that smooth color feel in Macke and Ward's artwork. After I got that done I moved onto the main background image that I had. The image is a picture of my living room tv with some of the area around it for me to stand on. All I really had to do with this image was increase the size of it so that it can fit within the parameters of the digital collage. To do this I went to the edit tab and clicked on free transform in order to blow up the image. After increasing its size, I had to move the image around to make sure that it included everything I needed and wanted it to. This didn't take too much work as I really just needed the right side to match up, and then the rest of it I could choose to keep on or off of the image.
|
After getting the background done, I went over to the image I had of myself and cut me out of it. This took a lot of time since I wanted to make sure that the image of myself was cut out very thoroughly so that there wouldn’t be random colors in it around me. I started by using the lasso select tool to cut out a rough image of myself to then trim down. After selecting my entire body, I used the “refine edge” mode to do the trimming. I started off by just erasing areas. I cut out big areas that I had included first. I then zoomed in to do closer and smaller cuts to my body. After some time of me having trouble erasing specific areas, and photopea glitching out what I undo, I decided to get as close as possible and overshoot the cuts. I then went back with the foreground brush to refill the areas I wanted to keep. Finally after some trial and error, I successfully cut myself out of the image.
Experimentation:
Now that I finally had all of my images ready, I combined them all onto the one final image page. With everything finally on the one page, I now had to start fixing things into their right position. Since I already had the background ready, all I had to do was adjust the placement of the picture of me and the drawing. I started off with the aligning the drawing I had with the tv screen. At first I used the puppet warp in the edit tab. This ideally should have worked out fine, however, it was taking a really long time for my chromebook to keep up with what I was doing and eventually caused the program to crash. Due to it crashing, I had to redo some of the processes I hadn’t saved yet, however it wasn’t much. Then I went back with a different approach. I used the transform option and then warped the image. This way was much better since it actually worked nicely and didn’t lag at all. It took a little bit to do so but I eventually got the drawing lined up pretty closely to the tv screen. I noticed that it was a little hard to see the edges of it since it was all a dark color so I had to make some guesses. In the end, it still turned out.
|
One of the last things I had to do was edit the picture of me. All I needed to do was flip the image horizontally and move it a bit. To do so, I went to the image tab, went down to transform, and simply clicked on flip horizontally. Then I used the free transform edit as I had earlier in the background to adjust the sizing of myself. I originally started out too small, so I had to up my size a bit. I eventually found a suitable and proportionate size that made sense. Next, I used the move tool to move the image of me around until it fit so that it looked like I was looking at the tv at the right angle. I eventually put it so that my feet and some of my legs were cut out so that it could match nicer.
The last thing I wanted to mess around with was if I could capture Macke’s expressionist style of little detail and solid colors. I went to the filters page and started to scroll through the different options testing them out. I eventually came across the “paint daubs” filter that seemed to work nicely. I messed around with the amount of sharpness and brush size a bit but came across a desirable state of the image.
|
Critique:
Similarities:
There are some similarities and differences that can be seen in my piece and my inspiration pieces. One thing that is similar is that my piece and the piece by Macke has a similar layout to each other. We both choose to have a person as the main focal point and have them staring at something off to the side. While there is some background in each image, it is relatively simple and out of focus. My piece is also similar to the style of "Adventure Time" because of my piece containing the image on the television. I tried to make it have a similar style to the cartoon and captured it by using similar character design and background design. I made my character look similar to the main character, Finn, with the way I transferred the outfit into the style. I also tried to capture some elements in the background as well which I think transferred over wuite nicely.
Differences:
My piece is different in some ways too however. One big difference is the smoothing of colors that can be seen in Macke's style. I tried to emulate it but it didn't work out the greatest which caused my piece to look a little different. Another difference is obviously the subject matter and what is happening in the piece. The medium of the pieces is different as well with mine being a digital collage, Macke's being a painting, and Ward's being an animation.
There are some similarities and differences that can be seen in my piece and my inspiration pieces. One thing that is similar is that my piece and the piece by Macke has a similar layout to each other. We both choose to have a person as the main focal point and have them staring at something off to the side. While there is some background in each image, it is relatively simple and out of focus. My piece is also similar to the style of "Adventure Time" because of my piece containing the image on the television. I tried to make it have a similar style to the cartoon and captured it by using similar character design and background design. I made my character look similar to the main character, Finn, with the way I transferred the outfit into the style. I also tried to capture some elements in the background as well which I think transferred over wuite nicely.
Differences:
My piece is different in some ways too however. One big difference is the smoothing of colors that can be seen in Macke's style. I tried to emulate it but it didn't work out the greatest which caused my piece to look a little different. Another difference is obviously the subject matter and what is happening in the piece. The medium of the pieces is different as well with mine being a digital collage, Macke's being a painting, and Ward's being an animation.
Reflection:
This piece was a very unique and educational piece for me. While I have worked with digital art in the past, I have never used a photoshop like service like this before. I learned many new skills during this process and honestly became more familiar with Photoshop/Photopea. This project opened me up to new possibilities in the art world and I might try to do other pieces using a Photoshop type of service in the future. My ispiration does connect to my final piece well. You are able to see Macke's minimal kind of expressionist style with there being minimal details and more popping colors. My inspiration from "Adventure Time" is there, however it could be a little difficult to see as it is kind of blended in with the other style. The biggest challenge I encountered when making this project was trying to navigate throught the Photopea menu. There is a lot that was just presented in front of you and trying to choose what I wanted and needed was difficult at times. This piece does connect to previous pieces themes of animation and art while presenting some new techniques. It can be seen that you have to be careful with this piece as well however. My favorite part was seeing the final product. It was nice to see everything finally come together. My least favorite part was trying to navigate the menus when being confused. I hope people can see my work and see how important cartoons were to me and that they are still important to me in my life.
Connecting to the ACT:
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
From my inspiration of The Hat Shop by August Macke, you can see that I was inspired by the layout of the scene with having a person looking intently at some kind of area. You can also see my inspiration from Pendleton Ward's "Adventure Time" though the image seen on the television. The thing that the younger me is looking at is some kind of cartoon that I drew from the "Adventure Time" style.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The artist choice of placement in their work greatly affected mine as well as both the artists' style.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I have noticed that there can be a lot of feelings and emotions seen in a person without their expression being shown. There are ways to show off expressions other than one's face in art.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
My central idea or theme around my inspirational research is how art can affect a person and what they choose to do.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
I have inferred that showing less in the artwork (as far as August Macke's style of less detail and bold colors) can show more in the piiece.
From my inspiration of The Hat Shop by August Macke, you can see that I was inspired by the layout of the scene with having a person looking intently at some kind of area. You can also see my inspiration from Pendleton Ward's "Adventure Time" though the image seen on the television. The thing that the younger me is looking at is some kind of cartoon that I drew from the "Adventure Time" style.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The artist choice of placement in their work greatly affected mine as well as both the artists' style.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I have noticed that there can be a lot of feelings and emotions seen in a person without their expression being shown. There are ways to show off expressions other than one's face in art.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
My central idea or theme around my inspirational research is how art can affect a person and what they choose to do.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
I have inferred that showing less in the artwork (as far as August Macke's style of less detail and bold colors) can show more in the piiece.
Citations (MLA):
“Pendleton Ward.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Oct. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Ward.
Seibert, Fred. “Adventure Time Press Art.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 26 Mar. 2009, https://www.flickr.com/photos/84568447@N00/3387142535.
“The Hat Shop.” The Hat Shop by August Macke, https://www.thehistoryofart.org/august-macke/hat-shop/.
Seibert, Fred. “Adventure Time Press Art.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 26 Mar. 2009, https://www.flickr.com/photos/84568447@N00/3387142535.
“The Hat Shop.” The Hat Shop by August Macke, https://www.thehistoryofart.org/august-macke/hat-shop/.