i found the motif creation process quite challenging. i felt that my motifs were completely unrelated and i struggled with coming up with ways of combining them effectively.
i tend to struggle with idea generation anyway so this brief was definitely good for me in terms of pushing me out of my comfort zone and forcing me to deal with it without the distraction of colour and texture; which are the aspects of image making i'm a lot more comfortable working with and sometimes put more effort and emphasis on to make up for the fact that maybe my image isn't as well constructed as it could have been. as the brief required us to work in black and white, i really had to focus on the idea itself which was really hard but good for me to do!
i found that combining more abstract/conceptual motifs with figurative ones produced the best results. for instance, combining the idea of fluidity with the motifs mask and eyes/seeing resulted in my motifs expressing the ideas in the book quite well and gave them a layer of meaning. whereas when i tried to combine purely figurative motifs (like kola nuts+masks+feathers) the motifs didn't really mean anything.
selection process/final motifs
i definitely think that the idea generation process for this brief could have been a lot more exhaustive - and way less repetitive. that came down to me finding it difficult but also down to the fact i haven't read enough of the book i was working from. for studio brief 2, i'll definitely get to know my book a bit better to have a more eclectic mix of ideas and motifs to work from.
my selection process for the a1 sheet was grounded in 1. what worked well as an image visually and 2. what had meaning & expressed well the feeling/ideas in the novel. i applied to same selection process for the final 3.
feedback
looking at my motifs, i can definitely see how they could be saying more about the story and how they could have more meaning.
i was playing with the idea of seeing with the eye motifs in the hair and tried to express the magic and weirdness of the book in that way.
the pregnant goddess idea was based around mother nature and her giving birth to nature - but the feedback i received for it was that it wasn't clear that she was pregnant in the final image. but in terms of conveying some underlying meaning, this motif has done it the best.
the floating masks were a combination of the mask as a motif and this idea of fluidity that's expressed a lot in the book. but looking at the image there isn't much to dissect? i like it a lot visually and compositionally but it doesn't have much to offer in terms of meanings and hidden metaphors which is definitely something i'd like to improve on in the future.
zine!
the zine task was so much fun! i really enjoyed creating a collection of bits of information about my author and to me it was a way of refining the work i'd already done in my sketchbook.
i feel like i captured well the mood of the beginning of the book and translated relatively well the magical and surreal aspects of ben okri's spirit world. so fun, good good times x
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