Earth Artifact – Final Outcome

The top piece is what I have chosen as my final outcome, the other three are pieces showing experimentation with the background colour and the text. I think the top piece works the best with the black background and the single highlighted word, “destroyer”, as it is the most significant and defining description of humanity that I am trying to portray with this project. To make it further stand out I put it in the foreground, appearing in front of everything else, while the other words clip behind the face/skull/gas mask piece. The font is called “Franchise”, I chose this as it effectively conveys power and force. I feel this outcome is quite successful and I am pleased with the project as a whole.

Earth Artifact – Final Outcome Development

I feel this piece is by far the best of my attempts and I’m going to use it in my final outcome. I took away the ink bloom explosion, I think it works better without it as it doesn’t obscure too much of the skull and gives overall has better balance. The combination of my face and the skull is like a before and after of life/death. This links back to the Hiroshima research, specifically the before/after photographs of this incident. For the final outcome I am going to add the quote, “I am become death, destroyer of worlds”, to this piece. To me, that quote captures everything I am going for in this project, to show humanity as a danger and a threat to anyone and everything.

Earth Artifact – Final Outcome Ideas/Development

I mixed the ink bloom with the skull, making it look like it’s exploding, resembling a nuclear explosion. It is quite violent imagery, though it effectively captures the themes of death and destruction.

 

I think this is quite effective mixed with the skull. I was inspired to use a gas mask by one of the Kiev riots pictures as it was quite powerful and sinister, something I want to convey in this work.

For these experiments I mixed the exploding skull with the gas mask, and I’m very happy with the outcome of that. I also looked at using the red stripes again, though I don’t feel they work quite as well here. I am also going to look at including Oppenheimer’s quote in the final piece.

I created this using a picture of myself pulling a fearful expression. I think it came out well so I’m going to experiment with including it with the skull/gas mask mash-up. Altogether it would encompass the themes of fear, death, and destruction.

Earth Artifact – Skull

I drew a skull in my sketchbook using HB and 2B pencils, then scanned it in to use in Photoshop. I then went over it with solid black, outlining with the polygonal lasso tool and filling it in. This left me with the top black and white piece. I think the result is quite successful and I am probably going to use it in my final outcome. I chose the skull as it is a symbol of death and destruction, something my project has focused on. I also think it will prove to be quite effective as a result.

Earth Artifact Research – Fear

All of my recent research has been focused on terrifying events, all of which cause panic and fear. This is an emotion I would like to showcase, and as the images above display, fear is shown by the eyes. We’ve seen this many times before in horror films, or maybe personal experience, the wide-eyed look of panic.

Earth Artifact Research – Rwanda Genocide

The Rwanda genocide resulted in the death of an estimated 500,000 – 1,000,000 people over a period of about 3 months, April to mid-July 1994. The picture above is of the Nyamata Memorial, the skulls are those of some of the victims who were killed in the massacre. This event is widely seen as an atrocity, and serves a nasty reminder of what humans are capable of. These skulls show the destruction and devastation of this event in a similar way to the ruins of Hiroshima after the nuclear blast. Skulls are also, understandably, a very common symbol of death and so also have a certain horror element to them. This is something I feel I can use in my work to great effect.

Earth Artifact Research – Kiev Protests

The recent protests in Kiev began peacefully in November 2013, but before too long became deadly, leaving many dead in the early months of 2014. Some truly powerful photographs of the fighting were taken, many of which used by news outlets all over the globe. Several of these are shown below.

Many of these strike me as sort of theatrical in how intensely dramatic some of them are, the fact that these are images of reality is, while sad, quite amazing. I am going to try and incorporate some aspects of these images into future work.

Earth Artifact Research – Hiroshima Before/After

After getting feedback on my work so far from a tutor, I am going to move this project in a slightly new direction. The intention of these pieces is to warn aliens against attacking us, and whilst I feel my previous work successfully captures the power and might of humanity none of it will make sense to an alien who has no idea what any of it is or what it means. Instead of focusing on the weaponry itself, I am going to explore the death and destruction that results in the use of these weapons. I thought it would make the most sense to look at the sheer destruction a nuclear bomb can cause, the most high profile example of this being Hiroshima. The images below showcase before and after photographs of the city.

Before

 

After 

These images show how the city was all but completely flattened and scorched as a result of the blast, most of the buildings reduced to ash and rubble, all of the tress in sight stripped of their leaves and branches. These pictures give quite a harrowing insight into the horrific power of the atom bomb, something I feel even an alien would understand.

 

Earth Artifact experimentation

Here I have further added to this piece, using a different font, simply called “russian”. It has a very blocky, powerful aesthetic that I think fits the subject matter well. There are two variations above, on one the letters are cut to stay within the lines, on the other they aren’t. Whilst I think both are effective, I prefer the top one as the finished piece. I chose to use very hostile words like “kill” and “destroy” as they show danger and help serve as a harsh warning.

Earth Artifact experimentation

Here I am refining and experimenting on the previous piece, adding black outlines to the red stripes and also text within two of the stripes. The font used is called “Stencil Std”, I picked this as I wanted to maintain the powerful, militaristic theme which I think this font does well. I am going to refine this further to a final version.