Stoke SFC Art, Media and Design

AS Photography-Katy

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:53:00 +0000

The final part of our photography coursework we did a topic called Connected Images. I decided to photograph portraits and flowers more extensively than I had in earlier elements of my work, and try to combine both emotions and nature in different, more unusual ways.

I began by trying to express different moods through my images not only by directing my model, but through the lighting and the composition of the photographs, too.

My final shoot ended up with me photographing the beautiful swirls of colour in the iris of eyes and contrasting that colour with the flower petals held closely to my model’s face.

Bethany Threadless Graphics

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:07:00 +0000

As part of our graphics course this year, we had to create a t-shirt design for a company called ‘Threadless’. It involved a lot of brainstorming, a lot of Photoshop, and a lot of technical stuff. Here’s how I developed my design;

We had to choose a subculture to create a design for—one that we felt would suit us and other people within a chosen age range—so I chose to design some shirts for ‘Goth’.

We had to go through a process of different techniques on Photoshop, including silhouettes, congestion, mono-printing and typography. All of these components became first ideas, and were then developed into final ideas.

I created all my designs in Photoshop, and then put them onto t-shirts from the Threadless site. We then had to choose one design to put on the student forum for other people to pass a verdict on. This was a great way to improve on our ideas and to get an opinion from the type of people/age range who would buy the tee.

After putting it on the student forum and gaining feedback, I then improved the design by re-designing it. I decided to re-design all the tees to get a broader range of ideas. This made it easier to choose a design to submit to the Threadless site.

After re-designing everything, I then put my chosen tee on a pitch board, and asked 20 members of the general public (mainly in the train station) to pass a verdict on it. Based on the feedback I received, I wrote an evaluation on how to improve and then submitted it to Threadless.

College Rollercoaster

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:58:00 +0000

Before we began our Elmfield Marketing project, we got to grips with Stop Motion animation and produced the following videos.

The brief was simple: using stop motion, create a college rollercoaster!

Farai Samunyai, Grant Randall, Nick Smith and Alex Whitehurst

Lindsay Mountford, Ryan Mountford and Dominic Yates

Libby- A2 Art:Attention to Detail

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 06:15:00 +0000

For my A2 project I chose to investigate “attention to detail.”

As it was my last unit I wanted to create a very powerful and meaningful piece of art. I chose to explore disability and how it is portrayed, this is a very personal subject to me as I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) when I was sixteen. MS affects me differently day to day; some days I appear perfectly able bodied where as others days I need to use a wheel chair. So I see and experience the way the world treats you when you are perceived as having a disability. I have lived with MS for almost four years and now felt like I was strong enough to voice my opinions through my 3D artwork. I first looked in to the art of collage as this helped me to create a very personal unseen message which then would run through to further my development.

There are two meanings behind this collage; the first a disabled person looking up at god and asking why them, or god looking down and choosing who is strong enough to cope with a disability.

I now wanted to turn my attention to 3D collage, with the idea that man and machine as one. I made a series of with this theme trying to make the part of the chair and the human figure ambiguous. On all pieces I wanted the wheels to stand out as they tend to be the first thing people see. This tends to trigger one of the following responses, people either completely ignore you or they treat you like you are stupid.

The idea behind the art is that most people will see the wheel chair first and not the person, which is why I used a blank white body to symbolise the ignorance that some people show towards disability. Throughout these past four years I have been in a wheel chair, used crutches, walking sticks a number of things to help me cope but when I have good days when I don’t need any I have been discriminated just because my disability isn’t visible. What most people don’t take into account is the mental side and trust me I have been pushed to my limits, although I have not accepted my illness yet, I can already see that it has made me a better person and I want all viewers to take away my story and hopefully see that world differently without having to go through what I have.

Tori-Gif experiments

Sat, 14 May 2011 19:27:00 +0000

These are a range of experiments produced as part of my AS photography. They were produced with photoshop. Some techniques have been more successful as others. I experimented mainly with the speed of the transitions. If you click on them you will see the animation moving.

Jenny-Animated Gifs

Thu, 12 May 2011 10:12:00 +0000

This is some experimentationn with animated gifs as part of my AS photography.

Click on them to see them move

BTEC Graphic Design-Moodle Logos

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 14:17:00 +0000

Over the last few weeks BTEC Graphic Design Students have been looking at the branding, design and accessibility of Moodle. This week they have been focusing on the Logo itself and how the branding of Moodle and the college can be integrated.
Over the next week or 2 some of these will be showcased becoming the colleges Moodle logo for the day. Which are your favorites so far and why? Add a comment below.

Craig

Dan

Emily

Emma

Grant

Jack

Josh B

Laura

Mitchell

Rachel

Rebecca

Rebecca R

Ryan

Tasha

Vishal

Zak

Josh J

Btec Level 2 Art and Design

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:11:00 +0000

Rachael
I love studying art and design, because I do things that I love doing. We have made sock monkeys which was my best task, I had loads of fun doing that, when we made the sock monkey I learnt how to do different kinds of stitching. The other project I really enjoyed was our animation project and we put our videos on youtube. It was really fun finding out how things are done.

Nathan
One of the units I think I did better than the rest. The unit was about animation and jobs I had to draw an animation 1.30mins long about an art and design job. To start with we experimented with different animation types.

I started of by drawing on to acetate with marker and scanning into Photoshop. I edited the drawing in Photoshop then imported them into Windows Movie Maker added a title and credits and then uploaded the animation to YouTube.

I liked this unit in many ways it got me being creative and independent making my own work

Kiya
In art I have made many things for the project but my favourite task was making the sock monster/monkeys. I had to design a monster/monkey and make it, it was fun making. Making the body, arms, legs, and ears then stuffing it with cotton wool then sowing it together to make a monster/monkey. Making clothes for the sock monster/monkey was funny to make. This is the end result of this project.

Chris-Light painting in photography

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:32:00 +0000

The project "Connected images" I decided to go down the route of light painting and I really like work by Twin Cities Brightest (who creates images using slow shutter speed with a range of lights) and work by Dentsu London, this work used an IPAD to create 3D light appearing to hover in the picture like a holograph.

I tried lots of ways to make the images, like orthographic views of the side of each letter made on pro-desktop but the volume of letters was too much to work with.

I quickly moved on from this to the view from the front of the letter this work much better because the curves were smooth and they actually looked like letters. At this point I was testing light levels in rooms, playing with the depth of field and where to put the lettering on the picture. I strung all the images together on windows movie makes so that I could easily move from one letter on a MP4 to another without interruption after a few dozen attempts in several locations with different light levels I found some great images in the corner of my room which supplied a well lit area which was not too bright when the exposure was left open to make the photos.

Josh-Phone Advertising BTEC Graphics

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 21:56:00 +0000

Part of our Graphic work this year we had to design phone adverts for the "N Shape Phone".

This is how I developed my final design. I started of by taking the picture of the phone and headphones in a back pocket. I used a macro lens from far away in order to the blurred effect for the background. I then brought up the contrast to make the colours richer and more vibrant. I then copied the layer and edited the image so that only the darkest bits would show. I did this my changing the threshold and then selecting a white colour range so I was left with only the black. Placing this over the top of my original image gives it allot more depth. I wanted my design to contain some eye catching text that would make potential buyer want to purchase the phone. The phrase “more money for your pocket” tells you that by buying this phone you will be saving money. I put the words “more money” in different coloured text as I want that to be the first thing people read which would interest someone straight away. I chose this particular type of font as it is often associated with text language, also using text like spelling “4 ur”. The main selling point of the phone is the free music downloads which I have also tried to make a main focus point. By placing the text in a box the eye is more drawn towards it as it shows it is something of importance.

For this design I took some my ideas from my billboard design such as the text and the use of headphones to communicate music. I started of by adding a black to grey gradient background. I then added my picture of a phone with the headphones coming out of the sides. Next I added flourishes over and around the phone to make it look more dynamic and exciting. Next I added contouring circles which I made in illustrator and copied into Photoshop. Finally I added my text and logo. For the text I wanted it to mean something to someone who might be reading it and make them feel like this phone is saving them money. However I put the words Free, music and download in a bigger font and different colour to draw the eye to them 3 words, being the phones main selling point.

From peer assessment I learnt that there was a bit to much text in my first advertisement so I had to rethink my design. I still used to same image with the same flourishes but changed the text. The first thing you notice when you look at this is the word “free” in big capitals. This would draw in potential buyers. The add still contains all of the information needed, the name of the phone and its main selling point “free music downloads”. I think that this advertisement worked really well and the colour scheme I used makes it bold and bright making it stand out whilst still being easy of the eye to read and interpret. All of the information can be absorbed at a glance.

Amy-A2 Product Design

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 19:40:00 +0000

For my A2 Product Design project I chose something a bit different to the usual architecture projects and decided to go for a textiles project. I was inspired by a local cheerleading squad, Momentum Surge, to design a training gear for their weekly practices. They already have a uniform worn for competition and performances, but the uniforms are very expensive so they need something to wear for practice which makes them feel like a squad. The training uniform should coincide with the competition uniform, by featuring similar colours and styles. Below is a photograph of one of the squads’ uniforms, and an example of why the training gear needs to allow for a full range of movement.

I am still working on a range of different designs and am in regular communication with the client to get feedback on what they like. I have also done some card models to feature the clothes on to gain a better idea of what the garments would look like on the figure of a person.

I’m also working on designing a logo to feature on the gear, so that it is identifiable to the squad. I’ve been using Adobe Illustrator to do this, and have come up with a variety of designs which I will pitch to the client to get feedback on which one they most like.

Alisha- Heartbreaker

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 21:51:00 +0000

I am doing AS photography. My current project is connected images. My initial idea was to create a flip book but that has now developed in to a stop frame animation of photographs I took in the photography studio.

My idea for heartbreaker came from the theme of love and was developed through word association from there.

Sophia-Art of Lost Words

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 12:52:00 +0000

For this project I have been asked to adopt an endangered word, which is in risk of ‘falling out of the English dictionary’ and promise to use it frequently. To adopt a word I had to visit the website http://www.savethewords.org/ and look through a list of diverse words. From this I can produce my own artwork which uses and incorporates the word which I chose, succeeding with the objectives of my project.

After researching and analyzing the 3 artists work I chose a word from http://www.savethewords.org/ to use to produce my own art involving the word. My word is ingordigious, which means greedy. I really liked this work as I could take my word in so many directions with greed being a part of so many factors in life, such as, food, gambling, money etc. I then produced some origami shapes based on my word and photographed them. My favourite origami shape and photograph is this. It’s my favourite because I really like the camera angle and how I have used actual sweet wrappers and put them in the image to. Also, I like how you can slightly see down the tube and how the sweets are resting on each other.

I disliked this origami shape and photograph because it doesn’t look like what it is meant to be. The idea behind this origami shape was how vines on a tree are greedy for sunlight and ‘strangle’ the tree to get to it. However, I think it looks more like an arrow, and the photograph is to close up.

After photographing all of my origami I edited a selection of photographs which I had taken. I edited two for each shape I did. My favourite edited photo is this because I really like the effect which was put onto it. I liked the photograph before it was edited but with the contrasted turned up on the effect I think it makes it look more professional and interesting. I think it creates a better atmosphere and adds more depth to the photo. As my word has a strong, bold meaning, I wanted to make my work stand out and show the statement of the word. I feel like I have achieved this, making it much easier to move on to the next stage of my development.

If I am to edit the photographs which I have taken in the future I will take into account the improvements needed for some of these photographs. Overall, I have enjoyed doing taking the photographs and editing them in Photoshop and I would like to carry this on further throughout my work. However, I would like to make it more detailed and have an improved, professional quality to the finish.

Btec Subsidiary Diploma Graphic Design- Nshape

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 13:45:00 +0000

Students were asked to create a design for a new "N-Shape" phone using Abobe Photoshop and Illustrator. They had to produce all elements of the images themselves from the photos to the brushes they used.

Grant: This is a design that I came up with for the N Shape. I made the guitar on adobe illustrator but going around a picture using a pen tool and adding certain detail to it. I tried to achieve an image that advertises the phone within the catergory music.

Vishal: The design itself heavily relates to an exisiting advertisement by Samsung, which examines how sound waves are interpreted, here through the use of large circles.

Ryan: This is my attempt at advertising The 'N-shape' phone I was aiming for an elcetronic futuristic feel.

Carl-A2 Art and Design

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 09:16:00 +0000

As an A2 art student at Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College I am currently working on a project, ‘Art of the Lost Words’ , a project aimed at reintroducing words that are either no longer used at all in modern language, or are slowly in decline. The overall aim of the project is to prevent these words from being lost altogether and to bring them back into common use through the medium of art. The word I chose was ‘Scathefire’, meaning very destructive fire, part of the project brief involved creating origami models relating to the chosen word. I elected to make paper trees for my origami and made a large number in order to compose a ‘tree forest’. After photographing them together I decided to reintroducing my word back into my work, by setting fire to, and burning my trees, creating an imitation of my version of a ‘forest fire’.

In order to try and bring back my chosen word another element of the project requires a ‘Graphic Product’ to be made using images and photos from earlier in the project in order to carry on the theme and make it flow. The function of the graphic product is to spread the use of the word by mass distribution. In order to do this I decided upon a CD album cover, bearing the band name ‘The Scathefire’, using an image from my burning trees I ‘photo shopped’ it to make it more exciting and bold. Incorporating a lighting strike as is the cause of many forest fires.

On completion of my graphic product I then resolved to explore the theme of ‘environment’ and issues that surround this topic; using work that I had previously studied gave me inspiration for this area. After looking at work by ‘Andrew Tift’ a painting of a car factory onto a body panel, my first step in the direction of environment was to source a car body panel that was to be scrapped. I then proceeded to paint an image that would be the opposite of the damage that cars inflict upon the environment; the object I chose to signify this was a tree.

I also decided to have an attempt at pencil carving with inspiration from an artist previously looked at with the theme of environmental art. Dalton Ghetti creates highly intricate sculpture out of nothing more than an old pencil, shaping the lead into amazing shapes and objects. In my attempts I copied his idea of the alphabet and after many trials with broken lead I finished with the letter ‘L’ and the Letter ‘F’.

After this was done I decided to reverse the roles of my work, instead of painting an image of a tree on a car, I painted a car onto a piece of wood. I wanted to create a highly realistic and detailed image that could almost be lifelike. First I had to scout out a vehicle that has a distinguished shape that is common and instantly recognisable as ideally this piece should be viewed from a distance and therefore the shape and lines are important. It would also be imperative to get the shape and shading of the vehicle correct or the whole piece would look wrong. After looking around a local car park I settled upon a ‘Peugeot 206’ for its significant shape and front grille section.

After doing both of these pieces I realised that I had theme running through my work, painting on things that are not necessarily painted on. I therefore went about looking for things that are not normally considered as canvases, the next item I decided upon was a television which I am currently working on painting a scene that includes a tree.

Howard- A2 Photography Stop Frame

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 09:04:00 +0000

Ryan-A2 Product Design

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:06:00 +0000

My name is Ryan, I am currently studying graphic design and product design at Stoke Sixth Form College. This is a small insight into my product design course, which is to design and develop a vehicle that can be used by the emergency services that will be a hybrid as so to speak that will be a link between the first responders and the fire and rescue service. I have focused my concept vehicle towards the road traffic incident area, as this type of emergency requires fire and rescue as well as paramedics and the fire service.

The vehicle is based loosely on Landover’s new city style 4x4. The following are just some ideas I had generated to be accessories, solutions or general design inspiration.

Here I am throwing some ides around about sirens and lighting ideas, loosely rendered in marker.

In this sheet of ideas I am generally just putting ideas together, but on this sheet I talked about the ground clearance angles of hills and where the vehicle would bottom out.

This is hopefully what the vehicle will look like at the end of my project.

Vishal- A2 Art 'Update'

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 09:22:00 +0000

After finally getting my infographics work completed for my graphic product I have started to explore a more diverse side of my creativity. The focus is now on relating my work to Shepherd Fairey as well as translating it through a message which relates to the theme of Snollygoster.

One interesting graphic that I came across during the Election earlier this year has started to shape the recent progress I have made within this project. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results - this is the link that I found which depicts a proportional measure of seats won by each party in the 2010 General Election. I noted that the pattern and style that this graphic has been created through is one that I could utilise for my independent development, therefore I began to produce an array of patterns using stencils to experiment with composition, scale, proportion and style.

The results were terrific and I decided to relay the pattern from the infographic onto these stencils by using Photoshop – further layering it within the vectorised image of Gordon Brown seen within my previous post, as well as “despeckled” images of the Labour rose. All of this led to the below outcome of a party political poster that takes advantage of all of my research upto this point.

In relation to Shepherd Fairey I feel the piece has strong visual links with the way in which Fairey uses “worn” images and stencilling, however to kindly humiliate my own support for left wing politics I have also created the below piece which heavily relates the Fairey-esque style of stand up politics; labelled as “The Social State” it relates to the surveillance and interference of our previous government within society, exposing the disparity between our fair democracy and other more extreme left wing socialist dictatorships. It is this piece that brings me to the end of Task 11 and onto my independent development – therefore I wish for my work to evolve into something much darker, and maybe much more cynical.

The next stage of this project is now to explore the reverse side of left wing politics; Conservatism. More so by exploring the role of religion and society within a conservatively dictated nation, namely the Southern States of the US, as well as our own current “Conservative” arrangement.

Abbey-A2 Art and Design

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 12:09:00 +0000

For my A2 Art this year I have been working on a project called The Art of Lost Words. I chose the word Perantique which means old and ancient. I started by experimenting with typography developing a pattern out of different fonts and sizes. I then folded my typography into an origami owls which I felt represented old and ancient.

I then experimented with collage and image montage (graphic product). I began to focus on jewellery made out of the images and old images I created.

I liked these jewellery pieces I made, however I wanted to create something more substantial and experiment with wood, metals and plastics more.

I started by heat pressing some of my image montages onto ply wood. Then I drew the shape of my owls onto 2D design ready to lazer cut them out of my ply wood. I experimented putting these together in different ways with different findings and small screws.

I am starting to experiment more with jewellery and creating different styles of brooches looking at traditional jewellery for inspiration. These are some of my designs I have come
up with.

I have experimented with different types of acrylic to produce my designs.

What I love about my project so far is my wooden owl necklace. I feel it has worked better than my other necklaces/bracelets as it has the traditional look, which I wanted to achieve with my word meaning old and ancient. I am now developing new angular designs inspired by my origami shape.

Mitchell - AS Product Design

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 19:09:00 +0000

I am a product design student and recently we have been doing the AS lighting project and I have found it a really interesting course. This is because we have been working on designing lamps and I have done a few designs myself which I will make. I have attended all my lessons and found the theory lessons especially helpful because they help will works and help prepare for my exam.
We also did a lot of initial sketches to help develop our finals ideas here is an example.

Also after this stage of development we have been developing them into 3D models ready for making. This is one of my earlier 3D models which I made form this Sketch.

Tavonne- BTEC Subsidiary Diploma Art and Design

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 22:19:00 +0000

In this project the focus for our work is party. We are going to design party related graphic products.

So far in the project we have created a development cycle which identifies key parts of the brief so that we can understand what we need to do at each stage.

Last Wednesday we threw a party in the Art department and took pictures for visual records. We then had to pick a party item to draw in different media such as paint, ink, wax etc. so we could use them as a motif for a pattern.

Today I have just learnt how to draw object in one/ two point perspective to make our still life drawings look more realistic.

My next task is to draw still life images then using a view finder to find parts of the image that I can draw in more detail using different media.

Vishal-A2 Art and Design

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 19:48:00 +0000

The project brief for art this year was titled as “The Art of Lost Words”; to pick a word that is in danger of becoming unused from Save the Words and to bring it back into the vocabulary through means of products, posters and individual artworks. I chose the word Snollygoster (a shrewd, unprincipled person – especially a politician) from a frantic array of lost phrases that yelp every time you hover over them, who would have thought such an historical expression of significance would be hidden beneath such vulgarism? Anyway, I am glad that I found this word as I am confident that I can reintroduce it back into the vocabulary at least within petty advertisements or slogans for political parties, a technique that I have found interesting undertaking within my sketchbook.

As well as this, I have tried to relate the word to Bush-era politics which define, in my opinion, the true connotation of the word Snollygoster. I have explored this through the use of info-graphics, which presents information that I have collected online regarding the recent political history of Britain, Europe and America through means of Military Expenditure rises, popularity of administrations and the usual jargon that follows political debates.

My latest endeavour was to create an “individualised” artwork; however I chose to take inspiration from Shepherd Fairey’s truly amazing work on political sentiments – using powerful illustration and subversions to publicise one’s opinions (a characteristic I would like to apply to the word Snollygoster). Throughout this I will be experimenting with different patterns, portraits, quotations and stencils to create work that has relevancy to my project, as well as the personality of Shepherd Fairey. I have alot more to do throughout this project and for the year; in terms of research, development and maturing my own creativity, yet so far I have enjoyed finding myself through this very interesting project brief.

Howard- A2 Photography

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 12:32:00 +0000

During my current studies in Photography A2 I am looking at the combination of two themes inside and outside. I recently responded to a piece of work by Valerie Belin by going up to the Roaches. I decided to bring some objects we associate with the inside and put them in the outside environment. The Roaches was a good place to take pictures because it gave me an interesting outside environment in which to work in. I also got to go climbing which was a fun bonus. I am now looking at how I can follow on from this idea to develop it into a commercial product.

Dan N-AS Photography

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 12:01:00 +0000

This year I have taken AS Photography, I wanted to do this because it seemed like an interesting subject, which would provide me we new skills. We started the course by taking pictures from around the college which show the three main elements which are shape, tone and contrast. This is the best photo that I took from all of the pictures from around the college.

We then started to plan our own photo shoots, we started off by taking pictures of; pinecones, bottles of water and chairs. These were difficult because they are un-usual objects to take pictures and to make them good photos. One of our homework tasks were to take pictures of things and compare them to a photographer, the photographer that I used was Dale Unrah he takes pictures of nature and landscapes.

To enhance our learning we went on a trip to Birmingham to visit a number of art galleries modern and old to give us all new and inspired inspiration, this trip also take pictures of the art and sculptures. After we had been on the trip we started to use Photoshop to edit out photos, I learned about joiner photography this is where you take a number of images and join them together to make one complete photo. We also learned about HDR which is High Dynamic Range, this is where you intensify the colours of an image to emphasise different elements.

One of the major tasks that we were given was to recreate a masterpiece of a artist and recreate it with photos, the masterpiece that I picked was painting by Friedensreich Hundertwasser and is called 'Pavilions and Bungalows'. (Below)

I focused on shape and colour in my work to recreate it.

Harriet- A2 Art and Design

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 11:22:00 +0000

This year as part of my A2 Art and Design I have already begun a series of exciting new projects. The whole group are now working as a more experienced and confident art students, everyone is starting to set up a series of new pieces of art.

The project I am working on is called the art of lost words and the word I am work with is ‘Nubivagant’ it means; passing through the clouds. I chose this word from Save the Words to be the basis for this unit of work.

Wanting to commence the year with something that was going to inspire my work, and myself. I decided to create a large model using my preliminary images and origami work. Constructing a piece based on ‘moving among clouds’, with 200 origami peace cranes, I went on to produce a flock of birds. Here you can see I have photographed the model with dramatic lighting. I intended to create something unusual and eye-catching, in which people are attracted to its curious shape and odd presentation.

Using this as a foundation, following the brief I went on to create a graphic product and a mixed media piece. To carry through a geometric theme into my graphic poster I used silhouettes and sections from other images. Including vivid shades of blue to create a modern and eye-catching image.

I created a painting for the mixed media piece, right. Using pixilation I transformed an image of the model, creating a really unusual effect. I then painting this is onto a large board, I believe the clouds worked really well. This is the start of my project, and I am now moving onto creating geometric sculptures.