Embrace your creed

A final article before I start my second semester in film studies.

To recap, Serious Steps are articles that highlight my works for my studies; a more serious effort (That's debatable) for causes outside my own.  Only this time, I'm going to center works I did for a carnival that I'm volunteering since I'm not ready to share my videos to the world yet.

Soul Carnival , being held in MMU Cyberjaya, is a carnival that centers the idea of spreading the love and Islam; to share smiles and joy with all.  It's a one day event that has games for children, talks and celebrity guests.  Click on the link for more information! 

Because I'm here to talk about my proposed artworks.

The artworks were done months ago! But execution of releasing them to the public was only recently; even then, only one or two were used.  Why I designed these works is because of two things:

1. The longing for da'wah; my responsibility of sharing the teachings of Islam.

2. I had an idea.  Once I have an idea, I tend to become obsessed with it

Earlier this year, I missed my post-SPM days where I spend my times teaching kids.  I loved every single moment of it.  I felt I was doing something meaningful for myself, society and Islam.  So, after months of absence in the field, and the much stressful assignments, I figured that I could help out a little with the Islamic clubs in my university.

I volunteered for this carnival and I was tasked as a 'security' or an 'escort' for the celebrities attending.  During one of briefing, I reached to one of the leading coordinators to pitch an idea that I've had for a long time.

The Idea came from an observation as a geek; that hype loyal fans whom are artists create for their beloved work of fiction.  I see so much of beautiful fan arts that are unique, passionate and satisfying.  Sometimes, I prefer fan arts over original ones.  For instance, due to the fact that Jaegers aren't real, we'll only see the same movie stills and posters of the characters.  As fans, we want to see more and waiting two to three years for the sequel won't cut it.  Thus the answer is fan art.

The fact that the artworks also create strong hype is also interesting; a free publicity, you might say.  Thus with this carnival offering an opportunity, I just can't help but to experiment my styles and knowledge. 

I've created a few concepts of art styles based on my observation and the type of audience it captures.  The above picture is a Sepia style; a constant style that I see in social networks.  Due to it's, especially, simplicity and artistic nature, it's quite teen-friendly.  I believe anyone who has Instagram can do this; with a picture, a quote and the filters. 

  

The picture above is an example I did; an extra picture I took for my previous assignments.  I knew keeping those extra pics would come in handy someday.  The picture beside is more experimental; mashing in random lines and textures.  I, kind of, like it but I know it's not presentable.

The Cartoon/Mascot Style 

This is a more kid friendly style.  The idea was having people creating their own 'little me'; the same shape of body with a different colors and headgear.  This could have been a stronger trend setter though but alas, there's not much time to rely on people designing their own.  But one of the head coordinator did use it as a profile picture on facebook; that's it. 

After seeing a tutorial of making pixel art, I just had to do it! Initially, it was intended to be another mascot style but instead it turned into my personal profile picture. Haha. I love it very much.  To be on a safe side, it's 'me' wearing my favorite green hoodie.

Recently, I am fascinated by geometric art.  I am not keen on visual art.  I can come up with a decent story but not a solid canvas.  This weakness lead to some fascinating discoveries of geometrical beauties .  One where I find most interesting is rearranging photo(s) into shapes such as triangles, hexagon, octagon and so on.  I think it's really cool and, frustratingly, it makes me jealous because I couldn't come up with something like that. Darn.  This discovery was observed in social networks; those selfies that are distorted into some new found 'artistic' shapes.  But I was impressed with a work I saw on a Photoshop tutorial page.  That's when I became fond of this style.  So, I did some for myself; for this carnival.  And of course I did add some 'me' in it; a restriction if you might say.

 The first draft 

It's not much of a drastic rearrangement to a point you can't tell what it is.  I have this strict 'style' that I must put some 'sanity' to it.  It's a puzzle.  That's what I could think of and I'm fond of it.  The little misplacement of the clouds is something I really like....I can't elaborate why for the moment.  I just do. 

How would this help the bring hype to the carnival? I thought it would be interesting to bring hype to the fan art itself.  Yes, the fan art is to bring hype for the carnival but having more hype before it happens just scream out certainty to me.  People would like and share this artwork to reveal the logo and the fan art project.  After decent amount of those two, we would introduce the project.  Alas...again, there's no time to wait for a decent amount of 'social acceptance' (Likes and Share).  This idea was scraped.

The final product. I love it! hehehe~

Finally, as always, I leave the best for last.  Come to think of it, I love most of the works I did! Let's not get carried away now.  Most fan arts I stumble upon are digital or manual drawings.  From Assassin's Creed to Batman, there are thousands of designers dedicating their time to draw an awesome fan art.  All the above is experimental with satisfying results but below is not; no new styles, no observing the masses.  It's just me being me with my drawing.  Sigh, I miss drawing.  Take note that this was done months ago, around February.  Film assignments doesn't give me much room to draw.

The Sketch

  I forgot to mention that it's a collaboration with a friend.  I would sketch and he would color.  I drew with pencils and thicken the lines with pen to ease the vectorizing. 

Yes, I'm aware that they don't have legs.  I was, admittedly, lazy.  Plus, I can't draw satisfying legs.  I was afraid that I might ruin it if I keep erasing it with my eraser.  If you'd ask me, I personally love the woman in the middle.  I drew my favorite hijab style on her.