Context of Practice 3: Summative Statement

The Star Wars franchise has persisted for almost four decades, in that time it has entered the public consciousness, infiltrating our lives through popular culture. Imagery we are now more than familiar with has entered a collective hyper reality, half remembered through nostalgic tinted vision. This project was an an attempt to discover how the merchandising strategies became a paradigm for other similar franchises. Star Wars ushered in an era of diverse products united under a singular vision, examples include the Lord of the Rings, The Matrix and the more recent developments with the ever growing Marvel franchise. Visual responses have been born from the same source material as the dissertation. The designs reflect the obsessive lure of detail and trivia, which is heavily present throughout the textual response.

The project was timed perfectly to coincide with the development of The Force Awakens, as I was able to study the marketing and merchandising escalate before the film released. Now that the film has premiered and amounted a record breaking gross, it has been satisfying to quantify the reasoning and strategies behind the Disney machine compared the Lucas Arts efforts between 1977 and 2005.
There was a stage when I sought to discover whether this franchise, now at pseudo-religious levels was indeed a detriment to society, however I find that Star Wars is no less damaging than any other entertainment format, it has simply achieved an omnipresence.

It was also my intention to improve upon my previous CoP experiences, in this project I focussed on what I found more successfully in past; that is screen-pritning, technical diagrams and historically-structured discourse. I am conflicted whether the imagery has succeeded in becoming more than fan-art. However I am delighted to say it has entered the realm of hyperreality in true Baudrillard fashion. I have generated screen printed digital designs based on photographs of toys from the 1970s. These toys were based on fictional vehicles in a feature film, which were designed by teams of artists informed by concept artists and WW2 battle footage. 

Context of Practice 3: Boards

Context of Practice 3: Final Animated .gifs

Context of Practice 3: Final Screen Prints

Context of Practice 3: Development Summary

Throughout the project I have maintained a close study of Kenner products from early era of Star Wars merchandising. I decided this early era was synonymous with the brand imagery associated with Star Wars, as the Kenner products have infiltrated popular culture and earned astonishing amounts of money at auctions.

Although I had the intention early on to produce a strictly analogue drawings I soon decided to push my digital diagram drawing skills as far as possible. I used an isometric grid in order to constrain proportions and regulate angles and shapes. This was a great aid in reproducing the toys on screen based on fragmented reference images.

 <div data-configid="10701417/32731976" style="width:525px; height:400px;" class="issuuembed"></div><script type="text/javascript" src="//e.issuu.com/embed.js" async="true"></script>

Context of Practice 3: Final Peer Review

During this session we followed the usual procedure, beginning with informally walking around and writing down mostly positive feedback, and later gathering in pairs to more throughly review work.

The feedback I received raised the following points:

. Plenty of dissertation research is present
. Final prints are very good quality, the stock choices are complimentary
. Synergy seems to be present
. Broadening the context of the imagery makes it less like fan-art and more of a considered product
. Hand-made stock would be interesting to print on
. Blog is generally pretty comprehensive, even if there are one or two posts missing
. There are concerns regarding my consideration of audience
. There are concerns regarding the lack of experimentation in terms of material and tools
. Compositions seem to have come from nowhere

During the session I forgot to show the animations on screen, however they were present on the blog, and feedback regarding them was positive. I was notified of a clipping issue, which I managed to fix through some dirty rotoscoping.

Context of Practice 3: Screen Prints

After two days in the print room I managed to produce sufficient amounts of print.
The printroom was almost deserted, which was a relief as reprographics is exremely busy.
There is at least one high quality print of each design on each of the four stocks. The stocks I printed on were as follows:
Generic White Cartridge
Off-White 'Antique'
'Mango'
'Deep Sea Blue'

I had some issues with the ink during the first day of printing, however the second day went extremely smoothly and I managed to produce between 30-40 prints. I did however notice a few minor errors involving grammar. The millennium falcon also does not have a white edge around diagram lines, this is due to the last minute issues printing the positive which resulted in hiding that specific layer.

Context of Practice 3: Isometric Perspective and Why My Head Hurts

With each single image, I have had to trawel the internet for reference imagery. Even though the toys I have been drawing are alsmot four decades old, I have found many images to refer to. Helpfully, there are also many videos of collectors dissessembling the toys for repair and restoration.

 Model by Donnie

Working completely within constraints of isometrics presented some interesting challanges. All the reference images I refered to had real-world perspective, meaning that, as one might expect, things are smaller when they are futher away. Isometric persepctives are consistent throughout, as the above .gif shows.

To work around this confusion I referred to models from Sketch Ups 3D Warehouse, and changed the settings to 'Parellel Perspective'. However as these have been prodcued by hobbiests, they often have errors in detail.