AuthorTopic: Mosquito/Moth Poem  (Read 4030 times)

Offline Cure

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Mosquito/Moth Poem

on: March 19, 2011, 06:08:29 am

continuation of the ah/chu series

color-reduction of a photograph of a watercolor painting. i think the palette resembles consider the lilies's palette for this reason.

still tinkering with the palette, will probably shift a bit as I decide what I need out of it.

I haven't started pixelling yet (other than the text), so crits should ignore pixel tech at this stage.

should I stick with the font? or pixel over the handwritten poem? I'm leaning towards the latter

[ignore the apostrophe in it's :) ]
« Last Edit: March 19, 2011, 06:28:12 am by Cure »

Offline StaticSails

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Re: Mosquito/Moth Poem

Reply #1 on: March 19, 2011, 03:45:33 pm
This font does nothing for the piece. It's just letters right now. Maybe have three fonts for each part (stanza?). Start of with a more wild free lettering, then have it get more subdued, maybe even fainter (grey or something) as the poem goes on.


No crits other than that. I hope to see you spill some stuff out soon.

These are your paintings right?

Offline Jad

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Re: Mosquito/Moth Poem

Reply #2 on: March 19, 2011, 04:07:02 pm
Please do the handwritten one, it would go so much better with the hand-painted feel of the thing.
' _ '

Offline Mathias

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Re: Mosquito/Moth Poem

Reply #3 on: March 19, 2011, 06:36:52 pm
The font is very cheapening right now; no character.

So, we have another life/death metaphor going on here, eh. Unfortunately, the layout reads a bit like Word document with two clipart images pasted on top and bottom independently. Not a whole lot of cohesion. Is all the white really necessary? Then that generic black border.
I'd like to see another creative frame like on ah/chu and some connective decorative flourishes like your 'Consider the Lillies'.

Alien bird bath looks squished vertically

And yikes, that's quite a bit of clean-up you have to do now. The watercolors look very obviously reduxed right now, of course. It's always been my opinion that redux looking pixel art is better served as full-color digi art. When pixels try to be full-color there's a disconnect, like when a pixel piece is simply too big. That lack of pixel merit. But, you're one of the last ppl needed alerted to that and I'm sure you'll remedy the issue properly. Or you may even have a different thought; to each his own.

But, nice effort, Cure! Nice water-coloring! I anticipate seeing the final outcome.

Offline EvilEye

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Re: Mosquito/Moth Poem

Reply #4 on: March 19, 2011, 07:17:45 pm
Doing acid while bathing is probably not a good idea.

Your lines are less then perfect but you're painting skills make them look great nonetheless.

I have to agree with others that the text looks pretty generic and uninteresting.

Offline Mathias

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Re: Mosquito/Moth Poem

Reply #5 on: March 20, 2011, 03:45:37 am
Furthermore, why are they alien-esque creature dudes? It's distracting. If they were normal humans, I would recognize them as so and my mind would gravitate more to the important subject matter here.

And there seems to be a bit of a priority crisis here. I don't know if I should care more about the poem text or the figures and they're skeeters/moths.
Which supports which?
Is the imagery enhancing embellishment for the poem, a means to illustrate it  -OR-   is the text actually secondary and the images more the point of this. Either way, I appreciate your "fine art" approach to pixel around here, Cure. Higher driving concepts give things substance, makes them believable and earn their place in existence. Few do that 'round here. Granted, pixel art doesn't lend itself to that a whole bunch, not like, say, oil paints do. I tend to favor pixel art for goofy cartoony gamey art purposes I guess. That's why I question PA as the chosen medium here. But, I don't like to push my opinion on others; it's just some feedback. You post because you're interested in the thoughts of your peers, I would hope. Later.

Offline Cure

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Re: Mosquito/Moth Poem

Reply #6 on: March 20, 2011, 04:35:13 am
Yeah font’ll be replaced, just wanted to make a pretty pixel font I guess.

@Mathias:
Life/death is one aspect of the theme.  The last piece was mostly focused on the sneeze, with references to a knot being undone, birth/death, sleep, and anger/frustration (closed fist) vs. openness. The current piece has life/death as a theme; but more so it’s about the exertion and surrender of the will.

So the general theme is:
Tension, Conflict, Suffering (dukkha), Desire, Exertion of the will, samsara
Vs.
Release, Peace, Surrender, Submission of the will, nirvana

(as an aside, the jesus piece expressed these concepts in the anxiety of the farmer in the parable vs. the free and inert nature of the lilies/ravens)

/
I didn’t intend them to look particularly alien, they’re mostly just humans without hair, the latter one has corpse influence. The colors are just emphasizing the emotions/themes they represent. The anatomy on the second guy is a little freaky, granted. I may fix that once I’m in there with the pixels.

The poem came first, the imagery developed later. I don’t think one has priority over the other, they’re expressions of the same thing in different media and complement each other. I didn’t really feel one had to hold primacy, personally. Granted I don’t have much experience mixing visual media with poetry.

I see where you’re coming from on the fine art/pixel stuff. I’ve always treated my pixelstuff separately from my traditional work, and used it more for for-the-fun-of-it type stuff- mockups and sprites and a lot of character designs. But lately it’s seemed more sensible to unify what I’m doing, move the prints and the paintings and the pixels and the poetry in the same direction, something from experience and not some arbitrarily-decided subject. And I think pixel-art is too frequently disregarded as a serious medium, something reserved for games and icons on the internet and not for -real- art. Maybe it’s because it’s such a new medium, maybe it’s because of its historical development and tie to gaming and icons, or a combination of both. I think pixel art is a capable medium though, and would like to have to communicate something serious (or at least something more conceptual and not wholly focused on aesthetics) with it. Additionally, it’s a nice way to translate some traditional work into something more easily-distributed, like prints were back in the day. Gives me a bigger audience. I could always do this by uploading traditional art to devart or something, but pixel art is unique in that it maintains full fidelity of the original image, unlike photos of paintings or even rescaled digital painting.

I do post to get the feedback of other artists, so thanks for taking the time to respond. Express any concerns you have, I promise I won’t take it personally J

@EvilEye: startlingly accurate guess at my muse. Thanks for the painting props, hopefully I can fix the problems with the lines with the more-workable medium of pixel art.

@StaticSails: I like the idea of the writing gradually becoming more subdued. My paintings and poem fragment, it’d just feel dirty to pixel over someone else’s painting.


haven't really had a chance to work on this yet, but here's a quick idea on unifying the various elements:

Offline Helm

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Re: Mosquito/Moth Poem

Reply #7 on: March 20, 2011, 01:35:55 pm
I don't think this works, sadly. As comic art, I have flow problems with it that have to do with how that medium works. As poetry, there's problems with how images frame the text. As pixel art, it is too early too tell. I applaud you for your intent with unifying your skills and working towards a single direction, however there must be I feel a bigger discussion on how to converge these disparate things, not just put them on a canvas together.

A blank background doesn't work for what you're doing, I think. Neither does image - text - image. There's a reason illustration is separate from text in books. If you want to do a comic book, use panels. There's a reason people use panels. There is no flow between elements. A blotch of color behind them won't unify them. They're disparate pieces. You either need to connect them more, or much, much less.

Offline Cure

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Re: Mosquito/Moth Poem

Reply #8 on: March 20, 2011, 08:29:23 pm
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

well the watercolor is (to be) a triptych on 3 separate sheets of paper
(something like this probably):

I guess that's more evident than I assumed it would be.



I axed the img-txt-img for a more intermingled approach, lemme know if it's better or worse or I need a whole 'nother direction entirely. less separate perhaps, but is it too confusing?

text obviously needs work to be more legible, haven't gone in and pixelled with it yet.

any ideas on how to make the thing more cohesive are welcome