Unit 4 Evaluation

The brief for Unit 4 was to produce a piece of work based on the theme ‘Outside, Inside and In Between’. Interestingly, I have included this idea in a sculpture I made on the map. My initial ideas were to look at the City of London, a fight between multiple people, and the human mind. I started by completing three idea sheets, one for each of the above and I decided from there that I would have much more scope working on the ‘London’ idea.

The first item I listed was ‘maps’ as when you are traveling to, and around London, you usually refer to maps of all kinds: Network maps for your train connections, Tourist maps for finding out about attractions listed, and a normal city map to find out how to get there. This fits the theme I was working on.

I decided to go with maps, as recent research into the Brian Biggs’ style interested me into creating my own buildings, in the said style. I had originally started off with a very in depth experimentation, but there were a few parts in the street scene I had created that went horribly wrong. The idea of this style was to ink drawings drawn isometrical, and then use photoshop to create coloured layers. Especially with the red double decker buses, I had forgotten some steps in the process, and got too far before I realised my mistake.

Starting fresh again, I decided to continue with my fictional station idea, and originally thought of creating a network map. Thousands of networks later, and I found that it was too easy, and not that in-depth. Thinking back to the experiment, I started to draw some ‘obvious’ buildings that I had talked about in spare time linked to my fictional county, in the same isometric style as Brian Biggs. From this, I looked into more tourist maps, the map of France by Mel Croft was particularly inspiring, and I started to copy the basic outlines, and some of the images on the map. I also emulated this, by adding some new buildings, some of which were entirely unrealistic! I wanted to make the map fun and quirky, concealing a few jokes that you had to look for: The Eiffel Tower being used as an oil rig, the ‘idea’ hot air balloon, the Hornby country church and the steak and peas (with no plate!). The map wasn’t the easiest to recreate, and I struggled slightly with copying the outline of the part of France. I also didn’t have the best time with drawing the fisherman, located next to the river. I have to admit, though. Despite my attempts to recreate this map, and make it look busy, if I were to repeat this process, I would put more drawings in, as the map looks too open for my liking.

For my final piece, I had intended to make it unique, and add slight changes that would make it stand out. Interestly, I combined where the express train line comes into the county, to when it leaves, turning into the commonly known black and white striped line seen on some sat-navs. I also continued the river into the ‘sat-nav’ part of the map. I feel this adds emphasis to the county, but at the same time shows the viewer the county isn’t a dead end. I had originally thought about fading out the county to the right, and also considered making the county into an island, but, looking back at the piece, I think I made the right decision.