Beginning to think about TASK TWO...

Task Two is to construct an A2 poster celebrating 100 years of the GF Smith Paper company. We should do this by employing the techniques that we have acquired during task one.

This is GFSmith's company logo which I got from the website. I am going to try and incorporate this into my designs in some way. 

So.. my first idea is to cut the letters out of the paper, but not fully, so they can be folded up slightly, like above, so that they stand up out of the paper. I tried this firstly with just the word paper to see what it was like.. I can see that the idea is good but I need to try and make it a lot neater. I think this idea was also inspired by Peter Callesen, as it's the idea of it rising out of the paper again. 

I also tried photographing it this way, to show the letters actually cut out of the paper. Although I think this looks quite rubbish really.. I decided to go for it and take a bit more care this time..

This also makes me think of Peter Callesen's work, two pieces in particular..

This is basically the method I am using here, only I'm using text, whereas in these images Callesen has obviously done a ballerina and some butterflies. I really like how they are still attached to the sheet of paper in one bit.. helping it to stand up properly, just like how I want my text.

This one is a lot neater I think, I really do like this technique! I started with just '100 years', but decided to carry on and add more text, to see what it would like like if I was to try and do the hole poster like this. Of course I would have to photograph against a plain back ground.

I think I could capture this really well in a photograph. especially now I have a BEAUTIFUL NIKON D3100 to take my photographs with. I would also like to play around with the focus a bit more, as I like how the text that is behind goes sliiightly blurry and out of focus.

I decided to try and bend the paper a bit, to see if it made the text stand out any more, and I think it did. Gives it all a bit more of an angle...

 I really like the outcome of this experiment, but before I make any decisions I will have to investigate some more options and different ideas, as there is so much I could do.. 

Other things I could try are cutting the letters completely out of the paper and putting a darker background behind it to make it stand out.. like so: 

OR I could even use the letter cut outs too.. 

Nothing is waste. I could even do a combination of letters cut out and the letter cut outs to vary up things. Only if it looked good of course.. another thing to try out. 

This makes me want to try layering up cut outs of the letters, to create texture, maybe if photographed right that could look awesome, if you can tell that the letters are raised up out of the paper, like Braille. 

Another Epic Fail...

Well I just tried out my final experiment for making a 'globe' out of paper. I have found this quite hard, as of course a sphere is quite a difficult shape to create smoothly out of paper.

 This is the 'net' that I used. I also thought this one looked like it would work really well, although there are no tabs or anything, no clues of where you attach it or anything, so I just went with it and stuck on my own tabs.

 ..and this was my result.

I'm not very impressed with this. Again I find myself thinking that I did something wrong! It's just NOT ROUND. So again I have found another method to cross off the list.

This is a photo of the light shades that my Dad has in his living room. It is made this same way, but as it's a light shade the there are holes at the bottom an top, and also it has wire going round inside to hold in 'in place' and round. I think that is why it works so well.

Personally I believe that the football layout that starts as a hole sheet, is the one that has worked the best and created the roundest paper sphere out of all the ways I have tried. That is the method I will use. DECISION MADE.

... more to inspire

..While browsing the internet for artists, I came across the lovely works of Yuken Teruya, a Japanese artist who constructs intricate paper cuttings out of waste materials.. like this:

 Toilet Roll ... I love this one, as it's so simple but beautiful!

 This one is AMAZING. It's made out of a happy meal box, which is definitely something I never thought could look so wonderful!

 I love how he manages to make the tree look so realistic! You can actually tell the shapes of the leaves, not just branches.

I think that this one is gorgeous too, from an object so simple such as a book, I like to think Yuken's work is almost a metaphor.. that something beautiful, like a tree, can grow out of something miserable such as people's garbage.

Another globe attempt...

Well.. I googled 'how to make a paper globe', and came across the following website:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4461007_make-paper-globe.html
I thought it looked good, as the template it gave me to print out looked like it would work perfectly, and it was for kids so it should of been rather simple..

Here is all the sections that they tell you to cut out, like so. Then following the instructions I started to glue to tab bits, to attach all the sections of the hemisphere together. The first couple of sections came together nicely, as seen below.

... However as I continued and glued all the sections together, it was clear that they didn't all seem to 'link' nicely. I don't know whether this is because of the thin paper I was using, made slightly flimsier by the printer ink, or whether perhaps I hadn't quite cut it out neat enough, but I carried on anyway.

At this point I was thinking it might just work, as it looked better than it had previously. Although for some reason it was like the instructions stopped. They weren't telling me what to do with the other bits that I still had left, so I decided to try and work it out myself.

They called this section the 'north hemisphere base' so I figured it went like this, to hold the paper in a more 'round' position and to reinforce it a bit, but when I tried sticking it in, it just didn't didn't quite fit. This could of bin because I hadn't managed to stick the hemisphere bits together properly, but either way it wasn't fitting.

So then I was left with this. By this point it's looking quite hopeless, and I think maybe it's a bit too complicated. I'm quite shocked that this was for kids, as I found most bits of assembling this rather difficult and do not see how a child could of done this! Also you can see on the right hand section that it is not going together properly, and doesn't even look like a proportional half sphere, I think even if I had managed to get both sections together, the globe wouldn't have been an actually rounded globe.

At this point I am giving up on this idea, and moving on to look at another.

A trip to IKEEEEEEA... inspiration is all around!

 LIGHT SHADES!

 I think these two are very interesting! You can see the way in which the designer has linked each bit of plastic together to create the globe shape. I think I could also do this out of paper... Although the shape isn't very smooth, I've found it useful to see how other people approach the task of making a sphere, even with different materials.

 This one is extremely similar to the shades that my Dad has in his living room, and is also done using a technique that I am about to look into.

I think this one looks like it's paper, but when up close you realise it is actually plastic.. But a similar thing could be done with paper. Maybe I should think about using the trees made out of paper to make my globe using a comparable method.

Starting to THINK about a final piece..

After A LOT of thinking.. I have finally come up with an idea!

I want to some how make a sphere, representing the WORLD! I am then going to make some trees, and have them sticking out of the 'globe'. My initial idea is that I am going to find out what percentage of the earth is covered by forest, and represent that with the trees sprouting from my world. I am going to try and show this by only covering that percentage of the world with the trees.

 So.. I need to find the best way to make a 'ball' using paper, without paper mache-ing a balloon! My first thought is making it up out of pentagons and hexagons, like a football :

With this idea in mind, I went to a sports shop to have a look at a football, and take at least one photo to refer to.. as I currently do not own my own football already! 

Here is my first attempt! I drew the shapes out firstly, and then used the method Richard Sweeney showed us last session, about folding the paper to create more symmetrical shapes, so when I cut out I was cutting more than one piece at a time. In total I worked out that I would need 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons.

 When I first started putting the shapes together I thought it was going quite well and work just fine..

But as I got further along with it, I started to think that all the edges where they link are a bit too sharp, as in not smooth and round enough. The pattern that started to emerge was reminding me of honey comb, which of course was sort of expected from the shapes being used. 

However it was creating a spherical shape... UNTIL ..

 Somewhere I went wrong! And it stopped going round and started coming out! OOPS! I think I just made a mistake in the combination order of the pent and hexagons, as I had also started running out of the shapes!
Instead of just trying again straight away, I decided to try and search for better images to refer to, as the photo I was using didn't even show the hole football, which I think is partly why I went wrong! That and a decrease in concentration!

After a while searching on google and a couple of other sites.. I finally found this net! ^ which I printed off and   assembled, to see how well it worked and how it went together.

 I was very pleased with how this worked! As it had no tabs when I stuck it together in various bits, it came together a lot rounder than my attempt with the separate shapes. So if I was to use this method, I would draw out the net on a much larger scale on white paper, as one big shape. I really think this would work well.

This was another idea that I had discussed with a friend. The idea was that I made a cube out of paper to go in the middle, and then wrapped the paper strips around it to make the sphere.. but as you can see it didn't work that well at all! Never mind..  the only way of finding out is trying it out!

THEN I found this! I don't know why I hadn't thought of this before! Therefore I am now going to try this out, by cutting out those leaf type shapes and seeing how easy it is! WATCH THIS SPACE!

Sweeney Workshop Number Three...

For our third workshop with Richard Sweeney, we started to look more at symmetry and repetition.

He showed us a method of folding the paper in half, so when a shape is cut out and then unfolded, it will be completely symmetrical..
This method reminded me of cutting out snow flakes.. so tried it out, but making a square, and folding it into quarters.

stage 1

stage 2

 So this is what it looked like once unfolded. Not particularly exciting or interesting.. but maybe this method could be applied to making another shape.. possibly making the shape using the paper that's cut out already. This would give the shape a completely different look, and would photograph really well with the light coming through the holes.

 ARROWS> by folding the paper in half, I could get the arrows directly in line. This might come in handy at some point...

 After doing the first cut out arrows, Ross, sitting next to me, suggested that I didn't cut the arrow out fully and leave it poking out.. like so! ^  ..and then cutting out another arrow from the arrow inside!

 I like this, it gives more volume to the paper.. and as I'm meant to be creating a three dimensional shape/sculpture, I need to look at this more.

I also tried folding the paper into thirds, so when it was folded out, there would be three completely symmetrical shapes in a line... like so:

I need to think about how I could incorporate this into a three dimensional shape, like maybe if I cut something out of the paper first before then manipulating it into a more 3D shape...

This is very simple, I just cut a few parallel arcs out and then started bending them out in different directions. It didn't quite work out how I would of liked it to, but in another way I also quite like it. It makes me think of the solar system a little bit!

Of course the way it is photographed affects the way it looks as a shape, but at least it's got more of a three dimensional look to it.