Thursday, October 27, 2011

More Research on Disney

Recently I found an artist work on minimalism and one of them happened to be about Disney, I thought I would blog about it because it related to my original idea where I would strip Disney down to its most simplest term. Even though my idea has changed since then, I thought it was still interesting to look at this person's work. The artist's name is Juanca Yto and he is a graphic designer by also a typographer. 


So as you can see, Yto took the most iconic characteristics about each Disney character and display them in a rectangular shape. In the first row, it's easy to tell that the characters are Mickey, Minnie, Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto. In the second row, you can tell that the shapes are the characters to Winnie the Pooh. For the third set, it was a bit harder to figure it out but they are the characters from Lion King. If the third set of rectangular shapes were by itself, I think it would really hard to tell what they are. By looking at this person's work, I figured that minimalism Disney has been done before and that it really would be too safe to do something like this for thesis. 

I've also found these photographs by Alicia Jeremias, I thought they were really compelling and really touching at the same time. Basically, it's a set of photographs of a little girl dressed up in Disney princess outfits. I think these photographs really capture the idea of innocence which Disney promotes through the princess movies but at the same time, the photographs show a sense of struggle for the young child. A struggle that such a young child at that age should not experience. And that struggle seem to take away her innocence. When we look at the bigger picture, Disney princesses promote this sense of innocence and fairy tale where princesses are beautiful, they live in castles and fall in love with princes. As these little girls get older, they find out that a lot these fantasies don't come true. Real life is full of struggles and disappointments. Through these experiences, we lose a lot of our innocent qualities. 






Sunday, October 16, 2011

The Darker side of Disney

For last week's thesis critique, I've come to a more focused direction of where my thesis project should go. I wanted to do something on the subject of Disney empire, Disney culture and Disney corporation.  The problem is to find exactly what I wanted to say about Disney in my works. The legacy of Disney on our society is ever-lasting. Children grow up watching Disney movies and cartoons and parents take them to Disneyland to immerse themselves in this fantasy. When these children grow up, they take their own children to experience the same thing they did as a child. Disney is suppose to represent the innocence of childhood. And the two words that it stresses a lot is magic and imagination. Disney allow people to transfer into a storybook fantasy world. The characters of Disney are iconic and people all over the world recognize them. Disney is not just an icon but it's a conglomerate that has its hands on every kind of consumer merchandise. From movies, to television to theme parks to toys and everything in between. Disney is not all just fun and games, it has also gotten a lot of criticisms throughout decades. One of the biggest criticism is that people have found Antisemitism and racism in Disney films. The particular claim that Disney is anti-semetic has been well known in that Family Guy has also brought up this issue in one of the episodes. In is particular clip, Family Guy is drawn in Disney styles, and there are various subtle features that show that Disney is not as pure as it's played out to be in the public.


I have also researched on other unknown parts about Disney. A lot of the things that came up was about the Disneyland theme parks. There is a rumor that no one has ever died at a Disney park because Disney has paid officials to refrain from declaring injured or ill people dead until they hit a hospital outside of Disney property. But there are reports that there have been several accidents that happened on the rides that had resulted in death. Since Disney is such a huge corporation that they can easily cover up these accidents without them being a big deal.

Another interesting thing I found about Disney is the concept of subculture Disney. Subculture Disney is basically made up of Disney enthusiasts. These so-called "Disney Freaks" visits Disney weekly or even daily. they tweet about their Disney experiences for several hours each day, sharing photos and insights with fellow Disney fans through Twitter and Disney World blogs. One Disney enthusiast that I've came across would be a guy name George Reiger who has over 2,000 Disney tattoos. Reiger claimed that "Disney practically raised him when he was a child and he wanted to have Mickey and the entire Magical Kingdom with him everywhere he went." He lives in a Disney-themed house, full of over 24,000 Disney collector’s items. The fact that people can basically devote his entire life to Disney shows just how much of an impact Disney can have. People have become obsessive with these fantasy worlds and fantastical characters. It's a way to for them to escape from a real life. There was an article that I read about Disney fanatics and this particular quote was a bit unnerving to me. "Wives come and go, kids come and go, but Disney is always going to be there for me." 



On one point of view, Disney has become a place for people to escape to. In another point of view, Disney has found new audience and I'm not talking about those that come to Disney to meet Mickey. In a news article in LA Times in 1997, it was reported that "Teenagers in Mohawks, dog collars and anarchy patches crowding Tomorrowland. Groups of ghoulishly dressed youths in the parking lots of Disneyland and nearby businesses, some drinking or smoking joints and sending tourists walking the other way." The goth gang went by the name "Disneyland Arcane Crew (D.A.C.)" It is ironic that a place that claims to be all about innocence and virtue, is actually a place full of secrets where people go to do drugs. Perhaps it's the fact that it's taboo and it goes against everything that Disney stands for is the reason why these things happen. And the fact that people intensely watch all the Disney movies to see the supposedly sexual innuendos that were purposely put into the children movies. 

I have also looked up some graphics that are not made by Disney but I thought they were really interesting. 



Dismayland by Jeff Gillette

Fallen Princess by Dina Goldstein




Saturday, October 1, 2011

Brainstorming Part II

Currently in my Design 3A class, we are learning about data visualization and coding data visually. What we've done so far in this class is something that I've never done before. I think this class takes graphic design to the next level because we are taking all the stuf that we learned about graphic design and adding time and motion to graphic design. The first project that we did in class was to make a AfterEffects video about a haiku. This projects deals a lot with typography and the challenge for me was to set type in motion. I had to think about how the text flow into the screen and think about how it transition from one set to another. From doing this project, I've looked up a lot of videos for inspiration and tutorial; I came across one artist that I really like whose name Bjorn Amundsen. I think his typographic videos are quite simple and has minimal effects which makes me appreciate the way he set up his type in the video more. 



In The Beginning from Bjorn Amundsen on Vimeo.

Easter from Bjorn Amundsen on Vimeo.

In the last class, my professor spoke about data visualization where we take a whole bunch of data and try to creatively express it in an interesting manner. I think that for sure when you're doing a project on data visualization or any sort of info graphics, you need some sort of system so that things will be organized in the end. There was a video that was shown in class about how an artist came up with a system of where things are painted on the wall, that particular artist did not actually end up painting but had other people follow his instructions and painted the walls. I was looking at Behance.com and I came across this artist whose work is similar to the artist that my professor showed in class. Obviously, when we look at the title, we know what the artist is trying to convey which is the city. But if we didn't know the title, I think the system of different combinations of circles make a very interesting pattern, there's a certain rhythm to each of the piece and the selection of color makes the eyes dance around the piece. I feel that the artist probably used some sort of system in order to make the piece, I don't think that the artist just randomly place different size circles next to each other, it was done in a conscious manner. I think that is what data visualization is about sometimes. Instead of just looking at a bunch of numbers and data, by applying a system to it, it becomes really interesting. It becomes more than just a bunch of numbers and data. 

Circle City 6, Holger Lippman, 2011

Circle City Series, Holger Lippman, 2011

Circle City Series, Holger Lippman, 2011