final piece - lh

Final pieceLiam Heeley

My idea

My final overall idea for my street art piece is something that i have a personal interest in, which is fashion. The idea is very simple, however looks effective. It is simply just a process of laying an outfit out on the floor in a specific way then taking a picture from above looking down on the outfit. In this modern day, people call this a outfitgrid. I chose to go along with this idea because it has a personal connection to my interests, which therefore means when it comes to explaining why i chose the idea, i can easily talk about how it is closely linked to my interests. As i am going to be putting these grids onto a poster, i am going to remove the background, which is a wooden floor and simply just have the outfit on a plain white background so it stands out more on a brick wall.

Inspirational mood board

Personal mood board

Inspiration for my idea

These specific outfit grids are some of my personal; favourites because of the links in the colour throughout the image. For example, on the first image, the colour is based around a dark, grey theme and on the 2nd image, the theme is a bright white and oak these. It is important to keep a theme throughout so the image has a flow to it, where you can look at one peice and it flows onto another.

Contextual research

Forsman & Bodenfors worked with ikea to create these simplistic ways of representing ikea in one picture. I saw a book including these images whilst i was in ikea and this is what gave me the idea to start doing outfit grids, as well as all of the other inspirational bloggers that already do this. These designs are very colourful and bright, which is important because if it was dull, most people wouldn't bother looking because it doesn't have any vibes to it. The ideas that i have used from these images are the structure and the composition of the items. I placed the items of clothing in a clean and simple way so that it made them very easily viewable by the audience.

http://www.fb.se/work/ikea/homemade-is-best

Development process

1. I will open photoshop and import the unedited image

2. Then, i clicked on ‘image’ and adjusted the colour settings, like saturation for example

3. Once i was happy with the edited version, i saved the file as a jpeg

4. I then continued to edit the original image in different ways, like making it black and white, drawing it out and even simply just removing the background.

5. I then repeated this for 4 more grids and then created this presentation to display them all and evaluate them.

Drawings

I wanted to try something different to creating development on the computer, so i decided to draw out the grids and leave them colourless to keep the focus on the grid. I think this was a good idea to draw them out because it creates creativity as it is not digitally designed or edited on the computer. My favourite drawing is the middle one because it is simple, it shows the different layers of clothing, allows the jeans to be clear that they are jeans and the shoes are easily recognisable as shoes. My least favourite drawing is the 4th one along, this is because it can come across as messy because it looks rushed, i can tell it looks rushed because of the lack of detail in the drawing.

Photoshop editing process

This is where all of the editing in photoshop starts, simply click image and adjustments, then a selection of different ways of editing appears. There are ways to edit the vibrance, saturation, levels and many more. This is very useful for me because it means i can try many different methods of editing the original image. I have added some screenshots of the windows that open when i selected a specific part of the image to edit.

Developed ideas

Idea 1Original Black and white Colour editing Drawing White background

Out of all the development steps from this idea, personally the black and white edit is my favourite. This is because it goes with the outfit, of a black and white theme. This makes this outfit grid effective because it is using only 2 base colours, so it allows the outfit details to stand out. The development that i am least keen on is the colour edited one, this is simply because it doesn't flow with the black and white theme, it also just ruins the background colour.


My personal favorite development of this outfit is the one with the white background. This is because of the way it allows the dark and light colours to contrast, for example the blue jeans and the grey hoodie work well together in this as they create a mixture of tones. I am again not keen on the colour edited development because of the way it changes the background colour too much and changes the way the colours look, for example the blue denim looks a lot brighter.


Unlike my other ideas, i really like the colour edited development as it adds vibrance to the outfit, which therefore allows the orange tone to stand out above the rest. The orange tone is on 3 pieces of the outfit grid, means that it contrasts well with the background colour and the black clothing. The development that i like least is the black and white version, this is because it ruins the vibrancy of the colours and takes the main link between the clothes away from the image.


The development on this street art idea doesn't really change as the main base colour is grey. I like this because it lets the development flow with few changes. The one i like most is the colour edited one because it adds emphasis onto the tonal beige colours of the grid, this also allows the two colours to contrast. My least favorite edit is the one with the white background, this is because the grey background is take away, which was what gave more colour to the beige.

Idea 5

Original Black and white Colour editing Drawing White background

This grid includes very few colours, likewise to all of my other grids. This allows the image to be easy to look at, which is important because i can develop it in any sort of way and still allow it to look simple. My favourite development is the white background one because it makes the tan colour stand out and also adds contrast to the blue and tan. My least favourite development is the colour edited one because it completely changes the colour of the tan and the background.

Final outcome choice process

Chosen 3

These are the 3 developed ideas that i chose to pick for my final outcome. My personal favourite out of the 3 is the first one to the left, this is because the white backgrounds allows the bright orange colours to stand out above the rest. I didn't go for the other style of edits on this grid because they didn't make the colours constants as much as this one did. The other 2 ideas i chose look very simple and don't have much colour, so i decided to choose these to have a choice between a colorful grid and 2 uncolorful grids.

Chosen idea for my final outcomeThis is the grid i am using for my final outcome. I chose this because of the vibrant and mix of colours throughout the grid. This was important that the colours stood out because it means not matter what background i put the grid on, the colours will still be visible. I didn't go with a grid that had a background on it because when it comes to placing it on different surfaces, it lets the surface flow between the grid, but if it had a background, it will not look very effective as it already has a background.

Evaluation

What i intended to do

From the start of this street art unit i knew i wanted to included some sort of fashion based theme into my final outcome, so therefore i used my own personal instagram fashion blog photos as part of my development. This then led onto me actually using one of my pictures as my final outcome, but just simply edited in a different way. I wasn't really sure of the final edit technique that i wanted to use, but i finally tested all different versions and messed around with eh colours and came out with removing the background from the image. The image that i have used is called an outfit grid, which basically consists of laying an outfit out on the floor in a specific way, then taking a picture so the outfit is clearly displayed.

What techniques i used

I used several techniques on photoshop and illustrator to change the look of my pictures. For example i simply used the black and white effect to change the picture to black and white, this was much more simple than messing around with the saturation and contrast as it was an automatic change. I also edited the curves, levels, brightness, hue and vibrance. To get the original pictures, i used a traditional technique, which was physically laying the clothes out on the floor and using my iphone 6 camera to take the picture of them. The lasso tool also came in handy because it assisted me into cutting out the background off the images so that it was only the outfit the viewer would focus on. I also used a pencil and paper to draw out the outfit grids to see how they look.

Did i use digital or mixed media? why?

I used mixed media in my work as i used photoshop to edit some photos and i also drew out the outfit grids to create some variation. I found it important that i do this because it let me see how different versions of the outfit grids work better or worse. I found that the drawings were not very effective because it wasn't very clear what the outfit was, it just looked like a top, jacket, pants and shoes throughout all of the outfit grids, it didn't define each piece. As i mentioned in previous slides, i used photoshop to change the colour, detail and sharpness of the images. Another reason i used mixed media is because it meant that i could make several variations so that all different people could be attracted to my work.

Where did my inspiration stem from?

My inspiration came from successful instagram fashion bloggers who use these outfit grids throughout their instagram feed to display the outfits they wear. Each blogger has a different way of doing these outfit grids, which helped me because it allowed me to see variations in the way these grids can be set out and displayed. This was where my biggest inspiration came from because i am on instagram everyday and see these outfit grids daily, which meant i simply wanted to have a go.

Who is my target audience?

My target audience is the people who are interested in fashion and want to get inspiration for outfits. This doesn't mean i don't want other people to see my work, i want others who aren't interested in fashion to become inspired by my work to get more people involved in the community. I want a range of people to see my work to get involved with different communities and to see how different people work with art. The main age i want to point my work at is the younger generation so that they can be inspired by it and hopefully continue with it themselves.

What were the development stages

The first stage of development was me gathering the outfit grid pictures at home, by laying out the outfits and taking pictures. I then had to upload them onto the computer ready for me to edit. Then i put them all into separate folders and began to edit them. I used the same editing techniques for all of the grids to compare which grid worked best. These editing techniques varied from black and white to contrast editing and other filters. Once i edited all of the images, i put them into a powerpoint, evaluated and compared them.

Original outcome and why?

My final outcome includes very vibrant colours, which are based on dark, dull colours. This is because i want that bright colours to contrast and be able to stand out on all backgrounds. I chose to remove the background off my outfit grid because it will mean it can be placed onto any surface and it will still stand out, instead of there already being a background on it. The outfit includes some very recognisable brands for the people in the fashion community, which will therefore make mine stand out from the others. I have asked people for their opinion on my outfit grid and the majority of them said ‘the vibrant colour stands out from the darker colours’.

Has it fit the purpose (how it fit in the area we placed)My outfit grid has fit the purpose of street art because i have used mixed media to design it and also it gets the message across about fashion. The main target for me was to make sure that the people who see my outfit grid recognise what type of fashion i am into and how i like to put an outfit together. The area that i placed the outfit grid in, which is Manchester, is massive in the fashion industry, so therefore my fashion based street art highly links to the area i placed it in. I have used a mix of the formal elements in my street art, i used colour, tone and composition. I have used colour and tone throughout my street art piece whilst editing and taking the original picture. Composition was the main part of my street art as this is the way the outfit was layed out.

final piece - lh

Art & Photos