In this extensive project I have researched into peoples minds to find out what they find strange by asking what their strangest experience was. At first I wanted to record people verbally saying their stories, this didn’t prove successful, as the people I asked didn’t what to be recorded. I decided that I would get a more extensive response by using a social networking site so people could write there experience as they pleased.
I collected them all and after shifting through all the stories I found that I wanted to focus on the ones that involved nudity, as I found them the most strange. I found it intriguing to think that everyday people would do such strange acts out in broad daylight. I started to visualise the illustrations I could draw to go with each story, and what media I would prefer to use.
From the start I wanted to do an illustration brief, so I could use my preferred area and at the same time doing something visually experimental by making a book, which I wasn’t that familiar with.
Through out this project I had a problem with how the illustrations should be managed in the space in the book. I wanted the book to have a simple layout; white pages and bold black illustrations, spacing being the key. I had decided on the book name quite early on in the project ‘ from behind’, this book title collectively describes the gist of the book. I like this title because it signifies the meaning of the people who do these secret naked acts, the use of the word ‘behind’ is more apparent. The stories that I’ve used are all quite explicit in my drawings I have made sure that I have hidden their modesty by only drawing them from behind or a cropped section of the body.
I’ve researched many artists some of whom have influenced me a great deal but most of them have just given me an idea on how to draw a dark illustrative piece to a narrative context. My own illustrative style is unique to me, so I didn’t want to change the way I illustrate so much instead I looked at in my research on how other narrative artists used black to convince the reader that image is sinister/dark. I used black ink on my illustrations of naked figures, I could smudge the black to make shade or drip it to look like liquid which I found very effective.
When it came to the text I just wanted a simple Sans serif font that was easily legible because I wanted it quite small on the page. Negative space in my book is definitely the key. So when I laid out my text I wanted to give a sense of hierarchy and pauses when you read the stories, so after much testing on different types of font, size and layout. I decided to have scattered text, the sentences would break at crucial points in the story making up for pauses and as for the more important words and sentences they would be larger. I devised a scale of three sizes and a scale of three shades of grey that would determine on the intensity of the word/sentence. This gives the reader a higher understanding of how the person witnessing the strange situation felt.
I looked a different ways on how to bind my book, I briefly look into saddle stitch and constantia but those types of binding, in my opinion give the feel of a leaflet and weren’t official enough to be called or recognised as a book. So I decided on having my book perfect bound which I thought was the perfect way to have my book done properly with a cover for the book affect. I chose quite thick paper throughout my book including my front cover, I chose to have 230gsm uncoated White Paper.
Altogether my book was a success, it covers everything I wanted to do and has the reaction I wanted it to have on people when they see it, which is usually disbelief, horror and amusement. The response and a realisation that people have when reading about these strange experiences is the satisfying element of carrying on the feelings towards the experience that the original person had. This book overall is a very strange occurrence which makes you feel uneasy but at the same time can be seen as funny. ‘ From Behind’ is aimed at people with an artistic appreciation, they would see this book as a selection of strange naked recordings but at the same time see it as an art form.
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