EXPERIMENT: COLOUR: Connotations and abstracting to the absolute further...

'In just a glance, colour defines things in a viewer's mind before they have a chance to interpret words or images. It can even change the meaning of an image or a word entirely.' (Marks, 2006: p9)

Still working with the absolute and abstraction, I've started looking into colour. From research and previous knowledge, different colours have many different meanings. Most people have similar connotations attached to certain colours. 

So it's about the context a lot of the time.

Using research in the context of turning my story 'The Cats's Dead', i've used some common associations of certain colours.

Pale blue: calm, uncertain, underlining sadness

Increasing Grey: sorrow, somber

Pale yellow, nerves, anxious, slight worry

The darker blues: sad, loss

Greeny greys: calm sadness with increasing sadness

Light red: tinge of anger

Dark red: strong feeling, sudden, anger moment...more specifically in the case of this story it is the abrupt statement laced with accusation.

The shades of purple: confusion, slight questioning, worry is present.

Turning to grey: nerves turning to sorrow

I really like the idea of doing this to stories. I'm not sure how well the viewers will get the emotions unless you explained the context, due to the number of connotations each colour can have. But it's an interesting idea non-the-less...

COLOUR CONNOTATIONS: A Thought.
What came first our associations with the colour, take bright green, as 'go' because of it's use representing 'go' or us thinking it was 'go' before. It's a circle. What caused it...?
In some cases it's more obvious like green also being 'the environment/environmental', which makes sense as the physical thing is mostly green.
But with feelings and emotional representations it's a bit more to do with psychology. Where did those preconceptions come from...? I'm going to go completely of point if i look further into this. I just thought it was interesting.

Anyway i think abstraction has gone as far as it should for this project's timescale. When you get to the point of just drawing coloured boxes i think it may be time to move on...

Paths to the Absolute.

Famous abstract painter, Kandinsky, once asked himself 'Speaking of the hidden by means of the hidden. Is this not content?' regarding the point of symbolism. When we view his painting we are 'simultaneously looking at what it is concealing. veiling'. (Golding, 2000: p82)

Applied:
What is more prominent in the narrative in terms of emotion or subject matter.
You know it's symbolism so you are looking for meaning in what is hidden/not shown. Aware of looking for what is hidden for meaning. Strange to hide something that you then know the point will be to look for it...

'Kandinsky...achieved abstraction through the proliferation of imagery, through endowing his pictures with such a multiplicity of images that eventually one image cancels out another and the canvus surface becomes a single, throbbing whole.' (Golding, 2000: p83)

For this picture i used the same codes and shapes that i had come up with for the rest of these related pictures. Red scribbly anger, the orange triangle cat, the dead triangle cat with the sign of death. The blue-ness-overwhelming sadness the comic has to it's theme. The murky confusion in the middle and the smaller orange triangles where the cat is recurrently thought about throughout the narrative. The white running through it is the distraction about the freezer defrosting...


The video to the below is anger turning to confusing. Anger is represented in this case as an imposing red square, while confusion is a swirling murky mess.
By filming this moment, the transition becomes the story. An interesting thought in the way of the form of storytelling.

EXPERIMENT: Abstraction 3...Rise of the Triangle/Narrative through Symbols

So i've looking looking into symbolism and thought the idea of trying to convey a narrative through abstract shapes, using the codes and conventions of symbols. You can see my sketchbook plan and key for this in a pervious post below.
I used boxes/cells, a common structure device associated with comics to hold the picture together and control the narrative/the way the viewer reads the image and is taken through the story.
This is about assigning connotations, whether pre-existing or not, to shapes and colour to create appropriate mood and feeling that suggests what is going on in the narrative.

Like before, i recorded the process of drawing out the story as i am interested in the idea of that too conveying the narrative in a different, possibly clearer, way.
The narrative plays about before the viewer and they can follow as the story and emotions unfold.

Clearest, simplest design. Even this conveys a narrative.

The Cat's Dead.

The Times: "Wes Anderson's ... movies, such as Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, tend to drive audiences into two camps: those who see them as emotionally dead baubles wrapped in self-regarding irony; and those who see them as the apotheosis of film craftsmanship. The Darjeeling Limited is hardly going to bridge that gap". The Times 

^ Hutson, Graham; Siret, Mal. The Times (London).http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/film_reviews/article2915999.ece.

I did a proper comic drawn out from a script i wrote and with my own characters. Using the slow pacing, long pauses, emotionless expressions and sentences that go nowhere of Wes Anderson. Towards the end it's meant to turn into more Stanley Kubrik in feel; With flashing images of close up faces and use of red.