'BBC PROJECT'/2011

So BBC wants to celebrate it's 75th anniversary and is asking from Westminster students to take the lead and make a TV advert that is targeting young, fresh audience, using absolutely anything including their knowledge and creativity.
I've been quite interested in the project as it is a challenge for me to make a 50 sec promotional advert, that would both show my skills around promotional illustration and my knowledge around the moving image.

What makes the project quite complicated is the fact that we've been asked to show the history of BBC without creating a documentary video; Meaning old, plain, black and white videos of unfamiliar events and faces that have absolutely no influence to the young audience whatsoever.

So my first thought, is make a plan of the history; I've researched and picked up the most highlighted moments of BBC from it's very beginning until the 20th century and this is what I came up with.

I've been looking at different ways of making animation but I always find myself particularly drawn to the 'stop motion' technique. Many adverts that use stop motion for promotional reasons seem to be very successful and in particular seem to attract younger audience.

Some of the recent stop motion adverts/ experimental videos that I've been looking at.

http://www.smashingapps.com/2009/06/15/21-stunning-examples-of-creatively-done-stop-motion-animations.html

This website is full of the most amazing and clever stop motion techniques that don't really require any high tech knowledge.
In William Kentridge "Compassions, he seems to be using a quite interesting technique for referring to the 'past' using black and white audiovisual videos put together in a strange circular way. Always worth considering.

looking back at some of the 'masters of stop motion', The Quay Brothers and Jan Svankmajer seem to have different but equally appealing techniques, either using delicate paper figures or detailed plasticine personas. I love how truthful those stories look and what great effect they have on audience.







Looking at some of the modern stop motion techniques, you can tell there is a lot of creativity floating around and it is a fact that you can do stop motion by using almost anything.

MTV in the 80's used a lot of animation that revolved around powerful imagery and revolutionary music. Some of the 80's adverts are using great stop motion techniques without much digital touches, making them look more real and fun to watch.

Movies like the 'Science of Sleep' are combining both film and stop motion animation, travelling through realities and dreams; They manage to capture the essence of dream world by using paper and plastic props, puppets and pretty much any lifeless object.

Two of my favourite animations are from a band called 'Future Sound of London" and by a guy called Andreas Hykade. Both of the animations use different techniques but both play with sound and movement, something I found quite revolutionary and interesting.

In the first film there's a serious amount of Collage, Green Screen techniques, PHOTOSHOP and all of the 80's traditional techniques of cutting and putting together in a rather naive way. Some of the figures I find very interesting as they walk around with different faces and body parts. It has a certain revolution and craziness about it, something that we don't see on video clips anymore.
In the second video, Andreas Hykade is using FLASH at it's best with some crazy animation figures that almost put you in a trance state.

Considering the animation part I thought I make some drawings of various 'BBC people' including John Reith founding father of BBC, broadcasters, royal and celebrity guests, documentary presenters etc

Summers Work 11'

I thought I'd be nice to bring my 'fine-art skills' back from the dead, and truth is it's been a while since I took a big blank canvas and draw whatever my heart desires on it. In this case the painting was a request by a relative.

She wanted something that reminded her of ancient Greek culture so I thought soft colors, impressionist features and a touch of cubism would suit the occasion. 

Still life painting with a female figure.

Acrylics on canvas.

During my summer break back in Cyprus, I decided to practise a bit my 'advertising skills' at 'ELENI

EKKESHI' Advertising Agency. i got the chance to work, for about a month, with professional people and in an environment where designer meets client face to face.

What caught my attention was the amount of clever solutions a designer could provide, in order to promote a certain a product, as well as a very valuable tip; 'always have a plan B'!

This is a illustration a designed as an opening image to a Website designed by 'EKKESHI Agency', where you can basically find offers on a wide range of products among the capital city of Cyprus.

here you can find the link of the website http://www.nicosiasuperoffers.com/

CYTA, CYprus Telecommunication Authority, has been organising an event, celebrating it's 50 years. I took the chance to design some of the flyers and cards that would be sent out to people. The main idea was to add two half parts and create one whole; which is the definition of the organisation.


I wanted to play a bit with the main idea and the placement of the type.

So it's 8th September, soon to be back in cloudy London, and I'm almost half way of finishing another painting requested. She wanted vivid colours in an impressionism style... seems to be very popular in my country. I don't think I will be able to finish it before I go back, since it needs  a whole lot of detail in it, but I'll try my best.
This is what i've done so far.

Currently working on promoting my personal work for posters, background pictures and book covers.
This is an illustration that I recently made called "The thinking man". It was originally made as an illustrative book cover for "Immortality" by Milan Kundera. I'm still working on finishing the last details and hopefully post it out soon.

(pen and ink on paper)

Self Initiative-2011

What I wanted to communicate in this project is how music can influence our perception and create some sort of emotions when reinforced with a form of visual response to it. Audiovisual Performances are thought to be very appealing and interesting to the audience since they draw two of their very basic senses; therefore pushing them into noticing, analysing and questioning what they experience.


Based on an experiment made by the 'American Psychological Association' on " Feelings and Perceptions of Happiness and Sadness induced in music" on 2010.


      * Listeners were put to listen to 30's musical pieces and rate: (a) How sad and how happy music made them feel and (b) How much sadness and happiness was expressed in music.


      * Results showed that: (a) Perception ratings were higher than feeling ratings. 
                                               (b) Associations between music manipulations and listener's      feelings were made by their perception of emotion conveyed. 
The clear outcome based on this experiment is the fact that knowledge around music matters to our response to it.


For this project, I am making a visual interpretation to a song by Mills Brothers, "Sweet Georgia Brown".

30's songs are thought to have a very positive response to the listeners; This is often related to pleasant childhood memories but also to the common structure of such period related songs.
I've made a research on what the listener's response are to music and it's based on various factors:
- Major Keys/Rapid Tempos: cause happiness
- Upward Motion/ Downword Motion:  tension/ resolution
- PITCH: Upward Motion/ Downword Motion: tension/ resolution
- TEXTURE: Density/ Sparsity: tension/ resolution
- INTERVAL: Dissonance/ Consonance: tension/ resolution
- TEMPO: Acceleration/ Slowing: tension/ resolution
- INTONATION: Bending Away from the Nominal Pitch/ Returning to it: tension/ resolution
- SUNCOMPATION: Off the beat/ On the beat: tension/ resolution
- BEAT DIVISION: More division per beat/ Less division per beat: tension/ resolution
- DYNAMICS: Louder/ Softer: tension/ resolution
- ARTICULATION: Staccato/ Legato: tension/ resolution
- REPETITION: Repetition/ Variation: tension/ resolution
- ORNAMENTATION: Ornaments/ Simplicity: tension/ resolution




Artists such as Brian Eno, Wassily Kandinsky and Dali have included music within their work and have managed to visually interpret music according to it's structure; the very structure of music is based on "audio" colour and the feelings expressed.

Artists such as Oscar Fischinger, Stan Brakhage and John Whitney have managed to represent rhythm visually in a number of works such as “Early Abstractions”, “The Dante Quartet” and many others. Jackson Pollock’s dripping paint on canvasses is another proof that artists are constantly experimenting on how to visually suggest bass, rhythm and melody.

What I want to do is visually interpet the song and show what kind of feelings could be shown through the structure of the song. The video will be presented as a link below the article of the experiment.

 This is the final video I made based on the song "Sweet Georgia Brown" by Mills Brothers

Poster Design for 'Hamlet'

Typeface Project/2011

Final piece for the 'typeface' project. Several snapshots of carved wood typing inside water.

What I wanted to do was to create a poster referring to the recent tsunami strike since 2004, and it's devastating results to many countries. This is a message to all the people who feel influenced by the strike as well as a reminder, that it truly does create an "SOS" situation. The wooden lettering was meant to look as if it's falling apart, just like the destroyed buildings when observed from a 'bird view'.

The material used for this poster could also be used as a stop motion video. Hopefully I will be able to create and post it very soon.

Zine Project/2011

Zine Workshop/ Sequential Narrative

" The characters in my novel, are my own unrealised possibilities. This is why I'm equally fond and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. [...] For beyond that border lies the secret the novel asks about." 

"Unbearable Lightness of being" by Milan Kundera

This is one of my favourite phrases from the book on which i decided to base my narrative. This is a purely personal confession of the writer's ambition for this novel. I decided to interpret this in my point of view since i consider zines to be more of a personal object. We all have our "borders" but it's when we don't realise them that we actually make it and cross over. It's an inspiring phrase from a well written book that I strongly recommend for those interested in a deeper meaning of life.

Diesel Project/ Captured through Dragon/ Edited through Final Cut Pro
This is the final video clip I've done as an illustrated response to the band Magnetic Man on their song song "Getting Nowhere".  Since this is a dub step  band that uses a variety of sounds mixed with a touch of  electronic style, I wanted to create the feeling of strong beat and sequence within their music. Shapes, Colours and Light are the three elements which I tried to manipulate in this video in order to represent rhythm, bass and the drums of the song.
My hope is to actually put this video indoors, in a place where there's loud music and dark lighting, and see how people respond to it.

These are three of the samples I've made for the members of the band "Magnetic Man". I tried to give each member a touch of their own personal style, inspired by the electronic style of music and the role that each one of them has in the band.

I've tried to portray both band members and style of music using different ways.

Some of the sound waves samples I found quite interesting for this project. I'm trying to portray the sonic wave sounds of a song using colour and shapes combined in a moving image.

I've experimented with stop motion to make small videos of the band members as well as sound waves. I've tried to capture the movement of different sounds within the band. 

These are two of the ink and water stop motion experiments I've done to visualise sound waves. I wanted to capture the flowing movement of the ink when it's combined with water and later use it as a contrast to the bass line of bands music.
I've tried to capture the sounds of a particular song of Magnetic Man called "Getting Nowhere" ft John Legend.

I've experimented with pins and light change to represent the drum line of the song "Getting Nowhere". The reflection of light on the smooth material of the pins makes a rough contrast of light and darkness, which almost looks as if the sounds waves of the song are synchronised with the movement of the light.
I've also experimented with water colour and some facial movements to play a bit with the sound of the song and see how it works.

This is the most recent stop motion video clip I've done for this project. It's a representation of the song "Getting Nowhere" by Magnetic Man.

"Magnetic Man"/ Visual interpretation of Music

This is a Brittish band I've recently discovered and that I'm very much interested in, on how it introduces an entirely new era of sound.

Its an electronic music project, with dubstep influences created by Benga, Skream and Artwork; the three of them are DJ's who perform using three computers. One plays drums samples, the other one basses and the third one leads and samples. They basically combine pitch, rhythm and melody using electronic musical instruments.

What I love about this band is the fact that they combine different genres of sounds, like techno, pop, opera, and they mix them with electronic elements of modern music. They take unusual electronic sounds to suggest the beat, that is mainly presented as a 2-Step Beat. This ultimately creates an overwhelming Bass line that is reinforced with occasional vocals and manipulated instrumental sounds.

In my opinion, it's an innovative new band that represents perfectly the roughness and the darkness of city life in a modern society.

Inspired by Brian Eno's Constellations (77 million paintings), I've considered taking the sonic pieces of the a band's songs and divid them into individual parts of sound. Each part could be differently presented as a visual canvas of colours and shapes. I t will not relate so much to the lyrics of the sound but the more into the pitch, rhythm and melody of that specific song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_06fTFFMoi0




* A quite interesting experiment of a foundation student in his project on how to visually interpret the sound of an analog radio being tuned.
http://vimeo.com/11746359

* Another interesting example on Audio Visual Interpretation of a song by Eminem.
http://thedesignatedsketcher.com/progress/audiovisual-interpretation




DOUG AITKEN

A very inspiring work of Doug Aitken- "Sleepwalkers"(2007) at MoMa, New York. It consists of five  short interconnected film that tells the story of one night in the life of 5 New Yorkers. The fact that it is so gracefully placed and presented around the city buildings, makes it even more realistic. This sort of projects as well the music of Magnetic Man, are very much representing a new, interactive era of the 21 century. Audience is given the chance of experiencing sound and image in an entirely new way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVRds0rTILM


Monica Bonvicini

" Destroy she said"/ two-channel video installation onto drywall screens (1998). An inspiring artist, who's video installations and general concepts on art and life are quite interesting.  


Olafur Eliasson

San Francisco/ Museum of modern arts. This is a tunnel of colour and light illusions that you experience while walking through it and gradually observing it from different angles.

The artist makes the piece so spectacular because he manages to manipulate the light, the shapes, the colours and the angles in order to create a beautiful synthesis of colours.

Jenny Holzer

I love Jenny Holzer's series of work, called "Projections". She focuses on applying words and ideas in public spaces. Through her work you can clearly see that she's very well aware of the art of text and uses her knowledge to draw the attention. 

Considering this, I've thought about using the lyrics of my chosen song and use different style, size and boldness of lettering to emphasise the music. 


Nam June Paik

" Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S" 

Paik was committed to finding ways in which he could develop video and the moving image as an art medium. He discovered innovative ways of using the TV as an art installation medium. He also used laser as a new form of sculptural art and installation. In his other works "Exposition of Music-Electronic Television" and "TV Cello" he uses magnets to distort the images on the TV screen.

I've recently found this work by illustrator Wayne Horse. I really like the idea of having a big screen outdoors somewhere easy for public to access and just show great animations with the affordance of sitting while watching. I'm very interested in this kind of approach towards music, something free and public for everyone to see and hear.