[RealFolkBlues]

In my Computer Art 1 class a couple of weeks ago we were assigned the task of creating a non-representative work of art based off of a particular song of our choosing. Naturally, I leapt at the chance to shed some limelight on OCR, so I chose to do mine based off of Disco Dan's awesome Green Amnesia from Chrono Trigger. Here's what I came up with in Adobe Illustrator CS/2;




What do you guys think? I can take criticism, so be honest, but if you absolutely hate modern art, you probably won't like this either, so that's not really useful.

[Infinity's End]

that's one of my all-time favorite mixes.

stating the obvious, but why is there no trace of green in it?

[RealFolkBlues]

Every color I used had at least some green in it, if it wasn't in fact a shade of green. I used a RGB slider in Illustrator to guarantee that, and the farthest I strayed was with one object that was close to fuchsia, and a very dark green for the long dashed line.

[Petara]

It's... interesting. Kudos for the homage of my fav OC Song.

[Barnsalot]

I'm no artist, but it seems like you did a good job. The picture sort of "breaths" green instead of outright saying it because all of the colors are either reminiscent of green or are of some pale shade of green.

[sgx]

Originally Posted by RealFolkBlues

In my Computer Art 1 class a couple of weeks ago we were assigned the task of creating a non-representative work of art based off of a particular song of our choosing. Naturally, I leapt at the chance to shed some limelight on OCR, so I chose to do mine based off of Disco Dan's awesome Green Amnesia from Chrono Trigger. Here's what I came up with in Adobe Illustrator CS/2;




What do you guys think? I can take criticism, so be honest, but if you absolutely hate modern art, you probably won't like this either, so that's not really useful.

I don't like it.

And I like/make abstract stuff.

The main thing that bugs me is that it is so uniform and flat. The composition consists mainly of putting everything right in the center of the 'canvas'. Almost all shapes are conveniently placed so that you can see the whole of it. When photographers take really cool, dynamic photos, they don't usually step back and make sure they get 100% of the subject in the frame. They get up close and take some weird angle that produces really interesting and bold lines across the final image. It is ok to cut out parts of what you feel are the subjects.

You need to think about composition and how to make something that moves the viewer's eye around the canvas.

I'm not too fond of the colors myself...it kind of just looks murky. If that's what you were going for then that is cool.

This piece looks like an exercise in learning graphics tools. You probably learned some tight illustrator skillz though, eh? If you aren't and you are able to, make sure you keep taking the basic drawing, 2d design courses at school if you can. The computer art courses I took were more tech training courses rather than helping me make good art.

[RealFolkBlues]

Originally Posted by sgx

I don't like it.

And I like/make abstract stuff.

The main thing that bugs me is that it is so uniform and flat. The composition consists mainly of putting everything right in the center of the 'canvas'. Almost all shapes are conveniently placed so that you can see the whole of it. When photographers take really cool, dynamic photos, they don't usually step back and make sure they get 100% of the subject in the frame. They get up close and take some weird angle that produces really interesting and bold lines across the final image. It is ok to cut out parts of what you feel are the subjects.

You need to think about composition and how to make something that moves the viewer's eye around the canvas.

I'm not too fond of the colors myself...it kind of just looks murky. If that's what you were going for then that is cool.

This piece looks like an exercise in learning graphics tools. You probably learned some tight illustrator skillz though, eh? If you aren't and you are able to, make sure you keep taking the basic drawing, 2d design courses at school if you can. The computer art courses I took were more tech training courses rather than helping me make good art.

First off, you have my sincere thanks for a useful post and some very constructive criticism. I appreciate that.

Secondly, now that you mention it, it could use some more motion and off-focus contrast. I did include a few items to produce motion and draw the eye around the canvas (the dashed line and the fuchsia object primarily,) but now that I look at it again, it is a little more stagnant than I might have liked. This isn't too bad in my mind, since the piece is supposed to work with a six and a half minute long song, so I think too much force or action in the work would detract from its statement about the remix. Nonetheless, I can definitely see where you're coming from.

Third, the colors actually ended up okay in my opinion. For a while I wasn't satisfied with them, but I was actually going for a murky, ambiguous feel to them with only a few points of contrast, and I think I pulled that off all right. The little bits of bluish hues and the circles in the back with a red tint I thought helped break up the monotony of so much green.

Finally, you're right, this was mainly a technical exercise, being our first assignment in Illustrator, and the first time I had ever used any vector-based graphical editor.