Visual Techniques

My interest is in product design and graphic design in various fields, especially something like animation,

television, etc. 

Black Rock Shooter: Complexity, intricacy,  spontaneity, activeness, exaggeration, instability, irregualrity, diffusion, episodic.

 Magical Girl Madoka: Sequentiality, accent, consistency, balance, regularity, depth, repetition. 

The two images are both clearly from animated works featuring action, however they have very different design styles and visual techniques. The first image (Black Rock shooter poster) has many details but is very disorganized, probably planned that way, and the message is somewhat unclear. There is too many details making the message unclear and complex, it feels scatted, messy, but a feeling of activeness is going on like action is everywhere. It does manage to clearly highlight the two girls giving a center to the image yet also being unstable with details. The second image is much clearer as it is more organized and consistent. This is a an action scene of a girl using her guns to fight a witch, clearly all the guns are detailed, have depth, are organized and lined up to fire. The girl stands out in the row of guns seeing as she is the only thing that is not a gun, but it can be indicated that she is the one using the guns as she is going in the same direction as them. Both images are quite nice and are quite different visually, especially in terms of their purposes, they provide excellent examples of the sort of work I wish to do in the future. It would be nice to make designs come alive. 

Contrast

Good Contrast (Black Rock Shooter Figure) animation product design interest:

This is a picture I took of a figure, I thought it seemed to have a good contrast of pale skin and dark clothing while using negative space in a way that helps highlight it. I saw the pale skinned and the black clothes are a really good contrast to each other, making them visibly stand out rather than smother one another. The figure is clearly visible and despite there being negative space, it still manages to stand out as the subject of the photo. Because the character has such a strong tone of black, it contrasts with the white negative space making it more visible. This is a successful use of contrast in design because the subject product has a contrast that does not conflict but even has a sense of balance. Attention is focused clearly on the product and its color design makes it clearly visible, like viewers can see the general details of it without confusion. A product with high contrast that works very well.

source <http://swisedesign2010.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/bad-contrast/>

This seemed like a blatantly bad design that suffers from its rainbow colors because they are are too bright and the black letters are not bold enough to make a good contrast for visibility. The rainbow design overpowers the lettering of the cover and it is difficult to make them out, if a product fails to achieve its goal because of its design it fails. Also, looking at this bright design actually physically hurts to look at, seems the hue was much too high. Harming viewers is another reason why this design is terrible, no one wants something that will hurt them. The rainbow design stands out far more that the writing so it is may be unclear to viewers what the message is, I know it has to do with Christ but I do not wish to look at this any longer than necessary because of it is a eye harming visual. This may be one of the worst designs I have ever seen and it is all because of a terrible lack of contrast. It might have worked if the cover was black and the letter in rainbow color.