One day projects - week 1 - Creating collages on a cube

One day projects - week 1 - Creating collages on a cube

Daisy Jackson / 24/02/2022

For our first day back after having Christmas break off, we started our new semester with our first one day project. The brief that Molly provided us with mentioned how we should focus on collage and tell a story on a homemade cube. This story could be looped if we liked or it could just narrate our own ideas in any way we like. Originally I was going to aim to create a loop until I decided against this idea during the building of the cube.

Here are my thumbnails for ideas:

Originally, my idea was to base my story on a duck who was chasing after a person. I thought with this idea, I could approach it in a humerous way as I could use my newspapers and cut out celebrities faces so for example, it could look like Ariana Grande was being chased by a murderous duck. However, the more developments I made, the less I liked the idea as I felt it was lacking some kind of subtance. With my new idea, I decided to focus on the growth of a tree sapling. I wanted to have a comical approach to this piece and I definitely feel like I succeeded with this intention. 

Negatively speaking, I am quite disappointed at how my creativity lacked today. I feel like my brain has had a complete refresh since the Christmas break so I am going to work on this and hopefully come up with more imaginative ideas. Arguably this self criticism is quite harsh, however, I found it extremely difficult today to think of ideas so I definitely wish to improve upon this!

When it came to making the cube, I used card for the base while then applying newspaper over the top. I then messily applied blue acrylic paint to create a background for the sky. I liked the messy approach as it looked homemade and has a more appealing appearance in the terms of what my style is. I do wish my cube looked more presentable at the end of the day, however, I think the appearance fits nicely with the story itself. After this, I grabbed some green paper and drew the textures of grass over the top which I then stuck onto the 4 bases. When this step was done, I made each development of the tree by combining green and brown paper. This made the contents of the cube more appealing as I am trying out different materials and mediums. The same applies for the addition of the dog on the 4th panel as well as the inclusion of the letters which were of course, cut out of a newspaper. I then finished this off by creating a 5th panel, following the same initial process as before.

Unboxing the storyline of the piece, it is quite straight forward but I personally love it. In each panel, you watch a tree sapling grow until it becomes such a large tree, it grows out of frame. This tree then has a face which looks quite sad as it is unfortunately being urinated on by a dog. This is why I decided to add the humerous addition of the text 'Kill me please' which was formed by newspaper cut outs. 

Overall, I am very happy with my first day back. Improvements are of course my creative thinking but also I feel like I could have examplified the idea of 'collage' more openly in my work. However, I do feel like I did enough through the inclusion of newspaper and the layering of coloured paper for my sapling. Positively speaking, it did get a few laughs and is a very straight forward story. I did not want to complicate anything and I definitely succeeded in that!

Here are my photos of what I did today: