Poem Book Concept

The poem I based my book on is entitled “Soutod” by Till Lindemann. It is a lovely German piece seemingly about a man hunting deer in the pine forest. However, knowing the twist in former works of the artist, one can deduct that the writing is clearly about the hunting and molesting of a person. With this in mind, the concept of my poem book is the illustration of that story. I found a deer on the front to be a fitting cover because this is what one observes upon first viewing the poem. As the reader digs deeper into the context of the writing, they begin to whiteness that the prey is not an animal. This is why as the viewer of my piece goes deeper into the book and folds back the pages they begin to view the people being referred to as deer. Finally, after all the pages are removed one bares witness to the figure of a woman where the deer once was, thus completing the parallel.
As for the construction of the images I composited drawings with digital photos of a pine forest as depicted in the poem. I felt it important to keep the forest background up until the last panel of the book to keep more of the imagery of the poem. In contrast, the final page consist of an ally way background to further confirm the readers beliefs that the man in the poem was preying upon a young woman all along.
The drawings were all created as sketches on paper then brought into illustrator for coloring and manipulation through live paint/trace. After being colorized in illustrator they were given shadows and warped to root them into the backgrounds. The text was also manipulated through illustrator. It was given a new font, size color and shape that I felt attributed to the situation of the poem. From there the text was then placed into the images through photoshop and warped to also root it to the depictions. The physical book was created by cluing the images to two paper boards and cutting the top board into six panels so that the viewer can slowly uncover the image within.

My piece is entitled “You Never Know Just How You Look Threw Other People’s Eyes” as suggested on the front cover. The concept I strived to portray for my self visualization project is the image others view me as, as opposed to who I really am. I did this by creating an image comprised of 3 separate depictions of myself. The first depiction of me in a pink room in a cat had it the lighter side that many view me as. It is both happy and childish due to people’s assumptions of a bubbly nature and young age. I chose this image because it is one that I am most recognized as, though it is not an accurate portrayal of myself. Likewise, the image to the far right is also an inaccurate portrait of myself that many have seen me to be. This depiction possesses darker and a more menacing air about it due to many people‘s negative reactions to my person. I chose these specific images because of the greatest contrast between the two and the personal experiences tied to them. For example, the comments I’ve received from complete strangers “I can’t wear a cat hat because I’m an adult” as well as “are you a Satanist”. As for the center rendering of myself, unlike the others, it is not drawn but a digital photo of me. I felt it important to use a real photo of myself because it introduces an aspect of reality not shown anywhere else in the piece. The significance of this in relation to the concept, is that the reality of who I am is different from the fabricated renderings viewed from the minds of others.
The images was created through manipulations of drawn images scanned into Photoshop and Illustrator. After drawing all but the center depiction of me, I used Photoshop to adjust the thresholds to generate a cleaner picture. After cleaning up the drawings, I transported them into Illustrator to color them. For the coloring I made live traces of the images, closed all the gaps through vector manipulation, then colored them through the use of live paint and the paint bucket. After I was satisfied with the colors, I brought the images back into Photoshop. From here I added shadows to the pictures to give them a weighted appearance in the rooms. Furthermore, I melded all the rooms together an did a few small manipulations with opacity, transforming, warping as well as other Photoshop elements to give the images accurate proportions and angles.