I began my class in Saul bass by doing some research on what Saul bass actually is. It was the first time I had actually heard about Saul bass and I like new things! Our teacher first told us about what Saul bass was and how it was used in many movies today for example, Iron Man, Jaws and many more.
I had to begin doing my research by looking for posters of films already done. There were so many it was so hard to choose and to try and fit them all in. I wanted to be creative in my mood board of collected images but I did eventually filled the entire A3 page and printed it out.
I had to find many pictures and type faces during my research. I was also picked with a partner to fin some so not all were my choice but I did like them anyway. In the corner, I had found a colour pattern which could go well for research on colours used in my designs creating Saul Bass Styled work.
During the research I had found out how basic it was but how amazingly well it pointed out what it was trying to show. An example would be in the bottom right corner the batman one, even though you can barely see the writing you know what it is. A man with a batman shadow. It directly shows what it is, which makes it so great.
My favourite Saul Bass styled Title sequence, as I am a fan of the super hero gaga stuff it popped out to me. Even though it has so much basic touches to it, it directly shows what it is. With the batman figure in the shadow behind it gave it away instantly but for some people who wouldn't know who it was the crime scene at the bottom of the page would know its some sort of crime fighter of some sort. The character that is casting the shadow is obviously the hero batman, which I like because it shows his basic real form while his 2nd life is behind him. I also like the text, its quite funky compared to the text I am using right now, this stuff is formal as that is quite crazy done! I also like the paper background with the folds, I personally don't have a reason why I like it. It just pops out to me and makes me feel intrigued to find out what it actually means, because honestly I don't know.
I like this title sequence with saul bass inspired title sequence because it shows everything that is included in the film. The joker's face represents him so well with the mouth and the green hair, it is clearly obvious that it is him. When it shows batman himself, it shows him exactly how he is done in a basic form and I really like how its done because of that reason. It did not need to be in full detail to show how batman is actually looking like. It shows another villain in the sequence called Two-Faces and it shows his face how it is weird on one side and the other normal, it shows that he is in fact two faced. The colours used in the title sequence have been used well with the greens, reds, blacks and whites. The fact that black and white is used is greatly shown to show how gloomy the film actually is.
After finding the title sequences, I had to start thinking about my own typefaces in the style of Saul Bass without much inspiration from sight but using my own head in creating basic but also quite crazy types of text. I wanted to do my Saul Bass texts around the film 'JudgeDredd' but also known as just 'Dredd' but I had to have 2 or more words to use it on as Dredd isn't enough to practice at different letters as it only consists of 3 different words, D, R and E.After creating many rough copy of typefaces, I was asked to take my favourite 5 and develop them and clean them up a bit. Which I had done, I added colour and just put more effort into making it less rough than before. I really like these designs because they are all quite different and positioned in a great way. I like the bottom right, because of the sharp edges it has, it really represents the Saul Bass style but I also like the positioning of the lettering of the top right corner. Even though it is completely different it still represents the Saul Bass style and I really like them all other wise I wouldn't really pick them.
After creating our font styles we had to do some research on proper font styles, using the website Da Font, I found many, many fonts I really liked the look of and I could possibly use in my title sequence. My favourite from this list would have to be Crazy Cartoon which is the far right side, third one from the bottom. I liked this one because it actually looked like one of my fonts I had created before even finding it and it was quite a shocker to me.
After the font finding, I had began to find out what were the main subjects in the film Dredd itself. Many ideas were thought from the film, I also watched the trailer before finding what I need for more inspiration. The main things that came to my head were, helmet, Badge, Gun and Slo-mo. Slo-mo being the drug, for the ones that actually don't know what it is. I chose to look into Dredd because I really like the film, I love the fact of how emotionless he is and skillful he is in his job. His emotions create the character a lot.
I also found some images from the actual film for inspiration of my mind map.
After making actual research on the film I began creating Saul Bass images of my own. While creating I figured out that I was spending quite some time on the detail, but that wasn't a part of the Saul Bass style so the teacher gave us all one minute to create one simple Saul bass drawing and with the lack of time to create detail, it ended up being in the Saul Bass style which I definitely liked. Even though I didn't really like the basic style of the work of all the drawings I done.
When I put it onto the computer to redo in Illustrator that was when I started to feel more satisfied about my work. I had to choose 6 objects and recreate them 5 times but with a twist, they weren't allowed to be the same. Being colour, close up or however, there had to be a change to it.
My first design was to create a cityscape to show the viewer of what sort of place the film is set in. It is set in a futuristic city, full of slums. But it wasn't easy to show the slum side so I stuck with the city scape. I used the colours red, black and golden yellow because they were the colours of the Dredd film. They worked well in the Saul Bass designs, my favourite of the 5 had got to be the bottom left because I like the black on top of Red and I thought of the idea of putting the title in between the buildings as they will fit perfectly.
After the cityscape I wanted to include the bike Dredd uses at the first action scene contained in the movie. I thought it would be a great part to include of the sequence, using basic form of Saul Bass I split the bike into parts, it was quite difficult to make it look like a bike as I got opinions from my peers they said it looked like a golf cart, I was annoyed personally but yes, its their view. I stuck with the look of it, because I still think it looks like a bike and its important that I listen to my view more but taking on board others too.
In my mind map of the objects and ideas I could use in my actual sequence, I wanted to add the psychic that was in the movie as she is a big aspect in the film. I had to think of a way to create a way to show you that she is psychic. So I thought about having eyes with a spiral on her head, which shows that she has something. Maybe confused, I don't know. Depends on how you see it, but I see it as a psychic. My favourite had to be the yellow back ground with white and purple as I didn't want it to be to dark due to her being on the good side rather than the dark side (Star wars quote).
Another design was the eagle of the badge the Judge's have as their symbol, I thought it would be good to use because it symbolizes their organisation in a basic form. I tested 5 times, as well as the others before. I wanted to change positions, split them in half or put them on an angle to see how I can position it to be effective in the title sequence. My favourite would have to be the one with an angle to it because the ones that were set straight seem to be quite normal in my eyes and normal is boring to I added a twist (Pun intended).
My final 5 designs was of bullets, as there was a lot of shooting happening during the film that it was a major aspect of the film to show violence. What is there without some violence in a Dredd movie. I thought they were okay, I mean they weren't as good as the rest because I thought it was just really basic, I know it shows what it is but I didn't like how overly basic it was but that's the point of Saul Bass to make things that are complicated to make it simple.
After creating 6 ideas with 5 designs of the same object I moved on to creating a story board of how my title sequence will go. I had added more objects/scenes than I had actually planned but that was a part of the development, I thought I was able to add more to my sequence and I could use quantity to my gaining. I added the helmet of the Judge's because it was very important to have and some how it was a perfect fit for the ending. I included much text to it, using the names of characters to show that it possibly ended with them being alive.I also added another character being chained up because one of the scenes the judge's were caught which I thought was a great thing to show the viewer that a judge had gotten into a sticky situation.
At the bottom of each scene there is text to show what would happen during that section of the sequence giving me a better plan on what I will add in the moving title sequence.
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