Unit 27 - Digital Montage - Research - Mister Koppa

Mister Michael David Jerome Hoffmann Koppa, or Mister Koppa for short, is an American artist born in Wisconsin USA in 1969.

As you can see, some of his work consists out of a full background image with several layers on top of it. This is kind of what I used in my own montages. It's a simple but very effective technique.

"Born with a nostalgic heart, I am attracted to commercially printed images predating the Atari 2600. Through the free association of images representing a century of human history, I stumble upon relationships I find to be interesting, intriguing, ironic, or just plain funny. These relationships may mean something or nothing at all, but always satisfy my craving for amusement."

It is this quote from the artist's website I tried to, kind of, apply in my own work. Having these little relationships between things. In my case, the little people and the scanned text.

Seeing as montages aren't really my thing, I find it hard to understand some if not all. However, I do appreciate the work that has gone into making them and the techniques that are used. Koppa's work, to me personally, doesn't mean anything. Yet I quite like some of the things that go on in his images. And sometimes, the longer you look the more you will see.


Resources:

http://misterkoppa.com

Unit 27 - Digital Montage - Research - Axel Saffran

Axel Saffran is a Dutch artist. He uses his computer to create surrealistic photomontages. Below is an image from his 'Turning' collection from 2009.

From what I can figure out myself, the original image is that of an apple. This seems to have been layered with a wall type texture and several birds. He then used a sky and other birds to complete it.

I love this. This is really cool. It is almost like another planet or even Star Wars' Death Star (Yes, perhaps I show my inner nerd here).

Saffran also creates montages based on the elements, earth, wind, fire and air. Below is an image he created for the element of air.

He has taken lots of different photographs of skies and layered them in a David Hockney way to create a whole new image. To me, it looks like a whole new round cloud. I really quite like this, because the longer you look at it, the more you see.

I'm not sure whether I will use anything like this in my own montage, seeing as my idea is totally different. But it's been interesting to see.


Image Resources:

http://www.axelsaffran.com/

Unit 27 - Digital Montage - Research - Lee Muslin

Lee Muslin is an American artist. She studied fine art at the University of Delaware, where she took courses in painting, drawing and printmaking. It was also where she took her first photography course.

At the age of 20, she continued with her photography. When she attended Parsons School of Design to earn a degree in photography, she discovered digital imaging. Since then she has used her computer as a paintbrush to travel beyond the limits of reality.

I rather like some of her work, such as the above. Creating imaginary landscapes by layering different images is a very cool thing to do in my eyes. It gives you the opportunity to almost search for an Utopia. What I like about this image is the fact that it's very well layered. A lot of montages look very stuck on and you can easily tell it was cut and pasted.


Image Resource:

http://www.fineartamerica.com

Unit 27 - Digital Montage

 The Plan

As soon as I read the topics and saw that 'A personal response to a political issue' was one, I had made up my mind. As people may know from my previous posts, I am a registered disabled. Disabled people can, if they apply for it, receive a benefit called DLA (Disability Living Allowance). The government has announced that between 2013 and 2018, everyone receiving this benefit will have to be reassessed. The new benefit is called PIP and anyone that qualifies after the reassessment will receive this benefit instead. This means some people, depending on the outcome, will lose their benefit and anything attached to this.

Now, personally, I think it's a good idea. Simply because everyone gets reassessed and any frauds will lose the benefit. Unfortunately, as we've seen a few times before, these reassessments could also mean that some people who do deserve it could lose their money because of perhaps harsher guidelines.

So to me, that brought up the question: "DLA to PIP... How much should this worry me?" and that is exactly what I have used in my montage.

What did I do to create my montage?

For starters, I imported the image I used for my documentary brief of me with my walking frame and reduced the opacity to around 75% in Adobe Photoshop. I then scanned in 4 pieces of text that I ripped out of a brochure about the issue. I scanned them at 300dpi, just in case the image needs printing at any stage. I made sure the objects were flat on the scanner, therefore avoiding any issues with the quality of the scan. I then imported them into Photoshop, cut them out individually using the and layered them over my background image. To make it all look a bit better, I added some shadow to the text parts. Next, I used images of people in wheelchairs and with walking frames and cut them away from their backgrounds in Photoshop. After I cut them out, I re-sized them and moved them on top of all the bits of text. This makes it look as though they're walking and rolling across my text. To finish my image, the only thing left was to add my personal statement/question: "DLA to PIP... How much should this worry me?". I positioned the text on the top and bottom of the image, making it look like a protest banner. Again, I added a little bit of shadow to make it look better.

The Result

Alternative Options

Now the image above was pretty much what I had in my mind when I set out to create the montage. Because of my experience in Photoshop I didn't have any problems creating this image. However, because of went straight for the idea that was in my mind, I didn't really experiment with other options and versions. So in this part, I had a play around with it to see what other versions I could come up with. Different effects, colours and things like that.

On the next image, I changed the colour of the written text by using a red gradient. I also changed the I then duplicated the layers and re-sized and skewed them in order to create a shadow that falls onto the background and is attached to the letters, rather than a loose one. I then changed the colour to black. Next, I removed the shadows on the scanned pieces and instead went with a different contour to create the ribbed edges and then added a red gradient to match the colours.

Now personally I like both version, each for different reasons. The first one is calm. It brings my message across without being 'in your face'. However, the second one is great because of the effects and because it almost screams my message. They both work, but in different circumstances. The first image is more of a brochure image, whereas the second one is more of a protest image. Just shows what making a few tiny adjustments can do to an image.


Image Sources:

http://gwsaguelph.blogspot.co.uk/2012_06_01_archive.html
http://www.handicapablemedia.org
http://www.hunarch.com.au/IndVehsPlot1.htm
http://www.allardycehealthcare.co.uk