Self analysis On 'Four Paws' Project
Project duration: 1 week
Animal Abuse- Ukraine animal abandonment
Many animals are being abandoned as a result of their owners having to flee their homes to escape danger due to the war in Ukraine destroying many people's livelihoods. This unfortunately, has left animals stuck and in danger as well. This charity called Four Paws shows compassion that has sparked an interest for me to create a poster and direct it towards helping abandoned animals in the Ukrainian war.
Research about campaign
The charity mentions in their opening title that they have worked previously (in 2012) before the war had broken out to help stray animals, as it only became illegal to kill stray animals in 2021. Ukraine had development an issue with stray animals with an estimate of 200,00 dogs and many more cats on the streets. Since the start of the war in 2022 the growing population of animals being abandoned has caused many of them to be untreated and the country has seen a rabies outbreak, even human have contracted the virus.
Four Paws has helped to prevent the killing of animals since 2012 due to the football championship, with people killing stray animals to prepare for the game. Luckily, this was able to cause global attention, and the charity gained funding to help prevent animals from inhumane euthanization and tortured. Four Paws also provides help for refugees alongside their animals, they support soldiers returning from the battlefield using animal-assisted therapy sessions in the refugee centres, as well as delivering food to bomb shelters.
To me they are an exceptional charity, and I would like to encourage the public to support their work, especially since they take care of humans who have suffered from the war as well as animals.
The charity has many petitions that are outside of the Ukrainian war crisis as well. From supporting ending the abuse of bears in Vietnam and other areas of Europe, to ending the big cat trade. In addition to this, they have push for reform in farm animal conditions in factories and offer sanctions across Europe and Asia.
Graphic design style and Art style
How I would tackle this issue as a graphic designer
My intention for this project is to create a poster that is adaptable for both social media and outside public spaces and serves a purpose of capturing attention on the streets as well as attention from those on digital social platforms. The poster must engage viewer’s interest in less than a few seconds, as we live in a fast-paced society. This may also include adding a barcode that could redirect the public to the Four Paws donation page to make it as fast and as easy as possible for the audience. The target audience would vary, as the goal is to involve a large population to contribute to the cause. As the war has made Ukraine's economical state plummet, leaving the country unable to gain supplies, this initiative would offer a wide range of support to the charity workers who are committed to aiding and supplying those in need in Ukraine.
Art inspiration
My artist of choice to take inspiration from for this campaign called ‘Jojodoboro’. Jojodoboro ethos when designing appears to evolve around a composition of figures being placed in a way that gives a ‘broken mirror’ effect, or even the illusion of looking at the piece through a bubble. The artist gives the piece a very ‘’untamed’ look whilst still appearing very intentional. Jojodoboro appears to render their art on Clip Studio Paint , creating a contrast of old tones in the ‘’shadowed’ areas, and inserting warm tones in the lightened sections. This creates a retro atmosphere that aligns with the mood of the piece ‘’alone but not lonely’. The texture Jojodoboro appears to work on top of this is the ‘grimy’ texture, which makes the piece seem as if it’s been painted on a traditional medium using water colour and felt tip pens.
The most prominent feature used in their work is the way they manipulate perspective. That feature acts as Jojodoboro’s signature to the piece, that is how the artist is recognised. They also like to have the effect of a ‘spotlight’ to illuminate a certain section and induce focus on that specific area of the piece. The art piece is escorted by influence from the art movement of ‘’cubism’ in the early 1900s, this is suggested from the block colouring a cut-shaped box and geomatic ’shards’ that help create a ‘’jump’ behind colour.
'Golden' by Jojodoboro, 2024
Current Graphic designers approach to this issue
Searching for other animal right’s campaigns I happened to find this French art director called Nicolas Amiard who created a project called ‘’Summer Adventures’. In this project they thought of a way to really resonate with adults of that generation childhoods, or people currently experiencing a childhood. They took everyone’s favourite kids TV shows that included dogs (or for the Pokémon one, an adorable electric mutant yellow rat) and made the other main protagonist from the show walk away from them. Amiard made clever punch lines that flipped the tone of the poster to appear to be darker and sombre. Such as the Simpson themed edit that's renamed ‘Santa’s little helper’ to ‘Santa's little wander’. It has a very personal and very emphatical effect on the viewer, as Amiard strategically reconstructed every famous show that everyone must (at the very least have heard of). A lot of animal abandonment in (some countries) is a result of children asking for an animal and the parents not putting enough consideration into the responsibility behind the animal’s welfare. This has caused for 1.2 million abandoned dogs to be euthanized in America and 100,000 abandoned animals in France, which is what this artist is responding to by creating this campaign, which proved very effective.
The cartoon innocence used in these posters is the emotive effect I would like to incorporate into my own work for animal abandonment, and to create an empathetic response to the cause.
'Summer Adventures' by Nicolas Amiard, 2024
Mood board
I wanted to include some national symbolism from Ukraine, as this should present the focus on the cause, considering Four Paws takes on a variety of few projects in different countries.
Their national bird is the cuckoo, and this touch to the piece would present freedom for the main character of the poster, which is a dog looking up. Sombre colours would also be incorporated into the design, that also have some vibrate reds to highlight some areas, taking inspiration from the artist, Jojodoboro.
My Mood Board
Sketches and ideas
Two approaches and compositions were drafted to begin with, trying to include the cartoon empathy that Amiard’s project had used to his advantage. Thinking that using Jojodoboro’s style would create a more 3-dimensional image from the use of perspectives and colour and tonal manipulation. Jojodoboro has also added making images to convey the main subject’s feeling in their pieces in the past, (e.g. broken shards of glass on the image where the main subject appears distressed.
My planning sketch
This initial sketch was created to view what possible composition would work best for this poster. This is done on procreate and drafted as quickly as possible, whilst adding the placement and overall concept for where the light tones and dark tones should sit. This is still raw, and the caption and typography wouldn't be added until the poster itself is completely finished.
First draft on Procreate
This premature painting gives guidance to the intended proportions of the dog's head, in contract to the rest of it's body to give a 'birds- eye' perspective effect, using the same technique as Jojoboro’s work. The dog's face holds some subtle human features, such as the eyebrows, to evoke an emotional response that viewers can comprehend. This approach considers the phenomenon, pareidolia, where humans look for familiar facial patterns in objects and animals. This encourages human empathy and may drive a psychological connection between the artwork and the viewer.
Painted and more line work
The picture above is now without the draft layer, and dark tones and colour added, although not quite yet rendered. The cuckoo will be painted later into the image after building on the primary subject and relaxing the stagnate posture. I feel that some of the proportions could be readjusted, to create a realistic illusion of the bird’s eye effect, before working on the anatomy of the cuckoo, and the proportions of the birds to curl around the dog’s head.
The final Outcome
Finally the cuckoo is inserted and after the colouring was completed, a grainy texture to imitate Jojodoboro's style was plastered onto a layer with a lower opacity. The typography in the final outcome was written in a computer style typeface, similar to what would be used in war advertisements and encapsuled in a red font.
What I could have to improve the piece
The flooring tiles were meant to serve the purpose of enforcing the illusion of a vanishing point, they could have been organised better to align with the door rather than being so spaced out, which diminishes the effect. The first rough draft of the dog character seems to have been a better fit for the project since it displays more of a childish cartoon innocence, the final out come looks as though the style is trying to be taken as a realism piece. In this case, if the artwork wanted realism it should have been through the technique of photomontage with an actual animal to be displayed instead of a drawing.
The typography could have also played a more significant role in forming the overall message of the piece. The typography lacks in effect, and misses the opportunity to have been written using the same typography of a famous children's cartoon, just as the artist Nicolas Amiard had done in this 'Summer Adventures' project. The slogan added at the bottom left, 'War Abandons Every one', almost seems not developed enough, and a much more attention and emotive slogan would be more effective.
To add to this, lighter values being added to the graphical artwork would elevate the effect of the colour work, giving a more rendered completion to the piece. Although the execution of the piece could have taken a more tactical approach, it still encapsules a message of the course with subliminal messaging (the cuckoo added in to reference Ukraine's national bird) about what the course entails. In this case, although the hints are fun for art lovers, for a call to action poster for those not in Ukraine, this failed to fulfil it's duty. In the future, I would try to divide the time taken for this piece more evenly to excel it's focus in each section of the poster's development.
Works Cited
“About FOUR PAWS.” FOUR PAWS International - Animal Welfare Organisation, www.four-paws.org/about-
us/four-paws-about-us.
“Behance.” Behance.net, 2024, www.behance.net/gallery/81110439/Summer-Adventures. Accessed 7 Nov. 2024.
“Jojodoboro on Instagram: “What Does Falling in Love Feel Like? Music By-Fasa(Ft. Aton, Teague) Streaming
Now on Spotify and Soundcloud🎧✨ #イラスト #Illustration #お絵描き#Procreate #プロクリエイト
#Shinchan.”” Instagram, 2020, www.instagram.com/p/C_F4xgUPOYE/?img_index=1. Accessed 7 Nov.
2024.
“Хміль ☼ Українська міфологія ☼ Народна творчість.” Proridne.org, 2024,
proridne.org/%d0%a3%d0%ba%d1%80%d0%b0%d1%97%d0%bd%d1%81%d1%8c%d0%ba%d0%b0%2
0%d0%bc%d1%96%d1%84%d0%be%d0%bb%d0%be%d0%b3%d1%96%d1%8f/%d0%a5%d0%bc%d1 %96%d0%bb%d1%8c.html. Accessed 7 Nov. 2024.
