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Arianna Morese
The purpose of the Fear Factor photography project was to pick a phobia of choice and create a visual representation of it, along with the dreadful emotions felt by those possessing the phobia. Despite being a photography project, I myself along with my teachers and peers had mutually agreed that I would best represent my chosen phobia through illustration instead. The phobia I chose to research and study was telephonophobia, which is the fear of taking phone calls. To show how one with telephonophobia would feel, I aimed for a dreadful and ominous mood, with a large emphasis on making the telephone itself feel particularly unsettling.
Illustration variation 3 (color)
Creative Process
Before beginning anything, I needed to choose a phobia that I would represent, that of which was telephonophobia. Knowing that telephonophobia is the fear of taking phone calls, I made the telephone the center of focus as it is the source of fear, aiming to make it feel ominous and menacing. Since this was originally meant to be a photography project, I got a close friend to get their own vintage telephones for me to use for my photos (as seen on the right). However, as I created my sketches for what I wished to recreate as photos, once my teachers and classmates saw my sketches, they all decided that my execution was effective enough as an illustration that I had no need to do any photography. I created three main variations of my illustration, each being originally shaded in grayscale but also had some color variations, along with some lighting variations such as flame-like lighting.
Top left: Illustration variation 2 (line art)
Top right: Illustration variation 2 (grayscale)
Bottom left: Illustration variation 2 (color, variation 1)
Bottom right: Illustration variation 2 (color, variation 2)
Tools & Elements of Design
Using Paint Tool Sai and a Wacom Intuos tablet, I created all of my illustrations for this illustration digitally. However, as I usually illustrate traditionally, the methods I used were no different. This seemed to work to great effect in the case of Fear Factor because as it is about human fears and emotions, creating drawings by hand without any digital aid (despite being drawn in a digital format) added an essence of humanity to it, with visible flaws untouched by a computer. That being said, the only tools I used in this program were the brush and eraser, just as I would use on pen and paper, as well as layers to separate all of the elements of the illustration (color, line art, shading, sketch, etc.). Throughout this project I kept strongly in mind the many principles of design, with lighting and alignment being key in assuring that the telephone could be clearly shown as the center of attention. In each of the illustrations, there was either a person or the hand of a person along with the phone, each having the strongest lighting and focus on the phone with the parts of the person being lit along the edges. This way, the person would appear feeling inferior to the phone. Since the project was centered on making average people feel the same emotions as someone with a phobia, I had to make sure that the drawings did not seem as though they were about a particular person, but rather the fear itself.
Left: Illustration variation 1 (grayscale)
Right: Illustration variation 1 (color)
Left: Illustration variation 1 (grayscale)
Middle: Illustration variation 2 (grayscale)
Right: Illustration variation 3 (grayscale)
Performance Evaluation
Since I practice drawing daily, I was able to execute my ideas better through illustration, with my only limit being my imagination. Rather than being bound by the limitations of photography, I could take anything from the realm of my imagination and use it to my advantage to make these illustrations feel truly unsettling. Even if I hypothetically created the sketches traditionally, I found that using a digital program such as Paint Tool Sai for coloring allowed for me to experiment much more with color without having to worry about the irreversible choices that are made in traditional art. As I often experiment with my drawings, having an opportunity to continue experimenting only came natural to me and helped me learn and grow in the process.