MEDIA Research Project 1

ILLUSTRATION / ANIMATION BA

MEDIA Discourse Research Project 1

As part of their Media Discourse modules first and second year Illustration students began looking at the origins of visual awareness. Was there a single moment early on in peoples lives that triggered a lifelong love of images or pictures? The students asked themselves and members of the staff team to ‘show and tell‘ their earliest formative memory of a single image and describe what it was about this confrontation that had sucjh a lasting and profound effect.

Project Brief:

Most people can trace their love of the Visual Arts to a single image. This confrontation normally occurs quite early in life and may have passed by without fanfare at the time. Only in retrospect, when looking back, does the enormity or significance of this moment become clear.

So what was yours?

Was it a painting in a museum, an illustration in a book, a postcard, a stamp, a comic strip, a billboard poster, a newspaper photograph or a moment in a film or something completely different?

What was it about this image that so completely grabbed your attention or sparked your imagination?

What was the lasting impact of this event?

Please help us develop our collection of these images by sending a copy of yours and a brief response to the questions above.

n.hadfield@hca.ac.uk

Here is the first offering from HCA Illustration Lecturer Jonny Mendelsson

I was lucky enough to go to Prague as a child in 1977. Wherever you went their were images of The Good Soldier Sveijk by Jiri Trnka.
My parents bought me some small dolls that sadly, didnt stand the test of time, but some postcards did and they have always featured prominently in my workspace .
There were a number of puppet films in my childhood, but Trnkas puppets had the most charm. Im not sure the image was "The catalyst" in a creative career, but it is the one I cherish.
Tomi Ungerers Frances The Face Maker & Saseks This is London, that my aunt gave to my sister in 1960, ran Trnka close!