Zine: Finished Images and Feedback

For my zine I decided to create a series of full bleed images out of the various extreme close up portraits I had produced as well as cropping and enlarging some of the initial drawings I did of Murakami. I feel this did result In the personal and highly visceral/motive feel I wanted the images to have. Furthermore I think positioning certain images on corresponding pages, such as the male and female figures looking opposite directions helped communicate the more specific themes of isolation and miscommunication/understanding.

I tried to further support and reinforce this through including a few key quotes where Murakami discuses these ideas, either personally or within his narratives. I felt the one relating to him actively choosing to and being content with being on his own was particularly important as I've always felt, unlike for instance Kafka, Murkami approaches the subject of alienation/isolation in a way that seems quite contented and like something he's at ease with rather than something overly sullen and cathartic.

Although I think it was the right decision to include the quotes and that, conceptually the idea of splitting one of them over two pages to communicate the idea of things getting lost in translation between two people worked well, something that was mentioned in the group crit, I think I should have considered choice of type more. One of the main criticisms of my work during the megacrit which I'd entirely agree was that I hand drawn type would have visually been more complementary with the looseness of my work and conceptually would have better suited the ephemeral nature of the themes at hand.

Finally although, the ambiguous/mysterious nature of my images was at times praised during the crit and, for those who were familiar with Murikami's work, was said to reflect the themes and philosophies central to his work and life well others argued that the zine felt too vague. This is something I am really going to have to consider when tackling with such intangible and abstract themes as I definitely feel there is a risk of my work becoming too visceral and ambiguous to the point where it fails to effectively communicate a message and instead becomes a series of seemingly pictures lacking any conceptual basis.