EMOTICON

These are meant to be little spot illustrations. I had other ones I wanted to add to the series but I ran out of time and interest. One was "The Birth of Venus" doing this ; D another was "The Scream" doing this : O.

Great topic by Sam. Can't wait to see everyone's work!

Emoticonputer

Yipee all done! It's changed a lot since my sketch, but I think it's working quite nicely! I think a universal new keyboard is a nice step in the right direction, to achieving better email etiquette :D Cheers!

Sam

TEAM SHEEN piece complete!

I really wanted to do a Charlie Sheen piece while he's current and all over the place. I did still relate it to theme for this month "emoticon," which is why he has that expression  ( :P ). It goes with both his character and the theme. I had a blast doing this piece and am totally happy with the outcome. I think this  is one of my best works. Hope you all enjoy :D

You can see my process work on [my blog] as well as the final work on my [site]

I'll have you know I worked hard on this one, but it was a pleasure.

Kira Shaimanova

face-to-face

This is my final piece for the "emoticon" theme. I wanted to show how we are missing the gestures and all the other important communication tools that come from face-to-face interaction.

This was done with a soft lino block of questionable origins, ink and photoshop. The yellow is actually gold ink, which looks much cooler in person.

Cheers,

Jacquie

Emoticon Letter

So what I basically took away from this article is that there is a lot of misinterpretation that goes with communication through writing. Which I sometimes feel is the result of lack of detail in the writing, or replacing an emoticon with what a person wanted to say and assuming the other gets the exact meaning of it.

In any case, my concept has to do with those old Dutch paintings where a wife is reading a letter from the husband who's away (symbolized by the painting on the wall) (remember Frances Brown's class?) Basically I wanted to play on that idea and change the letter from a loved one into a simple emoticon that represents love, yet without the romantic gesture. 

Emoticonputer Sketch

Looking great everyone! Hope my piece is up to par with everyone else :)
Anyone who's had an online conversation with me knows I'm a sucker for emoticons! They are very valuable emotional cues that may seem immature, but can easily send a powerful message and sometimes tip the scale between a friendly message and a nasty one. Like the article says we have a natural tenancy to read emails with a negative tone of voice, so my solution is to create a universal new keyboard fully equipped with all the emoticons and emotional abbreviations you'll ever need so you'll never accidently piss off your boss, spouse, or grandmother ever again :D


This is where I need your expert advice. What do you think about the position, gesture, and scale of the hands? I'm thinking I should crop into the keyboard more so you can clearly read the emoticons. And if you can suggest more emoticons and abbreviations so I may fill up all the keys that would be great!


Cheers,
Sam :) 

Emoticon Portraits

This is a great topic by Sam Singh!

Immediately, I pictured people with emoticon faces. As in the article about email etiquette, we sometimes rely on emoticons to relay a feeling that we cannot impress in words. But is it because emoticons are convenient, and words take too long to edit and arrange? Emoticons are a part of a universal language spoken in the virtual boundaries of email, chat rooms and other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. A single emoticon can communicate more than one meaning. ;p (the winky face) can easily follow: "I think you're a babe, ;p" or "You're too young for me, ;p". These emoticons are multi-functional! But when something is so versatile, it can be generalized and a specific notion is lost. Really, you miss out on sharing something personal like how great your day is when all you post is :). I'm not hating, I'm just pointing it out. I use emoticons, too. :p, like there.

I am going to do a series of portraits of different people (maybe 9 or 12). But instead of capturing the physical features that identify our distinctiveness, faces will be simplified to convey a universal emotion. I'm thinking of doing them in pencil and acrylic...

And lastly, here's an excellent emoticon illustration I found online today.

It's an Emoticon Love Story (by Miss Tal).

http://www.miss-tal.com/show.php?name=heart-story

:S

This is really fast, sorry it looks rushed but I'm about to go to work. What I'm gonna do is a series of little spot illustrations.

My concept is to take famous paintings and portray them through emoticons.

I suppose I could say it's a commentary on modern societies inability to adequately portray emotion. Also that an increase in technological capabilities has led to a decrease in traditional ability within the art community.

Mostly I thought it was funny...

I'll post some refined roughs in a few days.

Emoticon -Sketch

This is my sketch for the emoticon or ":S" theme. I wanted to show how little our text based relations convey. There's so much missing from them, even from phone conversations, but for many of us it is the only contact we have with some of the people in our lives. Increasingly, it's also the favored way of communicating. I remember seeing a guide to using the phone that was released right after it became a popular house hold item. it had sort of schematic and cheesy illustrations. That's what I thinking of when I was drawing this sketch, so some of that may have come through. Let me know what you think. It will be rendered in a print.

Cheers,

Jacquie

Sketch for "emoticon" theme

So I guess I'm the first with my sketch up! This is Charlie Sheen if you haven't guessed with the whole "winning!" banner. His face is supposed to be the "tongue" emoticon expression. Anywho, he used to play baseball in the past and starred in 2 baseball movies also, so baseball is still related to Charlie even if it's not in the current moment. I thought it totally works with his "winning!" phrase - relating it to a game and putting him on his own team "team Sheen". There it is!

- Kira

March Topic

Hey everyone! It's a new month and that means a new topic.
This months topic is the emoticon,

:S 


(colon + capital S)

This week I came across an article about email etiquette and the value of using emotional cues in emails. Check it out here. Go wild with this topic: do you know someone who actually looks like this emoticon? Does the emoticon correctly convey this emotion? What is the emotion? What does it mean? Or is this nothing more than some punctuation on a keyboard? Free range everyone! Have fun with it :) (see what I did there, haha).