Inspirational Images

The following images to do not belong to me, the majority of them are the works of some very talented artists over at DeviantART.com, I am merely using their works here as a source of inspiration for my Propaganda project, to help develop and generate some ideas.

"Propaganda" by ~QuantumParallel

The artist says they used the infamous line from the "Dune Series" of books "fear is the mind killer" to create a government propaganda poster. The line "The show must go on" is the artist's take on the governments' rather "careless handling of events." The propaganda here is essentially representing the artist's view of the government. I found this work to be very striking...the gas mask in particular was evoking; it made me think of war, the trench's...the concept of gas in the air, as though this man is surrounded by some sort of poison or venom, whether it be physical or mental suffocation. The lighting and use of black and white seemed to be a powerful way to reflect the serious tone and mood of the image.

"PROPAGANDA" by ~Kryptiikz69 (Right)

I liked the fact that this was hand done, which is what drew me to it...that and the clever use of colour to represent the ideas. The artist drew inspiration from WWII and from the movie "V for Vendetta" whilst creating this image and sort to depict the "lies, lies and more lies" spouted by people during war time, often due to physical or mental (fear) enforcement. The use of colour is clever, on the 'bright side' uses yellow and many colours of the rainbow which is generally symbolic of happiness and joy...but used in contrast with the images (planes falling, guns firing) and the looming 'dark side' with the revolver a darker meaning is brought across.

..Won't let me add more images, don't know what I've done wrong. lol. Will continue next time.

Researching Propaganda Assignment ideas

Just been looking at images on Deviantart under the search "Propaganda" to see if I can draw any inspiration for ideas, techniques or issues. I'm still unsure as to which of the four topics, (citizenship, the state, economy and the body) I wish to focus on. Whilst I love the fact the broadness of the project allows for such a large amount of freedom in creativity, its not helping me force myself in any one direction! Mostly been considering heading off in the 'body' direction, but the issues I've been considering (bulimia, anti-smoking, substances abuse) seem very unoriginal and at least in the case of anti-smoking already well covered.

When I get home I'll post up some of the images I've found, till then here is a definition of "Propaganda."

Propaganda

Propaganda is a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people. Instead of impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience. The most effective propaganda is often completely truthful, but some propaganda presents facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the cognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience.

(sourced from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

Propaganda during war time seems to mainly appear in the form of cartoons or 2D images whilst advertising type propaganda of today uses a wide variety of techniques to get the message across.

Till next time then.