Boxes

For our last project in our "skills module" we were directed to use Illustrator in order to create a visual based on the title "Where I live". I love the idea of a title like this - it's just vague enough, and yet just specific enough to come up with some interesting ideas.

I came up with the idea that living in halls is a little like living in a box. Bear with me...

As a fairly large human being, any room would seem small to me, but the rooms in Lomas are small for most, and between my room and the poky kitchen, I have very little space which is mine. There's something very organised about halls - a corridor with several doors off of it - it feels like we've all been compartmentalised.

Wow, I feel all fine-arty again. The second box-comparison I can make is the quality of the living arrangements here. Since moving in last September we've encountered an ant infestation, mould, a lack of heating for the whole of winter, a broken oven, mould, broken doors, mould, and now the return of the ants... Not entirely unlike living in a box then.

I expressed this sentiment through the text, and exaggerated the angles in the visual. The box graphic was constructed around a live-traced photo of a hunched-up me, which I sketched over with the pencil tool. I added the shadow to give depth. It has a fairly quick, graphic feel to it.

Overall, I'm happy with the piece - given a longer period of time I may have created something more complex, but this fulfils the brief quite well. Roll on July, when I move into a bigger box.