In this project where we had to create a triptych, I drew inspiration from an article I read online about animal cruelty in factories and farms where the animals are treated with extreme violence and disregard. Hundreds of animals cramped into small cages, hit and beaten by the farmers and workers supposed to take care of them. As such, I decided to flip this idea around and create a world where the animals were the ‘humans’, and the ones being mistreated were the actual humans locked in cages. The actual concept of this piece is actually quite simple, but I felt would have quite a lot of visual impact upon execution.
For the composition, I did some research on cruel animal farms and decided to include some elements from images I saw of those farms such as the cramped cages and the hanging carcasses. As for the animal tourists walking around, I wasn’t sure if it was actually something done in real life, but nonetheless I decided to include it as I felt that it added another layer to the composition and made my message come across more clearly to the viewer.
In terms of colours, I decided to use a limited palette consisting only of the three primary colours. Machinery and the general environment in blue, the humans in red and the animals in yellow. I felt that this was really effective in distinguishing the different elements of the composition from each other, especially in the case of the humans and animals. The red of the humans is close enough to actual skin tones that it wouldn’t seem so strange or off to the viewer but in contrast, the yellow used in the animals is quite unusual and is not something that the viewer would necessarily expect, hence making the world of the piece seem even more unsettling.
While I liked the general outcome of the piece, I feel that I definitely need to spend more time in touching up the details and colouring in the background as right now, too much of the paper is left white and thus feels quite empty. Also, while I do like the general composition, I may decide to add a couple more animal figures into the piece to make it seem more crowded and busy as well as add more elements in the doors of the piece so as to further add to the believability of the world.
6th December 2017:
