7 Deadly sins • Final Statement

This project has evolved a lot through the course of its production, and the changes and improvements that have been made, I think, have made it a pretty strong representation of the sins:

The beginning sketches messed around with the themes in a really elementary manner, trying to make it super obvious which picture was each sin. While this was a nice way to help understand the meanings of each of the sins, each idea was a pretty typical, expected representation of each sin. Moving forward, I tried to think of ideas that were still clear and understandable, but not as cliche. Here are some of my early sketches for some of the sins:

Even in the drawing stage of this project, I realized that I wanted to pay particular attention to the facial expressions on each of the chicks. Drawing this was a lot easier than making it work on the actual chicks. Formally, the chicks are just a piece of really fuzzy pipecleaners with legs and eyes glued on. With such a simple object, it was a fun challenge to try and convey their emotions while keeping everything as simple and crafty(since they're so crafty-looking to begin with). Even just adding a pair of eyebrows to the little toys made their emotions recognizable; it's crazy how something so tiny can make such a big different in our understanding of emotions. Then it was just a matter of twisting and standing or sitting them in a position that helped to further convey the sins they were representing.

In order of appearance in book:







In the end, I chose to have 4 photographs containing text, and 3 without. I think this is a good split down the middle. I considered having each composition contain speech, then reconsidered, because it seemed like overkill, and too redundant. In the opposite direction, I also considered trying the photos with no text at all, but decided against it. The sin that each photograph is representing it clear without the text, but I liked the text to help reinforce the theme, and also to add a bit of humor to the images.

The book:
For the cover page, the index and the colophon, I kept the text all pretty simple, with the added character, the text-made chick, peeping up every once in a while. Minimal color, just an Easter-y pink, was used. Craft-wise, all the images printed out pretty well, and the construction of the book turned out really well.


Overall, this was a really interesting project that tested my skills in ability to compose interesting and informative images while keeping the set as a whole cohesive and visually compelling. Also, this was a fun experience in constructing and setting up artificial environments for the subjects of my photos, even though in the final images I chose to omit most of the extra details that the environment provided.