4.06.2011

DVD package progress

I have chosen Darren Aronofsky films for my DVD box set design, showcasing Requiem for a Dream, Pi, and either The Fountain or Black Swan.

IMDb notes that Darren Aronofsky does a lot of the following in all of his movies:

"Frequently uses a technique known as the hip-hop montage, which is a sequence of images or actions shown in fast-motion with accompanying sound effects, usually shown to simulate a certain action, such as taking drugs.

"Fade to white for emphasis, a break in the story, or an end of an Act/Section in the story.

Characters with strong obsessions that drive them towards self-destruction."


I am mostly intrigued by the characters Aronofsky portrays, in which they begin each movie with ambitious goals and dreams, yet these dreams end up eating them alive until the characters are nothing but a shell of a person (or just dead entirely.) This duality of beginning good and ending bad will offer a lot of imagery for me to play with.

I began playing with the idea of ambigrams for Aronofsky's name on the cover. If I stick with thie idea, Darren's name will appear the same whether you are holding the box upside down or rightside up. Depending on which way you were holding the box set, either good imagery from the movies would be seen, or dark and morbid imagery would be seen.

Here's a screen shot of a (very) rough shape for my ambigram:

As you can tell it is still rather difficult to read, but I would like to go back in with my Wacom tablet and add thicks and thins for contrast and to make it a little more visually pleasing.


I like the way this ambigram is treated (taken from wikipedia):