Visual Skills - Brief 2 Initial Ideas

The article I've been given for this brief about editorial illustration is titled 'The age of loneliness is killing us', and it's about the increase in depression and loneliness as we become more reliant on technology. One idea I've had for one of three final pieces is the idea of a lone ranger - the article mentions people becoming more focused on individualism and compares them to lone rangers. I thought I could use this to create an interesting piece, where a lone ranger is walking away from a pile of smashed computers, insinuating that social media and technology takes ahold of our lives and we become too obsessed with this virtual world, but even if you sever ties with it you can still feel isolated.

 

This is some initial experimentation with the idea. After speaking to Pete, he agreed that having the character smaller if more effective in conveying loneliness, with the vast empty space around him. However, he also said that maybe the sunset in the distance suggests a happy ending - which got me thinking that maybe I could turn it around and have it as a 'happy ending'? The article is overwhelmingly biased and negative towards technology and doesn't offer up a solution aside from - 'we must confront the world-eating, flesh-eating system into which we have been forced', which could be conveyed by this illustration - the lone ranger leaving technology and virtual people behind and going back to community.

 

Here's some more playing around with the idea, bringing colour in. In the first one I got rid of the sunset, but I didn't actually like how dark it was. Although that could represent depression, I thought it filled the space too much to be considered 'lonely', so I drew it again this time using blue line and lighter blue washes. I thought that worked better. In the third image I tried to convey that 'happy ending' idea by using yellow and orange, and I actually liked this idea better.