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How can I use abstract representations of lines, color, and texture to depict the world and characters of the play Antigone on a concept board?
Quick answer:
To represent Antigone on a concept board, use abstract elements like lines, colors, and textures to symbolize key themes and characters. For example, depict Creon's metaphorical blindness and Antigone's literal imprisonment with dark, hard textures and colors. Use geometric shapes to represent characters and actions, and arrange them logically to convey progression or complexity. Colors should complement or clash to show themes or conflicts, while unconventional objects like tubes can create visual metaphors for isolation.
Previous answers have addressed some specific aspects of the story itself, but I can add some tips for designing concept boards in general.
A concept board (even a 3-D version, like the one in the assignment) is a lot like an infographic. Pick two or three main points that you are trying to make, and focus on getting those across as clearly as possible. (Do not retell the whole story on one board; you will just overload your design and confuse your audience.)
Plan your design before you start sticking images and other material to the board. You might use one shape to represent characters, another to represent action, a third to represent consequences, and so forth. Geometric clues like this will help your audience “decode” your message easily.
Is your message linear (beginning, middle, end)? To show a linear progression, your images should be placed to “read” logically from...
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left to right or top to bottom. Alternatively, are you going to convey a lot of open-ended possibilities and questions? In that case, arrange your main points so that all the connecting concepts can radiate out from them (kind of like a mind-map).
Color schemes can also help you get your ideas across. Colors provide subtle clues about the meaning of a piece, and work together with the shapes to help direct viewers’ eyes through your work. Select images with colors that complement each other to convey related themes, and colors that clash to show conflict. Definitely avoid throwing too many colors together at random—that will just confuse your audience.
One way to approach this concept board might be to see the way in which characters place themselves in binds because of their limitations. For example, Creon can't see the humanity behind Antigone's desire to bury her brother, Polynices, because he has deemed her actions treasonous to the state. He also refuses to relent, though the gods have deemed Antigone's actions justifiable. By limiting his worldview, he sets in motion a series of events that ends in Antigone's execution by being immured, or placed within a cave that is sealed up. Therefore, she winds up literally being walled in, while Creon exists within metaphorical walls that cause his blindness.
To create these abstract ideas, you might use unconventional objects such as paper towel tubes or plastic to create walls around both Creon and Antigone. The colors within the walls can be dark, signifying that each character has, either by physical force or mental blindness, been forced into isolation from the outside world. The texture of the walls can be hard, signifying that the characters cannot emerge from their metaphorical and actual prisons.
While there are several ways to illustrate the conflicts, themes ("choices and their consequences; custom and tradition; gods and religion, and betrayal"), and interactions of Sophocles's Antigone, here are some ideas that may spur others from you:
- Critics agree that Antigone and Creon are caught in "double blinds":
Creon - 1. He feels his will is more important than the
rulings of the gods.
2. He demands that civil law be
obeyed first. (He views civil law as of more importance than the laws of the
gods)
Antigone - 1. She violates civil laws in burying her
brother
2. She cannot
disregard the religious duty she has to her brother.
These "double blinds" could be demonstrated by using chess figures/ dark and white, and covering them with little cut strips of tape as though they are blindfolds.
- Influence of the gods, Ancient traditions
Zeus is certainly invoked several times in this play. Burial customs are influential. These could be symbolized with cut-outs of pictures of statues of Zeus, etc., and illustrated with figures and mounds of sand/dirt.
In Ode III, Scene 4, Antigone alludes to the story of Niobe, and Tantalos her father, stories that relate to the plot of this tragedy. So, these tales could be illustrated. These stories can be tied to Antigone with lines
- Conflict of Conscience vs. Laws
A diagram could be drawn with three columns under the words LAWS BROKEN that are put in a box above the columns and connected with lines to these words: Who? Why? Results?
- The Chorus and the Tieresias
The influence of the Chorus and the Tieresias should not be overlooked. certain scenes in which they play strong roles could be illustrated with symbols, figures, etc.