Buster Keaton Patterns

When in college, I had a tendency to tailor class assignments around Buster Keaton. Especially at the end of semester. It was one way to ensure that I wouldn't slack off because I'd stay interested in the assignment. I wrote a lot of final papers on Buster Keaton (And got A's on all of them, by the way).

I've been taking graphic design courses for a while now. This semester was all about designing using Adobe Illustrator. Two out of the three projects I did where we got to choose subject matter ended up relating to Buster Keaton.

The first assignment was to design CD packaging. I redid Curtis Eller's American Circus's "Taking Up Serpents Again" CD and made "Buster Keaton" the title song.

The images are line drawings I did that take Buster Keaton's face and impose it on iconic images from other movies. The inspiration came came from the song "Buster Keaton," from the line, "Won't you come back to the movies, Buster Keaton." So, the CD art imagines him as "back in the movies." The cover and CD art is Buster Keaton in Sweeney Todd. The left inside flap is Buster Keaton in 300. The CD would be inserted there. The right inside flap is Buster Keaton in North By Northwest. The black section on the inside is the insert with lyrics, etc. When that lifts out, the background is the completed image (plane), in tan and black. I don't love it, but I think it turned out alright. If I were to redo it, I think I'd like to take out the 300 image and put something from the 80s in, like Say Anything..., with Buster Keaton as Lloyd holding up the boom box. That way, the images would sample three very different decades and movie styles.

The final project for the class was to make several patterns. I used two basic forms related to Buster Keaton for patterns: the porkpie hat and eyes line drawing that is on the hardcover of Buster's autobiography, My Wonderful World of Slapstick, and Buster's autograph.

Here are some designs using a repetition of the hat & eyes image. The second also uses his autograph.

Here are some designs using his autograph, repeated dozens of times, like in the first one, or a quadrillion times, like in the fifth:


































The longer formats are ones I turned in:



























I had a lot of fun with the patterns. I made and turned in some other patterns that didn't have any relation to Buster Keaton, as well. Those were harder for me to stay interested in, and I didn't like them as much. However, as much as I love Buster and enjoyed making the patterns, I can't deny that I'm happy to be done with the class.