New Direction

WORK is sending me into the void, if hell is personalised then mine will be retail for all eternity.
The awfulness of my job is another factor encouraging me to keep on illustrating every night so that I'll hopefully never have to work anywhere remotely similar eveR AGAIN.

I'm tired but happy with how my new ideas are coming, I've tried to let ideas & concepts dictate where I take the visuals, rather than becoming too caught up in visuals and using basic boring ideas. I'm exploring the essence of duality in five Shakespeare plays:

• Macbeth: Lady Macbeth's character change from supportive, normal wife, to murderous lunatic in like, two scenes.
• The Tempest: The difference between night and day in the character of Caliban, is he evil just because he was born out of an evil witch and ACTUAL SATAN? Cut him some slack, he already looks like a demon goat man. Does his inhumanity actually remove him from notions of good and bad, like an animal?
• Romeo & Juliet: The cultural perception of their relationship as beautiful and idyllic, and the contextual reality of their relationship as flawed, naïve and ultimately fatal.
• As You Like It: Freedom vs containment, is absolute freedom really what we want? Characters with absolute freedom always end up establishing some sort of institution or rule system to live by. Is the blank slate of complete boundless freedom just the same as being contained indefinitely?
• Hamlet: Hamlet's identity, he knows he must avenge his father, but instead of getting it done, he spends the whole play faffing about with the idea of it. Should murder be met with MORE murder? He as a character comes to a standstill between his two halves as he realises good and evil are mixed in every aspect of life. To be or not to be. That is the question.

I definitely feel much better about the project as a whole now that I have a solid foundation of ideas for heading forward.

Happy new year! (I intend to spend the 1st of January entirely asleep)

Secret7 moving forward - SELF INITIATED

After talking to everyone who was ready to do Secret7 (before it was cancelled and knackered my life), I've decided to start a self initiated project in which I intend to illustrate the covers to seven songs myself. I've already done so much development for this brief I don't see the point of wasting that work and the progress I've started to make.

I intend to complete these illustrations in a similar way to how Illustration Friday operates, taking a different song periodically and illustrate it without using text or any photography of the artist. So far in my development towards this I've enjoyed trying to illustrate songs as its not something I've ever done before.
My aims for this brief are to develop my independence with responding to a continuous running brief that it will be my own responsibility to keep up with. I also intend to improve my skills at idea generation, as trying to convey intangible concepts is something I'm really interested at developing in my own practice moving forward.

Secret 7 CANCELLED WHY

We found out recently that Secret7" won't be running this year.

This was a bit of a knock to my Responsive plans as I've been focusing on secret7 for a few weeks now. I think I'll have a go at the new Illustration12 idea briefed by college, but I'd like to be able to direct things towards a self initiated project, as I've enjoyed working on the preparation for Secret7 and want to keep this energy going forward.
I'll be aiming a project towards either music or film, as I've enjoyed translating music into still illustration as its a representative method I aren't familiar with so far in my practice.

IVE CHANGED MY MIND

I DONT WANT TO PRINT THESE
Today I decided that I need some new ideas if I want to make interesting and exciting work for the final prints. I think because this is the longest project we've done I feel drained of ideas, but I just aren't connected to the designs I've been making, focusing on the marionette figures and their character icons. I'm going to try to just take this brief back to my stronger initial ideas of comic book cover/movie poster styled drawings, because I want to use this to make stuff that I'm proud to show, rather than these bloody puppets (who I now hate, even though I made them, curse my past self)

I just don't feel there's any real depth to the compositions like I had in the first few pages of this brief. I'm going to try to recall that kind of work and redesign my prints between now and the New Year. I feel insane but also that this is the right thing to do, better to make a few good ideas great than churn out a thousand mediocre ones.

More Print Idea Development

I want to have a solid idea for each print by Tuesday so I can get some feedback before going on break for Christmas, mainly so I know what direction I should be heading in by then. I'm pretty confident with the marionette ideas, I just need some help in refining them and getting them good enough to actually be printed over Christmas.

Sound Task: Deconstruction: Picnic Studio Sting

Picnic Sting from PICNIC* on Vimeo.

After deciding to do three 10 second stings rather than one 30 second sting (because I'm still figuring out what my final prints will be and my stings should be organically related to them, and I don't think 30 seconds would be suitable for the direction my designs are going in) , I've started to have a look at shorter stings and adverts, as I'll have to compress my ideas into a smaller time frame.
The use of sound in this sting really makes the hand done illustrations pop and be memorable. I don't think I'll be using a soundtrack to my stings, as that sort of sound doesn't really fit with the motifs I'm illustrating in relation to Shakespeare plays. I'm going to use recorded effects and atmospheric sounds to establish a narrative in my stings, much like this sting from Picnic does. The sound is varied but constant, blended together smoothly, which makes for an engaging few seconds. I find it really interesting how such a short clip can have so much work put into it and be so rewarding for the few seconds it exists in.

Sound Task: Deconstruction - Adventure Time: Food Chain

When we were first shown examples of animated shorts/stings, I immediately thought of this short from Adventure Time (that I may have blogged about before).
Its dynamic animation and bouncy comedic soundtrack combine to make a funny and technically intriguing short. The song doesn't really work without the visuals, and the visuals are mostly nonsense without the song for context, and this co-dependence is the strength of the short as a whole. I want my sting to be completed by the inclusion of sound, rather than sound being an afterthought that doesn't make any difference to the animation as a whole.
While my stings will probably be a fair bit darker than soaring food chain musical numbers, the essence of the animation responding to the sound is vital to the success of a short sting, as it only has a few seconds to get its message across.

3005 - Finalised Design

3005 -  Childish Gambino






















I feel that this is probably my strongest design for the music based designs I've been exploring for this brief. My visual inspiration for this was the music video for the song, which focuses solely on the intricate spin of a ferris wheel. I wanted to get across the intricacy of the wheel without just drawing one, so I took a perspective of the viewer on the ride itself, up close with the different cables and bars. Because it is quite an involved design, I wanted to stay simple with the colours, so as not to overcomplicate the composition. I think the complicated intersecting rectangles and the simple flat colours work well to balance the composition as a whole.
The song itself is about uncertainty and loneliness, and I wanted to convey that with large areas of black negative space to communicate a character that is very much on their own, and I think the opposing intersecting lines that make up the wheel work well to parallel the uncertainty and apparent randomness that the speaker in the song is feeling.

Digital Exploration - Secret7"

 Me and Your Mama - Childish Gambino

Continuing with developing my work in more conceptual, idea driven ways, I have been exploring further with solely digital methods.
I've also been trying to convey elements of the music I'm illustrating in the image itself, so for this image I incorporated the four strings of a bass guitar in the blue streaks dominating the composition. The image of the moon in the top left corner aligns with the explosive first note of the song being struck on that string. My colour choices were mainly driven by the soul-inspired, lamenting nature of the song, reminding me of a deep blue night sky.



Telegraph Ave (Oakland) - Childish Gambino

I've never really utilised photography within my work, so this practice piece was a challenge I tried to set myself to (hopefully) develop some new skills. Working with levels, brightness, shadow and reflection on this image to create an outcome I was happy with was something quite different to what I'm used to. I feel like it appears too simplistic as a final image, so I plan to take the methods I've used here in more complex work in the future to create more successful work.

This is what we call the Muppet Show!

After talking with Theresa and Ben I've decided to narrow my designs down, as they've been quite disjointed and broad over the last few weeks, and really think about what will work as a set of prints, and what needs to run across all five to bind them together.
I still want to experiment with scale and background in composition, but to unify my prints as a set, I want to keep character simple and consistent. The imagery of puppets works well towards this idea, as they can be expressive and blank simultaneously, so I've started to adapt them into positions and situations that best represent the wide range of characters in each play I'm going to illustrate.

Storyboarding Workshop 2 notes

• Storyboarding is a good filter for finding which ideas are good and which ideas are WORTHLESS
• Walk cycles take ages - much easier for a torso bobbing along to look like its walking without the effort of animating its pesky legs
• One of the functions of a storyboard is to try to get your idea across without having to explain it to anyone who sees it
• Consider the introduction of depth, scale, pace, colour - make storyboards more complex to ensure a solid final idea
• Empty space is important, can work in a comedic sense, can set the tone - every single frame doesn't have to be crammed

• Overcomplicating compositions will just make their realisation more difficult to animate
• Lack of movement builds tension
• The smallest details are often the most successful
• Angle/speed etc - the way something enters a frame can establish it as something funny, scary, emotional, exciting etc - the way something comes into the frame is AS important as what it does once it's there
• Engage the audience - something that rises towards you or plummets away in three dimensions

• The World Stare Competition - A simple idea done well is better than a complex one that's half done

More Secret7" practice - Childish Gambino - KAUAI

Keeping in line with the less complex, more graphic method of getting a concept across that I've been employing in my investigation of how I can visually respond to music, I started to explore elements of composition and frame in this illustration for the EP Kauai

Normally when making this kind of work, I'll draw it up by hand and scan it into the computer to alter it there, but with this I chose to step outside of my comfort zone and dive straight into just digital work.

I definitely need to keep doing these and practicing not only to improve my method, but also my idea communication/generation. I want to be able to immediately convey a feeling or concept in relation to these songs that acts as a companion for the music itself. To do this, I have to move away from the kind of work I feel totally safe doing (character etc) and start exploring more abstract, concept driven work like this.

Secret7 - Tame Impala: The Less I Know the Better

I went in a more graphic, shape driven direction for this idea, basing the design on a basketball court with psychedelic colours, in line with the music video's focus on basketball and the relationships between the characters connected to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBzrzS1Ag_g

This was definitely a real challenge for me because its not really like anything I've worked like before, as its focused on shapes and symmetry. I feel that stepping away from what I know I can do for this task was beneficial as I had to work harder to make something I could be happy with.

Secret7 - CHVRCHES - Clearest Blue

This is my response to another one of the Secret7" songs from 2016 - CHVRCHES: Clearest Blue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpFXXPruuqU

For this one I wanted to go for a more minimal, graphic approach to convey the simple electronic beats that make up the backbone of the song. As the pattern is quite irregular, I think the V centres the whole composition quite well.

I'm trying to explore subtler ways of illustrating an idea or concept, and I think this minimalist approach to interpreting a song visually has been useful in starting to understand how to do that.

Secret 7 - 2016 song practice

I started getting psychedelic with this Tame Impala cover today. I'm not sure yet what a final version of this could look like but I think it would probably have to be converted into a digital format to make sure the geometrics (is that the right word) are all even and measured. I'm playing with more pattern and shape based ideas when thinking about this song in particular, as it is quite narrative heavy so I don't want to lean too heavily on just illustrating the story of the song.

Responsive - Group Feedback Session

Briefs selected

• YCN - Roald Dahl - illustrate scenes containing one creature, one villain, one child from Roald Dahl's stories
• Secret7" - illustrating record covers for a set group of songs
• Illustration Friday - weekly small illustration challenge

Is the rationale sound?

• Could start Roald Dahl now and continue it throughout the year until the Secret7" songs are released in the first week of January - two substantial briefs but spread apart so it shouldn't be too much to do
• Freedom to be weird and funny with Roald Dahl, don't get anything like that with the AD&D briefs I've been looking at
• Stay away from iconic Quentin Blake look - working for a new audience

What technical considerations are there?

• Consider audience for each - eg. children and young people for Roald Dahl
• Consistent media, have to start considering how work works as part of a set
• When using branding and logo take time to consider the brands identity

What time considerations are there?

• Secret7" isn't released until the first week of January - I'm aiming to do this in addition to the YCN brief so I have to be ready and ahead with that before the songs come out so I have time to consolidate ideas and produce work I'm happy with for both briefs

Is the balance of briefs appropriate?

• Should be enough if I also keep up with Illustration Friday every week, that will build up quite a lot of smaller works to go alongside the bigger briefs of YCN and Secret7"
• 
  

Storyboarding Task

I've found adapting my ideas visually for moving image a bit of a challenge really, as there's a lot more to consider when an image has to be animated, timing and sound are things that we don't generally have to tackle so much in illustration, so adapting to that for these storyboards was interesting.
I feel my visuals luckily lend themselves well to animation, as I'm focusing on imagery of puppetry and stage props in my development for Printed Pictures. Animating these characters could be a fun way of injecting some real life into them, hopefully making each one more individual and recognisable.
I enjoy storyboarding overall, its just the process of actually physically animating that terrifies me. I think it's because I don't have any proper experience with the software or really any kind of aptitude for new fangled and frightening computer programs. In essence, I am a grandfather confusedly toying with their grandson's Gameboy Colour at 7pm on Christmas Day, realising the future is upon me and its spooked me good.
But I really love film so storyboarding is really interesting to me, I'm looking forward to combining what Ive learned about film in regards to timing, comedy and scene setup with illustration.

Comedy is my way of dealing with the world and situations I find myself in. (can you tell by my blog's oversaturation with these little self depreciating asides in brackets? (actually the proper term for brackets in this context is parentheses. And these are parentheses inside parentheses. I mean brackets.))
Because of this, I've leant heavily on comedy for these storyboards. I think it works to diffuse some of the tension that I build up when overthinking tasks like this, and helps me to relax and focus on an idea and how that comes together. Otherwise I become a dithering mess flitting from concept to concept thinking each one is hot trash. I tried to focus on the comedic elements of my ideas for this task, as it mainly came down to me thinking "what would I like to see Shakespeare's characters do that would make ME laugh?" and going from there. That openness wasn't really easy for me but I gave it a crack and enjoyed beginning to play with these characters in motion.

Storyboarding Workshop notes

• Sequential illustration & narrative
• A series of frames that deliver a message without words  - with words added, not dissimilar to comic strips
• Instructional Information - delivers a message through images alone
• Links between illustration, animation & film
• Consider character as a living thing rather than a tool - consideration for how it thinks, moves, breathes, talks
  A storyboard can be a form of shooting script
  How one image relates to the next & the next - explore the visual relationship in between the frames
• Matt Forsyth talk on Creative Networks
• Can use screen shots of digital work (still frames) & use them as developed storyboards - compositional movement & moving pictures combined - visual language and communication - the difference between our idea generation and an animators technical ability
• Look at opening and closing credits sequences - Winter Soldier, Scott Pilgrim vs the World
• Jamie Hewlett - Gorillaz - the combination of illustration and consideration for music

Its Nice That - Animated Sting

It's Nice That—Animated sting from Animade on Vimeo.

I chose to look at this typography based sting on ItsNiceThat, as we'll have to think about animating type for our authors names at the end of the sting. This animation is really helpful for coming up with playful ideas to animate text, as each letter has its own unique way of forming in the frame. I think I'll be animating Shakespeare's name to appear as if it is being scrawled on a page with a pen. I'm not sure how I'm going to incorporate that bit of text into the actual narrative of my sting, as I don't want it to feel like it's just been slotted in over the top of something else happening on screen.

Gorillaz - Rock the House

Keeping in mind with longer animations and narrative, I thought Gorillaz music videos were a good place to start. The video for Clint Eastwood is probably their most famous, so I chose to have a look at a different one - Rock the House, the narrative of which plays out just after that of Clint Eastwood.
I'm interested in the way the actual band are animated in this video, as the focus is obviously the massive ps2 villain looking version of Del. Because of the stylised character design, the 3D rendered characters haven't really dated. The way the band have been animated is really clever and inspiring to me, as I aren't that confident with animation. A lot of their movement is repeated and replayed to the beat of the music, and I'll be focusing on simple movement in my own sting. They use block shapes like shadow and comic book effects/arrows to convey dynamic movement, without having to add loads of complex animation. I think this simplicity is the strength of this video, and its something I'll be carrying over into my approach to my stings. Mainly so animating them doesn't send me mad.

Scott Park - Star Wars Vehicles

I think I'm going to try to do a thirty second animation for studio brief 3, so the most important thing to keep in mind is timing. I found last year when having a little go at animation that pacing is everything, especially in the work I aim to make, as I try to lean on comedy when using moving image. This video is in the vein of the kind of thing I'd like to make, an escalating narrative with quick and bouncy editing to move the piece along. The style of Scott Park's illustration isn't particularly something I'm aiming for in my own work, but I thought the real strength of these illustrations as a set is the pacing of the animation in this video, combined with the Mos Eisley Cantina music, as it accentuates the vignettes themselves and just brings a smile to my face. Which is really all I want my sting to do.

Responsive Lecture - 10/11/2016 - Interpreting and Responding to a Commercial Brief

Our individuality and interpretations are what creates a response to a certain brief

Altruism Ethics - its our choice which briefs we accept and respond to

- working for free - is the person asking you to work without being paid, being paid themselves? If so, why can't you be?

Exposure - people will say working for free is good exposure + promise future work: Both vagye excuses for not paying you - why would they pay you in the future instead of just using another person for free again

TAKE MONEY - CASH CHEQUES + BREAK NECKS

Dinovember - a different dinosaur drawing every day (We're halfway through now but I nEED to do this)

Arrogance is counter-productive - you are still working for someone else - you should get the credit you deserve

Investigate pricing - the cost of our work includes our ability plus all our training, education, experience and work

Get promises in writing - not too formal, contracts can be complex and off putting

Ask everything in your brain so they can't shaft you with a loophole later 

Don't die before you get paid

IDEA BLOCK HELP

I'm feeling a little empty of ideas at the minute, I think because we've made so many roughs over the last few weeks I feel like I've already voiced all the good ideas I'm going to have. I need to fill up with more research to try and fuel some more ideas

Lino Workshop

I found the lino printing workshop interesting and unlike what I was expecting. Lino is a method I have zero experience with so I chose quite a simple design to experiment with. I've been looking into the visuals of the Lion King in my visual journal, as the plot is adapted from Shakespeare's Hamlet. The focus of the printed pictures brief for me has been trying to adapt Shakespeare visually for a modern, normal audience, as his plays were written for normal, mostly illiterate people at the time. I want to echo this in my work and use imagery associated with films and music to make Shakespeare accessible and non-elitist. This is basically what the Lion King did by adapting Hamlet, children were learning Shakespeare storylines without even knowing it.
The actual process of cutting the lino was quite difficult and took a few practice offcuts and bleeding fingers to get it right, but once I had a suitable piece of lino and a larger cutting tool I found it a lot easier and able to manipulate the linework. I forgot that the process of printing reverses the design you cut so my prints are all backwards, but I don't think it affects them very much. I'm happy with how they turned out, the ink is more dense in some places than others, but for my first experience with lino I'm happy with them overall.

Illustration Friday first post

This is my first submission to Illustration Friday, the theme last week being "stripes". Of course I had to link it to the election, and decided to explore the idea of the iconic stars and stripes. The tone of this illustration basically sums up my current opinion on what the future landscape of politics looks like. I'm going to try to keep up on a regular basis with these and produce development and a finished illustration for Illustration Friday every week, if I can.

AD&D BBC Brief further breakdown

Problem

• Making the Edinburgh Festival accessible to a worldwide audience
• Allowing people to find acts and performances they might not be aware they would really have an interest in

Task

• Use technology to allow the festival to reach our and include those who aren't there with the spirit of the Festival

Achieve 

• The BBC wants everyone who has an interest in the Festival, ticket or not, to be able to experience & enjoy it in some capacity, regardless of where they are
• Unification & brand recognition

Benefit

• People who can't afford to or can't get to the Edinburgh Festival
• The BBC - they would look welcoming and inclusive

Message 

• Unity - sharing/talent/recognition

Audience

• Millions of people worldwide - specifically people geared towards the performing arts - musicians/poets/actors/dancers - creative types etc

Delivery

• Using modern technology - through an ad campaign or an application - something easily accessible and inclusive

Problem 

• Creating the successful idea to base something like an app around - need to research advertising methods - why people buy what they do + how they shop 

Print Process Illustration - Luisa Uribe

Luisa Uribe is a Colombian illustrator whose work revolves around adventurous narrative and themes rooted in magic and fantasy.

I'm approaching my prints with a strong sense of narrative in mind, and Luisa Uribe's work immediately stood out to me. Her work is largely influenced by children's storybooks, and her visual style has a sequential nature to it that conveys different layers of a story the more you look at it. Her Red Riding Hood screenprint (below) is a good example of this, as she effectively uses subtle linework and text to illustrate the duality of the idea behind the image.

She depends on digital media to finalise her designs, but values the analogue method of pencil work, which is evident in her sketchy, children's book inspired visual signature.

Her work is presented and sold over the internet using her website and Instagram accounts, but she is also part of an illustration community in Bogota, the capital of Colombia. In an interview I read on LightGreyArtLab.com, she explains that the community of artists there has been gaining notoriety recently, particularly because of their ability to create so much with little resources, due to the ongoing political difficulties. She says that these limits have been influential in regards to her practice, as she has been forced to adapt and think outside the box to keep making her work.

Print Process Illustrators - Dan Mathers

Dan Mathers is an independent screenprinter whose designs are rooted in graphic design. Recently he has been working specifically with water based hand bench printing to create screenprints that have a focused attention to detail, and simultaneously hand crafted and personal feel, due to the method by which they've been made. I'm really interested in the relationship between maker and work, as I much prefer personal prints that have been made by one man who cares about the presentation of the work, rather than a group of distanced people who are just replicating something on a production line.

The first aspect of his work that stood out to me while researching was his confidence incorporating type into his designs, which his fluid geometric style lends itself really well to. This is a hurdle I want to get over in my own work, so seeing Dan Mathers' designs has given me some inspiration to try and work with type moving forward. The main thing I find so inspiring about Dan Mathers and his practice is the fact that he's a one man operation, as he says it: "from quote to dispatch". This gives his work another layer of personality to me, as it feels like exactly what he wants to be making without the compromise of working underneath anyone else.

Print Process Illustrators - Loulou & Tummie

Loulou and Tummie are a Dutch duo (real names Laurens and Chantal) who work across illustration, animation and character design.
Their individual styles are quite opposing, Loulou being interested in intricate machinery and graphic design, often creating robotic characters and fantasy monsters, while Tummie has a more hands on practice, sewing and modelling more human cartoony characters. However, they compliment each other brilliantly, as the juxtaposition works well to compliment the general crazy visual style of their work as a team.
They describe their preference for Adobe Illustrator as having ultimate control over lines and colour, something that often has to be compromised in other programs (looking at you Photoshop).

They began their professional practice mainly through self initiated briefs that gave them a lot of freedom to develop their style, and the lack of boundaries allowed them to test themselves and keep going past what they thought were their limits. This experience was obviously invigorating for the pair, as the sheer volume of their work along with the vibrancy tells of two practitioners that are fully enjoying every second of what they are doing.
 Their work is widely distributed by contracted work for companies and advertisers, such as Google, Mercedes, Vodafone etc. Their work fits very well into the current aesthetic of these sorts of companies, as its all very clean and vectorised but wacky and appealing to the eye.

Thinking about scale

I'm enjoying messing about with scale and perspective in composition because it feels like a learning curve for me, the more I do the stronger the visuals in my mind get. Roughing is always really useful to me in terms of refining an idea down to its core principles and trying to capitalise on them. Ive started moving away from JUST character based illustration in my research, and illustrators who make use of sprawling landscapes (like Moebius, above) and make the environment feel like a character within the image, rather than an afterthought background. This is something I'm trying to understand through my roughs as I think it really makes for compelling compositions with multiple visual levels.

Progress Crit - Group Feedback

• Think about using a combination of print techniques - lino altered digitally and screenprinted?
• Make little models for the puppet theme designs
• Isometric perspective
• Persian perspective
• Look at architecture and maps - repeat patterns to make background
• Artists: Mondo, Ian McQue, Nico Delort

Mondo: start thinking about colour and colour limitations, how to use block colour and texture combined to accentuate the key elements of prints

Ian McQue: think about scope, if I'm doing wide expanses it has to be convincing and grounded in reality or it will look jarring when all the elements come together

Nico Delort: Shakespeare is largely fantasy, I need to ground my ideas in fantasy - consider the environment as a character too
Blend elements of fantasy with the visuals of reality - realistic scale and distance etc