Exhibition prep

I've been working on some product designs for a part of my final exhibition using the animal designs I created over Christmas last year. The images underwent a re colour and texture process to improve the quality which is fairly noticeable when compared against their originals.

I've been looking at teatowels, booklets, notepads, sticky notes, pens, bags and cushions. 

I'm also interested in making a gift wrap print some mugs and possibly a fabric box. 

I'm finding the process really enjoyable to be honest. 

Tea towel print

Teatowel/poster prints

Notepad design

front/back cover and inside pages

with alternative hand drawn and digital drawn font.

I also have plans to finish two more animations for my remaining Disney villain inspired frames, these will exhibit alongside the work above. 

Final Animation

I finally finished it! I've uploaded a teeny, limited colour and dithered version of it in giff form above as the original file is too large for blogspot to host. I made several variants but due to the time it takes for rendering and such I'll only be showing them in img form below. 

As you can probably guess it's based around the Evil Queen and her poisoned apple. I used the frame design with some amendments and the texture paper from my print examples. I had originally experimented with illustrations of the characters themselves blinking and moving/changing but when I came to deciding on my final outcome I realised what I really wanted to make was something that actually 'moved' and had life.

I also felt that my illustrative skill in terms of drawing the characters was lacking and thus decided to take a more abstract route - aka focusing on the hands and key element [the apple] - which surprisingly has gone fairly well considering hands are the bane of my illustration career.

I'm very keen to do a few more like this - to cover the other two frames, but since each panel is drawn individually it's a very lengthy process so I'm lucky enough to actually have managed to finish this one in time for the hand in!

During my earlier giff experiments I found flash frustrating to use as it was difficult to line panels up and modify the document settings, this could have simply been down to my lack of knowledge with the programe regardless I decided to try out photoshop's animation tools.
I got the grasp through much trail and error and have definitely found myself preferring it to flash. The timeline system and layers make it much easier to line things up - it also saves the time of transferring the images between the two programes as I generally put my imagery together through photoshop to begin with.

In terms of the animation I decided to take a very old school approach and started out by filming myself rotating the apple and going through several different poses. I then manually saved the frames and split them into blocks.

I picked my favourite out of the ones gathered and enlarged the frames. I picked a sequence that rotated the apple within the hand and then further polished the skin as this produced some interesting hand movements. I removed the colour and added contrast to the frames to create the series of reference imagery used to compile the animation.

From these frames I drew the lineart for the animation, scanned the frames in and animated it using PS timeline.

Once I was happy with how it looked and had gained a basic understanding of the programe I added my boarder design and a background and slotted the animation frames inbetween them. 

I created a practise piece that used the lineart with overlaid colour effects, once this was finished I took the original lineart frames and painted them using watercolour and wax effect. These were then rescanned in and processed. I then replaced the frames and worked with the timing and positioning to get my finished product. 

For the amount of work involved the animation itself is disappointingly short but I have become more accustomed with the working method now and could probably achieve a must faster result. It does make me appreciate full length animated films a whole lot more though! I'd love to do more with this method and will possibly aim to have some others by the time my exhibition swings round.

Screenprinting

I've spent the last week screen printing my soul away, I picked the method back up after so long of not setting a foot anywhere near the print room and have produced a series of prints and bags. There have been several failures one consisting of a screen photocopying larger than intended and thus messing up the print - but all in all I've had a productive week. 

If time allowed it I'd have liked to have designed a few more prints to be put on screen so it's possible I will continue to do so after the deadline during the run up to my exhibition to further buff out my work mass. 

Despite not intending to produce bag prints I have become fond of how they appear against the canvas material and have since planned to create another smaller animation switching between all the different versions of each print if time allows. 

I enjoy the randomisation of each print, while I'm sure it's meant to appear perfect I do find myself liking the ones that sort of 'failed' due to not enough ink or a smudge/misline here and there. I gives it the printed impression which I find my digital work lacks. 

Portfolio Visit and Agent Meeting

For a couple of weeks prior I have been communicating with an agent via email and last Friday I managed to meet up with them over coffee to discuss my potential career with them hosting me.

I had previously forwarded this blog to them alongside my photography links as they also specialise in photography printing. Regretfully my personal website is still in the works so I was unable to link it through but luckily my blog contained enough information for them to grasp my style and way of working. I took my portfolio to the meeting and a separate folder on my ipad with my photography prints and talked them through the pieces including the methods and information behind each image. 

They took interest in my cover image and mini calender examples and talked about starting a commission based service involving taking elements and requests from the buyers and then drawing up their images in a similar style. The calender series was composed using 4 elements from an individual - favourite animal, colour, accessory and favourite fruit, we discussed how this could be adapted to suit a family in a series of small portraits or one long one. The same idea for my cover image but just taking random objects instead of a set of questions. 

We discussed the time each piece would require and I found myself considering things I'd previously not thought of, I worked out time allowances and methods which was beneficial as I realise these are very important things in terms of freelancing. I feel much better about my future in terms of becoming an illustrator knowing that these are things I can do, and with an agent helping me I'll find it much easier to branch outwards. 

It was also put forward the fact that they preferred to feature work in exhibitions which is great to hear as this gives the chance for people to see the work in person as opposed to seeing a shrunken jpeg on a random website. It feels more active and will allow more face to face chances in terms of acquiring work. 

Needless to say I'm looking forward to my future chances of work now! =]

Animation test

I had a go at animating some of the sketches using really basic transitions and effects. I haven't really been formally taught how to animate yet so the majority is guess work using flash.

It took much longer than I anticipated as the program kept crashing on me so it's pretty clear I'm doing something wrong.

[stills]

I made the black and white effect in flash itself purely for test purposes any final product would incorporate it's own textured and hand worked image. I think the gist of the idea works here but the timings need work, some slides in my mind still need speeding up more so which is something I would require help with. I'd also like to add more animation to the first frames other than eye movement - which was also done in a very basic copy and paste form for this example. 

FMP progress

I've managed to churn out two finished boarder designers for my current and final project of the year. I'm part way through my third - I intend to stop at four and begin the process of adding in the content and experimenting with my animation techniques. If time allows I will be able to return to the boarder stage and make a few more but otherwise I think four is a good number.

Maleficent

Progress on Maleficent and more info can be found here

Ursula

I've also experimented with the tones a little but this will remain a possibility as I don't want to take too much attention away from the actual content.

I'm happy with my progress so far but really need to step it up a notch.

I've also been sketching some imagery for the villains themselves. The general idea I have is to animate them switching between the forms. Beautiful to crazy or truth. 

I also intend to do some sample pieces that show the villains in their 'natural habitats' when they're not fulfilling the bad guy role. 

Villains

I've been working on some small cameo's for some of the re known female villains from Disney. It has the potential to be animated with small blinking actions and swaying etc and so I'm taking care to keep my layers throughout construction. 

I also have ideas to create shadow [blacked outlines] versions, using just iconic imagery [aka a spindle] within the character boarder or a piece of text with alternative life/interest and hobbies of the villain. 

I've been reading some texts as backup theory on my work and found an interesting article that talks about the other side, splitting the individual into two sections - the evil and normal side. I'd like to work with this concept a bit more. 

[mock up]

Gotham Villains 3MT Life Drawing

Last friday I attended a life drawing session in Manchester at the 3 Minute Theatre with Dr Sketchy. It was very close packed, a literal full house and very exciting to be at - there were 3 models, Cat woman, Poison Ivy and The Joker. It was really beneficial for my work as my FMP is based around villains. The atmosphere was great as was the entire session - they used tracks of music to time each pose and experimented with lighting and props throughout. As usual I started out slow but managed to get the hang of sketching the further in I got, however due to the lack of space I found myself unable to experiment media wise - maybe next time!

Poison Ivy started her section off with a mini performance showing the transformation,  her outfit was really interesting as it lighted up

There were also a number of competitions throughout the night that involved coming up with comic and film titles and compositions. 

I really enjoyed the session and would definitely participate in another one

Update

A mini update!

I'm not sure I posted or showed an example of this when I initially shared my business card designs - but there are two different images that when placed together create the full image =]

I've been advised to rework the text and colour so I'll be looking at modifying it very soon.

I've also been working on my final project - which is based around villains. I'll be attending a Gotham villains drawing session tomorrow so I'm hoping to take lots of inspiration from it.

The point of the project is to show the other side of the characters we love to hate, to show them in a more positive life - or behind the scenes.

I felt like drawing a pretty boarder piece today that I may or may not use at some point..

I've also just finished a crazy costume which I'll post up progress and information on soon! It was a lot of new things for me and has definitely fed my knowledge for several areas previously unexplored. 

Lord Whitney Brief | Nonsense

As a form of break from our final projects Lord Whitney came into the studio with a mini brief that involved taking one of the nonsense rhymes originally written by Edward Lear and illustrating it. We were given full freedom in terms of media, size and level of completion. 

I chose the rhyme

'An old person of Skye'

I sketched the initial elements of the image and scanned them in as bases.

I then outlined them in a vectored style way on photoshop. Starting with the boarder image - it combined both plantlife and music notes to symbolise the 'sweet tune' mentioned in the text.

I then repeated the image to create a cameo style boarder and placed the new vectored image inside it - then added the moon.

I then began to play with the colours and effects. I ended up adding the hill and some stars as well. The rhyme was added underneath to complete the image. 

I treated the brief like a real brief and completed it in a day so it's definitely rushed therefore it has sections that could be reworked and such. If I used more time I'd have liked to incorporated more imagery to suggest the flow of music into the actual image as opposed to just featuring in the boarder. Overall though I'm pleased with the final image.  

It was a good try out for my boarder technique as this is a style I'd like to use in my final project work.