Friday 8 October 2010

Lane Smith

Lane Smith is an American children's book illustrator and author. He illustrated a book by Jon Scieszka called 'The True Story of the Three Little Pigs' which I think is an amazing story, it is basically the story of the three little pigs but from the wolfs point of view.
I also love the story of the tree little pigs as a band named 'Uglu Kid Joe' have written a song about it, interpretating it in there own way which I really enjoy listening to and hopefully one day I would like to illustrate it or possibly do an animation from it.

Tim Burton Movie Posters

I love most work done my Tim Burton, I think he is very imaginative and interesting, I even love his movie poster, which i'm not too sure if he had designed them personally, but they include his characters and scenery so I think they are pretty interesting.

Even his dark work, and 'black comedies' are very imaginative, with crazy characters, unusual and inventive characters which all have different qualities.


His animations are even more imaginative. Using bright colours in scenes which in reality are no so bright, for example, Corpse Bride (to the left) is about the Land of the Dead, yet, the land of the dead according to Burton, is bright and colourful, and the real world is a dark and gloomy place.

These are two films that are happier and brighter, but have a darker side to them. I love the Alice and Wonderland movie poster (to the left) as there is so much going on it in and it is so detailed, also including some of the interesting characters.


These are two of Burtons, dark and 'scary' movies, which I think comes across in these movie posters due to the darker colours, with the colour red, which usually comes across as scary or dangerous etc etc.

Andrzej Onegin


Andrzej Onegin, another Polish poster designer. (As you can tell i'm really into Polish poster artists and designers)

Once again, loving the bold black blocks of shape and the unusual colour scheme, works really well in this era of design. Unusual and surreal figure designs. Bright bold background colours, grabs your attention. I am also keen on the pattern and repitition in some of his images.

Andrzej Klimowski

Andrzej Klimowski, polish poster designer.
Designs interesting
posters, using collage, creating random and unusual images. Very surreal and abstract way of working.



I used the images above as reference for my narrative sequence project. I think they are very interesting due to how random they are and that you could come up with many stories surrounding these images.

The image to the left: I find this image very interesting, the colours scheme works really well and the amount of space left makes the hand print image stand out effectively.
The yellow image below, again I find very interesting, the colours used are very striking and eye catching, makes you want to look at the image. Also the character created is very unusual and surreal.

Wednesday 6 October 2010

Jan Mlodozeneic



Jan Mlodeozeneic was a Polish graphics designer. He worked in posters, drawing, book and publication design, illustration.
In these posters I love the use of thick black outlines, simple shapes and they give off a rough feeling and hey are very 'in your face' which is why i am attracted to them. The images with the pink and white backgrounds do not have black outlines around the shapes and figures, i still think this works well as the colours make them stand out instead of the outlines.

Jan Pienkowski

Jan Pienkowski, is a Polish-born British illustrator and author of children's books. He is probably best known for his 'Meg and Mog books' and for his pop up books written by Helen Nicoll including Haunted House , Robot, Dinner Time, Good Night and 17 others.

http://www.janpienkowski.com/books/meg-and-mog/index.htm


I used to read Meg and Mog when i was young, (primary school days). I found them fun and interesting and i still do now even though they are children's stories. I think the characters and very imaginative and well desgined for children's characters, simple block shapes and lines, nothing too detailed. Also the colours used are simple blocked, bright, colours, these catch the attention of children. The black outlines make the images and shapes stand out which again catches the attention of young children. The fun characters are easily remembered by children and also the older children and even adults.

Jan Pienkowski also did some interesting silhouette work for some book covers.

I think these are really interesting. I love the bold black shapes and how they work so well with the coloured backgrounds. Very interesting. The backgrounds are very unusual, using different shades of one colour and blending them together, this brings the black foreground figure/image sand out even more and i love this process.

Eric Carle


Eric Carle is a children's book author and illustrator who is most famous for his book 'The very hungry caterpillar' which was published in 1969, he has illustrated over 70 books and many of these have been best sellers over the years.
Eric Carle’s art is distinctive and instantly recognizable. He usually works in collage technique, using hand painted papers, which he cuts to created bright and colourful characters and images. Alot of Carle's books are surrounded by nature and many animals, as most small children are interested in these things, he gives them something to learn about in his books.
I think his characters and fun and interesting and I cans ee why so many children love reading his books.

Tuesday 5 October 2010

Box Project: Part 1 Object Final




Made from waterproof Material, which was painted for other colours. Hand stitch as material was quite sensative so I didn't want to risk it ripping on a sewing machine. Straps also hand sewn on the back of the penguin back, with the wings made as small pockets. Bag opens at the head of the penguin, closed with velcro.

Leszek Zebrowski

I just thought these movie posters were quite interesting and different...

Playing with Illustrator


A penguin I created on illustrator, just using simple shapes, lines and colours. Found illustrator quite confusing and hard. But hopefully somewhere down the line I will get the hang of it and enjoy playing about with it.

Andrzej Krajewski: Polish Movie Posters

Andrzej Krajewski, Polish designer, graphic/illustration. Creates these amazing movie posters, very inspiring as I would love to create something like these for some of my favourite movies.
The Big Lebowski, great film, very random as is this poster. Love the colours used and the text is very interesting as it looks like it has just been done free hand, which gives the piece more personality. Love the black outline, brings out the images and figures.

Sex and the City, another film/series which I really enjoy (hard to believe i know), again love the colours and the black outlines, also love how simpley the characters are drawn/created. Also liking how the pink boarder expands at the bottom of the image which the text placed on top, works really well.
In the Blues Brothers poster, I love how thetext has been used as part of the background, very interesting.
The Reservoir Dogs poster, reminds me of work by Matisse, the colours and the bold black lines.

With this one, I love the tiny circles used as part of the background, gives it a comicy kind of style.This piece is abit different from all the rest, the outlines are not as thick as the rest and It looks as if it has been created on graph paper. I like the sharp edges and the darkness of the image.

Box Project: Part 1 Object

For this project, the aim was for my to create an object unique to me. It could be anything from textiles, home accessories, furniture, games, toys, books, puzzles, magazines, jewellery, etc. The ideas need to be personal, almost autobiographical in nature. The artifact should be a legitimate extension of my artistic practice and sensibilities into a mass produced object. It should also function as a promotion device for myself and as such may feature my name, email address or web address. Personal expression is important but I need to trigger emotional/passionate responses from recipients. Just as the product should touch an expressive chord in the 'consumer' it should emerge from an expressive place in the designer. It is all about balancing expression and viability.

To start this project I thought about things that I like to collect, use alot or just like in general. Things such as, every day things that I use, for example, hair brushes, clothing, stationary, bags, glasses case, jewellery. (BRAIN STORM HERE)

After brain storming I thought about making a bag, and the theme for my bag would be penguins, as I have a huge love for penguins and I have many penguin collectables at home. (Yes I know, i'm sad, but I don't care :] )
After Bainstorming I decided to make a penguin bag, and to make it a waterproof bag as Penguins are obviously swimmers so I thought it would be good, linking the material with something to do with the animal itself.

Quick little sketchs of how I would do this.

Box Project: Part 3 Narrative Sequence (2nd Attempt)

Using the same image given to me on my 1st attempt of this project, I started to look at an artist who had done work using a narrative sequence in an unusual way. This artist was Andrzej Klimoski. I love how his frames in this image are so random and unusual and you can create many different stories using these same images.
To start myself off this time, I decided not to think about the 'story' too much and I just started to create images by photocopying images of people and random objects, cutting them out and sticking them down together to create an image where it wasn't completely obvious what was going on.


These were the first images I came up with, which I thought worked well, especially with the face of the man being covered up, so he becomes and stranger, an unknown character.
From these two images I had created I seemed to have created a slight theme with the camera, so I decided to create/base my 'story' around this. In the image on the left I had also added a couple of drawn in lines to give a slightly messier look to my work which I thought worked well with the cut out images.
So I thought it would be a good idea to maybe add some drawing into my images.

The image to the left that I came up with relates to the photograph I got given at the beginning of the project, the 'mug shot'. I then carried on with creating images for the rest of my sequence, putting in small drawings of my own, like the image above to the right.
I also decided for one of my images that I would draw out the whole thing and have one image slightly different to the rest, which I thought worked really well.

After I created at last six images I started to put them together, cropping them and playing with levels and experimenting on photoshop. I decided to have all my images he same sizes and formats and I wanted to use the layout Klimoski used in the image I was looking at earlier, very simple straight forward layout. After I cropped all my images to the same size, I felt some of them were slightly too spaced out and plain, so I added black boxed areas to some of the images which I felt made me slightly more ineresting to look at and they all worked well together in this way.
After I had played around with my images on photoshop and I felt they were finished I put black boarders around them all and placed them together as a set. I feel they worked really well together.






After my second attempt at this project I feel a lot better about my images, I feel that they are much stronger than the images I created in my first attempt. I also feel a lot more confident and happier with this piece. Over all I quite enjoyed this project, after my second try I am pleased with my final result.