Tuesday 27 March 2012

My animation! :)



My animation! I decided to do Stock motion as it seemed like the easiest option as everything else seemed so confusing and time consuming and as we might have made a while to do something, prepartion took it's time and we've all had our FMP's and London etc to be getting on with. So stock motion, was pretty fun and easy, playful way of working which I really enjoyed and wouldn't mind trying it again in the future.

I just took a skeleton from my rapunzel book cover that I was working on for my fmp and decided to make him move in some kind of fun way. At first I was going to create something with Rapunzel and the Prince but this would have just took too much time and would have been difficult with stock motion I think.
But overall I really enjoyed doing this, considering at first I didn't even want to attempt an animation, I am pleased with my out come.

Screen Prints




Making some pillows and things, fun! :D getting really into screen printing!

Fmp part 2


The Second part of my Fmp is to do the Puffin Awards 2012, the Grimm's Fairy Tales book cover. My idea for this was to go with some of the evil characters of the story and fit them in some spooky scenery. Again I have played around with view point, using the same view as the Rapunzel cover and adding some kind of pattern to the bottom half of the image, this will hopefully make the two covers feel like they are part of a set, which is what I intend to do.

Fmp part 1



So for my FMP I am basing it around the puffin awards for this year, which is Grimm's Fairy Tales, So my first part is to create a book cover for Rapunzel, one of the well known stories. I've been using lots of shapes and textures again, using a variety of textures instead of sticking to just one. I've also added some repeatative shapes to make a sort of pattern.
Playing with view points has been a big part of this project, making it quite flat yet playful, I really liked this idea so I have carried on using it for the main Grimm's Fairy Tales cover.

I have also started to play with screen printing, Gary and Ian both kept telling me my work would look great screen printed, and I have always pushed it to one side, as I have done screen printing a million times before and have hated doing it, but I've started to get really into it and it is working very well with my work.


I have also been playing with typorgraphy alot more and encorporating it into the image instead of slapping it on at the end, As i've never played around with typography that much and never felt that confident with it, I seem to have worked with it quite well in the piece and I feel it works.
I still need to work on the back cover of this image but overall this image is working pretty well for me and I am pleased with it.

Portfolio Visit- Tim Clear



So on the friday in London, I had a portoflio visit with Tim Clear, who is the group Art Editor for John Brown Media.
So walking down this long road and looking for the numbers of the houses etc, I was thinking, are we going the right way? I wasn't sure at all, but the building was hidden away slightly around a corner, the building was quite big which made me nervous, but as the portfolio visit the day before went so well, I wasn't as bad and felt a little more confident.
So I went in and signed in and even got a little badge, I waited for Tim to come down to meet me.
He was a lovely chap and made me feel very comfortable, he had loads of papers and magazines in his hand aswell, so lots of things to show me.
We went into the canteen and got a drink and sat and had a little chat about what I'd been up to in London so far, I didn't feel as nervous anymore as he was a very nice guy, felt like i'd known him so a while.
He explained that he thought I was very professional in my email to him and he liked that I got off my backside and made arrangements with him myself instead of through tutors etc. He told me that if Tutors had emailed him asking if students could arrange a group visit with him he would have declined as he feels that student need to do these things for themselves as the tutors are not always going to be there for them, So I was quite pleased with that.
He had had a look through my website before meeting with me, and he said he really enjoyed looking at my work.
So I took him through my portfolio, and he some of my characters made him smile and he thought I wokred really well with them, but we spoke about my difficultly with human characters which he said to just keep practicing as in Children's illustration, alot of the time is to do with human characters, so it would be good to start working with them.
He seemed to like my portfolio, thought I had a nice range of work and some different things than just having children's illustrations. He loved my shark as he felt the hand made shapes work slightly better than the digital ones, which is why I am glad that I have started to go back to cutting out my own shapes instead of digitally mastering them.
After I took him through my portfolio he showed me a few things that they do at John Brown Media, including airplane magazines for children, which have puzzles and games in them. They work alot with lisenced characters, like Dora the Explorer and Sponge Bob, so they have to work around these characters. He also gave me two of the magazines which was lovely of him.

Again this was a fab portfolio visit, Tim was a lovely guy and had some nice things to say about my work, I will be hopefully keeping intouch with him and hopefully if they have any projects suitable for my style of work he might contact me :) I left once again feeling very confident and proud of myself and my work.

Portfolio Visit- Aurea Carpenter

So, in London, I have a group portfolio visit with Aurea Carpenter, Short Books publishing. Quite a small publishing group.
This was my first portfolio visit in London so I was very very nervous, and after walking up a few flights of stairs in the heat, I became even more nervous. Even though I was with both Chloe and Philippa my hands were still shaking. The area was nice and quiet compared to where we were staying (Kings Cross travelodge) but it was not too far, about a 20 minute walk.
We buzzed in and a nice lady showed us where to go etc, it was quite an old building, with old floorboards and things everywhere! (mostly books of course) but it was very calming and cosy.
So Aurea took us to a small meeting room and spoke to us a little about what they do, then she took a look through our portfolios, I was sat next to her so she automatically went for me first! eek, I was so nervous, even Chloe said she could see my hands shaking! But once I got into go through my portfolio I felt a little more calm, and it helped that Aurea seemed to like my work alot which was great.
She liked my use of colour, shape and texture and could tell that I am interested in Children's illustration.
My twinkle project is at the beginning of my portfolio, which most people I have been to see haven't really had much to say about it, which has made my confidence about it drop a little, but Aurea seemed to really like my characters and she liked the outlines aswell which alot of people have not been keen on, but I think it works well for those particular images. But like most people she also mentioned that I need to work on bringing my text in with my images, making them work together and not separatly.
She loved the colours and patterns of my Dia de los Muertos work, very bright and eye catching with a fun topic to work with.

I also put what I am currently working with in my portfolio, my Grimm's fairy tales book cover, which I thought I had finished, but Gary suggested a few changes, but I had already put what I thought was finished into my portfolio before the changes, but Aurea loved it. She told me not to change anything as she thought the idea was great and she pointed out certain things that I hadn't even thought about before and hadn't noticed untill she said. I had used very sharp pointed shapes for trees which my characters were made around, gary felt that these shapes were making my characters strange looking and not as good as they could be, but Aurea pointed out that these shapes give the cover a sense of jeopardy and they also looked like teeth, making the image dark and scary, which was my main aim of the cover. So i stuck with my image as Aurea suggested and I am very pleased with it. She said she could see it working very well as a jacket on a book.
She liked my rapunzel book cover, mostly the castle which I had created, which lead me to think of things to do with the castle, so I have started to screen print the castle and make some pillows and other bits out of them :)
She seemed to like all of my work and didn't really have any negative things to say which was great and made me feel alot more confident about my work.
After she looked through all of our portfolio, she showed us a project she was working on atm.
She was trying to find an illustrator to illustrate a book cover mostly with typography and she was showing us some good roughs and bad ones. The stage she was at, she had 3 similar roughs from one illustrator, and she asked for our opinions on each ones, the good parts and the bad, after explaining the story we got a better sense of what the cover should feel like, but we gave her our opinions and she agreed with all of us and said she was going to go with what we thought, which made us feel great, having someone professional take our opinions into perspective.

We left her some business cards which she thought was very professional of us and left her some chocolates to say thank you. Overall It was a great portfolio visit, we all left with huge smiles on our faces and felt really good about ourselves and our work. We were very proud and thankful for Philippa for arranging the visit.

Wednesday 7 March 2012

Just So Festival

So I am thinking about volunteering for Just So Festival's events this year. I attended a short meeting held my Tom, an organiser of the events. It sounds like so much fun! I would love to get involved in other things as well as volunteering (after i've finished the course of course) maybe in things such a set making and costume making.

The festivals are for children, getting them to take part in different activites and learn new things. Alot of fun for famlies aswell as the children. Art, music and literature pay a big part in the festival. Lot's of magical things to do! and performances to watch. The festival is also set in lovely forest areas to give more of a magical feeling. Taking part in something like this would be brilliant, as I am quite interested in children's illustration this could give myself a boost in the industry, it is also something good to put on a cv.

The organisers also hold smaller events, as just recently there was a very short event held at Picadilly Station in manchester, where people dressed up as characters from fairy tales and started to dance to classical music and then quickly dissapear, it only lasted for a few minutes but it looked like so much fun! It was done to celebrate and advertise The Spellbound Forest event taking place at Delamere Forest at the end of may which I will hopefully be volunteering for!