Book Binding

Yesterday (21st feb) Lucy Wilson came and taught us how to bind books, at first I thought this is going to be a pain and that I would not be interested, but I actually thought it was really interesting and fun and easier than I thought it would be, so I would hopefully be able to make some more books in the future, hopefully containing my own work, would look pretty cool and much more personal than a bought sketchbook (which is what I usually keep all of my work in!)

To attatch the pages together we did the cool stitching technique, looks complicated but it's pretty easy once you get the hang of it, (after the first few pages) I'm a messy bugger so I don't think mine came out perfectly and it felt really loose before I put some glue on it, but after a couple of practices I think I could easily put together a perfect cute little book. Was a good and very helpful workshop! Which i'm glad I attended and i'm glad I had the opportunity to learn this fun and useful technique!

Frann Preston-Gannon

Frann Preston-Gannon's skeleton work gave me an idea for part of my Rapunzel book cover, as I wanted to illustrate all the men that have tried to save her from the tower, and I want to illustrate this by adding skeletons to my imagery and Frann Preston-Gannon's work inspired this idea. These are the skeletons that I have created so far, but I am thinking of screen printing these, as I think that if the ink runs a little bit it may give a nice feel to them and then they will not look so 'perfect' as skeletons are usually rotting and not perfect shapes. So screen printing might give a nice textured feel to them.
I also like the backgrounds on the top two skeleton images (coffin ones) having different shades and strips of one colour instead of one colour in the background, gives more depth and patterened feel to the imagery and makes the lighter colours stand out more.

Little White Lies

For the competition brief I decided to do a magazine cover for Little White Lies magazine, choosing the film The Tree of Life:

The Tree of Life is a 2011 American drama with experimental elements written and directed by Terrence Malick and starring Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, and Jessica Chastain. Malick's film chronicles the origins and meaning of life by way of a middle-aged man's childhood memories of his family living in 1950s Texas, interspersed with imagery of the origins of the universe and the inception of life on Earth. After decades in development and missed 2009 and 2010 release dates, the film premiered in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d'Or. The film received polarizing reactions in response to Malick's use of technical and artistic imagery, directorial style, and fragmented non-linear narrative.

A mysterious, wavering light that resembles a flame flickers in the darkness. Mrs. O'Brien (Jessica Chastain) recalls a lesson taught to her that people must choose to either follow the path of grace or the path of nature. In the mid 1960s, she receives a telegram informing her of her son's death at age 19. Mr. O'Brien (Brad Pitt) is notified by telephone. The family is thrown into turmoil. In the present day, Jack O'Brien (Sean Penn) is adrift in his modern life as an architect. When he sees a tree being planted in front of a building, he begins to reminisce about his life as young teenager during the 1950s.

The universe is formed. As the galaxies expand and planets are formed, voices ask various existential questions. On the newly formed Earth, volcanoes erupt and microbes begin to form. An Elasmosaurus, a large wound in its side, gazes out to sea. In a forest, a young Parasaurolophus is wary of predators. Later on a riverbank, the Parasaurolophus lies wounded. An Ornithomimus^[3] emerges and examines the wounded dinosaur. The Ornithomimus places its foot on the Parasaurolophus' neck, preparing for the kill, but then reconsiders after watching it struggle. The predator wanders off. An asteroid impacts the earth.

In a sprawling neighborhood in Waco, Texas, live the O'Briens. The young couple are enthralled by baby Jack and, later, his two brothers. When Jack (Hunter McCracken) reaches adolescence, he is faced with the conflict of accepting the way of grace or nature, as embodied by each of his parents. Mrs. O'Brien (grace) is gentle, nurturing, and authoritative, presenting the world to her children as a place of wonder. Mr. O'Brien (nature) is strict, authoritarian, and easily loses his temper as he struggles to reconcile his love for his sons with wanting to prepare them for a world he sees as corrupt and exploitative. He laments his decision to become an engineer rather than pursue his passion of becoming a musician, and now pursues dreams of wealth by filing patents for various inventions.

One summer, Mr. O'Brien takes a trip around the world in an effort to commercialize his inventions. While he is away, the boys enjoy unfettered access to their mother, and Jack experiences the first twinges of rebelliousness. Goaded by other boys his age, Jack commits acts of vandalism and animal abuse. He later trespasses into a neighbor's house and steals her underwear. Jack is confused by his experiments with violence and experiences guilt, throwing the stolen underwear into a river to rid himself of it. Mr. O'Brien returns home, having failed to sell any of his inventions. Shortly thereafter his plant closes and he is given the option of staying with the company and relocating to work a stable yet unfulfilling job, or be terminated. Mr. O'Brien agrees to the transfer and he and his family pack up to move. Mr. O'Brien laments the course his life has taken, questioning whether he has been a good enough person. He reconciles with Jack, asking forgiveness for his harsh treatment of him.

Far in the future, the planet Earth is destroyed, first burnt to cinders by the sun when it has turned into a red giant and then left alone as a desolate, lifeless frozen place still orbiting around the sun, which by that time has turned into a feeble white dwarf.

In the present, adult Jack leaves work. Riding the elevator down he experiences a vision of walking on rocky terrain. He tentatively walks through a wooden door frame which is erected on the rocks. On a sandbar, Jack is reunited with his family and all the people who populate his memory. His father is happy to see him. His mother is overjoyed when Jack's memory resurrects his dead brother. She thanks Jack, kissing his arm twice. Jack's vision ends and he leaves his building smiling.

The mysterious, wavering light continues to flicker in the darkness.

Still a work in progress, tried to give it abit of a 50's feels with the shapes/type and colour.

Bug/Insect Project for National History Museum event.

Scorpions! I was going to do a 10page fact book about scorpions for kids, But it didn't go to plan as I wanted, so decided to do the poster instead! And finally made some typography I actually like!
I have also created an activity sheet for the kids! Where they can colour in a scorpion, cut it's body tails and claws out and pin him together so he's moveable! fun fun fun!
I have also created some badges with googley eyes, which are very fun (will get a picture soon)

My books

Craig Oldham Poster

We were asked to Produce a poster for a talk by a designer called Craig Oldam. For this piece I thought i'd play around first with typography as I'm not very good at it so thought I could have a practice. And I came up with some text that I liked so I decided to use this. Having to come up with an idea pretty quickly as we only had a week of so to do this. I decided to have the text encoporated onto a computer screen as most designers/illustrators etc at some point use a computer to design their works, finish works or even just to scan images in and send them off!

Keeping it to a limit of two colours wasn't fun. I tented to make my computer blue, not sure why. Most computer are black/white/grey/silver. But those colours are abit boring when only usuing them with one other colour. So then after placing my text I just played around with the colour of it and purple was the colour that seemed to fit best with the blue computer. I then kept the background white (as that would be the colour of my paper) so I left some of the text white aswell.

If I had more time with this project I would have possibly worked on a better Idea and played with text and colour a little bit more! But overall, for a quick outcome, I actually quite like this piece.

Zine project

Decided to do my zine publication on The day of the dead, Dia de los Muertos. I ended up creating a variety of skulls and putting them together in a hand made book. I chose to put together my book by hand as it shows my personality more, I'm not a very neat person so I didn't want my zine to look perfect and neat so I thought the best way would be for me to do it by hand.

Twinkle Cat

This is the cat i created on photoshop as my main character for my story, Twinkle. Using simple shapes and colours which kids will easily enjoy and recognise. I also decided to use simple shapes for the face, so things don't get too complacated or un-easy. Using textures in a similar way to Eric Carle.

Personal Project

For my personal project, I have decided to write a short childrens story and illustrate it, depending how long we get for the project in september, this will help me to work out how many pages i will be able to illustrate (hopefully the whole thing).
My story is about a Fat cat, who goes looking for some food to eat.
Heres the story:

Twinkle Twinkle Little Cat.

By Rebecca Hadfield

Twinkle is a cat, a very fat cat, who loves to eat cat food all day long. There is always lots of cat food in the kitchen for Twinkle to enjoy.

Other than eating, one of her favourite things to do is sleep, sleeping on the window sill or at the end of a nice comfy bed.

Twinkle lives in a house, with her owners, a little girl named Emily and her Mother. Twinkle loves it when they give her attention and also when they feed her lots of tasty cat food.

While having a little nap, Twinkle heard the front door slam shut. She ran to the window and saw Emily and her Mother getting into their car.

“I wonder where they’re going.” Twinkle thought to herself.

Then Twinkle started to hear a rumbling sound, a grin began to grow on her face as she knew the rumbling was coming from her tummy and that it was time to eat.

Twinkle ran down the stairs, “What’s for dinner? Chicken? Tuna? I wonder”.

Twinkle approached the kitchen but could not smell any delicious cat food, she could not smell any food at all.

She looked into her bowl and it was empty.

“Where’s my cat food?” Twinkle said, with a sad look on her face.

Twinkle’s tummy started to rumble even more than before.

A strange smell was coming through the cat flap, “I wonder if that’s my food” thought Twinkle, so she followed the smell outside into the neighbours garden, where she ran into Mr Scruffles the dog.

He was eating his bowl of dog food, Twinkle told Mr Scruffles how hungry she was and that there was no food in her house, so Mr Scruffles let her share his food, Twinkle’s face grew with happiness as she started to dig into the food.

After a mouthful of dog food, Twinkle spat the food out as she did not like it, “Thank you Mr Scuffles” Twinkle said, “But this food isn’t for me”.

Twinkle then heard some tweeting coming from the tree above, so she climbed the tree to see who it was. It was a little bird called Susie, she was feeding her babies in their tiny nest.

“Do you have any spare food” Asked Twinkle, “I’m ever so hungry and I have no food”. Susie replied, “Of course you can have some food” and gave Twinkle a long slimy worm. Twinkle swallowed the worm whole and her face went green. Susie offered her some more worms but Twinkle replied “Thank you, but this food is not for me”.

From the top of the tree, Twinkle spotted an ally cat routing in some dust bins. So she went down to see what was going on.

“What are you doing?” Twinkle asked the ally cat, “Looking for my lunch” he replied, while munching on some leftovers he had found in the bins.

Twinkle thought to herself, “This is definitely not for me”.

Her belly was rumbling louder and louder every minute, she really wanted some food to eat.

All of a sudden, she heard someone shouting her name, “TWINKLE, TWINKLE!”.

She ran back to her home, through the cat flap and in to the kitchen, there Emily was with many bags in her hand full of food.

She then poured some cat food into Twinkles bowl. “I bet you’re hungry” Emily said. Twinkle started to meow with happiness and she began to eat. She ate and ate until her tummy was full.

She then went for a nice long nap on Emily’s lap, while Emily stoked her head and started to sing.

Twinkle Twinkle, little cat,

How I wonder, why you’re fat

Eating cat food every day,

Poo-ing in the litter tray,

Twinkle Twinkle, little cat,

How I wonder why you’re fat.

My logo

Took me forever to come up with something for a logo, so for now I think its going to be this! Its based on a teddy I have had, like forever! and I've never really known what its ment to be (will get a picture up soon). But I love my teddy and I knwo i'm nearly 21 but I don't ever want to get rid of it! I've made some slight changed to it to get abit more detail, (but the safety pins are actually on the teddy as my mum accidently ripped the ear off years ago and I've never sewn it back on!
I hope this logo is good enough for now but I will come up with something abit more 'me' when I have more time to think about it.

BugOff- 1 Day Project

1 day project, had to create an advertisement for a household cleaner called 'BugOff'- sends the bugs packing. So my idea was very simple, sink, were alot of germs can evolve from, bottle of BugOff on the sink, bugs running away. Simples!
I dislike this image, its too over crowded and Messy. But I couldn't think of anything esle to do. I like certain elements that I had made, such as the taps and the sink itself. The elements around the sink, comb, lipstick, etc etc are elements which I had taken from an earlier project (Editorial) and the spider bug is also from an earlier project (James and the Giant Peach) though I did edit it a little bit. Over all, I thought working under pressure was exciting, but my outcome isn;t as strong as it would be if I had longer on it.

Music Proposal

Image on fishtank, rough!

Description of images 2.Description of image 1.

Description of Project Proposal
The music track that we have decided to illustrate is ‘Kiss’ by Prince. Our idea is to illustrate all panels except for the door as it is the door that people are having difficulty finding, so we want to make it stand out.
We have decided that the track is about more than the literal act of kissing but about how a relationship and sex develops.
We propose to create large collages of sexy girls in their underwear the full length of the panels (see desciprtion of image 2). Additionally, we will mix up the body parts to create new personass. We want to illustrate kiss without being too literal or obvious with the subject matter.
Along the shorter panelled wall, we will hang illustrated circles (see description of image 1) containing different body parts on fine fishing wire from suction pads which will stick to the top of the glass panels. These circles will give a cheeky glimpse at some of the girls and their assets without giving the whole picture, alluring to the sense of seduction and lust.
Our colour scheme will be mainly black and red to portray the vampishness that Prince descibes with hints of pink and purple to illustrate underwear etc.
We think that our proposal will be fun and flirty without being seedy and dirty. The track is fun and we think that our proposal truly reflects that.
Music Fish Tank Installation Proposal
Kiss by Prince
Chloe Jones
Rebecca Hadfield

8x8 Spot Illustration

My Spot illustration for 8x8 brief! As I mentioned in an earlier post about my idea for my main illustration being based on chance games and how choices are made for you, for my spot illustration and decided to take the same idea/approach but instead of a fruit machine it was a roulette wheel, with different elements of the story going around the weel, with a spinner in the middle of course. And here it is. I am quite proud of this illustration, mostly because I did not come up with an idea for my spot illustration untill about a week before the deadline. At first it seemed like I had rushed it to get it out of the way as I felt the main illustration was more import, but as I got to tweeking it more and more towards the finishing point, I felt that it was a really strong illustration as it is using simple shapes and I just feel that it works very well. Again I used textures in my backgrounds and I used the same collaged imagery for my elements as I did for the main illustration aswell. Firstly I kept the colour scene a yellowish one to try and match my main illustration, but I felt that you couldn't tell exactly what it was by just looking at it so I decided to change the colours, to the colours of an actually roulette wheel, which are black, red, green and white. Though for the white I kept it to a lighter grey colour as the main circle at the back was white and you obviously couldn't see that on a white background. I wanted to keep the illustration a simple shapes and not over-crowd it by adding a background.
I really like this illustration, and I think I prefer it to my main illustration, but I haven't made my mind up about that yet!

8x8 Main Illustration

So for my main illustration for the 8x8 brief, I decided to create a fruit machine with all the different elements of the story. I chose to do a fruit machine as it is a game of chance, not choice. Your choices get taken away from you as does Joy's choices in the story. So my elements consister of, two male faces, representing both the men the girl is seing, Jack and Frank, A broken heart and a crying eye representing sadness and loneliness, A leaf representing a new start (turning over a new leaf) and heart representing love, a skull representing death and a dummy obviously representing a baby.

I started off my creating the shape of my fruit machine on photoshop, creating the shapes out of textures. I tried to make the bottom part look slanted like it is coming out like a 'shelf' where the buttons are placed. I also put things like bored and things around in the shapes to give abit more detail. I then added a white rectangle which it where the spinners would be with the elements then places onto. I kept the background of the fruit machine quite simple with love hearts as like a boarder, I chose this obviously as the story is mostly about love and who the girl loves. I changed some shades of the hearts to make them seem likes lights you would get on a machine like this. I also added all the elements at the top of the machine so you could see each element clearly as on the spinners. I also added a handle on the left hand side so people could easily tell what the image was. For my colour scheme I thought about firstly putting some red/pink in their to represent love, and I played with a few different colours for the machine itself untill one worked well, which was this yellowish colour. Which worked really well and during the meeting with Anna (the writer) One question asked was 'If you had to represent the story as one colour, what colour would it be?' and she answerd yellow. So that worked out well! For the buttons I tried my best to make them look 3D and in the end I feel they worked out quite well, and I added simple type on there as I didn't want to make the image to hetic. I added sayings such as 'Nudge', 'Bank' and 'Hold' are these are the main 3 buttons you see on fruit machines. For my composition, because the shape of my machine was pretty big I kept the background plain otherwise there would have been too much going on. I first also put the shape in the middle bottom of the page, but once I added the handle I thought it worked better to one side so I could get all the handle shape in.

I feel that this image worked quite well and I am quite proud of it and will deffinatly be putting this in my portfolio along with my spot illustration!

Music- Rough Sketches

Block squares, possibly with flowery backgrounds, with images such as hearts, flowers, lips, rings (romancey stuff). Hung from each other. Things dangaling, round a girl in underwear. Sexy/Romanctic.

Pair of lips. Squares inside the lips with things in, collagey!

This is a piece out of the Love Sick book. Really liked this page, thought about having girls dangling down on the glass, possibly with backgrounds. Obviously, creating our own girls in a similar style.

Making the girls abit more modern. Very Rough

Music Brief

For the Music Brief I am working with Chloe, the song we have chosen is "Kiss" by Prince. A song about love, romance etc etc. So our first obvious idea was to do something with lips and 'kisses'.

We looked at a book called Love Sick: A Smoldering Look at Love, Lust and Marrige, to get some more ideas.

8x8 Live Brief- Junctures

Met the writer for the story I have to illustrate yesterday, Lovely lady, Anna Paldanius. She liked my idea for her story which is brilliant! Story: Girl (Joy), Seeing two guys (Frank and Jack), doesn't know who to pick, she has a choice. In the end her choice is taken away from her. Death. Baby. Emotions. Idea: Games of chance, Fruit Machine. No choice, it's made for you, you don't know what you are going to get. Put faces on machine to represent the guys and main character Joy. Other things on there to represent other parts of the story. etc...

Editorial in Layout

Decided to make my own layout in InDesign, having just the gun as the shape and placing the text around the gun. I'm not great with composition, so thought I'd keep my illustration to a simple shape and this way I can place the text around it instead of it being a block shape. I really like working like this, with a simple shape as It limits compositions and helps with the use of white space!

Editorial- Killer Fashion.

The article I had chosen to illustrate was aout Woman in the USA who own handguns and have them stylized to match their handbags and wardrobes (which I actually think is kind of sad). I started of my just drawing guns which matched womans hand/arm accessories, bracelettes, nails rings etc. But I thought this was a little too obvious so I thought about things that woman keep in their handbags, such as fashion accessories, make up, jewellery etc. I then started to put these things together to create the shape of a gun. Which I feel worked pretty well.
I firstly started this project in similar ways I did to the James and the giant peach and wellspring brief, by collaging shapes and objects out of textured paper, but once i did this and then started to put them together on photoshop, They were not fitting well together, so i decided to scan in some textures I had made and I began to make my elements on photoshop instead, I tried to get them are straight and perfec as I possibly could, then once I started to put the elements together in the shape of a gun, they fit together really well and then I had so come up with a colour palet, and because I thought the article was quite 'girly' I kept the gun to shades of one colour, the girliest colour known to everybody, pink. I thought It looked pretty good.
I tried to put things such as bags etc in the background but I didnt feel they were working very well, and because i'm not great at composition, I thought about just leaving it as a simple shape, which at first I wasn't keen on, but as I tried adding more and more things to the background I began to hate it more and more and love the gun on its own more, so I decided to keep it that way.

Well Spring Finished Piece

Final image for Wellspring newspaper.
At first I had two legs beck to back but they began to look they they were two legs on one body and it looked a little bit silly and strange, so I decided to switch the legs around like this so you can tell that it is meant to be two different peoples legs. I decided then to place the larger titled text in between the two legs to hold the image together better, as they looked to separate before. I then placed the route of the run (not exact) underneith the legs and trainers, with some text inside this, (i think when printed in the newspaper, this text was straight and not slanted) and at the bottom are two web addresses of two runs from wellspring, which Johnathon himself asked me to put on there.
Over all I really like the piece, but once again think my main problem is my composition, I need to find a way around this and making my compositions better and less 'scatterd' or over crowded.