The Times Visit

This was my pass from visiting the Times, I love how they spelt both of my names wrong, haha!

So a few weeks ago, Jon Hill, the art director from the times newspaper came into college and gave a short lecture on the type of work he does. His job sounds very tiring but interesting!
He told us about the types of jobs he had before working for the times, after graduating, he did some unpaid work in a studio, then went on to work for another studio, then for years endedup being self employed before getting a great opportunity to work for the times!
This was quite comforting knowing that he had a few creative jobs and even worked on his own before he got a stable job with a huge company!
He spoke about all the different teams and how many people were in each team (a hell of alot of people working on one thing!) it was quite overwelhming. He even mentioned how sometimes people would be working up untill 10 at night, sometimes even later depending if they had to change the paper for a new story!
Seems like a mad job to me!
Me, Chloe and Philippa spoke to Jon afterwards and asked if he would be able to take a quick look at our portfolios while we were in London and he asked us if we'd like to join Lucy and the 2nd yr graphics on a tour of the Times, while we were all in London, so we happily went to this.

The building was huge and quite scary, lots of people coming in and out with there little ID cards.

So we went for a quick walk around the 2 floors of the Times, Jon explained who did what and what area they were working with. There were so many desks, people and computers! So many people working away it was crazy. He even showed us where the in house illustrator worked, they had the tiniest little office but it was away from all of the journalist etc who were all cramped into one area! Unfortunatly the in house illustrator wasn't in at that time so we couldn't have a chat with him.

At the end of the tour Jon had to rush off as he had to be abck at his desk to crack on with some work before he got into trouble and because he was so busy we didn't want to bug him about a portfolio visit, we didn't want be rude so we thought it would be best to possily just sent him a PDF or a link to our websites when we got home, that way he could take a look when he had to time to.

Even though it was a little dissapointing not to get a portfolio visit, it was a nice experience to get to take a look around the work place of a huge newspaper! It was very interesting but overwelhming, I don't think I would like to work in this kind of job, but you don't know what it's like untill you try it!

Creative Review: Ponyo

So yesterday I watched an animation called Ponyo, a film by Studio Ghibli. It's about a fish that wants to be a human, and a little boy finds her and becomes friends with her and watches her grow into a human and then back into a fish again, very magical, funny and sad!
Such a fun story and great characters.
Studio Ghibli films are always quite strang and magical but if you like things like that then I would deffinatly tell you to watch them! They are so much fun for all ages, proper family type films which just make you feel happy inside. Howls moving Castle, the Cat Returns and Spirited away are also brilliant, possibly my favourites and now Ponyo joins my favourites! Deffinatly a must watch from my point of view.

Tom Frost

So I came across Tom Frost at Pick Me Up during my Time in London, the whole exhibition was pretty good, but this was one of the illustrators that stuck in my head and that I was most interested in and inspired by!

The thing I like most about this guys illustrations, is obviously the shapes! lots and lots of shape, which works well screen printed. I also like that in most pieces there is a slight bit of pattern, which I can relate with my work as I have started to do this in my work, starting with my Brad Pitt Portrait from last semester. And now with my rapunzel and grimms book covers, I have some repetative shapes going on.
I also like the use of character. The human characters are done really well and this is something that I have struggled with for a while but really want to figure out before I graduate! Hopefully Tom Frost can be my inspirationg for this!

Pillows/ Notebooks/ Wrapping Paper

Frin the screen printing I did earlier, I made so me pillows as part of my fmp. I have decided to make a few bits and bobs for lil girls, things quite "princessey" to fit in my with Rapunzel and Grimm's Book covers :) So far I have made a lil note book, (just wrapping my image around an old note book) I accidently wrapped the pattern around the book the wrong way but I still think it works quite well and I really like it.
I have also made my pattern into wrapping paper (Wrapped a box to make it look like a present) and I have also made a lil tag out the pattern.
Also for the next part of my FMP i am doing a children's mural, for girls, based again around princesses and fairies etc. So I feel this lil accessories fit in quite well :)

I am hoping to also made book marks and possibly have my pattern put around pencils and some other things :)

Pick Me Up- London

So during my visit to London, I was advised by many people to check out Pick Me Up at the Somerset House. Lot's of illustrators had their work displayed. Lot's of interesting pieces, each have their own unique style, using different types of media and different ideas, lots of different ideas! Some illustrators even had tiny stalls set up where you could buy things they had made or printed on, things such as, canvas bags, note books, post cards etc.

It was quite interesting and I am glad I went, some of the illustrations inspired me with my own work and there were a few illustrators that deffinatly caught my eye as they seemed to have produced there works in a similar way to what I had.

I think these pieces were done by a illustration group called Peskimo, I have liked them on facebook for a while now and it was nice to see them at such a big event in London. Lot's of pattern and characters used in their work and It is quite inspiring and fun. Also lots of fun bold colours used which is always good!



This was done by an Illustrator called Tom Frost, I was first interested in this due to my interest in The Day of the Dead. Interesting shapes and colours. Some of his colour works were very colour and fun, another illustrator I would like to take a further look at!

These were my favourite pieces at Pick Me Up! Brilliant use of shape and colour which is what I love, especially in the middle picture of the solider guy, I love it! But I am not 100% sure who the illustrator is! I need to look him up so I can check out more of the work!
I like this piece due to the spaces and because you can easily tell that it has been screen printed, and I have gotten very into screen printing as of late. I also like the lack of colour, black/white and one pretty bold colour. It works really well!


This piece of work reminded me of the type of work that I used to do in foundation, tracing images of friends and family and using bold splashes of colour.


This piece just made me laugh as I like random things, I love the random colours, makes the black area stand out and look fun.




I love this! I am not usually into 3D things but this was just very interesting and eye catching. I love the shapes and use of colour, makes this spider look fun instead of scary! Looks like some kind of toy or decorative item.
This piece of work reminded me of my Brad Pitt portrait I did for Little White Lies Magazine due to the shapes and the white spaces between them. The piece was done by an illustrator called Ben Kirchner, hopefully I will look more into his work for inspiration!


Overall Pick Me Up was an interesting event with lots of inspiration and interesting pieces of work to look at.

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!