rant... 2.0

Ok, so it's been a while since i've used this blog and ranted i thought I'd catch everyone up...


firstly.. i havent been about purely because I have been using the 310 studio blog but also I've not wanted to whinge and moan on and on about the same stuff.. however I think im over due a venting..


For AGES i have been worried about STYLE.... i have jumped from technique to technique in hopes of finding the perfect style.. the perfect way of working for ME... but again i am having my doubts. Recently in the studio we decided to all have a go at a Halloween themed piece...

and this is mine..


I have moved away from using vectors all the time because I felt like any character in my work was lost through the digital medium and so I turned to inking my images in hopes of maintaining some of the character from my pencil sketches...

once I had finished this piece, i knew straight away that it was a giant step away from my inspiration... in terms of execution, composition, and colouring for example... my piece just looks and feels flat. the line art is meant to be thicker and thinner in parts.. mimicking comic book and cartoon like illustration.. but to me it just looks unprofessional... like a piece of fan art rather than a serious illustration for publication etc. without deconstructing every part of my image I can clearly see where this piece needs improvement but I think rather than me crying about the final execution of my images all the time I should focus on the idea and initial development of it in order to make sure the piece is as strong as it can be...

now I already have a reputation for over thinking everything and so this is still very difficult to do, making sure I have enough thought behind a piece without letting the idea go stale and becoming bored of it before I have even begun making it.

I think this is why a lot of my work stays in sketch form, because I worry too much about the final execution and that I will spoil the original idea.. but there is nothing stopping me from re-doing an idea.. only the time in which it takes to execute it repeatedly.... the Halloween piece took me approx 3 hours from sketch to finished piece.. and that ISNT enough time...

but after all.. i am still learning... i am still developing my "style"... it hardly seems it but i am still young....

I have tried so hard NOT to copy any of my influences, Not to regurgitate the same old thing just with a different subject matter I chose... but I have seen many young designers taking elements from popular and successful artists, adding it to their work and gaining a lot of coverage because that particular style is popular at the moment...

I know all my drawings have come from my own hand, my own way of creating and so already have my own style to them.. but what if I dont like my own style?

My main inspiration nowadays are Guy Burwell, Jay Ryan, Jonathan Edwards and Mike Budai, purely because they use their drawings directly in their work.. they dont vector it! I always thought I'd have to vectorize my work in order for it to look professional and finished but these guys prove that I dont have to. It's this hand drawn quality in their work that I aim to achieve in my own, only in this Halloween piece i've missed the mark some what...

through Twitter I have actually chatted with Jonathan Edwards about his own working method of sketching out ideas and then traditionally inking his work with a brush and ink...... i am yet to try this properly for myself... but with this method it would mean my line art isnt as patchy as when I use fineliners and the thickness of the brush also adds character to the piece but at the same time it still comes down to being able to draw. The beauty of cartoons and comics that I love is that your only limitation is your imagination and that you can exaggerate aspects or draw something unrealistic and new.

Recent Coverage

At the end of my degree course, Computer Arts were launching submissions for this years Graduate Showcase. I sent about 5 or 6 images in with a few sketches but they ended up choosing my D&AD/Don't Panic "running with scissors" poster...

And I was asked by ImagineTHAT if they could feature my work on their site, aimed at informing and educating young creatives and students. I half expected to have to answer a few questions but it seems they were already on the ball with this and wrote a very flattering review of my work.

Absence

... I've been away from this blog for a bit.. but thats because I've wanted to...

the main news I can update about on here is to check out our new studio collective blog for the latest happenings and also I have updated my personal site with my end of year editorial pieces etc

310 Studio Blog

Folio site

Collective Studio

Ok... a few people still follow this blog..so here is an update...

I have officially finished uni.. (got a 2:1), I think I have found my preferred way of working although I can't say I was completely happy with how things came about in the last couple of months.. but I made it. I've put together some promo packs but I still cant decide who to send them to.. Local design studios, Illustration agencies (both up North and down in London), or Companies/Clients who I would like to commission me...

Anyway, finishing uni has been a personal goal of mine.. purely because I have seen a lot of my friends either not go to university and just go into full time employment or I've seen a lot of them finish a course but then land a job that has nothing to do with the area in which they studied... so i am now going to prove to myself and them that you can complete a course AND have a successful career in that area too..

In order to make sure this happens, Myself and 4 of my classmates have decided to get a studio together just outside of Manchester city centre and are planning on setting it up as a place where we can all work on our own freelance projects but also work collectively on projects that come up. We're giving ourselves a year to get established and being so close to the city centre means we can easily venture out to meet clients, agents and visiting design studios. Eventually if all things go well, we're considering on treating it like our own agency and adding other artists/creatives later on down the line...

This Wednesday, we all met up to go into the studio for the first time together and started to clean it. We stripped the walls of the previous tenants magazine pages... added a 1st coat of paint and generally swept the place to begin furnishing it. We each need a desk and chair and will be adding bits as we go... so.. here's a lot of pics of the same thing but I dont care...



After we decide on a name, We're going to be setting up a proper website and blog for the studio and moving away from blogger... however.. deciding on a name between 5 people isnt the easiest thing to do..

LoveCream collective

A few of us in the studio finally pulled our finger out and put a newspaper together... using the NewspaperClub for the printing.. we just decided to go for it and see what happens. The actual copy has changed a fair bit from what I always imagined it would be but at the same time, this is a good thing as I get too attached to my own ideas and they become a little stale.. when others and introduced it means something different can happen and I'm normally pleasantly surprised...

anyway.. i feel i need to explain my decision on the images I created... firstly.. in what started as a joke.. we were all having a meeting and throwing ideas around about what the general theme could be... someone suggested Kurt Russell and for some reason it just kind of stuck.. I wanted to originally produce a sort of catalogue of our best work that could be mailed out to agencies but the idea behind our magazine just started getting more and more twisted... we started trying to create some sort of backstory to why we were doing an issue on Kurt Russell and we created the idea that we were all fan crazed stalkers of Kurt Russell.. and that we could literally take the images as far as we want.. after all it wasnt strictly for the course..

.. my first idea was to create a playful mask that you could cut out and wear in hopes of becoming ever so slightly like our hero Kurt... sadly.. on the paper it was printed...if you cut it out it may be a little too flimsy...


in all honesty... because I needed to make up another page, I came up with the idea of a set of accessories that you could cut out and decorate the mask on the front cover with them.... i created the moustache from Tombstone (Wyatt Earp), the furry collar from the Thing, the scar and cigarette from Death Proof and the eye patch from Escape from New York.... in the same way to the mask.. the paper is a little too thin to cut out properly but also the scaling seems to be off a little... oh well..


finally here is the odd one.. I thought if we were meant to be mad obsessed fans then what would a crazy person do? i then involved the mask off of the cover too.. ;) if you have a sense of humour then you'll find it funny.. otherwise.. go cry somewhere else...

we also added our own title to the piece...rather than just having plain type we each designed 2 letters.. here are mine.. i thought i'd try capture my love of comics and the slime one would be a slight hint to the name ... ;P

Editorial project... FMP

OK.. so this last few weeks has been absolute murder for me... basically in choosing a final major project to do.. i thought it would be wise for me to do something that would boost my portfolio ready for going into the wide world of illustration.. so.. i decided to do some editorials. I wish i didnt! ahaahah

working in the LOVE studio did some what distract me from my work, I found it more enjoyable to work on something that was LIVE and could go into print rather than on some ficitional projects. but saying that, I have enjoyed creating the images.. but Im not happy with the final outcome in terms of the colours.. but before I get to that.... let me start from the beginning.

I firstly decided some articles from New Scientist, T3 or Wired magazine would best suit me as the articles would at least be interesting enough to work on and also appeal to my interests in science and technology.. in the end I went with 6 articles from Wired magazine looking at...

'Discovering new species'

'Capturing Solar energy'
'Getting people to do as you want'
'Entomological terrorism'

'Work induced stress'
and finally...
'Chillwave: a new genre of music'

i found coming up with ideas rather easy but i just couldnt settle on which one to choose for each article. and even when I did I was never happy with the outcome I had chosen.. different ways of doing things always crossed my mind... anyway.. i started producing a series of images just to get some feedback...

Slowly these developed more and more and I decided that i would hand draw them rather than digitally vector them, but dont think I didnt spend time making them in illustrator too... eventually i had to just choose and I was in love with the idea that I could hand draw everything.. i was using tracing paper and pencil.. but this then drove me mad.. instead I switched to a light box and uni ball pens.. much better.. and if I made a mistake then I treated it exactly like how Marc McKee did and I used correction fluid.

Because I wasnt in the studio at the college, I wasnt receiving regular pointers on if I was heading in the right direction so I had to just trust my gut and go with what I thought was the right idea for the job...

sadly as time was running out.. i then had a tutorial and I had to re-jig my 5 out of 6 of my designs... the 1 design they did like was more animated, the humour was there and it very much like a cartoon.. where as the other designs suddenly looked too realistic in comparison... so I ended up re drawing a LOT of elements.. then having drawn them to how I liked.. i had to ink them.... all rather time consuming.. but having to add colour to them was the worst part yet. I nearly gave up numerous times, crying about if it was all worth it and if I should just colour them how I wanted instead of taking swatches from skateboard stickers and applying them to the artwork... I was a little dubious at first.. but then I realised that a lot of the stickers featured similar colour trends.. so I ended up limiting my palette to a choice of approx 6 colours throughout the whole set....

I'm glad I made the changes that I did as I feel the ideas have progressed.. but I'm worried that when not under the guidance and supervision of the tutors.. can I do this on my own? hence another reason why i want to work in a collective and around like minded people..

Hunter: this was the first image I actually started... the idea was about discovering new species and the ways in which you can go about this... immediately the typical ideas jump to mind.. a british safari/game hunter in khaki and a pith hat.. which I actually decided wasnt a bad idea.. but the main focus was new species.. i thought to myself.. rather than trying to imagine a new species of animal or insect.. I could distort the hunter character so much so that he actually became the new species himself... i began giving him more limbs.. and then later more eyes.. but I had to ask myself.. was some of the alterations necessary? for example.. the 3 eyes to the character.. does he need to look like a spider? or can the extra limbs signify that he is a new species alone?

my final piece in a mocked up context.

Bugs: this image started out as my favourite.. i thought the idea of depicting insects as terrorists was a funny idea... maybe so much so that people wouldnt be able to look at a common house fly in the same way anymore.. but as the sketches developed I found the bugs becoming plainer and less unique.. almost like i was drawing them too accurately again. I still love the idea of these guys but I feel like I could have distorted the characters bodies more in order to emphasize their qualities.. I also dislike the background i had originally made for them and the one currently in use with them.. where as I wanted some sort of marker in there to show scale. it just didnt work...

Zombies: Getting people to do what you want is no easy task, but I wanted to go down what I thought was a less travelled route.. instead of mindless zombies.. i wanted to represent the general public/ audience as puppets.. controlled by strings by an invisible puppeteer. it turns out I had it the other way round.. the puppet idea was over done and zombies less so.. so.. i had to swap them over... the puppet soon became a pair of shopaholic's with only SAAAAAAALLLLLLEEEEEs and BBBBBBBBBBBBUUUUUUUUUUUUUUYYYYYYYIng on their minds :)

Stress: Strangely, this idea is what the tutors favourite and also the easiest to accomplish.. i sketched out about 4 sheets and then just started straight off by drawing the character... it couldnt have gone any smoother.. i literally only changed the head as I thought the expression wasnt clear enough.. or exaggerated enough.. the down side to this image came about when trying to colour it along with the other 5...



Chillwave: one of 2 last minute decisions to include this idea, it basically came about when I saw the existing article image was lacking in any real creativity.. almost like the artist didnt know what to put so just threw in a cd to represent music wiht a few other symbols about. My initial idea was to have a musician frozen in ice and playing on the word chill... but my comments on this were that it looked too much like a scooby doo cartooon... personally i saw that as a compliment.. i love cartoons.. however i then started to change the piece so it focused more on the idea of musicians forming their music in their bedrooms with no famous backing band or recording studio... this idea was given the go ahead but a different execution was needed.. there had to be more of a sense of scale... this big artist trapped inside a tiny box room.. i also started with this design when it came to deciding on colours.. whether to go a little more realistic and recognisable or by taking some of the skateboard inspired palettes.. in the end this one ended up more abstract when coloured and it defined how the others would be executed..

Sun: this was the very last idea i had.. i hated it. i came up with the idea very early on.. but i didnt like how it looked... i didnt feel i could capture it properly (no pun intended) yet.. looking at the finished piece now.. i actually enjoy it.. not for the drawing but for the background i created.. it ties the whole piece together well i think. There are so many options and so many variations i couldve done with this design but somehow i dont think any would work well enough...i also never realised how difficult it would be to draw the chassis of a truck..

I'm not sure if I like these final designs or not... i mean theyre still my own artwork.. but the colours just don't quite sit right with me... I know I wanted to create these pieces as editorials but I also wanted to then use the designs as stickers and possibly skateboard graphics... but now I dont feel like I can do that with them for some reason. I know this is stupid, as I can... but i can still make them as skateboard decks.. but the colour way is what puts me off them ever so slightly. If i'm to still add them to the bottom of skateboards then I feel I'd like to alter them and exaggerate them a little more.. in a spinal tap kind of way... from 10 to 11...

ah well.. it is too late for me to worry now.. all i can hope for is that i dont fail