things that excite me...

I stole the title for this from a rather rude blog/tumblr thingy I stumbled upon via my new favourite site FFFFOUND

I always seem to be complaining and bitching about the same things recently... that I dont feel as if I am creating any work that is truly my own and that I dont get chance to do the things i want.. (creating characters, working in 3D or screen printing)...

I've finally decided to try and do something about this... (again)... either if it means just taking a couple of hours out of my day in the evening to draw/create something that isn't course related. This has come about since my tutor told me to bring the things i like into my work and to find a way to fit the briefs we're given to the ways I want to work...

I still feel a little bit like I have developed a way of working that is aimed more at professional practice (clean cut graphic like illustrations) rather than the sketchy and cartoony styles I feel more comfortable with.

so I thought I'd put up some reference to things I like and what I feel got me interested in illustration in the first place....

like most kids, i grew up copying my favourite characters from either cartoons or computer games...which is pretty much how i learnt to draw... i particularly remember that I loved to draw Sonic .... and I think this is why I still enjoy watching cartoons at the age I am now... theres something about it that lets me keep ahold of my childhood but also my imagination...

Growing older though, this has spread to feature length animations (both digital and traditional) like Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Wall E and Kung Fu Panda... as well as modern cartoons such as Samurai Jack and Spongebob Squarepants, but I'm also now interested in comics... I never read comics as a kid purely because cartoons were more accessible to me but now I find comics more enjoyable than watching most movies due to the stories being aimed at a more mature audience and also on the shallow basis of their artwork....

If a comic doesnt have interesting artwork then I often don't end up reading the story but I keep trying to pinpoint why I like cartoons and comics so much... the only reason I can come up with is they all have black outlines around the drawings... I remember being told off for this in school as things in the real world don't have big black outlines on them... yet its taken me so long to realise all these rules I've been taught about "art" are quite subjective....

Most popular comic artists have also launched successful art careers branching out into fine art and a range of other products such as James Jean, Ashley Wood and Jim Mahfood.

What I'm trying to get at is that all my favourite images, by any and every artist, often includes a black outline around them in a comic book kind of style. This has also been imprinted in my mind through the social scenes I am a part of too... such as snowboarding, and motorbikes and even when I was a skateboarder. The most popular brands and designs during the early 00's employed this very same art style...

not only that, but this has been used for years within the skateboard industry since it made it made its migration for surfing graphics.

Classic companies such as Santa Cruz, H-Street and Powell have been using this style for years, most likely influenced from early comics too...

but even to this day, the work of Jim Phillips is constantly being adapted to modern brands from his iconic screaming hand...

to



I feel using this style I can actually incorporate all the different things I want to do... as in I could firstly draw a design/character in my cartoony way, then refine it in illustrator before screen printing it...

and then I could also reference Mahfood in order to practice more contour drawing :D

Deadline Day

Well, sticking with tradition... I reckon there will be a few of us frantically trying to print stuff off tomorrow (myself included) in order to have something to stick up for marking...

should i blow some cash and print A2? ;)

It's been a weird brief this one, not only due to the initial confusion but things have come together and panned out a little too easily in my opinion. I've been sat here thinking there should be more to go wrong... well... i finally got my answer last Saturday...

this happened...

(not the most flattering, but possibly the most comical due to my expression/reaction to the camera flash)

which kinda threw the next few days out of sync, I was meant to prep some screens on Monday in order to print on Tues... but this never happened, which pushed it back to Weds... but we were all in Manchester visiting the gallery (and shopping) which meant I had to do it today... but I've been at work... so... I have my screens coated at home ready for use.. and no facilities or time in which to actually use them right now.. (the weather is causing problems with our outdoor hosepipe so I cant wash out my screens :( dammit)... they're currently sat in a darkened room taunting me.

I've actually had the basic design finalised since last week, but I've tested a few different things in order to tweak it into a stronger working image, although now its done, I no longer feel anything for it and want to start again! :/



The most difficult part of this was actually settling on 'characters' to represent the new theme of Birth & Death... I was torn between simplifying them too much and over stylising them in order to just show off... I'm still not quite happy with them as the Baby/Life/Birth seems too cartoony in my opinion and the Skull/Death reminds me of Gama-Go :)

Considering I have all my stuff primed ready for some screen printing, i WILL finally print something next week even though we'll be starting on a new project but I'm determined to print more this year... the only thing is I need to cut my deadlines a week short, in order to allow for time to prep and print!

The above poster is an example of how I want to execute my design with the my own red layer being overprinted on top of the black maze design (I can't for the life of me remember who made this poster but I think I have a link to it somewhere.. i'll add it when i find it)

As mentioned in a previous post, I wanted to have a child like scribble in my work but nothing really worked.. until I noticed I was being too controlled with my line making... I started almost over thinking the scribble, planning where I want it to go and how much space it should cover and how it should divide up...

e.g/

but when I loosed up a bit and found the work of Gary Kuehn, I started scribbling in thick pencil to give the lines a bit more texture and a more analog feel to them...

Some of Kuehn's work...

With this now in mind, I took my favourite few scribbles and mocked up how they would look on the computer... I then settled on my favourite of the bunch and I'm planning to print and screen print that one...



I still feel like i need to justify how my design relates to the theme of resistance though... or do i? either way... its meant to be a shout out to all those who take life too seriously, who worry about everything and they should take time out to enjoy life... do something different, something you wouldn't normally do.. anything that makes you excited, that makes your heart race... just do something that makes you SMILE :)

I also came across the work of Oliver Munday and his illustration for an article in TIME magazine... looking at the struggles of health care. Cleverly using the maze to represent difficulty whilst still retaining a sense of humour and light hearted play... the visual nature of a maze must be why it's so appealing to designers and illustrators alike...

Resistance Poster

my final idea has gone through a few drafts recently.. some changing the basic context of the poster, others the actual execution and design but I still need to keep refining everything down to one final (and solid) idea...

the map idea i originally had was quite strong on the idea of resistance, if you were a biker, working the shape of a car into the map only started to complicate things though. I still wanted to show that motorbikes had the ability to travel anywhere, or at least navigate easier than a car can do, but somewhere along the way I had lost sight of the theme again... I keep getting new ideas and wanting to progress them further as if I'm bored of the resistance theme now.

Anyway, the most intriguing part of my map idea was having a resistance against the network of roads and streets etc that are set out on maps, being able to choose your own route and make your own decisions. The only problem i have is that the idea of looking only at motorbikes versus cars limits the audience for my poster...

Flicking through Grafik Magazine (180) I came across the work of Gorilla, and their 'IRAK' poster. I originally thought Gorilla were one of these cool hip funky named design studios but it turns out.... in their own words ...

"Gorilla is a visual column that comments on current affairs through words and images. Gorilla is published every week in De Groene Amsterdammer and Adformatie, and on thedailygorilla.com".

(i kinda feel like i need to come with a cool name for myself in order to succeed... silly i know)

now i thought it may have just been the one politically aimed piece of work that I discovered but as the above says and after browsing their website I found many pieces on themes like the Euro, Europe, Iraq, Oil, USA, Africa, Drugs, Religion and Advertising, to name but a few... Their work would probably look at home in newspapers and magazine articles as well as posters for events and even bear resemblance to book covers in their use of simplistic shapes and colours to give as much information as needed without over stimulating the audience. But as I mentioned, it was their "USA's exit strategy from Iraq" poster that caught my attention simply due to the maze design they used, it looked exactly like a map but was reduced down to its most simplistic, graphical and universal state.

At first you understand the gag, saying that the USA doesnt have a plan and it's like they are wandering blindly through a maze until they finally leave but on 2nd viewing you notice the maze itself contains the word 'IRAK' within its design (dutch for Iraq, in case you didnt realise like me!) and if you follow the maze through, you discover there is no solution to the maze, there is no exit which is both humourous but also commenting on the US's actions at the time (the poster was made and printed in October 2006). But ignoring the theme for a moment, and looking at it in the context of being a poster or full page spread, the idea is that it should first be attention grabbing and then present information to the viewer. I've been given advice on how I should design a piece of work that rewards the viewer for looking deeper into it.. but I'm struggling a little bit working this into my current design.

As it stands, I've reduced the idea of making a city map into a maze, for its simpler design and I'm thinking of alternatives to resist against rather than the motorbike vs. the car... The basic idea I have can be applied to almost anything, just substituting the bike and car for other conflicting ideas such as Good Vs Evil, Heaven Vs Hell, Angels Vs. Devils, Yes and No, Black and White, Life Vs Death... the only problem i have now is making sure I have some sort of reward for the viewer at the end of it...

Top left: has multiple routes in order to complete the maze, Top Right: was a lame attempt at fitting a car into the middle of the maze, Bottom Left: has 3 seperate routes (easy, medium and hard) and finally, Bottom Right: has one complex winding route.

heres another showing the solutions to the bottom left maze etc.

I was originally going to have a scribbled route over the top of a map, this was inspired by seeing my 3 year old niece's drawings and thinking how at that age you don't stick to drawing inside the lines but I also thought that there was something universally understood in a childs drawing that didnt overly complicate things. I tried recreating this and testing different mediums while drawing the scribbled route and shapes for the motorbike which was originally to feature in the design...

however with the other ideas of Good vs Evil or Life vs Death I started sketching out some characters to represent life and death ( a baby and a skull) and I was fairly confident with this... however theres something that seems wrong about it.. as if the posters theme is cot death :(

I started out with http://www.billsgames.com/mazegenerator/ to make a few mazes, then i worked out the solutions... nearly ALL of them had one very simple solution so i chose the most aesthetically pleasing one to alter and form the mazes featured above...

I might update this later with a few more initial sketches etc..