I figured I'd learn the basics and then play around
Here's the results from my first attempt, it was hit and miss..
Saturday 28 March 2015
Making Brushes
Learnt how to make brushes from this tutorial
I figured I'd learn the basics and then play around
Here's the results from my first attempt, it was hit and miss..
I figured I'd learn the basics and then play around
Here's the results from my first attempt, it was hit and miss..
Friday 27 March 2015
parchment
making parchment textures with photoshop brushes
must test what this looks like when I print it onto the parchment.... or onto a thicker-than-printer-paper paper
some of the ephemera I will use actual documents and print them onto stock I've made
such as this article about the Kentucky meat shower
to minimise work load, instead of retyping this article I'll print it out, but since it has a white background I'll have to experiment printing this and nothing else onto the paper i've made, rather than putting it on top of the above parchment image which would require much white background erasing. I'm fairly certain printers read white as nothing..
thinking, thoughts, argh
Thursday 26 March 2015
Revised Proposal
What are you proposing to do?
Make a book box kit about unsolved mysteries, containing a book with accompanying illustrations and various pieces of ephemera relating to each case. The book contains 10 mysteries with 10 full page illustrations alongside 10 envelopes of 3 pieces of print ephemera for each story.
What do you want to achieve?
Informing readers about selected mysteries in a non-sensational way. A rationalised view on the paranormal and other such oddities.
What do you want to learn from doing it?
More about the content, the mysteries I am reinterpreting. How to make the products I'm proposing in a professional manor.
General Themes
mysteries, vaguely paranormal, crime, murder, kids books stuff
Specific Subjects
The mysteries I have chosen
Specific Disciplinary area
Publishing and book design, children's book and education
Audience/Contexts
Older children and adults, people interested in topic, bookshops, waterstones
Production Distribution Methods
Digital printing, handmade, proposing other products in range
Make a book box kit about unsolved mysteries, containing a book with accompanying illustrations and various pieces of ephemera relating to each case. The book contains 10 mysteries with 10 full page illustrations alongside 10 envelopes of 3 pieces of print ephemera for each story.
What do you want to achieve?
Informing readers about selected mysteries in a non-sensational way. A rationalised view on the paranormal and other such oddities.
What do you want to learn from doing it?
More about the content, the mysteries I am reinterpreting. How to make the products I'm proposing in a professional manor.
General Themes
mysteries, vaguely paranormal, crime, murder, kids books stuff
Specific Subjects
The mysteries I have chosen
Specific Disciplinary area
Publishing and book design, children's book and education
Audience/Contexts
Older children and adults, people interested in topic, bookshops, waterstones
Production Distribution Methods
Digital printing, handmade, proposing other products in range
Original Project Proposal
What
are you proposing to do? (Product, Range & Distribution)
|
A
series of mini comics about unsolved mysteries presented in a small box
All
approx. A6
Each
comic is a different mystery
Quantity
will depend on time but since I don’t have to make the story I’ll aim for
five
|
What do
you want achieve?
|
An
appealing end product, compared to my usual rushed work where most of the
time is spent developing the story and little effort is put into the
presentation
Also an
accessible retelling of some creepy unsolved mysteries from a skeptic and
rational point of view. (as most of the material on them is sensationalized
and mad)
|
What do
you want learn from doing it?
|
The
value added to a piece of work by considering higher production values
How to
add said higher production values, printing and binding etc.
More
about creepy unsolved mysteries
How to
adapt my drawing style to a different tone of subject matter
|
THEMES / SUBJECTS
What
Themes/Subjects will form the content of your work for this module? This should
include Theoretical and non- creative based content and concerns. This
section should identify your consideration of the social, cultural, ethical
and creative concerns of contemporary practice
|
GENERAL THEMES:
Mystery,
paranoia, hysteria
SPECIFIC SUBJECTS:
Unsolved mysteries, alien stuff, murders in
bizarre circumstances, creepy sensationalized and often unreliable
stories/myths/urban legends.
|
PRACTICAL & CONCEPTUAL APPLICATION
What
areas of Illustration do you intend to investigate in relation to the
practical and conceptual, production / distribution of work in response to
selected briefs.
|
SPECIFIC DISCIPLINARY AREA:
Character
and narrative
Comic,
sequential
AUDIENCE/CONTEXTS:
Anyone
really, older children, adults who read comics, people interested in the
subjects, or interested in finding a less unrealistic recount of them
PRODUCTION / Distribution Methods:
Digital
printed mini comics in a box with extras like stickers, postcards and posters
in the pack.
|
CONTEXTUAL REFERENCES
Identify
areas of professional/creative practices that will inform the
contextualization of the work that you produce. This should include specific
illustrators, studios, practitioner’s and products as well as broader
creative disciplines and methods of Production / Distribution.
|
ILLUSTRATORS / DESIGNERS / STUDIOS:
None
specific to the subject yet but for comics based contextual reference I’ve
been reading work by Craig Thompson, Sean Tann, Jamie Coe, Eleanor Davis
among others.
|
CREATIVE SKILLS
What
practical skills do you intend to further develop and apply during your
project. What do you intend to use the skills for. Consider extending the use
of skills that you already have in order to deliver work of a higher standard
as well as identifying new skills that you will need to develop.
|
Concentrate on the visual quality of the work
rather than the story
Develop synthesis of analogue and digital
methods
Develop adeptness with bookbinding and designing
and making packaging, making sellable products, using digital print
|
Wednesday 25 March 2015
Paranormal web design
The main problem with researching these topics is having to rely on the validity of websites that look like this...
those fonts...
that background...
those fonts...
that background...
Save the Children Boards
These are the boards I submitted to YCN
I used the first board to show what it is and the second one to show the drawings
i didn't think any more than two was necessary because i communicated everything across them
i got positive feedback in the final crit, mostly of people saying they liked the colours which is great because the colours were a struggle regarding the palette we were given
im happy with the end result of this project because it went pretty much how i wanted it to throughout production
it was exhausting to do because each image took at least a day to do, but i think if i hadnt done it to this extent i wouldve been annoyed and disappointed with the outcome
the last two images i think are the weakest, at this point i was rushing to finish off the book. also i struggled to draw the characters from the front because Id only really drawn them from the side.
Planning over
After an awful lot of planning I have decided what I'm doing with this thing.
The box will be 10x18x24 cm
Here is a sketch
INSERT IMAGE
And a 50% scaled down mock up
INSERT IMAGE
Inside the box will be an A5 perfect bound book with approx 26 pages inc. front and back covers + inside
A double page spread will be allotted to each mystery, the left hand page containing the text and perhaps spot illustrations if necessary or if the story is too short, and on the other side will be a full page illustration relating to the story in some way.
Inside the box with the book will be ten envelopes which will contain ephemera and documents from each case, like passports and tickets and newspaper articles. Some of this will be printed/replicated from real documents and some invented to explain things in the story further, like personal detauls of the people involved or things children might not know about, old things mentioned in the stories.
I have narrowed down my list of unsolved mysteries to these 10
- D.B Cooper - Highjacked a Boeing 727 and parachuted away with a million dollars, never to be seen again.
- Dylatov Pass - Group of explorers on a mountain ripped out of their tents from the inside and died in the snow after removing all but their socks, for no discernable reason
- Dancing Plague - People unable to stop dancing, died from exhaustion and heart failure after weeks of constant dancing
- Kentucky Meat Shower - Chunks of meat fell from the sky for several minutes
- Mary Celeste - Passengers on the ship disappeared
- Mothman - Sightings of a large winged bird man appearing to warn people of danger
- The Eileen Mor Lighthouse Mystery - Inhabitants of a lighthouse disappeared, logs report horrible storms causing them to fear the end, despite no storms being recorded at that time
- Jack The Ripper - Notorious serial murderer, never caught
- Elisa Lam - Found dead in a water tank of a hotel after behaving strangely in a lift, seen on cctv. Hotel customers compained about bizaare tast of water which lead to her discovery.
- Hinterkaifek - All residents of a small farm murdered one at a time with a mattock by unidentified person. No explanation for how they got there, stayed there or killed everyone.
I have loosly planned the ephemera that will go with each mystery
- Plane ticket, passport, note passed to flight attendant, ransom bills found
- Group photo, ID, map of area, autopsy/death records
- Articles/chronicles from time, physician notes, sermon record
- Article, witness statements, analysis of meat, ripped out book page about vulture and tendancy to vomit projectilly
- Passenger boarding documents, sailing map/chart, captains log/chart
- witness reports, articles, suposed images, book specification of creature
- keepers logs, weather records, ID, photographs
- from hell letter, articles, potential IDs, victims
- video stills, ID, holiday related documents, water complaints, death certificate
- death reports, new maids arrival/employment docs, crime scene pics, ripped out book page about weapon (mattock)
This will equate to roughly 30 pieces of ephemera
It shouldn't be too difficult as many of them will just be printed out or replicated.
Serveral of the incidents happened a long time ago so I plan to make these documents on parchment and age it with various methods.
Below is the contents of my 505 bookmarks folder, to demonstrate a portion of my research.
I think I'm ready to draw something now ...........
Friday 20 March 2015
Collaberative boards
These are the boards we submitted to YCN
I'm happy with the project and the boards
I think we met the brief, make a professional looking product and didn't fall out horribly
success
I'm happy with the project and the boards
I think we met the brief, make a professional looking product and didn't fall out horribly
success
Thursday 19 March 2015
Sunday 15 March 2015
Save the Children finals
I'm pleased with how these drawings are turning out, especially since I didn't plan them that much
I 've been sketching the image straight into Photoshop to save time and make them cleaner, then I've been drawing over the sketches in block colour shapes using various fuzz edged brushes.
To vary the colour scheme more I swatched 3 different opacities of the colours I chose so I have a wider range of tones to play with. I made a swatch palette of the colours I'm allowed to use so I dont veer away from the brief, and its much easier than pipetting every colour I need from elsewhere in the image. I will continue to use these swatches for relevant colour limited tasks.
I've been taking inspiration from this board I made of illustrations from the 50s 60s and 70s
I think the bright cheery charming aesthetic of these examples is a good thing to aim for for this brief because it attracts both children and adults (through nostalgia)
Follow Hollie's board 5670's on Pinterest.
Anyway here's where I'm at so far. My favourite is the signpost orange trees one. I realised when I started drawing this that I'd planned trees but I hadn't put any green in my palette, so I had to make it autumn and use the reds and yellows. I'm glad of this because I think it looks much better than if the trees were a forced bright green that did not match the rest of the colours.
Also I recently discovered groups in the layers menu.
I always get my layers confused and mixed up in the wrong order so now I've started making folders for each component of the image, so I'll have a folder for people and in that theres a folder for the dad and in that there's a folder for head and one for body and so on. It makes my working process much more organised and I'm wasting less time looking through my layers for the right one
I 've been sketching the image straight into Photoshop to save time and make them cleaner, then I've been drawing over the sketches in block colour shapes using various fuzz edged brushes.
To vary the colour scheme more I swatched 3 different opacities of the colours I chose so I have a wider range of tones to play with. I made a swatch palette of the colours I'm allowed to use so I dont veer away from the brief, and its much easier than pipetting every colour I need from elsewhere in the image. I will continue to use these swatches for relevant colour limited tasks.
I've been taking inspiration from this board I made of illustrations from the 50s 60s and 70s
I think the bright cheery charming aesthetic of these examples is a good thing to aim for for this brief because it attracts both children and adults (through nostalgia)
Follow Hollie's board 5670's on Pinterest.
Anyway here's where I'm at so far. My favourite is the signpost orange trees one. I realised when I started drawing this that I'd planned trees but I hadn't put any green in my palette, so I had to make it autumn and use the reds and yellows. I'm glad of this because I think it looks much better than if the trees were a forced bright green that did not match the rest of the colours.
Also I recently discovered groups in the layers menu.
I always get my layers confused and mixed up in the wrong order so now I've started making folders for each component of the image, so I'll have a folder for people and in that theres a folder for the dad and in that there's a folder for head and one for body and so on. It makes my working process much more organised and I'm wasting less time looking through my layers for the right one
Landscapes
I painted some landscapes to go in the background of the label
I wanted them to look similar to the existing packaging for familiarity, but noticeably different visually.
I used brush pen and a combination of watercolour pencils and felt tips mixed with water. I like using these because they're bright and its easy to stick to a strict colour scheme as theres a defined limit to the amount of colours available. I tend to get carried away.
I like this picture, it was nice to draw and I think it suits the purpose well.
It began bright pink but since I coloured it in shades of the same colour I could alter the hue in Photoshop to make it more suitable, as below, the rest are other options I tried and the last two the original colours.
I wanted them to look similar to the existing packaging for familiarity, but noticeably different visually.
I used brush pen and a combination of watercolour pencils and felt tips mixed with water. I like using these because they're bright and its easy to stick to a strict colour scheme as theres a defined limit to the amount of colours available. I tend to get carried away.
I like this picture, it was nice to draw and I think it suits the purpose well.
It began bright pink but since I coloured it in shades of the same colour I could alter the hue in Photoshop to make it more suitable, as below, the rest are other options I tried and the last two the original colours.
Wednesday 11 March 2015
Save the Children
I think the colours are getting better, also it looks pretty well balanced.
might be a bit empty though
Saturday 7 March 2015
Off Life entry
I thought i posted this ages ago but apparently not
this was my entry to the off life open submission last month
it didn't get printed but the ones that did were definitely better so its fair enough
I initially planned to do another comic as well about my summer job as a door to door fundraiser. I didn't end up doing this because it would have taken ages and there wasnt enough time or any need to submit another coimc at the same time
tried to make the panels look nicer this time, less scrappy
did them in water colour, it took a lot longer than other methods but it was therapeutic to paint and I like how it looks, a more organic and consistent colour palette comes from using an actual palette..
its kind of more difficult though, brush marks being permanent and whatnot
this was my entry to the off life open submission last month
it didn't get printed but the ones that did were definitely better so its fair enough
I initially planned to do another comic as well about my summer job as a door to door fundraiser. I didn't end up doing this because it would have taken ages and there wasnt enough time or any need to submit another coimc at the same time
tried to make the panels look nicer this time, less scrappy
did them in water colour, it took a lot longer than other methods but it was therapeutic to paint and I like how it looks, a more organic and consistent colour palette comes from using an actual palette..
its kind of more difficult though, brush marks being permanent and whatnot
Secret 7"
for my third entry i decided to pimp out this drawing i did in my 505 visual journal, because i liked it but it wasnt particularly refined
I drew it out again with a 1.5 calligraphy nib, a brush pen and a fine sketch nib so i could get a variety of different line qualities in the drawing
i think this gives the drawing more character than if i'd done it in one fixed width pen and its a process i intend to continue with
ligne claire
i had to take a photograph instead of scanning because i didn't have time to go back into college to scan it before the submission ended.
i put it into photoshop and coloured in areas of different opacities of pink
this made it look much more finished
it still looks a little dingy to me,
its because I took a photo instead of scanning it
I have a scanner now so this problem is solved
I have no explanation for the rabbit but it ended up going pretty well with the song
Save the Children
Page three of the booklet
still battling with these bizarre colours but I think it's going okay.
is the writing clear enough?
I have a new system where I draw out the rough shape with a textured brush and then erase around the edge to define the shape but keep the textured edge so its cut off sharply. I think its making the contrasting colours less stark.
Wednesday 4 March 2015
Unsolved mysteries and general creepiness for 505
Since I've been doing a lot of 'research' into this kind of thing lately anyway, I've decided to base this brief on it
Mostly I've been watching silly videos like 'top ten most haunted places' or 'worlds creepiest mysteries', 'cursed objects' stuff like that. It's oddly fascinating because a lot of them are simultaneously stupid but difficult to refute or explain. Also everyone must have a morbid fascination with spooky mysterious stories and whatnot. Surely.
https://www.youtube.com/user/MatthewSantoro/videos
this guy makes very palatable list videos of things, top ten this and that, they were my main gateway into research because they're so easy to watch
they're a little too buzzfeed-y but y'know, he makes it engaging
Mostly I've been watching silly videos like 'top ten most haunted places' or 'worlds creepiest mysteries', 'cursed objects' stuff like that. It's oddly fascinating because a lot of them are simultaneously stupid but difficult to refute or explain. Also everyone must have a morbid fascination with spooky mysterious stories and whatnot. Surely.
https://www.youtube.com/user/MatthewSantoro/videos
this guy makes very palatable list videos of things, top ten this and that, they were my main gateway into research because they're so easy to watch
they're a little too buzzfeed-y but y'know, he makes it engaging
etc etc.
ugh buzzfeed
i already planned this as a comic a few times for ppp last year (stupid deaths) but it never really worked on one page because it was too involved to fit properly, so it could work better with this project.
i have spent a lot of my life on wikipedia......
Tuesday 3 March 2015
secret 7"
Follow Hollie's board Secret 7" on Pinterest.
i thought it would be funny to put anthropomorphised rabbits in them all
it probably isn't
Follow Hollie's board how to draw rain on Pinterest.
i thought it would be funny to put anthropomorphised rabbits in them all
it probably isn't
this one is for go by the maccabees
it sounded quite bleak and vaguely journey themed
i didnt really plan this image, except mentally, which i dont often do because i usually plan rigorously and dont draw anything until the end, but it was quite liberating to just make an image and it be done.
I wont adopt this as my new process though because i think better outcomes come from planning ahead, but perhaps a mixture of the two approaches would benefit me
I've been experimenting with textured brushes and using pixel lock to lay the textures over sharper shapes. It's grand fun and I like the way it looks because its a combination of crisp digital and grainy analogue
had to make a pin board to learn how to draw rain, but I think this one turned out pretty well. I was mostly just playing with excessive textured brushes. Fun fun
i dont really know whats going on with this one.....
I was just playing around in photoshop and then it started looking okay so I added the rabbit men and submitted it for born slippy
i played with gradients mostly which i havent used before
theyre very handy and fun to experiment with because theyre slightly unpredictable
i think the ethereal pattern and the spaced out bunny men suit the sound of the song
i still dont know if i like it though, its a bit strange and unlike my usual work
oh well maybe itll grow on me
Monday 2 March 2015
Whippets
I whipped up some whippets (ehehehe) for the logo.
I drew them in photoshop with a smooth brush and textured brushes atop.
At first I only drew the head, but we decided to go with this design so I drew the body too.
I drew them in photoshop with a smooth brush and textured brushes atop.
At first I only drew the head, but we decided to go with this design so I drew the body too.
I like these drawings I think they're suitable for the brief but don't steer too far from the kind of drawing I enjoy making.
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