Encyclopedias

I've been reserching proper encyclopedias.
It was a task just finding them in the library, no one knew where they were and then I found a huge dusty stack of them in the back corner behind some computers. And they're all reference only. So thats convenient.

I went through looking what topics they have
as Britanniaca online demonstrates these are the main topics

It must be hard making proper encyclopedias, like writing down everything that is life and existance. Kind of a big job.
Less so when it's a universe of your own invention. Or more?
No probably less.

So I'm taking the topics I've found in this and other print encyclopedias and boiling them down to what will be relevant to Space Planet

A main consideration when selecting these categories is that they don't die. Or have money
This eliminates the need for a lot of things like medicine, health, religion, economy, war, philosophy, and arguably art and science. Basically anything about human life that isn't about avoiding death or making money, which is a surprisingly large amount of things.

So what I'm left with is

Planets
Heady Leggy's themselves, anatomy
Other life forms/creatures
Plant life
Natural Resources, heat light water - basics
Food
Transport
Homes
Habitats
History? (potentially irrelevant as they are immortal so history doesnt exist because they all remember it happening)
Environments/land areas
Music and some art (most art is about death and humanity in some way, without that they are left with portaits and landscapes)
Notable Figures
Literature?
Language, but thats basically english because I'm lazy

Not sure if any others are necessay but I'd like one page thats a full landscape of Space planet and all the stuff going on in it thats been mentioned in the rest of the book, probably the last page. 

encyclopedias

been in the library photocopying encyclopeidas

theyre really cool
i lost my skin cell and muscle picture which was the coolest

it lookedlike this

heres some pictures of my photocopies of the coolest pages with pictures

DONEEEE

I finished it
Waheee
After like two and a half days of struggle
I need to find a less time consuming process if I ever intend to finish this project.

Not sure about the outcome still but I think its just because I've been staring at it for days and now I'm deeply resentful.

Anyway its done so all is well

Colouring is taking forever

I think it's working but it is taking fooooooreevvvvveerrrrrrrrrrr

I'm up to here

Which looks nearly done but I still gotta do all the little ornaments and stuff and the outside looks garbage
Its taking ages to do this, I'm not really sure why, it's just really long
I have to get each bit and put it in the place and then erase around it so it fits right, but theres so many different little bits that its becoming really laborious and repetetive.
I'm not sure I even like how it's looking.
I dunno its a bit of a wrestle at the minute

Line Trauma

It has been a struggle making that line work usable
I dont even know why
It's never usually this gruelling
It just wouldn't go right.
So for starters I had to scan it in two halves which was a ballache enough, cos then I had to line them back up again which is harder than it sounds
But then there was all these marks on it, cos stupid people put wet work on the scanner and don't clean it so it gets all covered in gunk that ends up in my picture.
So I erased these thinking yeah no problem, but then when I was selecting the line in the channels to colour it over in solid black the absense of the paper grain was reeeeally visible where I'd sharply erased the blotches

Garahrghgh hideous

So then I spent the next hour or so  trying to figure this out
I even watched photoshop beginner tutuorials of how to scan linework it was so embarrassing.
Anyway in the end I wacked the levels way up and coloured in the line channel
But because there was so much white balance I had to copy the linework and multiply it over itself
So I put this one

and this one together

and got this one

This linework needs to be dark enough to withstand the colouring.
It is acceptable now
A little bummed I cant the paper texture in there but I'll get over it

Colouring

I was going to colour it digitally with Big Wide Softy but five minutes in I've decided this looks a disaster so I have devised a new plan.

What I want is the texture of water colour inside my linework.
This might be because I just bought these sets of watercolours
Look how beautiful

Ideally I would just paint around the linework I already did EXCEPT I went and did it in a horrid green cos I liked the transfer of that particular pencil despite the heinous colour, and I was changing it on photoshop anyway, so now if I painted into that either the linework would be ugly green or the paint colour would be changed beyond recognition.

So plan B, using a lightbox to project the linework onto a blank sheet I have painted in the loose shapes of all the objects.

 This one looks like some edgy abstract composition kinda thing

They look pretty garbage like this but I have a plan

TRUSTTTT MEEEE

I've tried to get as much texturey brushyness in as possible, disregarding neatness around the edges.

So now I have to put them into the linework one by one.

It better work cos it's already taken most of the day to get to this point

Lines

Drawn out the lines for the second final
The text for this page is
And softly, softly Smallpaw crept out of the kitchen…softly softly Smallpaw walked down the Hall…and softly softly she put her nose out the catflap and into the darkness….
Sniffing, sniffing, sniffing for a story just for her.

There was a sense of slowness and distance in this bit I think, so I depicted this long hallway, to show the space and slow movement. Tantrum is very small in the image which I think shows the calm creeping of the movement, if it were a more instant movement it would take up more of the frame.

I filled the page with objects for several reasons.
1, to slow down the pace of this page with stationary objects
2, As a child I loved pages where there was loads of imagery to look at for ages and I would look at it for ages, so I'm trying to recreate this.
3, drawing household objects is reeeal fun

The banana candle was an ornamant my nanny had and i thought it was cool but they sent it to the charity shop when she died

The face vase is a cool vase I saw in a shop that said celery and had a weird face but it was like £8 and i couldnt justify spending that on a vase so I continue to search for one at a reasonable price

The chicken painting resembles the one in my hallway which was a gift from Les my 86 year old colleague, he used house paint and uhu glue to get it shiny

The rest of the stuff I made up, except the not-smeg fridge

Now I'm gonna colour it in on photoshop

Makin Patterns

Got some new paints today so I had a little patterny play, with Crispin in mind

I like em, they could be used elsewhere too
The problem is they aren't repeating but that can be solved easily enough.

Wrestling with the spider

These are the many variations the spider image took before I gave up and settled with what I'd got

I'm still not happy with it, one day I'll redo it, it's become clear that there was no way to fix it with colour because the actual composition was flawed.
I'd ike to have them as a set with three images I'm proud of, not just two.

Briefs

My definitive finalised briefs are as follows.

STUDIO BRIEF 1 - Thoughtbubble 2015, prints comics and ephemera made for convention

STUDIO BRIEF 2 - Album covers, encompassing Secret 7" covers and re-designed covers for homemade albums

STUDIO BRIEF 3 - Carmelite Prize, 4 spreads and storyboard for Cressinda Cowells cat book, Tantrum O'Furrily

STUDIO BRIEF 4 - Heady Leggy, creating 32 page 12 spread encyclopedia of Heady Leggy life and their planet, accompanied by proposals for merchandise and franchise. (the big one) 

STUDIO BRIEF 5 - Portfolio Builder, quick turnaround live brief response pieces of completed illustration to put in portfolio and counterbalance large quantity of unfinished non-commerical work.

Space Planet Encycolpedia

I've been struggling with the Heady Leggy thing because while its really fun to do, it's been difficult working without an end in sight, or a goal of any kind.

In my group tutorial with Jamie he suggested I make it like an encycolpedia of the Heady Leggy world and suggested I use Codex Seraphinianus as a main reference point.

Ive been studying the pdf and I went down to vernon street to look at their reference copy. It's just the most surreal and beautiful thing ever.

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/downloads/CodexSeraphinianus.pdf

Obviously my output in this time period will be no where near as staggering but its a good point of reference and source to go on to influence my project

It will act as more of a way of arranging the work I've already done into something physical and complete, so now I need to work on refining all the sketches of creatures I've dome, making complete images and pages, and organising it into some kind of formalised structure.

I've also been photocopying pages of reference encyclopedias in the library. They are really heavy. I nearly broke the photocopier. 

I imagine it being a run through of the aspects of the planet and heady leggy life, with a narrator and Eddy present in the pages, interspersed with little cartoons and strips involving the acquired knowledge of the planet.

I've also been photocopying pages of reference encyclopedias in the library. They are really heavy. I nearly broke the photocopier.

d&ad

I decided to do the shutterstock brief for d&ad. Three images in three days.
Here's the brief.

The Creative Challenge

Comedy, Rebirth, Rags to Riches, Tragedy, The Quest, Overcoming the Monster, Voyage and Return – these seven plot archetypes can be seen at work everywhere, from global news stories to the smallest interaction (see Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories for a better idea of what these archetypes involve).
Pick three of the seven archetypes and create a static or moving image for each one that tells a story from the modern world. Look to unexpected places, find the dramatic in the seemingly banal, the emotion and humanity that underlies the routine of our daily lives. In a fast-moving, digital world, having the time and space to unfold a story is a luxury not often available. How do you distil the essence of it down to something that can be captured in a single moment?

So I did some quick sketches

I chose to do
Rags to riches - tenner on the floor
Tragedy - Dropped pasta sauce
Overcoming the Monster - Spider

I started immediately after deciding this and drew out the lines in coloured pencil for the first image.
I did them one at a time but it probably wouldve been more efficient to do all the lines first and then do all the colouring.

I'm most pleased with the sauce one, I think theres some good sauce textureyness going on.
The tenner one is fine.
I hate the spider one. The portraits were okay but its just flawed compositionally. Alas I only realised this after colouring it in because i thought it might be fine once its coloured in.

I coloured them in on photoshop and directly referenced the pantone colour swatch for 2016, because these competitions are all about trends and cynicism.

Here they are.

 I didn't submit them in the end because I think d&ad is a scam and you had to make a 30 second video which would take time away unnecessarily from other projects.

The purpose of this exercise was as part of the brief where I'm making quick turnaround finalised image portfolio pieces, to make up for all the non finished sketchy cartoon work I have.

I'm happy with them as a set but the spider one still bugs me. Hah bugs. 
I was gonna redo it but then that seemed like a waste of time. 

Trials and tribulations with spider image to come in issuu form.

Anatomy

Drew this of the heady leggy anatomy body insides and everything.

It will form one of the pages in the space planet encyclopedia about the physical make up of the heady leggy.

Penguin Book Awards

I ended up making these entries between Monday and Wednesday of this week. 

The rushing was motivating and also exhausting, but I wanted to force myself to do some finished work, like for the D&AD brief, so I did and now theyre done and I'm quite happy.

They might have turned out better if I'd allowed more time but also I might have laboured over it too much and ended up giving up or only doing one or making three strained dull images, who knows.
I would have had time to read the books though which I'm sure might have helped.

How to be a Woman

 Pretty happy with this outcome. I like the colours, accidently chosen the pantone colours of the year again but I guess theres a reason theyre colours of the year, cos theyre pretty. 

I'm happy with the drawing itself, I think a good line quality comes from soft coloured pencil.

The concept is very simple, perhaps too simple, there might be a thousand other entries just like mine, I'll just hope I executed it best.

 Emil and the Detectives

I made a very brief plan of this based entirely on my ignorant assumptions about Berlin

After this I researched a little and it was basically fine, just needed pimping out, but I liked the noir nighttimey purple sharp edged textured shape thing going on so I went with that.

I did this one entirely digitally for time reasons.

I like how it turned out but the characters could have benefited from more time devoted to them. 
Also I kept getting real annoyed with the cintiq because the colour changes DRASTICALLY from screen to screen its really weird, so I never knew what colour it actually was until the end when I faffed about with the levels. The top image is the colour it was on the cintiq and then it got brighter like the other two iamges on the mac screen. I ended up liking that one better anyway.

A Clockwork Orange
So it got to 10 on wednesday morning and there has an hour or so left so I thought I'd have a crack at clockwork orange. Why the heck not. 

It was very simple, for obvious reasons but i think its not bad.

The cintiq screwed me over with colours again because it was a really bright pure lobster orange but on the mac screen it went bright red, as below

 So I changed it back to orange but looking at them together now I'm unsure whether that was the right decision. Oh Well.

Im glad I managed to get all three submitted and pretty pround of how quickly I did it with reasonable results. Well done me. 


 

Pantone

I consider d&ad to be fully commercial
So I'm going fully commercial

Here are this years pantone swatches
and they are what I will make the picture with
I never really work with a preplanned palette I just add colour organically

I've used only these colours, and variations, to colour the three images.

I like these colours and theyre ones I'd usually use so it wasnt too alien

Laura Callaghan

She's one of the shutterstock brief judges.
I like her work, even though it is so painfully trendy.
It has nice colours, nice full and busy compositions, nice girls.
Its just good
In the most superficial way

I'm trying to channel her with my entry. Dark lines and pastelly garish colours

Sketchbook

Been sketching the creatures and plants and whatnot

It's jolly good fun

Annie Hall

After busting a gut getting Penguin in on time I thought I'd make a nice relaxing one hour Annie Hall poster for Friday

I started off going for a cartoony line drawing image of them struggling with lobsters but this did not go well.

It was too static and the composition was just non existant.

So I started again and went for the same angle as the mallrats poster using an image from the film and colouring on and around it.

This was more successful and I went with this one

I reappropriated the lobster as it was the only bit of the other drawing that went well, it seemed a shame to waste it.

It doesnt really capture Annie Hall as a movie very well, adams poster was much better, but it looks alright and it exists in time for the deadline and it was a quick and enjoyable way of image making.

Challenge

I'm going to do D&AD and I'm going to do it in 3 days, no more.
I like the Shutterstock brief but I don't like D&AD
I don't like the idea of sinking loads of time into it and its basically a scam to get free work and charge you to provide it.
I might not enter the competition but I'm going to complete the brief and I will do it in three days, three days three images.
Easy.

Crispin Orthotics

Liked the sound of the orthotics brief, I like making patterns and it probably sucks to have to wear an ugly cast thing, especially if it throws of the excellence of the rest of your outfit.
They're always that horrid peach or like hospital grey. Just tragic and depressing.

Here are some examples of the aesthetic tragedy of orthotics.

My how ugly

This one looks like an edgy art installation

This one actually appears to be in rose quartz and serenity
Bang on trend

Anyway they need patterns, says the brief, and they need to repeat and look nice on these visual monstrosities

They already have these patterns but theyre rubbish

I'll probably make one like the little patterns I've been doing with vague supremetism

Here's some patterns research

Big Sketchbook

Here are some photos of the big A3 book I've been using.
It's very freeing on big paper
I've been drawing creatures of the space planet land, and the planets they are on.
Its jolly good fun.
Some creatures are loosely based on things like monkey faces and the wrinkles on a dogs face and long freaky legs that would stride through water.
I've been trying to push them to avoid them turning out all the same.

Offlife

In summer when I had no purpose and direction I made these silly comics with willies in.

I liked them at the time and then forgot about them until I found them in my desk drawer a few days ago. In retrospect they're sort of like protoheady leggys, of which I'm sure there's a few in my sketches from summer, which I must dig out.

I decided to remake this comic to submit to Offlife because its completely stupid and meaningless, which is something I think is lacking in Offlifes output. It's all getting very serious.

I marked out the panels in yellow ink and drew on top of this with coloured pencil.

I was a good way of working, I'm happy with the outcome, it looks stupid and not too forced which I was concerned about.

Here it is

Heheheheheh

some plans

quick plans for the book covers
i like the hairy leg plan
the flowery pubes one seems like an edgy cliche
hairy leg is more playful

Research

I've decided to enter the penguin design competition because i want more completed pieces of work for my portfolio.

The only problem is the deadline is on Wednesday
This seems a bit silly but I guess you never know unless you try.

Even if I only manage one it'll be something thats a finished image I have to present thats not just a page from a comic.

First things first: research

Alas at this point i obviously don't have time to start reading the books so I'll have to rely on the trusty internet..

Caitlyn Moran

http://www.caitlinmoran.co.uk/
Start with the website, gives a good idea of the tone of voice
There's videos as well, gives a good idea of what shes about
I think with this one its more about the author than the book
The books are a biproduct of her persona and views

This is the existing cover

It's a bit dull, just a portrait and a title

This reaffirms that its about her and her ideology more than the book itslef

the book is the vehicle

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/06/how-woman-caitlin-moran-review

This was useful although the guy was kindof annoying

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10600242-how-to-be-a-woman

This will provide enough information though

It's the funny and honest opinions of a woman fed up with expectations and conventions of female life. So that is wat the image will be. 

NEXT UP 

Emil and the detectives

This is real old and classic and apparently the movie was good

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_and_the_Detectives

This was excellently useful

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/10441739/Emil-and-the-Detectives-why-it-is-a-childrens-classic.html

it already has some decent imagery

yellow is strong theme

ill probably avoid this though as alllll the others use it

It's set in Berlin so I'll probably work with imposing Berlin esque architecture and some children running after a mysterious figure. I'll jsut do it differently to all the others.

AND FINALLY]

Clokcwork orange

now ive seen this plenty of times but it specifically says to avoid iamgery associated with the film

The problem with this is that theres SO MUCH IMAGERY both from the movie and made for the book and its all SO GOOD how are you supposed to approahc that

I remember ben talking about how he did it and it was so good and reimagined it totally

I CANT DO THAT

look at all this imagery its great

its already inspired so many visual responses over all the years that its basically untocuhable now its like alice in wonderland or something

If im going to do this itll have to be pretty simple i think

its exaclty the kind of thing im liable to over think and over work\

i think Ill only do this one if i get the other two done

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/clockworkorange/

This will help