8x8 Short Animation

A short little animation made from the still illustration I did for the 8x8 project.

Many thanks to Jack and Tom for sorting most of the animation and showing me what to do, cheers!

Summer Project - Lunar Conspiracies

So in prep for a personal project when we go back to uni in September, I've been doing some work and research into a project on the first moon landing and subsequent conspiracy theories about it. I initially really wasn't sure what I wanted to look at for the project, but after a meeting and a few helpful emails with the tutors, my ideas moved from something to do with film posters that had a kind of minimalist 50's/60's look, through to the cold war, nuclear test sites and finally the space race and the first moon landing.

I quite like my history and post war developments in technology in the fifties and sixties is really interesting, so I thought that it would be cool to look into something I'm interested in learning about. Also reading some of the conspiracy theories and hoax claims is really interesting, they can be quite convincing! I'm not arguing either way, but its cool to see some of the things they have come up with.

Also I think that the scientific nature of this project, and the type of design going on at the time fits nicely with the type of design I like and the way I tend to work or hope to work, so hopefully I'll be able to create some cool stuff from it. So at the moment I've done a few little bits of work that I might post soon, and I want to try and include some typography of some sort into the project, but other than that I'll just see what happens.

1,2,3

 (Just found this post in my drafts from back in May, must have totally forgotten to post it! unless I did and can't find it....anywhere here it is, better late than never!)


I've posted below 3 pieces of advice that I have heard or been given this year.

1.  "...if you want to go further in your own work then sometimes shutting out what others have done gives you more of a fresh approach in your thinking and it also means less chance of being too overly influenced by someone’s else’s work that you end up subconsciously creating something that’s a bit too close to their vision." - Scott Balmer



This was a nice piece of advice Scott gave me when I sent him a few questions. It definitely makes sense and is something I really should take on board. I do spend a lot of time looking at the work of other people, and I think a lot of the things I do end up being a bad mix of loads of stuff I've seen rather than something of my own. I find it really hard to get something out of my head once I've seen it and it usually ends making an appearance in my work in a rather substandard fashion. I tend to avoid drawing as i think it looks really bad, so I usually end up jumping straight on the computer and making something that has no real basis to it. I think this is such a ridiculous way of working for an illustrator! I really need to sit down without looking at other peoples work, work on my drawing and develop that through to a final piece instead of starting on the computer and just chancing that something make come out of it. I'm hardly ever happy with my final pieces because I can see how I've tried to work like someone else and it hasn't worked out. Definitely need to sort this out!



2.  "Use the internet to your advantage. Share your ideas with other people and collaborate with them." - Dan Matutina 



This a piece of advice I'm starting to see the benefit of already. There are so many sites and networking applications at our disposal as illustrators, many of them free. They can be a great way to promote your own work and meet other designers. I think we've all taken a step in the right direction just by creating a blog, but there are a few other sites/platforms I think I could benefit from using, for example facebook, tumblr, behance, etc. Signing up to twitter has been really interesting for me also. I don't post many personal tweets but its great place to post links to my blog, and is cool for informally chatting to other illustrators who are on there; of which there are many. Only recently I heard of a charity exhibition opportunity via twitter, and as able to share it with other people in the class as something for us to get involved with, so I really do think this is a great piece of advice, and probably an opportunity missed if we don't take advantage of what we can do via the internet.





3.  "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts" - someone clever



Originally by Aristotle but adopted by uni, this quote was on a hand out of composition principles given to us not long ago. In the context of design it's their way of telling us about how simplifying an image down and making it less crowded can really help the composition and look of a piece. I always try and think about this when coming up with an idea, and seeing as though I'm quite partial to minimalist film posters and alike, I always seem to find myself doing the opposite. I think sometimes my ideas are a bit weak and I try and compensate by adding more elements, either in the form of bits of imagery, or more textures or marks. I think I probably convince myself that adding more stuff will solve the problem, but obviously if the idea isn't sound then it's not really going to make any difference. I do this as I'm going along also so I end up deviating from what I originally wanted to do,and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing. Oddly enough I think that on the flip side, I sometimes make things too simple and they end up being a bit boring, or not easy to understand. I'm definitely aiming to create a piece that has both a strong idea, and a strong efficient visual that includes just the vital elements without any added extras. That's the plan anyway...

Let's Be Lions

So a while back I put together a digital version of a logo for the band Let's Be Lions, to feature on their website, twitter etc. The original logo design was already done by one of the band members, and a rough sent over to me, so it just involved putting together a cleaner digital version and sorting it out so it all lined up properly. Turns out trying to fit type into a circle can be a bit tricky! Anyway I've posted the rough below along with the finished logo and a couple of slightly different versions I was messing about with. Check out the bands website here!