Christmas in Uganda Kindle Edition

The children's book I illustrated last year, 'Christmas in Uganda', has just been released digitally in Kindle addition. 

You can buy it on amazon for a small price (just under £2) with all proceeds going to the charity Helping Uganda Schools. Check it out here.

Past and Present

A while a go I was asked if I'd like to contribute a piece of work to a collaborative book project organised by illustrator Benjamin Carr. The given theme was 'Past and Present', and Ben chose a colour scheme of 4 colours for everyone to use.

The idea behind my piece was looking at how we connect our past and present via memories. After doing a bit of research I came across the concept of Flashbulb memories, that are vivid memories we create when we hear  "surprising and consequential (or emotionally arousing) news", such as during natural disasters such as tsunami's or hurricanes, or other memorable events such as the assassination of JFK or 9/11.

I decided to illustrate the concept of 'flashbulb' memories, and used a camera theme for the whole piece. I actually really enjoyed having the limited colour scheme as it really simplified my choices and meant I couldn't use lot of textures like I normally would (although I snuck a bit in). Anyway, I've posted my image above and my sketch below, and I'm really excited to see how the project comes together, so many thanks Ben!

FOURSIGHT

So in recent news, I've recently teamed up with 3 fellow illustrators from my course to form a collective called Foursight. The collective consists of myself, Kris Sale, Jordan O'Brien and Matt Bray, and for our first project, we are working on a print publication with help from the guys at OWT Creative. 

We will be announcing details about the project very soon, so make sure you follow us over at our blog and twitter to find out more, but not to be completely vague, it involves work from various fantastic illustrators, and we are working very hard to make it something special. Needless to say we are incredibly excited about the project! 

I can see you're intrigued, so go check out the blog and twitter now, and keep your peepers open for updates in the next few days.....

Thanks!

MT: Mindfulness

I did a few editorial illustrations in the not too distant past for the current issue of Managment Today magazine. I've post some pics of the images below along with the images themselves.

The first was a small illustration for a piece about transparency in businesses, so I did a glass suitcase exposing important things such as money, identity (passport) etc.

These next two are a full page and spot for a feature on 'mindfulness' and how it could improve your work life and therefore your business. These were originally going to have a 60's/70's theme to them which would have been a lot of fun to do, however the article got tailored back a little bit, but it was nevertheless a good experience and great to see in print!

Final Project Animation

As part of our final major projects, we were all given a brief to create a small animation on the theme of 'transformation'. We were given free reign to interpret transformation in whichever way we wanted in relation to our own projects, and the animation could be anything from a few seconds of an image changing from one thing to another, to a full blown animation that lasted a few minutes.

I think I probably aimed for somewhere in between the two parameters, as the main images I had at the beginning of the project were my astronaut and diver, so I thought they'd lend themselves to a change from one to the other as they were made with the same blueprint. But I also didn't just want to do a fade from one to the other, as I'd already done that with the 8x8 animation I did last year.

I talked with tutors about the possibility of making an interactive app for the ipad, but it became clear pretty quickly that doing that would take a lot of time and would be too complex for me to try and do for real. So instead we decided that it would be possible to make an animation in After Effects and play it through the ipad whilst filming someone faking the movements as if it were a real app. So the final piece is more of a proposal for a possible app that could be made with my work.


Below is the animation on its own, and then the final video showing it in use...

 

One of the things I probably should have thought about at the beginning of this was the fact that I don't actually own an ipad or iphone, so it made it a little bit more difficult to work out how it might work. So I did some research into the different interactive movements you can do on an ipad, and watched some tutorials, to try and get it to look somewhat genuine. I also wasn't able to make versions as I went along to try it out, so if I were to do this again in the future I think it would be best to borrow an ipad/iphone off someone to get it to look as real as possible.


Another problem was working out how I could fake the movements on the ipad, without actually touching the screen (as it would brings up menus etc.) and then having to memorise the actions, needless to say it was a longer process than I was anticipating!
These problems were solved by some high-tech gluing of card onto the finger tips, and a good few takes of the filming. 

Overall however I'm really pleased with the outcome and I think it was definitely worth giving it a go and seeing what happened. I'd definitely like to try and make a real app of some sort in the future as I think my work can be quite flat which probably lends itself to these sort of things quite well, and with the advent of digital magazines and ebooks (not to mention actual apps and touch screen games etc.), we'll probably be seeing a lot more of these type of things in the future.

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MT Editorial

I recently did a small editorial illustration for this months issue of Management Today magazine. It was to illustrate the word 'Boss' from the given definitions. One definition of the word was that it was a synonym for 'superfly', hence the 70's guy on the left, and obviously a more standard office type boss getting a bit stressed on the right.

It was my first proper commission so it was a bit daunting, but it all went really smoothly and I'm fairly happy with the outcome. Check out the image below, as well as a snippet of it in the magazine layout. Cheers!

London: Pick Me Up

Whilst in London the other week, we went to the Pick Me Up graphic arts fair at Somerset House on the Thames, and this was the first exhibition I'd been to that most of the work seemed to be close to the sort of work we are all looking to produce as illustrators at the moment...if that makes sense. 

There was work on show by lots of different people, some exhibiting as individuals and some as collectives, and a lot of the work was for sale. I saw some great work there, including stuff by Fernando Volken Togni, Matthew Dent, Dominic Owen, Tom Frost and Zim and Zou, and there was also a cool exhibition by the Pick Me Up artists in residence; Peepshow Collective. Their exhibition was titled 'The Museum of Objects and Origins' and featured all sorts of work, from wallpaper and prints on the walls, to objects and textiles in cabinets. Peepshow describe it as...

" Exhibiting items from an invented past, the collection is also a living, growing display as themed workshops create new works to fill the final few cabinets."

I've posted some images below of some of the artist's work, and also Peepshow Collective's exhibition (photo creds to their sites).

I have to say, some of my favourite pieces of work their were the stamps set by Tom Frost, and looking through some more of his work, I'm definitely a fan, so check out his blog to see what I'm on about, and I've also posted some pieces of his work that weren't at Pick Me Up below,... just because.

Dominic Owen

Tim McDonagh

 

Peepshow Collective

Tom Frost's work...

The hand made, screen prinited toy and 3D work of some of the best things I've seen in a while....seriously want one of those cars!

The Teenage Market

Recently a group of us uni students went down to 'The Teenage Market' in Stockport to sell prints, cards, jewellery, crafts, etc. that we'd made, to raise money to go to D&AD New Blood in June.

The market seemed pretty successful overall, with lots of people turning up and all sorts of stalls and performances happening. I wouldn't say we made that much money, but it was definitely worth going and seeing what we could sell. We sold more of the craft/handmade items than we did of the cards and prints, but i think with a bit more prep time we could have done better on that front, with maybe a wider range and less specific images. My own at least was probably too specific and not the sort of thing people would put on their wall perhaps. And the cards were mother's day cards. The market was on the 1st of April. Enough said.

Overall, the market was a good experience and definitely worth a shot to make some money for D&AD, which we did. It was also good research for if we ever go to any fairs or markets etc. to try and sell work in the future, as to what sort of things sell and which don't.

Book Binding with Lucy Wilson

Last Tuesday, we were all treated to a book binding session with illustrator and book binder Lucy Wilson. It was a really interesting session and fun to learn how to make a book of our own. I'd never really thought much about making my own books or sketchbooks before, but it could definitely be an option for the future. Lucy told us about the advantages of an illustrator being to bind their own books, where to get book binding supplies from, and she had also used her book binding skills to make her own portfolio, which was really cool.

I've posted a couple of pics of the A5 book I made below. I think I probably need a little bit more practice at it as it seems I struggled to even fold my paper properly! But it came out better than I thought and after it was all sewn and glued it actually holds together pretty solidly. Thanks Lucy!

 
 

'Christmas in Uganda' Childrens Book

So last November, there was a small book launch for the childrens book I illustrated called 'Christmas in Uganda'. I've been really busy (and forgetful), so this is a veryyyy late post with some photos of the book in print and some pics from the launch. It was a good eve and a good few books were sold to raise money for the charity. Cool.

This is the book, and a few of the spreads...

 

And here are a few photos from the launch.....

 

Christmas Cards

So, a group of us 3rd year illustration students decided to create some Christmas cards to sell, in order to raise money for a stand at D&AD Newblood next year. There was also a group of students who held a bake sale selling all sorts of lovely baked goods, and managed to raise a good amount of money for D&AD!

We screen printed 5 Christmas card designs, one by each of us involved. 3 of the cards were 2 colour jobs, and 2 were single colour. It was a really fun project to work on as it was probably the first time we had been able to work as a group on something this year, and it also gave us the opportunity to get back into screen printing, which I hadn't done since first year, and others had never done.

I did a couple of quick designs for my card, but we opted to print the Santa one (below), which was a 2 colour print of black over red.

 

Head over to Kris Sale's blog post here, as he kindly took few snaps of us hard at work prinitng the cards!

Leeds Con: Nelson - Blank Slate Books

Whilst at the Leeds Thought Bubble Festival a couple of weeks ago, I (accidentally) went to a panel discussion/launch of a comic anthology called 'Nelson', published by Blank Slate Books.

I had no idea what the panel or book was about, but I stayed, and it ended up being quite interesting!

The book is a collaboration between 54 comic artists, covering 54 days in the life of the title character Nel. Each artist did a day each (which was one day per year, so the book spanned 54 years, with a single day each year being told), and they had quite free reign to come up with their part of the story as well as doing the imagery for it. All the profits from the book are also going to charity.

At the panel there was one of the editors, Rob Davis, as well as four of the contributers. They spoke about how they each went about thinking of their day/year, and what it was like collaborating.

I think it was interesting that they spoke about why they wanted to contribute to this anthology inparticular (they got everybody they asked to contribute!). Firstly it was raising money for charity, but they also liked that fact that unlike many other anthologies which are just a collection of different peoples seperate works, this had a throughline and continuous thread of it being about one person. Each artist could put their own spin on it via their drawing style and obviously coming up with a section of the story themselves. Someone mentioned that this also helped in getting everybodys work seen too. In a normal anthology, people might just flick through to the artists they like, but because this was one long story, it meant that people had to read through everyones work so that they knew what was going on. Clever.

None of the artists knew what others had written before or after their day/year in the story, so I'm sure it was probably hard to make sure it all came together for the final product. Each artist worked independently and just liased with one of the editors, who gave minimal notes on the work, you know, like dont kill off the main character etc.


There are a couple of names in there that I recognised such as Luke Pearson and JAKe, but other than that I didn't know any of them, but having a flick through the book at the stall later, they all looked fantastic. 




Overall I think it was interesting to hear about a successful collaboration project and how they went about it. Definitely seems like something that could be applied to just illustration rather than comics, too. Maybe something to think about for next year...hmmm...

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HUGS Book Update

So, over the past 3-4 weeks I've been working none stop to complete the children's book I have been designing and illustrating for the charity Helping Uganda Schools. The book is called 'Christmas in Uganda' and does exactly what it says on the tin! It tells the story of some animals in Uganda that learn about Christmas and the story behind it, and all profits from the sale of the book will be going to charity.

I was kindly invited in last Wednesday to see the designers involved with getting to book to print; TaylorO'brien. The book was going to print that day, and they talked me through any changes that had made, in the typesetting in particular (I'm thinking orphans and widows here!), and also learnt a bit about how projects are prepared for print and the different kind of print methods used. I definitely learnt a lot and appreciated the opportunity to go in and see how they worked!

I've posted a couple of preview pics of some of the artwork from the book below for you to see (there will be slight changes to the type on the final cover), and I'll post some more pics of the book in print when I get my hands on a copy!

Finally, and importantly, there is going to be a launch for the book on Wednesday 23rd November, at 7pm at the Britannia Hotel, Dialstone Lane in Stockport, so you are all invited to come down! The book will be on sale for £7 I believe, with all profits going to the charity, but even if you don't want to purchase a book, come down anyway and say hi! Would definitely appreciate the support! I'll post about it again closer to the time, but for now, take a butchers below, and spread the word!