Dancing doodles (inspired by these lovely talented friends of mine) done whilst trying to keep myself awake at the marathon - 9 hours! - presentation session yesterday ...
Good show though, everyone did really well and I'm looking forward to seeing how people's work progresses next year ... wayhay, bring on the summer!
Here's what I've been up to this semester - a children's book about a little girl who dances with her toys and imagines being in far off places. I think it still needs a lot of work - but I am happy with where I got to at this stage. Hopefully this will get a mawling by the tutors and can be 110% improved for Macmillan next April.
*Sorry for the photo quality - Can't get the white balance quite right - will try again with Sunshine's advice once he's home.Proof:
The bombsite that is my work space at the moment ...... on the blogging front ...
I am here, just getting on with the last of this year's college work ...
Proof: More dancing in my sketchbook:
Now don't get me wrong, I think storyboards are mighty useful things, especially if you're trying to visually work out a storyline for a narrative (a graphic novel; a children's picture book; etc) BUT I definitely would not choose to be a 'storyboard artist' - someone who does it if for a living for things that are then going to be translated to screen (eg TV, ads, films etc) ...
As part of our Visual Narrative module, we've had storyboard artist Oliver Harud in doing a workshop with us. He gave us a kind of live brief - an ad he had to work on last year - and we had to make up the 12 panel storyboards for it. Fine ... but we didn't actually think up the 12 panels - we were given quite specific descriptions (for example panel 3 was "Close up of her plate of healthy food (not just salad but steam fish/chicken & veg)" and it just felt odd to be told so specifically what was needed ... creativity was REALLY limited - and a lot of us struggled. It didn't help that the ad was for a diet pill!
As you can see, the arrow thing on panels 8 & 9 were prescribed to be quite specifically as top view with the whole arrow and whole figure. I was so bored of the drawing (pretty much everyone had done the same image - just in slightly different styles), that I decided to do my own alternative version of her swimming towards the camera.
Anyways, I ended up using the workshop to try and work on developing a character and re-drawing her in different positions and environments ... and in that respect, I got a lot out of the workshop - and Oliver was a great tutor (along with Ben Newman who was also around giving advice). But I sure don't see myself doing this for the rest of my life ....
Here's what I've been doing the last two days ... We had a narrative workshop with the ever awesome Ben Newman where we had to do an illustration with lots happening all on the same page (see for example Marc Boutavant). I've been thinking about swing and dancing and all the related stuff a lot lately so the obvious theme seemed to be to do a dance floor. My initial idea had also people at the bar, the dj/band, people selling tickets, etc ... but the time constraints (1 and a half days) meant I concentrated on the dancers. Its still quite unfinished - needs a setting, and more random things happening; but for the meantime, this is what you get ..
This is dedicated, in loving memory, to Frankie Manning, greatest Ambassador of Lindy Hop, who passed away peacefully in New York on Monday morning, aged 94 and 11/12ths.
Frankie Manning May 26, 1914 - April 27, 2009 
Easter holidays seem to be more about work than holidays ... The last couple of weeks have been full-on wedding organising. Mum-in-law-to-be has been here talking through preparations ... I knew there was going to be a lot to do and think about, but I hadn't quite expected this much. And with college as well, have been feeling a bit overwhelmed and wanting to cuddle soft things (like fox plushies and Sunshine!) ...
On the creative front though, I finally got my wedding invites done and sent to the printers. Its been a steep learning curve about getting artwork ready for print and dealing with printers; choosing papers; etc. Am still not happy - but I had to draw the line somewhere and get on with other stuff. Also working on a childrens' book, but have decided now that I'm not going to stress myself out and try and get it in on deadline (for a competition next week). I'd rather take my time, do it well and enter next year.
Am enjoying wedding planning, but also really looking forward to next year when I can concentrate 101% on college ...
I apologise for the colour quality (although you can't see it) - our scanner is acting up and seems to not be dealing with warm colours very well ...
EDIT: I took a photograph (on top) and as you can see, its SO much better colours than the scan (bottom).
Thank you EVERYONE who's left birthday messages - including all those that came to me via my sister's twitter ... I am truly chuffed ... Here's a bit of sketchbook work for something I'm developing inspired by this.
A bit of a late update as I've been in bed with the flu the last few days ... should still be in bed but I'm easily bored, so here I bring you what I was up to this last week (please excuse the photo quality as its been really gloomy weather, and also I just haven't had the energy to try and take better photos ...) ..
So on Wednesday we had a 40 panels workshop. We were told to come in with a household object. Mine was an old vintage hair clipper:
We then spent a few hours doing observational drawings of our objects (also changing scale and composition). Here's mine:
You'll notice that each panel also has a word associated - that's what we were asked to do after we were done drawing - attach a verb or an emotion to each drawing ... if you look closely you can see things like 'vain', 'liberated' and even 'playful'. Then we went about picking 8 panels and making a narrative out of those ... here's my final narrative:
Its the story of a playful little hair clipper that teases the audience by skirting round the edges of the frame, then goes 'boo!' with a cheeky grin, and then flies away happily being quite pleased with itself (you got that, didn't you?!?)...
Thursday we had another narrative workshop - but this time it was all about words and audio and onomatopoeias. We were working in pairs - I teamed up with Charlie as we were both fairly ill and coughing so we thought we'd keep our germs to ourselves! We were given a bit of time to go and find an onomatopoeic poem or something with lots of descriptive words. Charlie's mum is actually a children's poet so we ended up using one of hers called 'Dinosnore'.
First we all took turns reading out our poems and excerpts to each other, and then we had to re-write the poem (or part of it) using only text/font and not images (unless the font was being used as a picture). Charlie and I both got quite into it as we both love hand-drawn type... its still very much a work in progress, but hopefully it'll be a bit more finished than in appears here in a couple of weeks when we have to present it.
And now back to bed!
Back to school and back to work! We have two modules this semester; one the academic, written one; and the other is 'Visual Narrative'. The intro was yesterday, but we had our first workshop today ... its nice to be back doing stuff :)
Anyways, so, the task for today was to go off with our digital cameras and take a series of 10 photographs. If possible trying to think of a narrative, but not absolutely essential. I went wondering off by the old rail tracks by the harbourside and here are my 10 photos:
We then headed back to the studios to print those photos and then go on to try and develop some kind of narrative with them. It didn't have to be a linear narrative, but mine seems to have ended up that way. We could enlarge, reduce, cut bits out, do whatever really with the photos (having access to a photocopier) that helped tell the story. This is how mine stands at the moment (click to enlarge).
I shouldn't have to explain it but ... stroll; train racks, distracted by found objects; running people .... erm the rest I leave to your gory imaginations ;)
We've been told to go away and have a 'dialogue' with the work over the next few weeks. Hang it up on a wall and then go back and see every few days how we might change/improve it.
It was good fun doing this - a quick and easy way to make up stories - by taking what you have in front of you and just trying to make connections. I'm always scared of doing narratives as I always tell myself "I don't know how to write a story!", but this excercise reminded me that I don't need to be a genius plot-writer, just simple observation can sometimes lead to all manner of things :)
So this is the last of this semester's projects. We had to design two book-covers and we were allowed to choose whatever book we wanted (as long as we cleared it with the tutor first). I went with one of my favourite books - Salman Rushdie's "Haroun and the Sea of Stories".
I wanted it quite tactile - for a while thinking that I'd make a set, then photograph it .... but that was just too much work considering how many other projects I had on. Instead I started playing with lots of cellophane sheets.
The first cover I did is quite colourful (refers to the streams in the 'Sea of Stories'):
I laid out lots of coloured strips that I'd cut, straight onto the scanner and scanned them in. I also tried adding several fish and water splashes etc until I found something that worked. It was all then composited in Photoshop and printed onto acetate (to give that translucent feel the original bits of cellophane had). Here's a photo of what the original strips looked like:
And examples of the scans are here.
The second cover is the last thing I did on Tuesday night before rushing to college to drop it all off. Part of the story refers to the people of the land of Chup - where their shadows are attached, but independent of them. Haroun comes across a warrior practise-fighting with his own shadow!
I made this up using more black and blue cellophane, photographed it and tried to composite it into a book cover in Photoshop. Somehow it just didn't work .... I tried all manor of iterations and it just wasn't coming together. Eventually I decided to go back to what I do best - hand made ... and so this is what I did ...
On a funny note, I did this, handed it in Tuesday night, and look what Rob Ryan put up on Wednesday on his blog.
Anyways, this is it for this semesters work ... I've got some time off now to do my OWN stuff (includng wedding planning!). I'm off to a zinefest tomorrow in London, and then visiting my Grandma ... will be back with further adventures soon!
After all the cryptic-ness that was this entry, here is what I finally produced:
So, the rationale ... erm, I still don't know what bacteria have to do with jazz (I did find a nice quote about bacteria and music that I put inside the front cover), but anyways, I ended up doing a very long concertina book, kind of inspired by how 'Peter and the Wolf' is put together - ie, each character in the story represented by a musical instrument. I went through my whole collection of swing music looking for something with very distinct solos by particular instruments. In the end choosing Count Basie's 1938 version of "Jumpin' at the Woodside" (yes,I can just SEE the lindy hopping crowd getting excited) ...
Listened to it till I couldn't stand to listen to it any more, then started working out how I might represent each instrument as a type of bacteria. After many iterations (and a bit of artistic licence), this is what you get. Each page is roughly 16 x 4 bars (or that's 8 x 8s for you dancers). Its not very clear here but there's also de-bossing (opposite of embossing) on almost every page. The bacteria images were all sourced from the Science Photo Library.
I'm still not sure what I think of this piece. It was a real stumbling block. Two of my passions - science and swing; and I found it really odd juxtaposing the two. Still, it was a great learning exercise in more ways than one! I'm most happy with the "introducing the band" page, as I was so tired, I thought I'd give them 'scat-esque' intros.
yes, its a bit small here at the mo... (might split it into a few chunks as blogger doesn't seem to like such a big image). Will be uploading individual page photos onto my flickr site soon - but right now, I just want to go to bed ....
EDIT: Done it , they're here now ... and for your amusement, here's my favourite page:
You can also just about see in the close-up shot (on the red cloud-shaped bit) that some of the pieces have de-bossing on them ... Also the word "paaarp!/JAZZ" has a mechanism that makes it swing out as you open the page.
