So after a long while (although it’s been a week since my last post), I can be able to post up some work on here.
It’s been really busy with plentiful late nights (right now it’s gone 2:30am) and plentiful of projects keeping me going. And a few of them are coming to an end…..eventually.
So the calendar project for Sheraton Hotels and charity organisation UNICEF has been made. My tutor only specified to do at least 3 or 4 month designs to get the basic gist of what it looks like. The designs are all my own, and in my own drawing style for children (based on, as you know, my Little Cuties style). It took me a while to get it looking like this and at some point I’ll post up the photos of the actual product. For now here are the digital designs. Eventually I will show you the prep drawings also. And once I work out how to put these images as a slideshow I’ll put that on instead.
For another project, we have to do promotional material for our university partners the London College of Music, who will be doing productions of the musicals And The World Goes ‘Round, Closer Than Ever and Into The Woods. We choose two to do and I did And The World Goes ‘Round and Closer Than Ever. I have been working on these designs for the past….3 weeks. So far it’s still on the development stage of what the idea will look like, but below is the concept for the posters.
These were done using water colour on paper (for the petals/middle), scanning it in and Photoshopping/Illustrator-ing it. I’ll have to wait until Thursday to see if they’re ok, so they are not yet finished.
We were also given another mini week project from the same module (Design Portfolio) to do a typographic piece based on the phrase “Between The Lines” It doesn’t have to be digital, but needs to be experimental and sized up to 420mm x 600mm with 300dpi and CMYK mode. So far I have done two, was planning a third one but I think I’ll pass for the moment. (Edit @ 15:40 : Feeling too ill to do so and working on calendar piece at the moment which is going very slowly right now).
The first one was made from skinny post-it notes, whilst the one just above is made from bendable hair rollers (which work wonders for curls!). Afterwards they were photographed from their original environment, then photoshopped for a brighter look both in object and background. So far my favourite is the second one (hair rollers).
Experimental Communication involved a few things since the postcard. One was that presentation I did in the last post. One other project we had to do was to recreate a product into an advertisement of a certain style. My chosen product was Shell Motor Oil and the style I had to take it in was 1960s wrestling posters. For this project however I have to develop it and make changes to it so it will be posted at a later date.
Since that one, there has been another, where we have to produce a stencil for screen printing (I’m so excited for that! Last time I done it I was….16!) based on a political view that you feel strong about. For me it was against fox-hunting. I like my little wild critters so it saddens me that this “sport” still goes on behind the scenes even though there was a banning/ Hunting Act in 2004.
We had to do extensive research and many sketches for our idea, which had to be restricted to one image and one colour only. From the research I found out that it is not only the fox that gets killed/injured. The hunting dogs also follow that fate, due to road/railway lines. So my whole focus was to show the aspect that both these animals, who are really the same breed, have the same fate.
My first design (below) showed the fox and hound joined together. The use of colour was to represent blood and the colour of their coats are similar to it. However, the main problem was that it looked too intricate for a stencil, and that it does not portray the injured/killings of these animals. From what one person in my class described it as, was “a very good-looking logo for a vet“.
It was created from initial full body sketches of the fox and hound from references of these particular postures of the animals, scanned in and went over on Illustrator using the calligraphic brush tool.
My next ideas focused on an image as inspiration that my tutor for the module showed us in a presentation:
She mentioned about using a similar blood splatter effect on my piece and another student suggested to do severed heads. So I tried to combine the two. Don’t know if they work, but we’ll see on Thursday.
And last but not least, is my sabbatical. For that, I went to a behind the scenes tour of Battersea Dogs & Cats Home in Battersea, London. From that experience I felt a lot of emotions ranging from happy, sad, and to angry due to the dogs/cats being kept there and thinking how ‘owners’ could just dump their animals.
I can understand ones who are in financial difficulty, or that the animal got jealous of a new baby, but when I heard that one gave their dog away because they have five kids already and expecting a sixth, and deciding that now is not the time to look after a dog appalls me. Just makes me wonder how people can be so heartless.
Anyways, they were all so wonderful and I wanted to take every one of them home. There was one particular dog I liked called George, and we were told by a volunteer there that he was afraid of men, which showed when Ryan came up to his pen/kennel area. When Ryan told me to come over, George suddenly went up to the fencing bit and starting licking it and everything! It was so cute >w< Unfortunately we could not stroke the dogs due to infection risk from one animal to another, and if we did touch one (there were two instances as they were giving performances) we had to use their specialised antibiotic gel.
There was also a really fluffy ginger cat called Junior whom I also loved. And it’s happy to hear that he has been rehomed, so I hope the new owners are treating him well : )
As for the project itself, we had to produce a logo based on our experiences (which mine is the emotions I went through) and afterwards produce an artefact. I’m on my way into making it and you can find the info on here. That is my blog for the Concept Development module and on there talks of the work I have done so far to date based on that. At some point I will scan in the sketches I have done during the sabbatical. But for now, none of those ideas shown on there are what I am planning to do as a final artefact.
Also, no comments for that blog as it’s for my tutor only, but if you wish you can follow it also. Thank you ^_^
So that about wraps it up. It’s nearly 4:30am, and I’m off to bed. Night! ^_^
The Fox Blog 