James Jarvis

James Jarvis is an illustrator who has intertwined himself into many different areas of the design world. He has been involved in commercial illustration, comic strips, making of toys and t-shirt designs, so he knows what it’s like to experiment with many types of media.

Jarvis is another illustrator who focuses with his linear pen drawings, and enhancing it with colour if needs be. The only comment I can make about his work that isn’t really my “thing” is that his work seems very digital at times, with not much texture. However, this works in his favour as it makes his compositions look very clean.

Another branch of design Jarvis has worked on is moving image. He made the images for his first film, ONWARDS, a collaboration with Richard Kenworthy. I think it’s amazing! He has taken one of his characters and taken it on a journey through this fantasy world of black and white drawings. Steps appear where they once weren’t, cool camera angles are used to show the horizon moving and there are some really cool effective yet still simple effects used when the weather changes to rain, and lightning, back to sunny!

I think James Jarvis is a great illustrator to keep in mind when I’m working on my final major project because he has covered all of the areas I want to in the future, and successfully. Even the simple idea that he’s made his work transform from 2D to 3D to moving image gives me the motivation to experiment more. First though, I need to create some characters to work with, and use my developing visual language to add a sense of identity to my work.