Ben Javens

I've only just seen Ben Javen's work recently but i already find his style very interesting. It is, in a way, the kind of look i was trying to go for with my book cover design i finished last week. He uses simple textured shapes to produce these aesthetically pleasing visuals, which also have a lot of character about them. A factor i also noticed about his pieces, shown underneath, is his attention to colour, which brings all the elements in the work together. This is done by only selecting the smallest amount of colours, and this gives his work more professionalism.

I have included images 3 and 4 in this post to give myself an example of how Ben turns a piece of work that he's already made into an edited version that can be used for commercial use. With just a few alterations, a simple picture has produced a really good advert. This is something i need to start considering for when we begin editorial work in the future.

Things I Have Learned.

What Motivates Me: Fun

I believe that everything a person does in their short life should incorporate as much fun as possible in order to get the best out of what they do. For example, I used to be very good at Maths in school, and was expected to carry this on later education, but I knew that if I ended up in a Maths-related job, I'd be hating my life. Now I always make sure I do something I enjoy everyday, and doing creative work accompanies this.

Things I Have Learned

It's OK to work with a free spirit: I always seem to be really worried about how my work will turn out or compare to other peoples, or what my style might be like. But increasingly over the second year, i'm coming to understand that these aren't the points I should be focussing on. These worries are shown in my work through how restrained it is, and I think that if i do a project in the future without any thought on the outcome, and just do what i like, maybe my work will express my personality a little more.

A good plan to begin with helps in the long run: Along with this, good research has helped me produce more rounded work. It's a no-brainer really but something i regularly ignore. I like to grab an idea and run with it, but now if i create lots of fast ideas I will be able to explore more and have a more confident finishing piece.

James an d the Giant Peach Movie Stills

I just thought i should include a little bit of research on my blog to show where some of my idea's are coming from in regards to the character development and the actual scene i will be depicting on the book cover. The characters in the film best show what the sort of look i want to go for, because they have been humanised by accessories such as hats, glasses and bags, and i think this will help the audience relate to them better. Also, the scene i want to show is when the peach is in the air, pulled along by the seagulls. In the story, there is a part where the centipede gets a little excited and falls off the peach, and Miss Spider and James go after him. This is the reason i have brought theese characters to the foreground of the front cover.

Ben Heine

I recently found this Artist while browsing the internet and was fascinated by these cool drawing/ photography pieces. Ben Heine has created loads of these, here is just a small selection of what he has to offer. I really like the fact that what he draws is always different, maybe depending on his mood that day, maybe down to careful planning (i hope it's the former). Sometimes, the drawing could be of what might be there, if it was stationary, like the tram line. Other times he uses iconic figures to create humour (like the Mario picture on the bottom) and even injects a little mystery into his work by creating spaces that wouldn't normally be there (top picture).

Graffiti Fun

I found this series of images on my less professional blog, but thought it would be cool to shear on here. I like it, although i find it hard to explain why. The artist almost knows that the text will be painted over before it even happens, and makes more of a mockery of the situation every time this happens. It's almost as if the question isn't really about the shade of grey the type is but the shade of grey society. That's what i get form it anyway.

David Hughes

Today in Illustration we had a talk/ lecture from design company Chase, initially intended for the third years but second years were welcome. I thought it might help me out with any professional thoughts i might start to have, so tagged along. The Art Directors gave some really good advice, but also showed work from some Illustrators that they've worked with in the past before.

One particular Illustrator that caught my eye was David Hughes, who has had numerous clients in Editorial including The Guardian and The New Yorker (the images below are all pieces for these two clients). The reason i want to share his work on here as well though is connected to realisations i've been having of my own work lately. David's work has a lot of the instinctive style that i need to include, matched with a solid use of colour, composition and characters with lots of... character!

When i saw his work for the first time on the screen it helped show me that it is ok to be more experimental and end up with work that still has a playful look to it yet till has a finished, professional element. I have doubts that i will ever end up drawing my figures the way he does but even so, just looking at other elements of his work has inspired me more than most work i've been looking at lately.

James and the Giant Peach: Final Outcome

Here is my finished book cover design for the Puffin Awards, based on James and the Giant Peach's 50th birthday celebration. I had quite a lot of fun experimenting with mixing the use of traditional printing with elements on photoshop with this project, and i feel like i got a lot more stuck in than i usually do. However, there are definitely pro's and con's to consider when looking at it, which has been highlighted with other peoples responses to it.

Pro's:

• Good type
• I think i did the layout of a book cover justice
• Using a black background isn't the obvious choice but brings the work together, and is a successful background
• Good use of texture.

Con's:

• Focus on making the characters look decent-- especially faces
• Think about use of colour more, no need to saturate the image so much
• I wish i'd spent more time on a better type for the blurb.

Brian Dettmer

I found Brian Dettmer in issue 10 of Artbox magazine a few months ago and was blown away by his work. I don't think there's anybody out there that can't be blown away though. He is a conceptual artist from Chicago who spends his time delicately cutting into media that has already been published (mostly books in the traditional sense) to create stunning visuals. He seals the book by it's edges so all the pages are locked in, then using intricate tools slowly carves the pages back out, one page at a time. It has been said that his work is a statement on the vulnerability of the static media forms of that past, saying that knowledge and information is constantly in change making these old forms of information less powerful tools of the present.

I really like this work above because one can appreciate the time and effort that went into creating the pieces, and they are visually mesmerising. But also i like the fact that it does sort of manifest part if Dettmers personality. In the interview in Artbox magazine he explaind how he comes up with the finished result through process of elimination:

"Whenever i'm worknig on a book, i know i can potentially miss several images that could have been great. I don't worry that i'll miss a beautiful image because there will always be more and there is onlya certain amount control i can have over a book that already exists. I try to go to one page, or remove one layer at a time so that i can use the most interesting image of text in a piece. Sometimes i fragment of an image below something i have already carved around and i want to use the whole image. So i go will go back and remove the piece i previously thought i would originally keep."

I like this type of planning where he follows a strict set of rules with his books yet the process will lead him to a different outcome every time, depending on mood, day, current issues, type of book etc. It's like wanting to create a piece of artwork but letting the results come out for themselves, rather than forcefully.

Las Meninas: Final Outcomes

This post is so late in the making! Here are the three final versions from the Las Meninas summer project, where we each produced an image based on a sculpture called Ghost (see previous Las Meninas posts). Generally i think all three of them turned out really well, and i was suprised to see that although we'd all included each others elements in our new versions the end results have turned out so varied!

This first final outcome bagan as Katies piece with the sketch of a figure. Paul then worked on it by adding some really cool-looking characters that appear to be part of her self-conscious, as they all appear to be surrounding her brain. When i got the piece i was confused as to what i could possibly add to the pice but ultimately thought that there wasn't a strong enough relationshipbetween the two. So i played aroung with my limited skills on photoshop and changed the saturation and hue to create a cold blue effect. This, i thought, brought the characters relationship with the figure together. I also added a lens flare to create a more realistic look on the overall picture.

The second picure was started by Paul as a beautifulgirl with half of her face escaping out into a butterfly. I continued the piece by adding the flowers from my original piece and making a montage of them, desaturating the colour and producing a background, then adding a little green colour to spice it up. Then Katiemade the picture more natural by using watercolour, and only keeping some of the flowers. She then used more of the flowers in an isolated position to represent the lonliness of the girl.

And finally here is the final outcome of my original picture. Istarted with a bright and colourful photo/ mirror frame in the style of what i thought the girl might make herself. Then Katie used her original picture of the girl and stuck her in the middle of the frame. She also added a few line drawings to compliment the colours. Finally Paul used my colour scheme to add a border, bird and some typography, which really makes the piece look finished.

Card Designs

For project one of our first brief of the year we had to create a "thing", an object that we could design and actually put into production. We had to come up with the concept, design and final excecution, meaning the the final result was to look professional. As part of my research i found this website full of interesting card designs, and these two in particular caught my eye so tohught i'd share them on here.

Dot. The world's smallest stop-motion animation character shot on a Noki...

Here's the stop motion video i saw not too long ago that was probably the main source of inspiration for my narrative project. I was amazed at the amazinglysmall scope and how it affected the overall look of the piece, but that was obviously something i couldn't respond to in less than three weeks. So i used the idea of the character staying pretty much in the centre of the picture and the background reeling continuously, keeping the narrative at a consistant pace.

This cool animation is actually a viral video ste out by Nokia, advertising (as you can see at the end of the video) on it's new device, the Nokia N8 using Cellscope technology that you can get on the phone. The actual animation was created by Sumo Science.

Chris Bachalo

Chris Bachalo is a very popular comic book artist from Cananda. I know of him because i essentially grew up with his artwork, i collected X-men comics since i was about ten, so throughout the 1990's there were a lot of stories where he'd feature as the penciller. He has an extremely distinct style compared to other pencillers i grew up looking at, where he uses angular shaped to draw his characters.I like him because whilst other artists sometimes go for the most realistic look possible, Bachalo goes for a unique cartoony look which does a good job of showing atmosphere and emotion on characters faces. He accentuates the male heroes muscles to make them look more powerful, and focusses on making the heroines look slimmer and more agile. Most of the pictures shown here are from a selection of x-men comics, except picture two which is another unrelated comic.

A point to make is also that he's only the penciller, so always works hand in hand with a writer, editor and inker for story and colours. This combination makes up the feel of the comic. Aside form pencilling for comics he has been involved in other projects in magazines and has had guest appearances on TV shows such as Pictionary. I decided to include this in my blog because of project two of the first brief of the year.