Animation!

Cureless Love Music Video for Dave and the Watchmen!

So much has happened since my last post, graduating from Falmouth and entering the free-lance world... but I thought I'd blog this first! Here is my first music video I made with animator Tim Wheatley at the weekend for Gerard and the Watchmen. It was a very tight 2 day deadline, so it had to be simple! Dave Gerard and his band's music is beautiful, so it was really great fun to work on.

We used quick and simple watercolour layers, photoshop and after effects to create it.

A Story Concept About Catching Sun-sparkles!

In between getting ready for New York and exhibitions, I decided to do some quick speculative artworks and character designs.

When the Sun goes down and you've fallen asleep, it's up to your 'dream-form' to get the sun's sparkles back together so it can rise the next day! And every animal, critter, and person has a job to do...

Lots of Exciting Happenings!...New York New York!

Since my last post I have been to New York with my course, exhibited with my 3rd year degree show... and packed up all my boxes from Falmouth and waved goodbye to University!

As part of our course, some time around May... we start phoning up lots of art directors in New York tying to set up some meetings. It was brilliant to get such a good response and we got to see people from publishers such as Macmillan, Little Brown Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and many more. It was very encouraging to hear their portfolio advice and it was inspiring to start our free-lance careers in such an exciting place. New York has such energy: it was catching!

Book Covers

   

I recently decided to do some young adult book covers. I enjoyed thinking more about design and typography. It gave me a good excuse to re-read some great stories.

Quotes and Sayings Book 2013

Every year Falmouth 3rd year Illustration students get to make a book for people to see. It's really exciting and I can't wait to see everyone's pages.

I've chosen a quote from one of my favourite poems, which is Tennyson's 'Maud.' It's so lyrical with heaps of atmosphere and swings of emotion; I picked, 'Come into the garden Maud, for the black bat night has flown.' It's a line which is full of hope, but it has a strangeness to it. I wanted to try and evoke the light which creeps in through an early morning mist, with Maud in an unusual wooded scene, the flowers awake around her.

My Christmas Characters

I wanted to quickly see if my charcoal characters would benefit from being transferred into a dry-point. I love the line you can get with dry-piont etching and I enjoyed drawing this simple Christmas card. I do not want to rule out this process in my work; this more designed and colourful effect is great for different illustration contexts and different audiences. I will have to experiment with different ideas in different processes and see which are more effective!

Christmas Story for Children!

Following on from my adult narrative work on Rebecca, I wanted to see if I could use charcoal in a playful scene. This is the result... After some characterisation and playing with concepts I decided to do a speculative artwork, showing Father Christmas giving the Lock Ness Monster a book of 101 disguises! In future I will see if simpler charcoal would be more effective for children.