3rd Year Project: Editorial Illustration

Not posted about my uni work in a while so I thought I'd share my current project..


At the moment I'm working on my negotiated project, exploring editorial illustration. For this project I chose to look at three issue based articles that I feel strongly about; environmental issues, optimistic art, and consumerism.

At this stage, I have chosen three previously published articles from The Guardian which I am working on illustrations for:

* The first is an article about the BP oil spill in the gulf of Mexico, and it's damage to surrounding wildlife: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jun/13/bp-spill-animals-cruelty-gulf

* The second is an article about the benefits of using art therapy in schools: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2007/nov/13/schools.uk3

* The third is an article about the recent UK riots and questions the psychology behind the looting: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/09/uk-riots-psychology-of-looting


My main aim in this project is to show that I can apply my own visual style to editorial context. I want the final outcomes to have the same style even though they are written in very different tones of voice. This will be done through choice of media.

Anyway, I am currently developing my idea for the environmental article...

The article talks about the effects the BP oil spill had on wildlife, and the main point is to tell people how they can help make a stand against the cruelty by changing attitudes as consumers. One of the ways recommended by the U.N. was to "go vegan for a month"

So this is the initial idea I had for "go vegan" and some of the development:

The initial idea is a plate of fish and chips..the fish is dead and oil-drenched..and there is a bottle of "BP Sauce" on the side..

I'm really happy with this idea as it is quite humorous as well as stating the point of the article. I'm thinking of experimenting more with collage for this project for a few reasons; I think collaging photographs of my 3D sculpture and using lots of found materials will look really good and perhaps a bit different in the context of a newspaper article, and also with editorial illustration, you are often required to produce an illustration in a very short amount of time and this is a really quick way of working.

The first part of my development has been the sauce bottle. I knew straight away this will have to b photoshopped and I am very confident in doing this. Here was my first attempt at transforming the product:

As you can see I've altered the logo and replaced the parliament image with a map of the gulf of mexico, however I'm going to experiment a bit more with using different images instead of this to see what works better. I'm also going to try using different colours instead of the blue background. This is just a rough experiment - for the final illustration I will most probably use my own photograph of the product as I'll be able to get the right angle in relation to the rest of the objects..

Anyway that's as far as I've got! More updates soon :)

Monster Bride - Happy Halloween!

Here's the puppet I've been working on for the past week! I'm a rubbish photographer, I need to learn some more skillz..

And here's a little illustration I made - Happy Halloween! :[

Style experimentation

Some experimentation with superimposing human eyes onto a puppet. This was inspired by the award winning animated short, Madame Tutli Putli.

I loved experimenting with this idea. It's a much better way of showing emotion through the puppet; I'm not the best at sculpting faces and by doing it this way I can give the puppet more emotion and character. I think it would be worthwhile to continue practising this process as it could work really well for the projects I'm working on at the moment..

Silent Screams - Revised

Silent Screams - 2011

A development of a previous illustration about hidden phobias. I much prefer this version; The hands and face are more subtle, and the whole thing seems to blend together better. I wanted it to be quite chilling and haunting and for it to seem as though the figure is lifting out of the textures, rather than it popping out at you instantly and looking "stuck on" over the top. I love layering a billion textures together to form a completely new one.

A Completed Puppet and Illustration

Here's an attempt at creating an illustration with my most recent puppet. I tried to really concentrate on lighting in this piece; I think it's a lot better than some of my previous illustrations but it could probably be a lot better!

New Puppet; Working Progress

 A new puppet! Headless, handless and footless at the moment...

Inside the body is a simple wire armature to allow the limbs to bend, in case I decide to try and animate the puppet.

I hope to add a lot more detail to the body, like a pocket watch to make it more interesting!

The body turned out to be a bit of an odd shape; from the side view it's a bit like Lurch from the Addams family! But I think it adds more character! :D

Also the shirt collar is really high so it's head is going to be really weird looking!!

 

I was originally going to make a new head for this puppet but I've decided to re-use one I already have...who was never given a body!

I think the expression works really well with the sort of personality I want the puppet to have.

Next steps: Attach the head and give him some hands an feet the poor sod..

I'm going to come up with some concept sketches for an illustration; I really want to create a small set to photograph him in made from old, found objects so will look into that.

After that I might try a bit of animation :)

Animation Experiment

Here is a quick animation experiment I did this afternoon using one of my own puppets! It's not the best, I'm not really an animator, just wanted to make my work come to life :) 

It was interesting to learn how different materials would need to be used in order to make a puppet for animation. This puppet was made of quite sturdy wire so was fairly difficult to move the way I wanted it to. Also I had to tie a piece of string to his head to help him walk as he is too top heavy and wouldn't stand alone!

I used iStopmotion to produce this, which I'm loving at the moment..it's so easy to use and great to make smoother animation as you can select the frame rate.