Cars

During the Adobe Illustrator workshops, we learned how to use the pentool, and we were practicing on a picture of a car. I don't remember the make, but it doesn't really matter. I wanted to hone my linearting skill, and wanted cars to use as part of a traffic jam in my final resolution for the book of 100. These are some of the vehicles.

VW Beetle


Smart Car


Mini


Nissan Micra


A Land Rover


Ford Ka


An Estate car

I'm pleased with how they turned out, and feel like my pen tool skills are improving.

-HJ x

Commissions

For a friend of mine, I was asked to design some posters for their Women's Officer campaign for the student union of Swansea university. I was working through a middle man, and came up with some designs that I really liked. They didn't take too long, and these are what I came up with for them to choose from.


This one below is my favourite, and my friend really liked it too, and took it to the person in charge. And he really liked it too, but he wanted some changes made.

My friend hadn't known that they needed to be in black and white for the printing costs. And that because the university is in Swansea, Welsh needed to be on the poster too. So I waited for the translation to come through, and then added it on and sent it out again, only for it to be sent back again. Welsh sentences are longer than english, so obviously the text was smaller. But it was sent back because I'm not allowed to show preference for one language over the other. So this is what it looked like in the end.
God it's vile. But it's what they wanted, so whatever I guess.

I was then asked to design one that looked like a comic strip, using the name 'Kim Possible' for the candidate. I actually like how this one turned out in the end, it's purely black and white, which should appeal to their printing budget.

And there is a Welsh version too, so there they have it.

I should have pictures of these posters printed out at full size and up on the walls soon. I'm tempted to ask if they can print out just a couple of the colour versions, and get pictures of those, because I actually liked it better when it was in colour.

Another thing I was asked to do, recently, was design a logo for a hoodie for the English Students of Swansea University. They wanted it simple, and small, and this is what I came up with. I like it, the client liked it, and so it was an easy job.Unfortunately, I only had creative control over the front of the hoodie. The back still says 'English Students do it like prose', but I can't do anything about it. At least the front will look good. I should have pictures of that too soon.

-HJ x

Old work.

I just found a file full of pictures of my old work in the partition of my hard drive. I figured I'd share some with you. See the work that actually got me onto this course, hah.

This is a transcription of Wrath, of the Seven Deadly Sins series by Digital Painter Marta Dahlig. She is amazing, completely amazing and this is only a part of her original image. This was much bigger than it looks there, because somebody spilled oil all over it in between classes, right before my interview for LCAD. I had to hide a lot of it behind the mountboard, but you can still see some splotches of it. I was so amazingly ticked off.

Life Model - Terry.

I'll get back to you with the name of this designer, but this is my transcript of her work. I actually love working with watercolours.

This image was put up on the projector for all of us to do a transcript of, but the photographer was never named to us.

I used to do a lot of portraits and realism, especially as there was only Fine Art at my senior school, no other options. Portraiture is something that I really enjoy doing, and it's a shame that I don't really have enough time to do more of it.

I just thought that I would upload a few examples, and hope that I'll get the chance to do more of it sometime soon.

Kyo - Dir en grey
M.C.Escher - Drawing Hands

Chuck Close's Self Portrait.

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day fame.


I really wanna get back into all this.

-HJ x

Typography

During playing around with type for the latest brief, for which I am submitting to the Don't Panic poster competition. I'll have another blog post on this project at some point soon, but at the moment I' just focusing on type.

I never had a chance to work with typography before I came to LCAD, and honestly, I didn't know anything about it.

I was messing around with a Plato quote that I was using for the poster, just to see what kind of typefaces I could produce by playing around with brushes and lines.


The above two images were made using paint brushes in Illustrator. I really like how messy and scrappy they turned out, but they are still completely readable, unlike some of the results that I came out with.

This image below was clearly made using the dotted lines and scissor marks that we see on an image that needs cutting out. Because there were so many lines and corners in the actual type, it went a little crazy, but I think it looks good. It's still readable, thought interesting to look at.
The image below is my favourite. I accidently created it using one of those page divider deals on Illustrator, and it went crazy but I really like how it looks. I'm going to play around a lot more with type in future now that I realise just how I can make type far more interesting.


-HJ x

The Dark Crystal

Now, I don't know how many of you have seen The Dark Crystal, but it's very good. Very strange, but I enjoyed it a lot, and would recommend watching it. It's like, twisted Muppets, and it was done by the same guy. Though I'm not sure whether this or the muppets came first. Anyway.

It's kind of like Labyrinth, which was also done by Jim Henson, but Labyrinth freaked me out a lot as a kid. Also, I get Legend and Labyrinth mixed up quite a lot.

I found this book in my room, because the living room at home is being redecorated, so all of her books, and there are a lot, are being kept in my room. She has some awesome books, and got quite a few art books like this when she was younger, I love rifling through them.

This is the concept art book for The Dark Crystal, illustrated by Brian Froud. There are some truly beautiful illustrations in it. It was printed in 1982, so it's older than I am!



Some of the images are on tracing paper so they form more intricate designs with the images behind them. I think that it's a fantastic idea, really, laying images up like that, and both images look great alone as well as together. This Brian Froud character is a very talented man.




My feet in the last one, hah. Oops. Anyway, if you haven't seen this movie, I suggest you do, or try find the book somewhere to look at. Or just look up Brian Froud's work.

American election VOTE posters.

I found this treasure trove of voting posters for the US election. A design company called AIGA invited designers to take a part in their campaign of creating posters that would inspire and encourage people to vote. Because so many Americans just don't bother (not that it matters, most votes don't count. Only certain states' votes really count). There are hundreds of entries on the site, and I trawled through them all, picking out my favourites to post on here.

The above poster was created by Mary Meiners to highlight all of the excuses that people use as to why they didn't vote. It's very interesting to look at and aesthetically pleasing. All that jumbled up text just makes me want to lean in and work out what all of them say.


This poster was created by Zach Norman with the phrase 'Use your voice'.
Unfortunately, this one has been removed from the sight and so I can't tell you who the designer is. It's one of my favourites though.

This design was sent in by Scott Brucato with the phrase 'Thing about it'.

Emily Green designed this one to spread the message that 'we need a leader that understands all of our needs and that the environment is one of them.'

This has since been removed from the sight and I really can't remember who designed this, I love it though. Picking out the letters in a brighter colour to draw attention to them is a sure way to bring the eye in and grab attention.

This one was designed by Will Ecke, and I think that this is one of my favourites. It's very simple, and the way that the two animal representatives have been combined to create a heart is excellent and aesthetically pleasing.

The site where all of the other designs are is here.

-HJ x

Book of 100

This is the final resolution that was made for the book of 100 brief. I wanted a box that looked like a book, as you can see. I bound it like a book, and to be honest, I'm really pleased with how the box turned out. My first attempt at making a box didn't work at all, and I managed to superglue my work to the table, but it was soon rectified. My flatmate told me that I should just make these boxes and sell them. I think she wants one.


The wooden wheels on the side, which are actually wagon wheels for doll house vehicles or whatever, are the turning mechanism for the 'scroll' type book inside. I had to make the holes of the wheels a little wider by scraping the inside of a pair of scissors. Easier than I imagined it would be.

Anyway, I thought that the wood looked good against the green and cream coloured box, and seemed to fit in with the whole feel of 'green'. Green as in eco-friendly. Despite using wood not really being the most eco friendly thing to use. Aesthetically it works, however.


This is the inside of the box, and as you can see, this is the first version of the 'scroll' book I made. It was very long, my illustration took up about..25 A4 pages altogether, I believe. During a crit, the one on the day before the deadline in fact, A lot of people felt that it was far too long, and they didn't get what the cars had anything to do with anything. They got bored with turning it about halfway though, so I bought some Pro Plus and got cracking as soon as I got home. It was a long night.


And this is the second attempt at the scroll mechanism within the box. I changed it quite a lot, and made it much shorter. I didn't take anything out, I just shrank everything down so it covered about eight pages instead. Another thing I did, was I removed the car illustrations and put them in a seperate line, which I coloured red, which indicates several things. First, it imitates the red light which is keeping all the cars stationary and stuck in a traffic jam, and second, red is a colour that connotes the bad things in life.

Which is why the figure dancing around is coloured green, because the green is good and better for the environment, as well as the signal for go. This time, only the figures are on scrolls, because while they move from side to side, the car illustration can't physically move anymore, meaning it's stuck while the person has the freedom of movement. That was what I intended, at least.


This is the cover of the book. My original intention was to have the 'Green Person' aka, the walk signal, sprayed onto the front cover, but I chose against it. I used this question instead, because posing a question to the viewer automatically asks their opinion and makes them curious as to how to answer it. That is my way of getting people to look at this book. I was going to spray paint this onto the front cover, but I ran out of time and had to stick a piece of acetate on instead.


This is my workstation on the day of the deadline, hah. Caffeine, Sausage roll...what a way to start the day.


The turning mechanism was not as smooth as I would have hoped for, but I feel that it was the best that I could managed with my limited tools and limited experience with making such things. That, and actually spray painting the cover of the book, are the main things that I would change about this design had I had a little more time, but overall, I'm pleased with the result.

-HJ x

What is Line? UV.

More light experiments using UV!


My room all lit up in UV, how pretty.To be honest, being that I messed around with using light in the book project...I'm getting kind of bored with it. Sorry to say.

-HJ x