Through The Looking Glass (A2 Unit 2)

For the second unit of my Graphic Design A2 course the topic was about books and I picked "Through The Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll who also created "Alice In Wonderland" and another sequel "What Alice Found There". The goal was to end up with a set of redesigned playing cards. So I decided to move in a different direction instead basing Alice in ancient Japan and not nineteenth century England. Originally Alice found her way into a mirror in "Through The Looking Glass" but in my version she is the daughter of a Inn owner and is dragged into an onsen (hot springs) by an evil twin. Landing her into an entirely different traditional Japanese fantasy land filled with demonic characters from Kabuki plays and old legends. 

The story of this project is actually highly inspired by Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirted Away" where the main character in that story lands into a strange world herself and is in the search to save her parents by working at a bath house. My story is somewhat similar but not quite the same. 

This was the back cover art for one of the playing cards I would be creating. A scene showing Alice riding into the night on the Cheshire cat in the form of a dragon. I decided to keep the Rabbit the same and the hatter although he is dressed in traditional garments. But the Tweedle twins were a cross between Humpty-Dumpty and Sumo wrestlers. It is all fantasy afterall.

A lot of time went into this piece, I found it took me almost three hours just using the tablet alone. However I am very pleased with this.

Personal Work (SAI + Photoshop CS3) Digital Art

For my personal work I really enjoy doing a fair amount of work on the computer using the program SAI which is a lightweight raster graphics editor and painting software. I like it mostly for the brushes, it's easy to use and brilliant for using with my tablet.

A lot of my work is probably mostly inspired by Japanese cartoons (Anime) and comic books (Manga) but also artists such as Mark Ryden with his unusual dolly works and also Soey Milk who is a freelance Illustrator/Artist. I find their use of large eyes, female anatomy and painting techniques impressive. But I prefer to mostly paint digitally opposed to using paint. 

I enjoy testing and trying out different brushes from "Airbrush" to "Watercolour" since the different outcomes are exciting and it gives me a new challenge, also where and how I need to improve as an artist.

Elderly People/Fine Art (A2 Unit 1)

This was a project I did in my second year at Xaverian College in Fine Art. The topic was based on "Elderly People" so I decided to look up a fair few artists who had work featuring older people. I began with research pages, examples of their work and a brief about each Artist. 

Throughout my sketchbook I used resources such as my grandparents using their hands to sketch from. Then I began trying out hands being my main prospect on different materials. I tried charcoal on news paper, painting on rougher surfaces then drawing with ink. However I used ink much more towards the end of this project. I liked the way I could make fine strings, almost remind myself of cobwebs. I enjoyed being incredibly bold with this piece, I found the outcome rather haunting.

My final piece was a series of hands drawn in ink on mounted news paper and black paint. Age is something we will all and we are currently enduring through life. But I think I captured the true horror of it. I find this final outcome quite atrocious but attractive at the same time. Age is neither ugly nor beautiful. It's both.

Animal Awareness Campaign / Graphic Design (A2 Unit 1)

During my time at Xaverian college in my second year the first project I chose to do was based on Animal awareness and creating a campaign to help prevent cruelty/neglect. However I decided to aim mine towards children as my main audience helping them understand how to take care of animals in small comic strips, telling them what they should do when coming across a stray or how to look cope when a pet runs away. So as an animal lover myself and a huge fan of creating adorable characters I absolutely enjoyed this project. 

The way I usually work is very spacious and scattered as I like to show off my ideas in sketches and little doodles, I feel extremely comfortable working this way and I am always happy with the outcome. Most of the time I tend to use pencil and then fine liners before moving on to anything else.

These were all on sheets of A3 in my portfolio folder. Since it was for animal awareness I came up with a variety of different names, once I was satisfied with the chosen name I then began developing the type of title I wanted to use for this project.

 After the title I then sketched out many different types of logos, from paws, bandages and hearts. Until I again found the logo I liked best.

 Simply because this project was aimed towards a much younger audience I had to be certain it would be something that would catch their eye. I am a big fan of Japanese cartoons and there is a certain style called "Chibi" which means "small person" or "small child". It is a style where limbs and bodies are usually smaller while the heads remind large with cute features.

So for each character who were all children themselves I created them animal costumes representing not only their favourite animal which children usually tend to have but animals that would turn up in each of the comics I created and how they should deal with the animal's situation.

All of them had names from "Franky Fox", "Bella Bear", "Bobby Bunny", "Daisy Dog", "Molly Mouse" and  "Cody Cat". I did this because it would help children to warm up to the characters much more and become familiar with them.

This was merely just an introduction into the series of comics. All the characters were creating an animal campaign themselves. I did the sketching first, then outlined with finer liner before scanning and moving this image on to Photoshop CS5 so I could begin colouring with my tablet.

I created a series of sticker designs before colouring them again with my tablet.