English Infographics

Phew, this blog post has been a long time coming! A few months ago, I worked (alongside other members of the groovy Splinter team) on a rather challenging project. We were to create a batch of infographics for the BBC Bitesize GCSE English webpages. It was pretty interesting to work on, but pretty tough too as we had to work to a very specific style guide provided to us by the BBC (this detailed the size images could be, colour palettes, etc). Needless to say, this project was a massive learning curve for me - in more ways than one!

Here is one example of an infographic I made to accompany a webpage on 'Frankenstein'. I was to depict Victor Frankenstein digging up body parts in a moonlit graveyard, which he was to use in his gory experiments back in the laboratory! The following are several versions of the one image - showing just how much things can change whilst going through the amendment stages.

As you can see, the last image is rather different from the first! Amendments were made to the colours, costume, image size, etc! It was interesting to see the image morph over time - I think as the illustrator sometimes you can't see past your original piece, so I like receiving feedback/suggestions from others that I wouldn't have thought of on my own.

I also worked on some pieces for 'Jekyll and Hyde':

And a little shot of a work in progress:

I enjoyed making an evil face in this particular style! (Plus I really like books set in the 1800s, the fashion back then was just oh so suave)!

And here are a few others that I worked on - with a lot of help from my colleagues!


So there we go, theres a glimpse at what was occupying me in work over crimbo and new year! I think in my next blog post I'll be having a waffle about Quentin Blake and his book 'Beyond the Page', woo! Time for a drink!

Making Great Illustration book

Hey ho! I've gotten round to reading a couple of books bought for me last Christmas, so lets start off with this bad boy! 'Making Great Illustration' by Derek Brazell & Jo Davies.


Making Great Illustration looks at a large scope of illustrators working in their respective fields. Fields discussed within this book range from editorial & typographical illustration to children's publishing & graphic literature, as well as many others. I discovered a lot of illustrators in this book - some I liked, some I wasn't so keen on (there weren't many of them)! I personally really enjoyed the work of illustrators Yuko Shimizu, Jeff Fisher, Oliver Kugler, and Kitty Crowther to name a few! The book also covers the more familiar names of Quentin Blake, Oliver Jeffers, David Downton and Catalina Estrada.



Each illustrator's segment is written in a blend of career descriptions mixed with some of the illustrator's own words. I personally found the writing to be a bit flowery in places - what I mean is that there were some parts in which overly complicated words were used which made some paragraphs sound pretentious - which I found to be alienating in places. I'm a down-to-earth girl, I like my writing to make sense and not be peppered with over the top phrases that I barely grasp the meaning of. Although I should say that most of the writing in this book is nicely done - theres just a few moments in which I scratched my noggin (so maybe this is just pointing out the gaps in my vocabulary)! :S
Anyhoos, each illustrator is favoured with lovely large images of their work and we even get a glimpse of their studios!



All in all, a good book! It allowed a glimpse into the lives of known and unknown illustrators, how they work, and how they themselves tackle client briefs! I was pleasantly surprised by some illustrators whom I knew little about, finding that I really liked their work ethics and therefore enjoyed their work! So I would recommend this book, but if you're a bit of a yokel like me, you might need a dictionary handy in a few places!

Nurses through the ages

I made a flyer/leaflet a few weeks ago, looking at nurses through the ages. My design for the leaflet was unfortunately reconsidered at the last minute, and the company went for a photographic approach instead. But I quite enjoyed drawing the characters for this mini project, and researching all the different uniforms, so here we go ...!


I would have loved to have drawn nurses from even further back in time (or from different countries), but alas, it wasn't applicable for this leaflet!

Here were my initial ideas for the design of this leaflet...


My favourite idea was the busiest one with all sorts of characters and objects appearing in the centre! I always prefer the more ambitious ideas I think of - and considering the turnaround that was required on this project; it was probably a good thing the company went for one of the more simpler ideas! Phew!

Thank you letters

A short while ago I was excited to be working on a set of illustrations for the LCH's 2013 Annual Report; unfortunately a decision was made to go with a different look for this years report. So I thought what should I do with all these illustrations I worked on? Why yap about them on the Nafftastic blog of course!

Originally, the Annual Report had the theme of a Thank You letter, and my illustrations were to sit alongside this theme. As you can see, these illustrations are really heavily influenced by Janet Ahlberg. Janet Ahlberg had a lovely, innocent style which she used to convey equally innocent and sweet characters. I particularly love The Jolly Christmas Postman, I used to love opening up all the letters when I was a kid, my favourite was Little Red Riding Hood's letter to the Wolf - I think because it was so colourful!


I experimented for a while with doing hand drawn illustrations and then recreating the same illustrations in vector, trying to see which looked more effective. Whilst I love watercolour paint and the texture/quality that can be achieved, I was leaning more towards vector illustration just due to the ease this would mean when designing the report - being able to resize without losing any quality is a pretty handy thing!
So heres a few examples of hand drawn vs vector!



(In this last one I attempted to draw the line work in Illustrator and add textures scavenged from Google to recreate the watercolour effect).

It was also suggested that I look into drawing some sequential imagery such as a flying paper plane, or a teddy bear using crutches - as it was planned to have a little flipbook element on the corners of the pages of the report.
First I just looked at how a bear could walk...



Walking Teddy from Nafftastic on Vimeo.

I then tried a more polished version of the bear using crutches.



Bear on some crutches from Nafftastic on Vimeo.
(I really enjoyed making these - I haven't animated anything in while so it was good fun)!

Finally, I mocked up some possible front covers for the report. These were a pleasure to think up as well; I was given the freedom to go as busy as I liked - I love illustrations with lots of things going on!


So there we go! I'm disappointed not to be working on this project any more, but despite this I really enjoyed the development stages and being able to tinker with some animation again.

Lunchtime

Just something stupid I drew after seeing several strange incidents during my lunch one time. Apologies for the very poor scan quality.