Nose Picker

Just a pic I had left over after all my re-design of my website/blog and Twitter and such! Now aren't you thankful for the Claire stuffing her face with green and pink eggs/ice cream at the top of this blog? You never know, it might appear in my print portfolio!

Noodoll x Gemma Correll collaboration

Again, another quick post just to show a little something something I did for a wee competition over at the Noodoll Blog.
We were given a bunch of cooly bookmarks that the illustrator Gemma Correll designed for the Noodoll store.

And we were given our wicked way with them! So this is what I came up with as a final piece:

I wanted to do something with quotes from books and typography, so I came up with this! I wanted to make an image to go with each bookmark but unfortunately I just didn't have the time to do that before the competition deadline; but I'm still planning to finish them off as I really enjoy pushing myself to mess about with type and such! So watch this space!

Here is a couple of drafty pieces I've sketched out, ready to put into Illustrator!

If you want to take a look at the other entries for this competition you can check them out over at Noodoll Blog. Its a 5-parter blog post so make sure to take a gander at them all! (My favourite is Sophie Cunningham's piece called 'The Great Vince the Strong Man'!)

Noodoll has a lot of cool stationary, gifts, and prints for sale too, so you should check out their shop and start some early Crimbo shopping! What?! Don't you look at me that way! Crimbo is a comin', whether you like it or not!

Noodoll Shop

Pixellated Peeps!

Heeey, just a quick post to show you some pixel pics I made in work the other day! They're the pixel counterparts of my work mates at Splinter! Can you guess which one is me?

There were already some existing pixel people to work from (created by Mr Jon Raffe), so I just needed to customise them - they were a lot of fun to do and I would definitely like to explore ze way of the pixel more in the future!

Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show 2012 - Part 2

Aaaaannnd we're back with the Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show!

After salivating over the various illustrations, we headed on over to the other side of the building to check out Graphics and Animation.

I've got to say the building was really cool! Large, spacious and but still using the traditional building structure.
(I generally feel a bit sad when thinking about Liverpool Academy of Art & Design (aka. John Moores University) building, as we moved into a brand spanking new building in my final year. It is very modern, spacious and impressive; but personally I missed the nice old-fashioned aspects of our previous building on Hope Street - it felt like there was more history in it! I'm sure as the LCAD gets more use it will achieve a similar sort of feel to it as well though! Plus I'm just like an old-fashioned stuff cause I'm set in my ways!)

Graphics

The Graphics exhibition was within an semi-enclosed area with bits and pieces from the Fashion course surrounding it. I felt there wasn't as much work in the Graphics exhibition - as in there didn't seem to be many students doing it; but I suppose when you have Illustration and Animation as separate courses, the students spread out a bit more (in comparison my course covered all of these different subject areas, hence a lot more students!).

I noticed there was lots of infographics going on in the exhibition, which I like! (It does appear to be quite trendy at the moment, don't it? One that I particularly liked, due to its delicacy and complexity was by Sofia Noble.

To check out more of Sofia's work you can go to her website here: Sofia Noble's Website

I think Markos Zouridakis' work was next to the Ms Noble's - and I quite enjoyed his work too (even if I felt too stupid to fully understand it all!)

I liked his traditional style with his use of slight decorative elements; as well as the limited colour palette. Markos' diagrams reminded me slightly of the blueprints you would see in some Tom & Jerry cartoons!
You can view Markos' portfolio here: Markos Zouridakis' Portfolio

I enjoyed Alice Lafford's identity design for a place called 'Mono' - a bar/cafe/vegan restaurant/vinyl store/gallery/music venue/mini brewery nestled in the city of Glasgow.

And this piece by Katelynne Kirk made me chuckle (I know a lot of people in my work who would like this!)

Katelynne's website can be found here: Katelynne's Website

I really liked this modern approach to an identity/packaging design for Long Stem Whiskey by Verity Davis. Verity's Website

And Anne Helene Vestrum's pixellated computer software logos looked awesome!

Animation

We then moseyed on upstairs to behold the Animation exhibition, were we saw a wide array of different stories and styles.

Each animator had their own computer all set up with their work playing. The first animation I watched was called 'All That Glisters' by Claire Lamond.



I found the rough style of the stop-motion animation really added to the story and subject matter - I loved the bright colours of the glitter standing out against the generally neutral palette. A very touching story, which really spoke out to me due to my own experiences.
You can find Claire Lamond's website here: Claire Lamond's Website

A piece of beautiful animation I watched was by Vitali Sichinava, it was a really unique style that I've rarely seen done before! Unfortunately I can't find a trace of this animation on the internet bar one image, and Mr Vitali doesn't appear to have a website!

The animation is called 'Tea Party', Vitali describes his animation as a "story about tea, love, life and death. It is mainly influenced by the work of great artists like Yuri Norstein, Francheska Yarbusova, Valeriy Ugarov, Fedor Chitruk and R.Ingpen"

An amazingly polished and professional-looking piece of animation was 'I am Tom Moody' by Ainslie Henderson. (There isn't a full version of the film available on the internet as of yet, but I have found this awesome Making Of video which allows you a deeper insight into the short film, and how accomplished it really is!)



You can see more of the works in progress of Ainslie's animation at his tumblr: Ainslie's tumblr
(Watching that Making Of video really makes me miss animation man…waaah I wish I got to do an animation in work!)

As well as the computers, the students had a small room in which all of their work was shown on a large screen with seating, and another space featuring portfolios, storyboards, models etc! I looked through a little peephole to see a scene from Claire Lamond's work!

I would say it would have been nice for the animation students to have a larger space to display all the little snippets of their development work as well as their final product! (But I know very well when you're poring over an animation that how your work is going to be displayed is the last thing on your mind!)

And finally here is a couple of pics of the College of Art's newspaper detailing all of the work featured in the show.

So there we go! Thats all I saw at the Edinburgh's degree show!
It was pretty darn awesome. I loved it. I will definitely be tootling up to Edinburgh again next year to check out the show - and ALL of the show this time! I've only shoved photos in your face of three subject areas, there were so many others to explore I think I could have spent days in there - and I think I will be next time!

You can check out ALL of the students featured in the degree show at their very own website: ECA 2012 Degree Show

Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show 2012 - Part One

This post is very very very much overdue, but here it is! Some waffle about the Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show that I visited about a month ago now (at the start of my chicken pox attack!) I really enjoyed the show - there were so many different things to see, I wish I could have spent the whole day at the college (which is a very nice building by the by!)

We were greeted by students from the college who gave us a nicely designed map to help navigate our way round the building.

BA(Hons) in Illustration

Our first stop was the Illustration course's exhibition, and I was really impressed by it all!
Each student had their own area to personalise and feature their work on (similar to how my Foundation year exhibition) - which I thought was very effective, as every student gets an equal amount of space with their portfolio alongside it. I always feel a bit short changed when looking back at my own degree show, as my university didn't implement such a technique, and as all of my work was on screen I got very little wall space and two pieces of my work were featured on a screen in the room and then my portfolio was put along with everybody else's - which I think makes it hard for viewers to find a particular person's portfolio and such! ANYWAY, enough of my rambling about days gone by!

I particularly liked one student's take on personalising their own space!

I thought it looked lovely, the way Jade Price presented all her bits of work looked very sweet and quaint! (You can check out Jade's website here: www.jadedraws.com/)

All of the student's had a selection of work out on display, as well as professionally bound books/sketchbooks of any development or extra work.
The Illustration course also had a shop with a large selection of the students work available as prints, greetings cards, canvas bags etc - I thought it was a really good way of funding the university and also gives the students experience of producing their own wares!

(I would have loved to have bought the print of this piece of work but I succumbed to something else I stumbled to a tote bag featuring Gary McKean's amazing painting style - which you will see a little later on in this post!)


Masters

We then went across the hall to look at the MA in Illustration's display of work - and once again I was blown away by the quality of the work in the show. Pictures speak more so than my old jibba jabba, so here you go….

There were two illustrator's works I especially enjoyed! Kate McLelland being one of them! I was enchanted by her beautifully simple children's illustration as well as her typography work - these photos of the word 'Flourish' made me drool very much so!

If you would like to see more of this lady's work, you can find it here: katemclelland.co.uk/

And the other illustrator's work which made me chuckle was Gary MacKean's rough and ready painty style. I really responded to his sporadic splattery style - especially as it incorporates the more traditional medium of acrylic paints - which is something that you don't see as often in illustration work these days (I feel anyways).

If you would to see more of gary's work you can view it here: garymackean.com

AND I've just remembered two more people's works I really enjoyed as well! One goes by the name of Laura Manson, who crafted these lovely nautical themed pop up cards - which looked very polished and (me and my boyfriend both agreed) should have been on sale in a gift shop - for we would have happily bought them!

Laura's website is still under construction, but when its completed you can check out all of her awesome work here: www.lauramanson.com

And the next illustrator calls herself Shorty Lee. Shorty Lee created a magical little wonderland with her space! The theme of her exhibition space centred around a children's book she had made using a colourful, playful style entitled 'The Magic Sheep'.

If you would like to see more of Shorty Lee's work you can gander at it here: Shorty Lee's Website
And she also has a blog, which you can find here: Shorty Lee's Blog

And then heres a bunch of other beautiful work that caught my eye, but I was so snap happy that I didn't get a chance to catch the illustrator's names! (I'm really sorry to not be able to name these illustrators! My apologies!)

(Note: Some of these extra ones may be the works of people I've already mentioned, but my brainium is scrambled as its been such a long time since I visited the show that I didn't want to wrongly credit a piece of work to someone!)

I really really really really really liked the illustrators exhibition - I think they all made great use of the space they were given and used a variety of ways to showcase their abilities to the viewer. And the amount of items available in the shop was tremendous! I personally wish my degree show could have been along similar lines - and I could have been responsible for my own space rather than having our work and portfolios dotted separately from each other; making it difficult for someone to locate the right person's work.

Righto. I think that is certainly enough photo action for one blog sitting! I'm going to make this a two parter blog post. In my next post I'll show you some of the piccy wics I got of the Graphic Design and Animation exhibitions!
Phew, I don't know about you but I need a jolly good sit down after all that waffle!