Print processes, stage two - artist research

Ben Aslett was one of the artists featured in the powerpoint presentation that we were shown at the start of stage two. At first i didn't really like his style because of it's simplicity, but now i can see that it is that feature which makes his work pop. Ben seems to work using a limited colour palette sometimes using only two colours. The simple vector shapes comes together to form cool little characters and i really like how he creates this noise around the edges to give off a really authentic printed look.   

I can see that Aslett likes to use the empty space to colour various parts of his image which is a technique that i can use on my work which would allow me to gain an additional colour. 

Aslett also uses the noise to give his characters life and i think that in the picture above he really utilizes the noise as it animates the guy screaming. 

Simple semi circles are used here to create a wave, i should try out simple shape making to see what i can generate using as little effort as possible. 

                                              Jack Teagle 

Jack Teagle was also featured in the powerpoint and i took a liking to him straight away. His characters   are simple yet detailed, the body and facial features are drawn in a simplistic way whilst the definition utilizes a lot of detail. 

I really like the different textures that Teagle creates in his images, his combination of curved and straight lines help to give the scene depth and body. Teagle seems to use a limited colour palette like Aslett though Teagle uses more shades of the same colour to seperate the characters.  

I really like this one, the simplicity of the images work really well especially when they are all collected together like this. Teagle has a big series of prints like these, a lot of them include famous iconic characters such as the red power ranger, skeletor, Darth vader and spiderman. Printing this way would be something to experiment with though i could imagine that it would be hard to line up. These simple little characters look soo cool and are really effective so i think this is the direction that i would like to take with the second stage of my project.
This picture also reminds me of the work that Ben Newman did for one of the Nobrow magazines. Newman did a print with a load of monsters all mashed up together using simple shapes that are very similar to the print above though Newman used a lot more colour layers in his print.  

I love the random chaos which is created here in this scene, again all of them are very simple but together they look great. I personally think that it is the unusual colour palette and the weird textures that really make Teagles work stand away from the background.

Ben Newman 

Ben Newman has a very similar style to Ben Aslett when it comes to his prints. They both use a very limited colour palette and they use simple block shapes which overlap to make a character. Newman also utilizes the noise around the image to give the picture a authentic look. 

Newman is known for his digital skills as well as his numerous collaborations with Nobrow. His graphic work is crude yet detailed and leaves nothing to the imagination. Newman really likes to experiment with the overlap of colours in his work and he likes to use the newly created colour to fill in the negative space as well as adding small details to his characters. I should look at what colours mix well together when they overlap, i could do this using photoshop and multiplying my layers. 

Newman uses a wide colour palette throughout his work and although most of his prints are outrageously coloured, some of them are really subtle like this one. 

This is one of Newmans more complex prints and it even has shading around the eyes which i think he generated using a colour overlap. I would really like to try and make my own characters in this style though i wouldn't be able to use as many colours because i will only have 1 screen.






This was the design that i mentioned near the start of the post. Newman has mashed up a load of monsters and weird creatures using this grid and a load of random shapes. I like how geometric it looks in it's early stages and you can really see how much effort he has put into each character. His blog contains all of the stages that he went through to get to the end result and it was pretty interesting to watch it come together. 




This is the final image and it looks amazing!
i can definitely do something like this and i think it would be good for me to work really loose as i normally pay soo much attention to the lines and the detail. I need to start thinking about what elements i can have in my image, mayeb i should make a grid for my character ideas and to see how they interact with each other. 

Summer poster submissions!!

my first choice 

                                                My second choice in a different colour

Make your Mark!

My original idea was to illustrate a Dali quote, i arranged them so that they look like they are growing up. the end illustration is a wizard of art which is obviously the highest rank any artist can achieve. the amount of detail that i put into this image would make it hard to stencil so i made a stenciled version below!.
i would obviously have to change some of the shapes if my image is picked for the wall but that is easily done.

Another idea for the make your mark scheme. this is a scholar like elf who is making his mark with the flag which was going to read PCA. 

Phils scene of the crime

This is a picture from the college toilets, i used bleach to make this burning effect, i found it quite humorous to see a toilet on fire, to make the really white parts i literally flooded that section with bleach.

Flames in the corridor, looks really effective here, maybe i could experiment with layering up the flame effects in photoshop. i think i would like to go with the arson attack idea for my final idea though i am not yet sure.

Just a random collage of a murder scene at the sinks in the 4.1 studio, i just used a pro marker to colour over the photo, the blood is really blatant and cartoon like but i think that i like it like this because despite it's cartoon appearance it still suggests gore and violence. 

This is a picture of the gallery in the art college, i really liked the open space and the white walls were almost asking to be ruined. the structure of this building sugests that it is strong and able to take a beating, thought destroying the piller could make the entire thing crumble. 

Drawing perspective image of a hall way, coloured with fineliner and water. 

This is a photoshop trace that i have done of the gallery, i have made it slightly cartoon like and i can now colour it. i earlier said that i liked the cartoon blood i had drawn for one of my images, i wanna keep up with this theme and use really bold and bright colours to illustrate this piece.

Here is my cartoonized image of the gallery, i have added my pigeons from the last project to make it look abandoned and they also fit in with the colour scheme. i have made the scene in a different location, i did this just to show that the inner structure of a building can be re-used into different scenes and landscapes. 

I experimented with odd angles and interesting objects for my crime scene, the phone hanging off of the  console could suggest that someone was trying to call for help but something got them.

Another photoshop trace - i didn't get around to finishing this one but i would have liked to colour it using the same technique as i used for the gallery, i would of also added some really obvious blood by the phone to suggest someone was clawing away at the phone before someone killed them.

Whilst i was doing all of this tracing i had the idea of using phil's room as a template for my crime scene, the desk and chair were good elements for the pieces structure and it would also be humorous to illustrate a crime scene that takes place in my lecturers office.

 I traced some of the key elements and then switched out his chair and macbook for a typewriter and an old victorian age chair, the many stages that this image went through are all in my physical folder. i coloured the image using pro markers, i then photocopied the image and coloured over it with charcoal  and then repeated the process. finally i tea stained some paper and used it as my background for the final image, i burnt the edges of my work to make it look authentic. The piece is mounted on a burnt bit of paper which is ironic because the image is showing an arson attack.

The image turned out really well and i am proud of what i have achieved, if i were to do this project again i would work more on the artist reference to extend my pool of ideas and i would focus a lot on how space is used to appropriately compliment the piece. I am happy with the way that this turned out and i really like the techniques that i had learned when creating this image.   

Stage 2 Visual communication

This is the article that i have chosen for my stage 2 Of the visual communication project. I used the archives in the city library to access some older crimes in hope that i would find a case that would be fun to illustrate. After routing around for about half an hour i came across this bad boy From the Western Morning News (1970). A couple a thieves broke into Co-op and made off with over 1000 eggs which i thought was brilliant. 

I had ideas for this project straight away and was eager to start drawing out some plans for the project. 

Here i started to generate ideas For my robbing characters, the article did not actually tell me how many   robbers there are so at the moment i am not sure how many i am to do.

Refining ideas slightly, I had the idea of basing my characters on the robbers from home alone, one obviously being tall and the other being really short. 2-3 bandits is a good number for this project because with the end result only being A5 i won't want the image to be crowded by a load of characters. The long nosed character in this image is looking to be a keeper at the moment, he is tall and has bird like characteristics which links in to his egg stealing.

         This is one of my ideas for the short robber, his little face and hat reminded me of Steve Bell's work that he does on David Cameron so i thought i would research him. I picked up a couple of tips for facial features when researching this artist.

This is one of the images that i got from Steve Bells website. For a while now David Cameron has been portrayed by Bell as a condom which i think is hilarious. It is the features which make it apparent that it is Cameron and i really like the way his eyes seem to pop out of his face, i will definitely take some influence from this artist when drawing the faces of my characters.

My quick sketch of the 'wet bandits' from Home Alone

An artists representation of the 'wet bandits' ~
The short one is pudgy and is lacking hair where as the tall one is skinny and has a nice head of hair. It seems that the taller one is the more desirable character but the catch is that he is incredibly stupid. the short guy is the brains. I think the structure behind these bandits work and i can see it being used in a lot of cartoons today, one will always be short and will therefore be annoyed about being short thus leading to him always being angry. The other will always be tall and incredibly stupid, this one will always find a way to annoy the smaller partner in crime.

 I started doing location research for my image, the scene of the crime is not actually that far away from where i live which i thought would make it nice and easy for me to take loads of pictures. Turns out that i forgot about how old the article was and realized that the store is no longer there. As an alternative i went to another Co-op branch and started taking pictures. The above picture shows the side if the store which features two massive windows with food printed on them as well as a cash machine in the wall. I thought it might be funny if the store was advertising eggs on the side of the building and some robber just came along and fell in love with the abundance of eggs and just needed to steal them.

This is the very back of the store, i managed to catch the fire escape door so it was open thus allowing me to see inside. This could be good to use as a location because this is potentially where the robbers would have gone to get the eggs and they would have hauled them through a small space like this.

 Just drawing out the scene, i replaced the fire exit sign for an 'EGGS' sign to lure the robbers in. Bit of an awkward angle to work with and adding characters into the mix might make the final result too busy.

Here i have just illustrated the robber walking past the store and seeing the massive display for eggs, it is almost like he has walked past a large page 3 print from the Sun.
Like this idea, not sure yet though.





This is my first character sheet, i took the idea of the tall and stupid robber and started to refine how he should look. I decided to give him a hook like nose which resembles a birds beak which also happens to be a coincidence because he is stealing eggs. He will always look tired and a hunch back will make him look disfigured which is the opposite of how the tall robber from Home Alone is portrayed. I noticed that this character also looks like the birdman from the TV program 'Hey Arnold'.








This is the Birdman from 'Hey Arnold'                                                      

Using some of the sketches from my early plans and the influence picture i drew from Steve Bell i managed to pull together my second character design, this one is incredibly short and also has a very large nose, though his nose doesn't look that big because of his fat face. The other robber was too stupid to wear a mask so he used his hat as his mask which still kinda works for him though his nose is way to big so they had to cut a hole in his mask. This guy has the right idea, he wears a mask and a hat for full identity protection. The striped shirt that i have given this robber would suggest experience or maybe he is on the run and it just looking to increase his bounty?




Here i have made a colour pallete for the robbers, i have explored different skin colours, hat colours and even shirt colours, using this i can decide which will be the best combination to use. Next i will need to pair them up and start building my image, though i am yet to decide on a appropriate location.








Here is have started to make the egg piles for my image, i did this by drawing out a small sample pile and then photoshopping them into a pile. works well .





Just some random egg splat's that i want to have on the walls behind the characters, i could also have a couple on the floor to show that the piles are that big they are beginning to topple over.





This is an image which i used in my guess who task for Ben, it is some of Chris Riddell's aliens and i love them, i noticed that they are placed in a traditional police line up which i think would be a good idea to use on my robbers. i could have them holding up the little number cards and have their haul of eggs in the background. Riddell has influenced a lot of my pieces from various modules and i keep referring back to him because i love his technique and realistic colour palette.





This is my first mock up of the two characters together, i have added the same style lineup from Riddell's picture and even used the blue patterns in the background. I also added a mock up pile of eggs which i think turned out well. There are quite a few problems with this image, there needs to be more eggs in my opinion as i really need to stress how many they stole, the blue is very sky like and although it brings the elements away from the page it just doesn't look right. Maybe i could try this colouring technique but with another colour?

Now i have added more eggs, the orientation is slightly off but now i like the image a lot more just because the eggs fill up my canvas and gives the viewer something to look at. i made this massive pile by layering up the same pile, reversing and re-sizing the image until i got this. Though now i am not too keen on the idea of them being in the police station with their number cards.

These two versions now feature a wall which i think really helped to bring the characters away from the page.
I was talking to Mel and we read through the article and we noticed that it said that they presumably used a vehicle to get away with the eggs, Mel then said, wouldn't it be funny if this wall was outside the store and they had got caught before making off with the eggs, or for some reason they had forgotten the car.
I thought this was a really good idea and started looking for wall textures.

At this point i thought it would be good if a could create a third character and have his head popping out of the eggs just for the added touch of humor.

This is the head that i created, he is based on some of my original sketches and is an adaptation of the tall robber, further up in the blog there is a diagram which shows his development into this character. I have used Bell's imagery as influence when sculpting the facial features of this character.

This is the wall i eventually ended up using, i sampled it from 'Game design blog ' the texture was re- posted on someones game design blog because i couldn't find the original. This wall is perfect and it really makes my character stick out, i added a really rough floor, it is rough because most of it will be covered with eggs in the next couple of steps, the pictures i took of walls outside of co-op weren't that messy and this one just works perfectly. Since this character was originally designed to be holding a number card i thought i would edit it to now read 'Egg Count' so it is his little check list for the crime ahead.

Now i am starting to build my image, i have made use of my egg splats and placed them on the wall, this combined with my main character holding eggs in his hand could insinuate that they are also there to vandalize the scene after stealing from it.

Now i have coloured all of the eggs using an image of real eggs for my colour palette, i used three different shades to add depth to my image and also because not every egg is the same colour. Here i have also added the other two characters and positioned them appropriately. Next i need to add shadows, a dark backdrop and a spot light to show that they have been caught.

I had to mess around for ever to make this work, i took a load of tutorials online to figure out how to make an effective glowing light, this is the result. I believe the dark area layer was set to 'darker colour' and the light layer was set to 'linear light' which gave me this effect. I also used a curves FX on the wall to illuminate it accurately with the light being shone on it. just need to add shadows to the guys now.  

Shadows have now been added, though i need to go back and change the main characters shadow as it looks like he is wearing a dress.







This is the finished piece...
i am quite happy with how this turned out, my photoshop skills have come a long way since the first unit, i also believe that my characters accurately convey that they are robbers. When the eggs were white i had worried about them looking like rocks but now they have been coloured and the egg splats have been added i now have no need to worry.
Throughout this project i have used Chris Riddell as my main reference, but looking back on my characters, i can now see that their expressions reflect more of Steve bells work, especially the condom Cameron cartoons. 
if i were to do this piece again i would like to draw my own wall to see how that would have worked with my characters, though the wall being the only non- cartoon element worked quite well in this piece and made everything stand out. I could take some wall pictures and use them for my backgrounds next time so then i can say i have literally created everything in the piece. There was a pretty nice wall across the road from co-op but i found it in the really late stages of this project and didn't have time to revisit the piece with a new background because all of the effects were keyed in to this wall.

This was the wall that i found a couple of days ago, could have worked well, but i have saved it in my textures folder should i ever want to experiment with my final piece.