Christmas Is Awesome!

I like to post this in places around Christmas time;
It's my favourite Christmas song:



A slightly belated Merry Christmas to you all!
I hope it was awesome. Xx

Human Wrongs, Human Rights

A month or so back, I was doing a project on human rights.
We had to illustrate one of 8 selected articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
& I chose...

Article 18:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with oth- ers and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

So this was my response, a drawing.
But to be more accurate, an interactive drawing.

If you look in the mind you can choose a religion, choose a belief:


You can choose from Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism...


...Islam, Christianity & Judaism.



You can even chose from Atheism and Agnosticism.
Ok they're not actually defined as religions, but you know they kinda count.

This is part 2 of a 3 part project. Over the holiday I'll be working on part 3, and part 1 is in a state of redux, so I thought I may as well put part 2 up, as it's the only bit that's "finished."

Just a bit of detail:
I just can't seem to let a project die these days. I'm going to re-do this. You see the character in the portrait is a little too stylised for the theme. So soon you'll see the same thing here again, but looking a little more generic. In a good way I think. If I'm lucky, in that future post, you'll enjoy a diptych.

Fresh Kristmas Air

In-jokes for the win.

For all those I have alienated with this post,
I hope you've at the very least enjoyed these images.

Innova Libre

You know, I never mentioned, while I had my Hidden Histories project,
I had an additional film project to get on with:



I present to you Innova Libre, featuring my wonderful comrades
Lillian Squires & Agostino Carrea.

It's a short film I created for a brief called 'My Eye, My Vision'. It deals with my vision of where character ideas stem from, and how they choose to manifest in your mind:



Did the boy look familiar at all?
& don't worry, it's not meant to be serious.

Despite choosing to specialise in illustration,
I do still very much love moving image.
Experimenting with some simple yet effective shots throughout the filming process
reminded me of this

FFFFEEDBACK:

My tutors said it was a very ambitious projects, as I was directing, filming and getting actors together. I got a feeling one of them wasn't too much a fan of some snippets of acting, but they were impressed on a whole... I think.

According to my friends & peers, I've come up with something cool.
But personally, I feel I missed the mark with this one, with a bunch of tweaks, and a few re-shoots, this could have been something great.

Hey, it's my first live-action film. I think I've done ok.


Oh, see what I had to put up with filming this!:



Just a thought, is it worrying that the outtakes are longer than the actual film?...

*************

EDIT - The answer to that was yes, so years later for the sake of all our eyes and ears I took the videos down! No need to thank me!

The Rise of Angle Grinder Man

Finally, Here.

You're about to read my outcome for the first illustration project of the year.
The project was called Hidden Histories.
It had to be about something real. So I went with Angle Grinder Man.

This is the story of how it all began:

Yeaabedadai!
Done.

What do you think.
It's a little sad to think, that of all the time I've been at CSM, this is the 1st comic I have ever finished. To think one day I want to call myself a graphic novelist!
I've definitely got to do more, and soon - good thing I have a plan to force myself to,
which I'll reveal another day.

You know, where there's a rise, there tends to be a fall.
So if I were you I'd be asking, "Where's the fall of AGM?"

Good question.

I wrote a script to it, but only had to time to do one of the proposed 2 comics for the final piece.
Which was more than enough of an outcome.

But I'd love to put the script into images, as I personally prefer it to the rise. What you've read is basically a summary of how AGM came to be. The fall deals with AGM in a much more personal light, reflecting on his last ever real blog post, and his disappearance after that.

I intend to do it at some point, but then again, I intend to do a lot of things.

Angle Filler

I wanted to post these before I showed you all the final piece.





They're just pages from my sketchbook, part of my obsessing over
the lost avenger that is Angle-Grinder Man.

I've had to stop searching unfortunately, mainly because the project is now way past over,
and I currently have no time left.

But I might as well tell you, this is how close I got in the end;

I found one more contact number for AGM, not the one that's plastered over all his working sites - but one hidden on one of his defunct websites that resides in the depths of the internet.

I called it once - it rung - I got no answer.
I called it twice - and a man picked up!
He spoke in a gruff tone, as if just woken up.
As he muttered incomprehensible but at the same time clearly English phrases,
the signal began to leave.
& then he hung up.
I called it thrice - and there was no answer.

And there has been no answer ever since.

Goddamnit! So Close.

Maybe one day in the future I'll get that interview.
Not for any project or anything, but simply for myself.

Whatever happened to Angle Grinder Man?

For the last week I've been trying to contact this man.

At uni we're currently doing a project about hidden histories.

Who would think that through this project I'd find out that real life superheroes exist.
Well, Kinda.

I've spent so long researching this man, that I have become almost completely fixated.
At times I've become so close to contacting him,
and I might have even deciphered his real name, but that's just not enough.

In late 2004, he self admittedly went a little quiet, but proclaimed to be back on an uprise.

Then he disappeared completely...

Just whatever happened to Angle Grinder Man?
Am I the only one out there asking this?

Glasser. Ring.

This is Glasser, aka the one woman orchestra Cameron Mesirow.



She has become my latest aural preoccupation
with the recent release of her debut album Ring.

The story so far:

Listened to Ring.
Mind blown.
Bought Ring.
Saw Glasser on 10-10-10.
Met Cameron Mesirow.
Saw Glasser again within 2 days.
Would see her perform again if I could.

Ring is certainly one of the best things I've heard this year. It will definitely be high up there on my top 10 albums of 2010 when this year comes to an end.

It's one truly eclectic piece of work, full of bewitching synths,
swirling woodwind, and simple, yet beautiful melodies.
Just listen ok:

Treasury Of We


I think Glasser has become my new musical obsession,
but once again, can you blame me?



No.

Thank You.

Fighting O'Gold

A wheelbarrow suplex clusterfucks the flying gigabuster.

Language excused?

No. 2

You're looking at my first drawing of the new term, that's right,
my 2nd year on my Graphic Design course has finally begun.

In case I didn't mention it earlier, I chose to specialise in Illustration.
But thankfully, I'll still be doing some animation! I think I made the right choice. We'll see.

So what the hell is that image about? No it is not a typical bout of pictorial rambling.
As a warm up we were asked to read Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth,
and pick one statement to make a black & white image for.

I chose to make a response to No. 32: Listen Carefully.
Makes a little more sense now right?

You should give the manifesto a read. There were quite a few I agreed with,
some I already deeply follow and some I would certainly like to try, such as:

No. 2: Forget about good.
No. 18: Stay up late - Strange things happen when you've gone too far.
No. 28: Make new words - Expand the lexicon.
No. 36: Scat - When you forget words, make up something else.

There's something there for everybody.

Birthday Wishes: Kate 1

To those of you who thought to themselves;
"Kate 2? But where's Kate 1?" Here you go.

Meet Kate Johnson, one of my good friends from back home,
she recently turned 21 too.

She turned 21 before "K2" in fact, hence her number 1 status. There's no bias here!
I drew her this portrait of herself on commission from her swain.

Now I've heard from the woman herself that it's finally in her possession,
I've finally put it up here!

If you read this Kate, I'm just simply glad you like it,
and narrowly avoiding butchering your face was a plus.

Birthday Wishes: Kate 2

My friend Kate's birthday came & went on the 24th.
It was the landmark. You know. 21. XXI.

One of my presents to her, was a zine, about her and her celebratory ways.
She appreciated it. I think, or more, I hope! You can read it here:

Now this zine appears to have a normal layout, but that's because you read the digital version. The real thing differs a bit:



It's a fold out zine, after each page you get more of the story (well guide really), whilst leaving certain aspects viewable.

The contents of zine, are clearly 100% true, why would you think otherwise.

Kate, if you read this, I forgot to say.
Stay Gangsta.

Aleksander Vindenes Dahl

A few of months ago my friend Aleks passed away.

Today is his birthday, he would've turned 20.

Aleks, we miss you.

We really miss you.

A V D

Digital Childhood

I finally got round to buying a tablet.
So I decided to celebrate by doing some pencil drawings in my sketchbook,
makes complete sense doesn't it?

After attempting to draw using my new Wacom, I kinda had to do some non digital drawing just to make sure I still knew how to draw. Yes, my days as a recent tablet unvirgin* haven't gone as well as I blindly assumed! I feel like I'm learning to draw for the first time.

Ah, I'll get the hang of it at some point! Early days.
At least it got me drawing some old(ish) characters again.

*Yes it is a word! In the urban dictionary anyway...

Autumn's Trigger

It has arrived.





Autumn that is.

Both the illustrations above have been brought on by both a need to keep my hands innocently busy, and inspiration by the song & its accompanying video below.

This song is so unbelievably awesome,
so brilliant yet so short - its sudden ending can shatter your heart to pieces.

I've been listening to this every day for the last week,
it's been playing on repeat in my mind,
& it really isn't a bad thing:



Thank you, Gold Panda.

True Advocation

Last Friday I finished a 3 week internship at
Advocate Art illustration agency in Wimbledon.



Aww, I could never replace their lil' mascot.

It was pretty cool, not only did I work with Advocate Art, but I did some work for their other, darker side, Vendetta Arts - doing things like creating, developing, and where I could designing various blogs for them.

On top of that I got a pretty good view of what it would be like working with/in an illustration agency in the future, which for the moment I hope one day to do. Working with a group of wonderful people was obviously an added bonus.

On a finishing note, whilst I was interning at Advocate/Vendetta, I stumbled upon these awesome artists & collectives, I suggest you check them out:

Lukasz Pazera
Alberto Mielgo
Jorge Monlongo
& DGPH.

Once again I am being bombarded my many ideas at once.
Oh how I wave my fist at inspiration and it's sporadic movement.

A Month's Silence

Font BeTa

My first real font is almost ready.
I did say I'd do this at some point.

I named it Becoming Taskless after this blog, as the typeface is based on an illustrative style that I began to develop just a little before I started this blog.
Part of it was even in my old header:



You can see every single letter of the fully working font just below:

I still have a few more things to tweak before I put this font up for download, I've got many a punctuation symbol to illustrate before I'm completely happy
- perfectionism can be a curse at times.

I'd like to thank Kate who has helped me out and modeled for me here and several times before.

In my last portfolio review of the year, upon seeing this book, my tutor asked me what does the term 'Becoming Taskless' actually mean.
Which lead me to think, I haven't mentioned it here at all.

You've probably worked this out by now, but for me becoming taskless is the ultimate dream, once you've become taskless, you are completely happy, as you've finished all the tasks you've ever needed/wanted to do. You're at the point where you could actually say, ‘I can die now’ and mean it.

This blog is an account of me becoming taskless.

Vinyl Magnitude

I'm rarely one to backtrack, even though I said I would in my first ever post. Yeah sure I may show something that I did a couple of months ago, but at times there tends to be that point of no return. But this time I've dug deep - with no more work to do as the year is basically over, why not?

Now this is pretty damn old:

For a typography project during the first term, we had to create something that communicated the essential personality of an almost randomly selected typeface.



I ended up with Amplitude; a rather young font (about 6-7 years old as I recall), created by Christian Schwartz that currently has 35 different styles.

Upon further research I found that the typeface predicts the spread of ink on paper using Ink traps.

So I created a 'Vinyl Toy Prototype' for a toy collection based on the font's ink trapping capabilities. Part of my reason for designing a toy collection was to point out how young the font really is, and to highlight just how many different versions of the font there are! Surely if I had more than 3 days to do this I would have definitely attempted to create a fully painted, fully packaged whole series! Madness indeed.




They trap ink in their deep clefts.

How cute.

I must make more toys, solely to look at them.

Heroes of Fiction

Hey there, I present to you my last project of the academic year.

It was a rare occasion, as I went for a design brief.
We had to design a collection of books based on inspirational people of our choice.

I chose to design a series of book covers on the fictional spearheads of various bands:


Lumi from Genki Rockets,


The Duke from Marmaduke Duke,


& Murdoc from Gorillaz.

Why the masks? I played with the idea of people being so inspirational that other people would want to be them. I decided to take photos of "normal" people being their inspirational person. Also unintentionally I feel that the use of masks outline the fact that the characters aren't actually real. There's also a chance that I subconsciously came up with this idea because of my underlying obsession with masks... I'm not complaining though.

The main focus of each cover is the photograph, so I put the book title on an easily removable label. It'd be up to the book's owner to keep it on, I personally would keep it, but that's because I find it hard to let things go.

I know that by posting these next pictures I'm effectively showing you the same images 3 times, but I feel they need to be seen alone, in their striking form; with no distractions:







Man, photography is fun - next year I must be sure to do more of it.

Doing this project has made me appreciate and enjoy aspects of design a lot more than I used to. The idea of having to choose one pathway next year and go with it for the rest of my degree is a little scary, as I keep becoming unsure of my specialties.

As I've said at many times in general conversation I feel like a Jack of all trades,
but master of none.

Test Scaly Grins

This is valid work:

I swear it.

C+Z

Sometimes you have so much going on you can forget about the nicer things.


'Undo' [11.7"×16.5" Acrylics, Inks & Pencil HeavyWeight Paper]

I remember hinting at this a long time ago, then wild obstacles appeared,
and brought the painting process to a complete halt...

...just to begin again a few months later.



As always, many man hours were lost to this,

actually not so much lost than self-refreshingly squandered.

Opening Time

Finally!



Yeah that's right...

The remnants of those alphabet bags I made a while ago are finally up for sale!

Click here or the image above to do a spot of screen shopping.

********************

Oh and update:

My bags have just been featured on Lovely at Your Side as a "Lovely Etsy Find of the Day"

Thanks Olivia!


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Update 2:

& here too!