website links

just read struan's blog and decided to put up some websites that i like:

http://www.psfk.com/ http://idressmyself.co.uk/ http://www.nextnewnetworks.com/ http://www.behance.net/ http://www.planetphotoshop.com/ http://www.phunkstudio.com http://www.artless.co.jp/ http://make.pingmag.jp/ http://www.tokyoplastic.com/ http://www.byroglyphics.com/ http://www.aeiko.net/ http://www.mariscal.com/ http://www.facebook.com/ ^-^

book design - hell

ok, so here's an entry about my book i designed for the 2nd semester at the Duncan of Jordanstone college for 2nd year.

we were given a random 'utopian' place that we had to create a book for. my place was hell. got a few ideas when we first got handed the brief. the cute character illustration was one of my original ideas that i stuck with. i went through thinking of doing the book on past events with illustration done in my cute character style. from there i looked at the different levels of dante's inferno.

***before i go on, i really need to remember to add tags to my entries 'cos keep forgetting!!! 0_0

yeh, so was gonna base my design on that, but the descriptions i could find were a bit vague and quite open so i kept searching while working on this idea when i came across the chinese hell - diyu.

the different levels/stages were a lot more specific and i found easier to work with. this also fitted in with my idea of illustration as my influence for these characters comes from the far east. characters like:

pucca
hello kitty (*did not know this was used as a rebellious symbol in japan!!!)
and characters that :phunk studio do. wouldn't mind working for these people.

and stuff like that. and then wanted to make it clean for reason i'll say later but yeh, really really like this site/these artists and want to make a website as clean and nice as this, so another reason for making a book with clean graphics.

artless!!!!!!!! < (this) = (equals) <3>

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so yeh...   ummm....  points > ...

* i didn't want to use colours as this assumes hell has colour, that we know what that colour would be if colour did exist and also didn't want to do the stereotypical idea of fire, lots of red, etc.

* i didn't want to use characters that looked human because if hell exists how do we know we get there in human form? also, to portray the levels as i wanted, using human characters would have probably started to become borderline offensive, sick and way more unacceptable to the reader. by using cute characters it takes away this problem. i felt i could illustrate these characters with whatever happening to them and it was ok to do so as it is far removed from the human form we can very much associate with.

      - i went to pictoplasma this year with my sister and the talks by different artist from around the world was amazing. one that related to, and influenced my book piece was a talk by 'Marek Michalowski'. he did a talk on 'Keepon' (which everyone should watch!!!!!) which was created for autistic children for them to interact with. a design they had before was a more realistic robot, the the children found it unapproachable and couldn't relate well with it so they re-thought their design and came up with a cute, cuddle and none offensive character that was very approachable not just to autistic children, but everyone who came in contact with this character. another speaker talked about an experiment they did were they had a robot who was very realistically modeled on the scientist who invented the robot. an interesting discovery they observed was that people who came in contact with the robot and then the scientist found that the robot was intimidating and unapproachable.

                                     - this relates to my idea for the book as i wanted to show the extremity of some of the levels without being really offensive to the viewer and by making the characters cute and non-human the viewer is hopefully more engaged. i feel they would have not been if i had used realistic brutal images as they would have had an instant block in their head due to the extreme nature of the images. i feel that the messages portrayed in each scene isn't lost as people can see exactly what is going on.

- maaaaaan, this is turning into a major long post!!! -

* i also didn't want to produce a book that had the usual bind down one side of the book to keep everything together. this is because when i think of books i normally associate the word to pieces of material joined together on one side with loads of text you read left to right or right to left and is also unchangeable. the reasons i did it the way i did was to create layers that people had to unwrap to get to the content and also each level/page/pullout doesn't have to go back in the same order; you can re-arrange them how you want. each page has the chinese characters of each level on the top left so you know which page goes with which.

ooooooh, yeh, a reason for my use of lots of white was because when we try to imagine what hell is like we base it on our own personal experiences that we have had through life. i think this is what we do when trying to imagine something we have never experienced which i think makes the thought slightly innocent/naive. since we have never experienced hell, our thoughts and imaginations of it are essentially innocent and naive and to truly know what it is like we would have to go their ourselves to find out. so yeh, the clean look and the massive amounts of white used in the book is because of our inexperience of the place.

- can't believe i almost forgot the last point as it was one of my original reasons for doing the book the way it is. the innocent/naive understanding of hell is also one of the reasons i went with cute characters. cute characters are associated with children, and children are associated with innocence and naivety and there you have a link.

well, that's definitely enough writing!

some more skate

got a random break from work 'cos was dead so came home this afternoon to work on more skate graphics. have been finishing them off just now.

the second board is from the entry before, but with some background on it to bring it out a bit...   not really what i was thinking but there you go. i'll work on it later. top one is my omni:studios character. bottom two are from a graphic i did at the metropolitan college in glasgow. that college is actually really good. oh yeh, got taught by tom from yield creative who was a really really good tutor and also jinty, but don't know if she has a website so can't put up a link to here :(

anyway, awesome tutors.

uhhhhhh.....  not sure if i had anything else to put on here...  ooooooh, yeh, was writing an entry this morning about a book project i was doing at college but ran out of time and had to go to work and then when i came back on my random break everything that i had written was wiped 'cos my computer was randomly off...   power cut? so yeh, i'm gonna put that in a separate entry after this one....

skateboard graphics

finally found a site today that gave out a good decent free skateboard template to work with, they also print designs onto skateboards for you. awesome! they're called boardperso.com. anyway, it's good to get a template. tried out a few quick designs. artwork is things i've done in the past and used the omni:studios text 'cos got my website up. the website's terrible just now. need to reeeeally do some work on it, well, a lot of work on it.

would love to design skateboard graphics on the side. always wanted to get an exhibition going with a few people and just buying a few boards and taking up a whole wall with decks attached to the wall showing off my artwork...    hmmmm....  should really add that to the list of things to do before i'm thirty. sooooo...   yeh, the one on the right is the one i really want to work on to bring it out. the 1st one on the left i worked on for a while ages ago and then stopped so need to add graphics to it. it's supposed to be a girl looking over the edge of a building or something so a future project to make it look better.

another project i'm working on is the website design of a diamond company down in chester called 'lotus diamonds'. someone else is programming the site so i'm just working on the look of it:

the text in the middle is random, was just put in to show where the main text would be placed. wanted to keep the design simple. also, if the guys who are wanting the site like the look of the design (which i've been told they do) they're willing to give me all the work for posters/leaflets/etc...   and the price quoted they'll pay for one poster design is '£a lot!', so if they're a couple of posters and also leaflets (business cards?!?) it should keep me going for a while.

well, if i ever get out to NZ it'll tide me over comfortably till my SAAS comes in. got a meeting on monday with my tutors to discuss a letter I wrote them after receiving the letter in the last post...   so been stressy for the past few days. need to think of solid points.

bad times

how much does this suck!!!!!!

umbrella goodness

ok, so i'm still upset that 'pingmag' isn't going any more. rubbish times, but was thinking of bio-mimicry... actually, i think i was just randomly thinking of the umbrella again and it links in with the bio-mimicry issue that has been around college projects and forums so thought i'd post a link here.

*crazy cool umbrella that i want!!!!*

if anyone wants to buy me one feel free.... 0_0