September 2010

Hi folks. First day of the new course tomorrow, hope there's not going to be any problems but knowing my luck I'll have been put in the wrong classes or something. Anyway, here's some more personal work I've done over the summer.

 This piece is called The Dreamer. I came up with the idea early in the summer inspired by the film Inception. It's an abstract piece about dreams (obviously). One of my favourite personal pieces so far.

This one is called Lament. I originally intended it to be a fairly quick vector affair but I got a little caught up in it. I hope the background doesn't detract too much from the main focus of the face but whatever, let me know.

New work, new house, new course

Yo. Well I did promise to update this blog so here's what's happening now. I got onto the BA graphic design course at Salford University! Going straight into year 2. It's a large class, which doesn't bother me too much as it'll be nice to meet some people and see how they do things. The interview was pretty hairy, I was bricking it the whole way through but acting comically angry which I tend to do when I'm nervous. We kept being told by the 2 tutors doing the interview that the course we all wanted to get on (graphic design communication, like a catch all course) was totally full and they were advising us to look at other courses instead, which was really off-putting. However my coursemate Nicola and I were offered spaces on the communication course despite it being full as I've previously mentioned (explain that...). The course should still allow me to decide what route I want to take with my work as I'm still quite unsure at the moment. They seemed to like my portfolio and my other coursemates at the interview all got onto various other courses which was great.

Anyway, since all this I've moved into my new university accommodation. To be honest it's a bit shit, although it doesn't help that I'm here on my tod for the weekend. It should perk up soon. Going to Bloodstock Open Air festival this Thursday which is something to look forward to, especially because I get to see The Devin Townsend Project

Here's my latest piece, called 'Sonar'. It's a bit of an experiment. It doesn't look anything like how I imagined it originally, I've tinkered with it so much, but I think it looks alright. Maybe it's a bit overworked, but whatever, let me know.

Anyway guys, I'll probably update some time soon when the new course gets underway. Now to go paste all this into my deviantart account...

Why let drink decide?

One of this years D&AD briefs. The brief was to communicate to Britain's youngest binge drinkers and their parents. I did 2 posters, one about liver cirrhosis which was aimed at the parents of those aged 8-13 which played to their fears of not being able to recognise their child after they start drinking, and another poster directed at those aged 13-17 themselves about the connection between alcoholism and class A drug use.

Resistance

This was for one of this years YCN briefs, to illustrate the word 'Resistance' in any way we could. I chose to do 3 different conflicts; Israel/Palestine, Police brutality in Rio de Janeiro and Northern Ireland. These 3 are by far my favourite pieces of work so far. The term Resistance can be applied to the means and methods of these combatants, their choice of anonymity or resistance to their brutal acts. All of these conflicts can be viewed from one of 2 standpoints, either you think they're right or wrong, I'll let you decide.

Israel/Palestine

Police in Rio de Janeiro

Northern Ireland

Day in a life

This was one of the more open briefs we were given this year. The idea was to illustrate a day our lives, it could be as extravagant or as mundane as we wanted. I chose to show a very typical day of me just playing video games, but decided to transpose myself into the game, just an average day killing zombies, you know. I decided to apply it to a piece possibly from a game magazine asking the question 'are video games art?'

GQ brief

One of my latest briefs. We were given a choice of redesigning a magazine, including the logo, the front cover and double page spreads. These were done entirely in Indesign. I felt I learnt a lot about the software from this project. It was a long project but I honestly never got tired of staring at Gemma Arterton all day.

Front Cover

Double page spread

Comedy Store

Another project from early in September. These are some vector image cutouts of famous comedians to promote a new season at the Comedy Store, Manchester.

Harry Hill

Billy Connolly

Michael McIntyre

Leaflet cover/redesigned logo

Book Illustrations

Here are some book covers I did in early year 2 of my HND for a series of Penguin Modern Classics. I especially like how these 2 have came out. I used a lot of layer styles and custom brushes and combined them together for the first time successfully. Here we have 'You only live twice' by Ian Fleming and 'One flew over the cuckoo's nest' by Ken Kesey.