This blog follows the artwork of RaelDanger and the concepts, inspirations and ideas behind her work.
Translate
Tuesday, 16 December 2014
Is Moving Image/Illustration the Way Foreword?
Moving illustration is best for online use like apps, articles, websites, promos act. But even if traditional illustration does dwindle it will be brought back into fashion because of nostalgia. Thinking more about this reminds me of my essay on Peter Lyle and how he says that traditional illustration is becoming a luxury, and that it is being sort after by people with money to spend.
Police Cadets and Ethical Issues
Depression
Panic disorder
Anxiety especially Social Anxiety
Body Dysmorphia
Paranoia
and more
Serious cases of bullying have even lead to the victim taking their own life.
But due to the 10-11 age range it would not be suitable for them, I got around this by hinting at it by using metaphors in my animation.
Instead I made a zine that would be for the parents that would talk about some of these issues.
Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away
Spirited Away wast most successful film in Japanese history, grossing about $330 million in the box office. The film was based on a friend of Hayao Miyazaki's daughter. Miyazaki himself has said that it has darker undertones. If you have watched it before and don't know about the dark undertones you would just think it was a wacky coming of age/romance film. But if you listen to the Japanese dub 10 year old Chihiro Ogino (also known as Sen) if referred to as a Yuna and Yuna in the Japanese edo period was used in reference to prostitutes and bath houses in eco period offered brothel like services.
Chihiro was given the name Sen by Yubaba who is the madam of the bath house, Sen is Japanese for Thousand and was also a common name for prostitutes in the edo period.
Haku is the love interest who ends up rebelling against Yubaba, if we look at him in context he would be a pimp who draws the line at child prostitution. This would explain why he is so stern and cold while he is working and he is friendly and supportive when him and Chihiro are alone. It also explains why the female staff seem to dislike him and seem to think it is odd for Chihiro to be so fond of him.
When the spell that is keeping Haku obedient breaks, the first thing he does is to try and release Chihiro from her contract with Yubaba. Another character called No Face takes a liking to Chihiro for letting him into the bath house, No Face is actually a lonely man with a lot of wealth who takes a liking to Chihiro and want to keep her all to himself. No Face makes money out of dirty which is probably a metaphor for the money being corrupt.
It is very interesting to look at Spirited Away from this perspective.
Howls Moving Castle Review
HEAVY SPOILERS!
The main characters of the story are Sophie and Howl, Sophie is beyond her years and apathetic about life. In the world she inhabits being the eldest is a bad thing and means you are doomed to failure, Sophie has come to terms with the "fact" she will never amount to anything. When her father dies her sisters are sent to promising placements, Martha the youngest is sent to study magic and Lettie the second eldest and the prettiest daughter is sent to apprentice at a bakery while Sophie is left at the hat shop where she grew up to become a milliner. She becomes bored of the hat shop and decides one day to visit her sister Lettie. On the way to see Lettie she gets accosted by Howl.
Howl is a pretty boy who loves to accost women, once they fall for him he loses interest and moves on to the next girl. The first impression you get of howl is that his is selfish, cowardly, vain and a drama queen. But howl is actually under a curse by the Witch of the Wastes who is a powerful and beautiful witch whom Howl had once foolishly accosted her. The Witch of the Wastes feel in love with Howl but after awhile Howl came to realise she was beautiful on the outside but ugly on the inside and left her. The Witch of the Wastes in anger put a curse on Howl that means if he ever fell in love his heart would belong to her. Which explains Howls behaviour when it comes to women.
The Witch of the Wastes hears about Lettie and how beautiful she is and she gets jealous she unknowingly puts a curse on Sophie whom she mistook for Lettie. The curse put on Sophie turns her into a 90 year old woman and she is unable to tell anyone about the curse unless someone knows about it.
She leaves the hat shop an stumbles across Howls Moving Castle. The relationship between Howl and Sophie was very well written and started out as Sophie becoming Howls cleaning lady and her antics infuriate Howl but he lets her stay in the castle with him and his apprentice Michel. Durning the course of the book we her about Howls escapades, Sophie starts to slowly develop feeling for Howl while at the same time finding him immature, petty and shallow. Howl starts to accost Martha who has switched places with Lettie, but it is revealed later on by this point Howl has figured out Sophie is under a curse and is trying to get to know more about her and trying to find away to break the curse. It is also revealed that from the moment he found out Sophie was under a curse he hoped she was the girl he had tried to accost but failed because she was on her way to the bakery to see her sister (Sophie pre-curse). The book on drops subtle hints that Howl is falling for Sophie until the end where he fights The Witch of the Waste because she has kidnapped Sophie to lure Howl so she can claim his heart.
The best parts of the book is when Howl is being a drama queen. At one point Howl gets ill and complains that he is drying of neglect as he crawls on his hands and knee's up the stairs. Sophie just rolls her eyes and keeps cleaning.
The book is geared towards children and teens but I think the book is a great read for anyone who is into fantasy.
Cyber bullying and anti bullying briefs
Today is my deadline for my second unit which included two briefs. One on cyber bullying and one live brief on rasing awareness in schools about bullying.
For my cyber bullying brief I made two posters and a zine. I am not happy with the quality of content I produced and if given more time I would have restarted it all. The cyber bullying bleed into my live brief, I used one of the characters I had made in the first project as the main protagonist in my animatic/animation. I was much happier with the outcomes in this project, I feel project 1 just got turned into part of the process of project 3 (the anti bullying brief). This could have been avoided if I had chosen a none bullying related subject for project 1.
There is several things I wanted to include in my unit hand in but I may not have the time.
1. A booklet full of helplines an what each one deals with.
2. A page on Lucy (my main protagonist) to help the kid empathise/sympathise with her.
3. Some talking points for the cadets to expand on during their presentation.
4. To have more finished animation.
I felt very strongly about both briefs because I have faced both regular and cyber bullying. I always wanted to find a way to share my stories and have them benefit others. What concerns me about bullying is that a lot of adults view it as character building, severe bullying is not character building it is character destroying. I really wanted to make that clear to parents.
Monday, 8 December 2014
YouCanNow
Michael Wolff talks about design (blogger doesn't seem to like vimeo)
What Michael Wolff said made me question my artwork. Michael says about how he thinks the feelings behind a piece of art and/or design and how it is communicated is what is important, I feel my work is very based off my own feelings and emotions but does that come across to the audience viewing my art. Does my art satisfy people are improve their life in anyway? It satisfies me but I'm not other people.
It definitely provided some food for thought.
Writing
I have always enjoyed writing and was often highly commended for it back at school. I took english language as an A level thinking I would enjoy it and it would be like creative writing. OH BOY was I wrong! I ended up dropping it as soon as I could. I felt unwelcome in that world, people looked down their nose at me because of my unconventional taste in literature and just my interests going against the grain in general. I remember the most demoralizing moment was when the tutor asked who plays Halo and being an avid Halo fan at the time my hand went up like a shot, the tutor sighed with exasperation as I wrecked his example. He then asked the class who read sci-fi again my hand went up, he basically told the class to ignore my presence because I didn't follow what females were supposed to like. And after that the class continued to look at me as if I didn't belong. That is when I decided that studying English was not a good idea.
But it has always been something I continued to do in my spare time regardless, it may not be as well polished as someone who had continued down that root and my tense maybe a bit wonky at times but recently I feel what I have started to write has reached a new level.
The thing I like to write about most is people and their interactions, I feel it's a my strong point. This is the first time I have felt really proud about a written project. I actually can't help but laugh at bits of it because it reminds me of interactions I have had with my friends.
In a way I wish that it fit in with my university projects because I have gotten quite into it.
Sunday, 7 December 2014
Etsy Shop and Recent Interests
I sat with my Mum who used to work in the post office and worked out how much postage to charge per item. For items I was sure about I looked to see who else had listed a similar item in the UK and looked at how much they were charging for postage.
At the moment I'm sticking to selling within the UK to keep things simple.
While scrolling through my facebook feed I stumbled upon a rather interesting artist by the name of Sandra Chevrier.
Tuesday, 2 December 2014
What I am working on
I am trying to go for a mixed media approach, I want my backgrounds to be mostly traditionally made while my character has been created digitally. I have tried my best with this project to retain my signiture style for the most part which often doesn't come though in my uni projects.
The other thing I am working on in conjunction with the animation is an illustrated booklet/zine to be handed out to the kids as a help guide and will also include an insight to how the animation was made. In this I want to include a section for parents with ways they can help their kids if they are being bullied. Most of my advice has come from real life experience with bullying. Sadly I know without the schools support bullying is hard to combat using non violent means which is unfortunate. The best way to combat bullying is to find the root of the problem and I want to encourage bullies to find other ways of dealing with their frustrations.
Ideas for the booklet
-Statistics
I'm trying to keep these at a minimum as not to bore the kids, but still include enough to inform parents.
-Advice
Things that worked for me, helping the kids stand up for themselves without the need for violence. Giving kids suggestions in how to project their frustrations in more health and constructive ways.
-Unused case studies
I have based my animation on how it feels to be bullied instead of a case study I think it will be more effective. With case studies you have to chose one which isn't too tame but isn't too extreme, I was finding it hard to find a suitable case study so I decided basing it on the emotional struggle would be a better approach since the others working on the project are focusing on case studies.
- Activities
I'm thinking of including activities to help kids express themselves in a none harmful way. And maybe even include activities to encourage children to help out other kids they believe are being bullied.
Monday, 1 December 2014
Some handy animation tutorials
Looking forward
Recently I have been wondering if markets really are a good platform for selling my artwork. And after a market I had on Saturday, I have decided I should try and sell my work primarily online.
After observing the visitors that look at my stall I have come to the conclusion my artwork is rather niche. And that niche is not present where I am currently doing my stalls.
I think etsy is the best way to go, I know that I am the kind of person who would buy my work. I regularly comb through etsy I think my work would have a better chance at being seen and bought. Since I do a lot of one off pieces my work would still stand out and have appeal.
As for my offline revenue I would like to gear more towards conventions such as Doki Doki, Japan day and MCM Manchester. These will cost me more than my average pitch BUT I think I would do a lot better at those kinds of events, and with less events to worry about it leaves more time for my uni work. Not to mention how many people have told me that my target audience is much more abundant at conventions.
At the moment I have too much to sell and not enough like minded people to sell it to.
So my plan is
-Set up my etsy
-Get my head around shipping prices (maybe only ship within the UK at first)
-List the things I already have before making more artwork
In the future I need to look at
-registering as a small business
-getting a website
-making an online portfolio
-branding
Monday, 24 November 2014
Salford zine library
Monday, 10 November 2014
Astigmatism
- Teachers always commenting that I wasn't paying enough attention.
- My terrible hand eye coordination and balance.
- My troubles with stairs, uneven ground and jumping from small heights.
- How hard it was to focus on reading books and subtitles.
- When my friends pointed out something right infront of my face I could never see it.
- How often I would just feel like all my senses were overloaded.
- I can pay more attention rather than have my brain trying to make sense of everything I'm seeing at the same time.
- My hand eye coordination and balance will probably get a lot better.
- I have noticed already stairs don't swim around like they used to.
- Reading has become a lot easier.
- I have been a lot less fatigued at the end of the day.
- I have no idea how this will effect my drawings I presume it will effect them in a good way or there maybe some regression before I get the hang of it again. I have already drawn somethings but they haven't been overly complex so I couldn't see much difference.
Friday, 7 November 2014
Police Cadet Anti Bullying Project
I have had quite a few ideas on what style I'm going to do for my animation. The animation will be aimed at year 6-7's which personally I think is too narrow an age group. I was bullied quite badly at school and I would say year 7-9 would be a better age group to target. I will probably bring this up with the police cadets.
Animation style ideas
-Stop motion
Drawing over the top of some of the photographs
Puppets/Shadow puppets
Claymation
-Mixed media (digital and traditional)
Photographic element cut up such as buildings or background images giving it a Dada feel.
Maybe include childrens drawings I could maybe get these from the police cadets so they are more age appropriate.
I could also used patterns in the back grounds or on the characters themselves like I have done in these examples.
I could drawing the scenes in sand or mud. But I don't think that may suit the style or audience I'm going for.
I want my animation to have a zany, gritty, cult, retro feel to it.
I also need to consider if I want my animation to be grayscale with key points in colour, monochrome or full colour.
Points I want to bring across in my animation
- I want to humanize the bully not demonize them, because they are suffering too.
- I want to get the audience involved, maybe by acting out some of the characters this will help make it more relatable and memorable.
- What support is out there, how to deal and cope with bullying.
- Let them know that bullying can happen at all ages.
- To include consequences of bullying.
Friday, 24 October 2014
Anti Bullying Zine
I decided to do an 8 page folded zine, these are easy and cheap to make and distribute if needed.
I have so far done 2 pages of the zine.
Sunday, 5 October 2014
Sunday, 14 September 2014
Out of uni project ideas
The t-shirt line would be called Anti-Bullying Pro-creative.
Another idea is a instant film animation I really like this idea BUT The price of the film I would need to make this project happen would be insane.
The ways I could do this feasibility are
- Do it over meany years
- Use a program called poladroid and print them off on photo paper
- Use an actual instant film camera to take a picture and just edit in the animation on the computer.
- Use lots of repeated pictures