I feel moving image/illustration is something as illustrators we will need to adapt to. BUT I feel there will alway be a place for traditional illustration like there will always be people who would like to buy a hardcover special edition of a book.
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.
Tuesday, 16 December 2014
Police Cadets and Ethical Issues
While doing the anti bullying animation I had to reconsider a lot of the content I wanted to cover. I wanted to focus on the aftermath of bullying which would be that kids who are bullied are at more at risk to mental health problems such as
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.
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 is a motion picture by the Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki.
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.
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
I will be reviewing Howl's Moving Castle a fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones.
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.
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
My tutor Jo sent us this link to YCN magazine in an email so I decided to have a look through it, the video at the bottom of the page is what I want to review the most.
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.
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
Recently I have been writing quite a lot probably due to my growing unrest as to where society seems to be headed. I have always identified more with being an authorstrator than an illustrator, the thought of illustrating other peoples writing never really fully appealed to me even though I have tried it (more like wrestled with it) and was proud of the results. But I didn't feel like the results were really me, and I find that expression of self very important in my work.
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.
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
On Friday I finally took the plunge and opened my etsy shop, since my last few markets have been flops I decided it would be in my best interest list my work up on etsy and only do local markets when I feel they will be worthwhile. And concentrate more on university and conventions.
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.
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.
Image taken from
I really like the mix of watercolour painting and retro comic book cut up.
Tuesday, 2 December 2014
What I am working on
At them moment I am working on a test animation for my university project. The finished animation will be part of a larger animation that will be shown in schools to raise awareness about bullying. This animation will be aimed at 10-11 year olds, as you can imagine we are having to keep the content of our animations tame. I'm doing this by using metaphors.
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.
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
I have been getting some ideas on how to put my animation together by watching these tutorials by (warning mild bad language)
The first video is about making a walk cycle and the best thing about this guy is he goes above and beyond in showing you how to kick it up an notch. He also likes to show you how to make a 2D animation look more 3D.
The second video is about head turns and how he does them and shows an example of how 2D animation can be made to emulate 3D.
The third video was his first tutorial, this covers lipsyncing and the basics of how he draws the elements he wants to animate.
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
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