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.

Image taken from www.junk-culture.com

I really like the mix of watercolour painting and retro comic book cut up.

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.

Some handy animation tutorials

I have been getting some ideas on how to put my animation together by watching these tutorials by Ross Plaskow (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

Salford zine library

On the 12th of November I went to the Salford Zine Library in the basement of the Nexus Art Cafe in Manchester. The first thing I felt when I walked in was that I was an outsider, I felt really awkward walking in just to look at the zines.

After wondering around and not being able to find where the zine library was I asked the guy at the counter. The salford zine library was through a door I assumed was staff only. 

When I got into the room there were shelves and shelves of zines stacked haphazardly on top of one another.

Not sure why this picture is sideways but this was a very small zine, probably one of the smallest in the library. The zine is called disintegration. 

I really loved the crudeness of this zine.

There was also some more lining the walls on small shelves.

This one was mostly in what in spanish (I think) and I really like how hand made this one looked.

From what I remember this one was screen printed and I really liked the limited colour palette.

I like how this one has been drawn, again rather crude.

Another crude one.

This one seemed to be portraiture based. 

I really liked the idea behind this one but not so much the execution, this zine was made from sand paper and held together with clips. I didn't like how the pictures were just stuck on and just seemed to be floating in space. 

The zine library gave me a lot of ideas to experiment with.

Astigmatism

This is a more personal post but hopefully an insightful one, on Monday the 3rd of November 2014 I went to the opticians for the first time in 8 years. I left it 8 years because up to the age of 12 I had eye tests regularly and never had any problems, up until the last few years when I noticed I was having trouble with bus numbers.

So I booked an appointment and found out I have an Astigmatism. Astigmatisms are common and most don't need any correction but my astigmatism requires correction in the form of glasses or contacts. My astigmatism is 180.00 in my right eye and 5.00 in my left, the optician said this is something I have probably always had but it has gotten worse without correction.

In primary school the teachers were convinced I had dyslexia due to issues with reading, spelling, maths and to some degree just communicating in general. Most of these things I have found through my excessive amounts of googling maybe typical for people who have an uncorrected severe astigmatism. The more I thought about it the more everything fell into place.

• 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.

An astigmatism is caused by the eye/s being more rugby ball shaped rather than spherical, this causes the eye to focus on two different point instead of both eyes focusing on one point. This makes it harder to process information because the brain is taking in two completely different points and trying to fill in the blanks.

One of my first reactions was one of anger, I had been put through so many tests to try and prove I had some form of learning disability, I was put in classes with children who needed extra help which brought down myself esteem. I was told in primary and my first secondary school they didn't expect me to pass a single GCSE due to my unidentified "learning difficulties". And then it turns out all a long if I had been given a proper eye test and an early age that could all have been avoided. People I have spoken to who have the same thing had glasses for it when they were barely out of nappies.

It was a smack in the face in a way, I had been struggling all these years to find out I didn't have to struggle at all. As much as it is a relief to have my glasses and to finally be able to function correctly, it still angers me that none thought to check earlier. Why would you not think to check? If  you think a child isn't taking in information as they should that maybe the eyes could be the key to the problem. 

Now for the exciting things about having my astigmatism corrected.

• 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. 

I think it will be very interesting to see how I progress now I have my glasses, I have heard people like me who have only had their astigmatism picked up as an adult say that glasses changed their life. I guess I will find out over time if that will be the case.

Police Cadet Anti Bullying Project

Really looking forward to furthering my anti bullying work. I have been working on a little test animation (I have done 2 prior).

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.