Eventful Month

I got a merit for my foundation.

I got into LCC to do Graphic and Media design.

Also making an animation at the moment and did this today:

Foundation Experimental Film TV project

A strange experimental film I made on foundation to go with the theme of the TV project. I made sounds from leads.

Wednesday 9th June

Unfortunately all the paper i had prepared earlier this week, got sectioned off behind a temporary wall. This is was very frustrating for obvious reasons, so this morning was spent trimming all my paper again to A3 getting ready for printing.

After an hour or so printing the flyers, and spending a fair few quid doing it (thank god i made it small and took printing costs into account earlier!), followed by cutting the pannels down to size, having made sure they all align with double sided printing etc.... i finally had the basics.

I have only printed off five flyers, so the idea of 'mass mail' is given accross to some extent, but also didint want to create too much work for myself.

I sellotaped these together and made the envolopes, on whcih i drew my man (so that attention was still directed to what the acctual point of it was) and asked college to run them through the franking machine to get the authentic postage look (a good last minute addition!) and strung them up:

This means i am now finished!

Here is the space where im displaying my work:

And ill put up a picture of the final show when it happens next week!

Evaluation still to do though, should be fine!

Tuesday 8th June

Worked late and well last night so managed to get most of the flyer done, painted the classroom and then finished all the flyer.
Here are the screenshots for each A3 page:

 I'm really happy with the way they have turned out, there was a lot of experimentation to get everything quite right, and this was more spur of the moment stuff, but i made sure to pay attention to detailing and to keep the flow of the flyer natural.

My only real worry is my writing skills, which bring the whole project down a few notches, but I'm not really judging myself on that.

Monday 7th June

After a weekend of stamping and coming up with the copy from the website, i have as follows:

I am happy with this as it keeps with the style of the rest of the project.

Today i have also been continuing with the designs of the flyer and have started to put the DYMO on. Been quite a hectic day as I've been looking for paper and checking my materials.

Also got to show a few friends how my project was coming along and to get some feedback from my target audience. So far so good and they are hugely in support of the DYMO. seems very easy to impress.

One week to go now, and I'm a little over schedule, but I'm still confident that ill have everything finished in time.

Friday 4th June

Not a massive day today as i'm also doing job, but got some detail style for the flyer done and putting it all together in the template. Will show in next update but for now heres the sheet im working with:

I have been deciding on the typography as well, and to keep in with the stationary style of the project, as well as the fact its just fun and 'cool' to look at, i believe i am going with the DYMO tag writing. It also gives the otherwise flat design flyer a bit of texture.... although the flyer obviously isnt flat when it pops out.

Well, i got a busy evening of stamping dymo tags and will reveal all when theyre done!

Wednesday 2nd June

Wow, fortunately another productive day!

I made the posters from the image of the spray painted font of Home Sweet Home and the human outline from my workspace which i grew to love because of its asymetrical form and shabbyness.

I made these posters very simple: black and white and not overstressing the quality of the images, this is so that costs would not be an issue.
I will print these out and put them around the room for the final show to act as a small scale teaser for my main flyer, simulating the cross city teaser linking to the mailout.
In order to illustrate this, i will also be displaying some photos of where the posters would be placed, so photoshopped them in and made them look glitsy to keep with the style of the project:

I'm happy with my progress today as well and will now focus on type, finalising the copy, and producing the flyer packages.

Tuesday 1st June

Today I called up Crisis to inform them of my project and get any tips/permission/copy for the flyer. They were lovely to speak to, but unfortunately unable to help in anyway due to the lack of staff/ time/ effort for another student project involving Crisis. However, they did wish me the best of luck, gave me the permission to use their logo, and forwarded me to their website for any copy.

From their website I found some useful information that I could use as copy and it gave me a good idea of how they like to communicate. You can see their website here: http://www.crisis.org.uk/ to save me from repeating any of the stats.

I also had a go at the images for the sheets of card for the flyer. I am using the ink technique used for the Rorschach style prints as i quite like the grunginess of it, it also helps incorprate the work done ppreviously that i liked both the style of and also the idea that there is more than meets the eye to homelessness. Its very hidden and wont be known by the audience, but it adds a nice depth to the work which i am happy with.

Here is an image of the working:

I then cut this A1 sheet into A4 size to scan it into the computer, where I could load it into an A3 workspace which will act as the template for the individual pannels of the flyer.

Here is the example of what i mean:

Im still deciding on font and there are a few details that need to be sorted out, but all in all im happy with how its going and am happy for my schedule and excited about getting to the finish.

Wednesday 26th May 2010

A great day. I am feeling very confident and motivated by my project.
Today i experimented with papers and card as i am pursuing the idea of a DIY flyer that tells the reader a story and information on the charity.

Basically, the idea is to create a teaser campaign for the homeless charity (in this case hopefully Crisis). The 'teasers' would be posters with the sprayed "Home Sweet Home" as seen in yesterdays entry, and also outlines, meant to represent the chalk outline of not only the crime scene of homelessness: allowing people to sleep rough, but could also be our perception of these 'other' people that are dead and missing to our society... either way it attracts attention and asks questions.

There will also be a followup package to this. This will be in the form of 'junk mail', although it will be addressed to 'The 18--25 year old':

A change I would like to make to the mock-up above, would be to have an implication of the teaser on the outside of the envelope, giving the target even more reason to open the letter. This could be a print of the outline character.

INSIDE the envelope, is the flyer. The flyer should involve the reader and be less about guilt, and be more informative and focus on the positive aspects of the charity.... but with regard to design, this is how it has progressed:

This was the first design.... it starts at the envelope, so is very large. Its more fun like this as you become lost in the journey and it is quite satisfying to build a house at the end.
Unfortunately it does use quite a lot of material and would be very wasteful and not very cost effective if it the were a lot being made.
So with this in mind, i went back to the drawing board to try and come up with a better design.

With drawings and experimenting with the card i came up with this design:

It is smaller, but as satisfying to open up and construct. There are also enough panels to tell a success story and keep the attention of the viewer.

As a bit of fun here is an animated gif of it opening up:

One of the ways I wanted to tell the story is to be able to have a character that is shown changing situations. My initial idea to do this was to show two illustrations that occupy the same space but at different stages of the unraveling.

This was OK, but it wasn't clever enough and could possibly be ignored. In order to grab attention i have decided to create a pop-out outline shape of the man which folds from being in a rough sleeper situation, to being inside the house, with his confidence regained.

Tuesday 25th May 2010

The past week or so have been quite dry and not very inspiring unfortunately. But today has been fantastic!
I got into college early in order to get the most out of the day. I am charged, but had a while recapping where i had left off.
The state i was in was lost and my project was not really taking any direction. I had a look at what i wanted and needed to do and broke it down part by part. I experimented with various fonts, tyring to be relevant but also appealing to my audience, and after a few sheets of experimentation, decided to go out into the streets to grab some inspiration:

After that i went back into the classroom to see what i could take from simplification of shapes:

Unfortunately, i still wasn't getting a result that really reflected what my project was about. I gave myself a moment to think and step back from complicated and illegible designs and thought what would be the most relevant font?
The font i decided on was a badly spray painted hand font. It is always noticeable in the hope that maybe it will be an offencive phrase and therefore could attract the attention of the audience. I will also be putting it on a white sheet of paper (A3) so that it remains clear and even more noticeable.

Here is an example of the font that i will use:

To conclude, i am very excited and motivated now and am coming up with ideas and am forming a solid vision of how i want my work to look when it is finished.

Week 2 Tuesday 27th April

Today was the first day of the video workshops, there will be five sessions- one every week. It was quite constructive and i'm sure ill learn more over the course.
My main interest is in steeing up the shots, and i would like to learn about lighting and angles... basically get any tips from someone who is obviously experienced at all of this.... So will update with work done with video.

Regarding classroom work that was done today, i carried on with the Rorschach idea by drawing on the walls (amazing i'm allowed to draw on walls without being told off), and this is what i done... innit.

I will carry on with this more tomorrow... or whenever the OHP gets sorted, as i have the acetate print out to trace around.

I also made, in the same style, a face (meant to represent a homeless man) although iit does look more like a transformer... the idea of this being 'What do you see now' is illustrated below.... as a homeless transformer... although technically all transformers ARE homeless (as kindly pointed out to me by Damba. Thanks.)

I also messed about with some shapes inspired by the polystyrene chairs and tables i once made:

My next Idea was the dead to society image:

Safe.

Week 2 FMP - Monday 26th April

After a week of not really getting anywhere with my project i've finally been experimenting with a few things and this is what ive come up with today.

My initial inspiration came from the idea of the Rorschach Aka. Ink Blot test, as 'hidden' shapes/things that have more than meets the eye. I was going to translate this idea onto the 'hidden' lives of the homeless, that they are essentially part of any city, but when you look closer: whats really there? who are these people? etc etc.... you get the idea.
Anyway, here are my attempts at using the Rorschach shapes: not to show homelessness neccescarily, more experimentation in creating some shapes:

 I also used a pen to make the outlines of the shapes stronger:

I then scanned these images into Photoshop and messed around with a few blends, filters, and adjusted colour, contrast and brightness.

I was starting to get some really interesting images that wouldn't look bad as band art (that last one is maybe too much of an acid trip)... i went with this feel and started to simplify the image. First by removing colour:

and then adjusting the contrast:

 And finally coming up with a distressed-looking Rorschach print that is clear and simple (and possibly quite spooky?):

NOW, I think that there are some usefull things here, and tomorrow i would like to develop these images, possibly by tracing the simple shapes and loading them onto an OHP and drawing large versions of them on the walls and see what insiration comes from that... Camera is finally charging, so hopefully ill be more consistent in uploading photos of my progress.

l8r,

Charlie.

Final Images 30th March

FINISHED the whole thing... blood, guts and all! Will put photos on soon.

For now though, here are the finished flyer jpegs...

Brighton Interview tomorrow. very nervous and excited. been working as hard as humanly possible all day every day. fingers crossed!

Need Feeback

Just quickly, i need feeback on which to go for.

Option 1 is:

and Option 2 is:

The copy (yes, i did just use the word copy to describe writing!) is going to say: "Now look at me, i'm beautiful!", or something along those lines....

Thankyou.
x

Friday 26th March

Finished colouring! 2 days till finished product i hope!

UPDATE Thursday 25th March

Here's an update of my FATKINS diet!

Shown is the WIP of the poster side of the flyer that is going into my box of body parts (for starving kids...it will make sense when it's finished).... [click image to enlarge]

I drew the image in pencil, then went over in pen... it did take all day, and am now colouring unsing Photoshop...

And here's the colouring process... laying the colours over the areas (I use a pink mask to make it easy to see) and then erasing, or if clear, magic wanding the needed areas... its a long process but im happy with the results: [click image to enlarge]

Shackleton's Voyage

This is a short experimental film I have made on foundation. I have painted ~200 frames, which are more like moods to reflect Shackleton's experience in the Antarctic. I also faintly drew in the story of the ship breaking up and sinking so that the story was subliminally told to the viewer along with the obvious story from the text. The speed and rhythm of the text is as it is to reflect the cold temperature of the antarctic.

Foundation Art Work

Brighton Work Sample, a set by Barclay Charles 0000186084 on Flickr.