Very Strong + Angry Monkey

This is part 3 of my story where the giraffe is strolling back to his village after being his neck issue was not resolved by the Wise Elephant. The giraffe is crying with his head down and walks straight through a banana in the angry monkeys hand as he was about to eat it. The banana is stuck in the giraffes ossicones and so the monkey pulls and pulls to get it back. I created this picture from a handdrawn picture I had created and then adding my own textures to it again. I was a bit  unsure on how to drawn a 'cartoony' monkey face so I got ideas and inspiration from an angry monkey from 'Family Guy' the tv show, the monkey is shown below. 

Another version I did using different textures and colours.

Textures

Wooden floor - Pillow - Pillow - Dressing gown - Wall - Leather Chair - Sofa - Wall - Wall - Table  - Carpet - Carpet

this is one of my favourites I have taken and will probably use it for the giraffes that i draw.

Wall - Duvet - Blanket - shirt - wall - basket - desk- paper - paper - floor - mums coat

These are some home taken textures I took with my camera. Im going to use some of these in my final outcomes.

The Wise Elephant

This is the second part of the story where the giraffe seeks out the almighty Wise Elephant, the elephant is shocked by the size of the small giraffe and unfortunately cannot offer any advice but tells the giraffe to carry on wishing and one day his dreams will come true.


Once again this is a hand drawn image, I had no help when drawing the elephant just my initial ideas, I filled the elephant with a texture I made from a scrunched up piece of paper. I like the effect its made for the skin. The sun I created easily just experimenting with the paint on Photoshop. And the sky was from part of a photograph from when I went to the Zoo.

Front Cover Attempt

This is my first attempt at a front cover for my childrens book (below), again it is very much inspired by Alexandra Ball, childrens story book artist. As you can see my original drawing of the cover is to the left << , and I have simply just added textures to the drawings very much like Alexandra Ball to give a very cool and colourful affect to the drawing. The textures for this piece were ones found on the internet but when I do this for my exam I will be getting all the textures myself. 

Development of Ideas

I had a mess about with my textures and drawings and came up with some interesting results! This style is very much inspired by Alexandra Bull who uses textures to fill her animals, trees and landscapes, its such a cool and effective way of filling items in Photoshop and its so easy to do!

The style of these pictures was taught to me by my teacher Jessica Townsend, her work is awesome and an inspiration to me. A piece of her artwork is shown below and as you can see my artwork here has been greatly inspired by the use of textures to fill items. (wood texture for floor, fabrics for clothing and curtains)

This is an easy process on Photoshop, all you have to do is duplicate the original layer and use the magic wand to delete parts of the layer you want and can replace with a texture. As you can see i missed part of the leg in the giraffe edit above, I improved on this in my other photoshop edits by messing about with the levels in Photoshop and making the lines darker and turning the tolerance down on the Magic Wand Tool.

Inspirations - Alexandra Ball

Alexandra Bull was born to an aerobics teacher and a countryside ranger, it was probably no surprise that she spent her early years with her brother running and jumping in the countryside. And to this day she is thankful for this as these great memories have helped her tell the tales and stories of her childhood and live her dream of being a storyteller for children. Alexandra Bull had a great love for art and she began designs work for mainly children and soon got a degree in illustration at Falmouth college of arts. 

Alexandra Bull is a huge inspiration to my work, I think her works incredible. Firstly, the simplicity of her work for e.g the picture above, the drawings are quite simple but the outcome is perfect. She uses a wide range of colours appealing to a younger audience greatly and the strong lovingness of animals is shown throughout the picture. Kids love animals and they're smiling and playing with the children which a child would love to read about. 

The thing I like best about Alexandra Bull's work, is her editting and illustration skills, many of the colours shown on the picture are not just fills of colour on illustration but are textures that she has scanned in and put into her image, I think this is incredibly creative and has an amazing effect on the picture. The tree in the above picture is shown to have been edited with a texture and it is interesting and not boring and the grass and the stares have also got textures added to them.

My Specific Mindmap

My General Moodboard

This piece is just a plot of thoughts relating to the briefs for the exam. I have included film inspiration, childhood memories and books I loved, wedding invitations and reality TV shows. I am quite familiar with reality TV so I could go for this idea, but I also have a love for the books I grew up reading and would love to give one a go at creating myself!

My Specific Moodboard

I chose to do a Children's Storybook, I'm quite looking forward to the task of creating my own characters and returning to my childhood thoughts when creating this book.

My Project Brief

Collecting Textures

Hat
<---
     

      Nancys
      Bag
      --->










Brown scrunched up paper                                         Spraypaint

For my project I decided I needed to collect some textures of different objects and things in which I could possibly use in my outcomes as an alternative to colouring in or just filling with a plain colour. I have created a number of textures that I can possibly use in my final design. The plan is to fill the animals with the texture I choose.
I chose the hat and the crosshatching to experiment with as an elephant texture and the brown paper and the giraffe skin like bag to experiment on the giraffe with.






Spray paint
<---

<--- Paint pattern             Watercolours

Paint
--->

Book plan ideas

 This is a rough sketch of what I intend my story to be about and what the pictures could be for each scene which il need to create.
The story was inspired by Aesop's Fables and
Tamaki Tales and should be quite fun to do. As I said this is only a rough sketch so the drawings below are bad but have given me an idea of what I need to do!

Ideas

These are drawings i have done of animals for ideas towards my final outcome. The one on the top-left i was experimenting with a biro.

Influences and Inspirations

Trying to think of a suitable story for my final outcomes became a struggle for me, I didn't know what to do and  I couldn't seem to think of any good ideas. But I came across a few websites which greatly helped me in my project the first one was called Aesop's Fables. It is an amazing website with hundreds of short stories for young children which was perfect for what I was looking for.

http://www.aesops-fables.org.uk

I had a read over quite a few of them and most of them have animals in which is great because I'd like to draw animals in my outcome and think they're appealing to a young audience.

My favourite fables I read were:

The Fox and the Lion
The Hare and the Tortoise
The Lion and the Mouse

All simple and easy with a great moral to each of the stories and would be easy to narrate with pictures.

Exhibition Review

We went to the Hayward Gallery to help us get some ideas for our A2 Graphics exam project. It was an enjoyable and interesting day, the whole I pretty much focused on just one particular artist named, James Dellar. His work was varied and consisted of political documentaries, exhibitions of British Folk art and the fusion of Acid House and Brass Bands. This fusion piece was called Acid Brass and the birth of the idea came from a mind map which connected the links between both the genres of music. I decided I like this idea of combining two opposites and am inspired by his creativity.

This is his piece, 'Acid Brass' I think its an amazing piece. Its not your every day piece of artwork and it reminds me of a mindmap of ideas. The way music is described and displayed on this piece is incredible, and its greatly inspiring as I have a strong passion for music! During the trip here, we were able to visit the artists bedroom and look through slides and holes and see pieces of his work.

           On a whole, the exhibition was a great experience for me, I am left inspired and influenced by James Dellar and I greatly appreciate his work. 

London Zoo - Photos taken

These were afew photos i have taken for my project, I went to London Zoo to get some ideas and it really helped! 

Inspirations + Influences when drawing animals

 I found this book really helpful when drawing animals, it really shows clear and easy steps to drawing them and the outcomes are pretty cool. The drawings are inspiring and helped me in my initial ideas.

Layout of outcomes

PAGE LAYOUTS 

FOR MY STORYBOOK

This first one is my front cover design I want text and image on the front cover as well as the logo and title of the story book. And then a funny, easy to read, blurb on the back of the story book.

This is one of my next pages, I'm not sure whether i'll do this one or the double page big picture first, but this page is going to be laid out like a comic book, there will be text and images to tell the story.

This is my last of three pages i intend to do, it is a double page spread with text along the top and a large illustration of the story.

My General Mindmap for A2 Graphics Exam

Graphics A2 exam project

Personal Study

For my personal study i am going to analyse and compare two Iron Maiden posters, because i like this particular style. Iron Maiden are an English heavy metal band from Leyton in east London, formed in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris.  The main focus in both the posters is the character Eddie the Head, he is a very recognisable fixture of the groups artwork, appearing in all of their album covers (most of the singles as well) and in their merchandise, which includes posters t-shirts and action figures. Derek Riggs was the creator of this world recognisable metal figure.
           The first poster on the left is the main image of one of Iron Maiden's most famous songs, 'The Trooper'. The song is about the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. This strongly relates to the poster. I think Eddie in the middle of the poster holding the British Union Jack maybe symbolises victory and a sense of gratify or honour towards the British men who fought strong and hard in the ward and came back in one piece. The song talks about the Charge of the Light Brigade which was a group of British soldiers on horseback charging straight head-on towards waiting Russian guns. It was a suicidal decision but came out victorious.
         The contrast and colour used in this poster are very bright and i think its partly the reason why i find this poster so grasping and interesting. Colour usually represent happiness and joy and a grey, dull colour would usually show sorrow and grief perhaps, which could be shown in the other Iron Maiden poster on the right. Iron Maiden really show how proud they are to be a British band, the main colours in this photo are blue, white and red and i think this is an intentional resemblance to the Union Jack. The mascot Eddie is also shown wearing British Queens Guard overalls and wielding the flag as stated earlier. The Iron Maiden hugely recognised logo up the top has been shown in red which is quite common but i think in this particular event it resembles blood the British soldiers sacrificed for their country, the colour is very deep and red and completely contrasts the blue background.
              
          The next Iron Maiden poster i have chosen to study and analyse is the main picture for the album 'A Matter of Life and Death' the poster relates to the previous poster i studied in terms of it being about war, but this album signifies a much colder and sad relation to war. Its clear that in this image, times have changed and its a lot more modern than the previous poster. Guns and huge tanks have been introduced instead of horses and swords.
         The mood in this image has drastically reduced, the picture is full of connotations of death and grief related with war. The land they walk upon is barren and lonely like a destroyed wilderness, it looks burnt by fire and completely abandoned. The image brings about a very depressing mood, it emphasises what war does to this world, emotional, mental and physical disruption. Nature and environments destroyed and forgotten, bodies going into war to die for no reason but the sin of man.
         The usual bright red Iron Maiden logo shown in the previous poster is no longer, it is black and depressing, the biggest resemblance to the colour black is death and this poster is swarmed by a depressing blackness. The flag shown on the tank is a black and white Iron Maiden symbol, intentionally ridden of colour to further push the musty, dull mood of war. The 'Eddie' skeletons walking, show corpses walking and serving to their own deaths, I think this further brings forward the reality of war and what and who it has it's affects on and if you listen to the album this is exactly what the album is trying to put across completely.
         
        The next images I would like to analyse are beer can designs and packaging. This was one of my first ideas for the project and find it very interesting the way they entice their consumers to buy their alcohol. The first design I would like to study is the Heineken beer can. Heineken is a Dutch beer which has been brewed by Heineken International since 1873. The company was established in 1864 by Gerard Adriaan Heineken who created the famous logo for the beer. The first thing i think when i see the logo is, its looks like its of high quality. The bold 'Heineken' in the middle of the beer looks formal and slightly masculine maybe assuming its more a man's beer than a woman's and this is made the focus of the logo by the contrasting colours black and white.A star also represents goodness and this is shown above the word Heineken. All these high quality factors, all symbolise the company's famous slogan "Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach" which was maybe their intentions. 
         I think a big characteristic of the company's brand is the rich green colour that is shown on every can and bottle. This really furthers what i said earlier about the aesthetic high quality of the beer. It also goes well on a beer bottle both being different shades of green and i think this was taken into consideration when making the design.

         This is a completely different and opposite form of beer design to the mighty Heineken, but this is equally genius in its own way. This beer can was created by beer company Rites De Pottage. The beer can on its own has a pretty cool design, its not the formal, high quality design of the Heineken, with the big bold name across the middle but it is a cityscape, its intricate, imaginative and interesting. But the best is yet to come, its even more interesting when two cans are put together, or there is a whole shelf of the cans in a supermarket! The can on its own is very subliminal and the true intentions of the brand is not revealed until two cans are put together. The image of  fishnets, garters, panties and thighs and this is bound to claim the eyes of many. This definitely isn't going be the formal Heineken drink you have at a family gathering but a bunch of lads out on a Saturday night on the other hand... This amazing idea will target the eyes of many. The idea very much focuses on the target audience which is a key part of creating a packaging design.
        I think the colours work well too, the dark glossy peachy colour as a skin contrasting the black silhouettes of the cityscape. The design has been well thought out and has a lot of potential.