To Do Lists: A Depressing View

I've just completed some To Do lists for the next couple of days and as much as I knew I had a fair amount to finish, well writing it out makes it look even worse. In fairness most of my projects are at the 'almost there' stage and just need fine tuning before being printed or made for assessment but I, like a lot of people I've seen on Facebook, am just losing the motivation to do it. 

I'm trying to be super organised and I've been writing check lists intermittently throughout the year, which have seemed to scare me into working, but as of late they're losing their power. Maybe I need to change their colour to bright red to represent the, FUCKING CRISIS AHEAD I feel like I'm heading for. 

This has been the most testing year I've faced academically to date (understandably) - it's not meant to get easier - and I cannot stress how much of a god send and a relief that the start of summer holidays are going to be. 

Bring on the travelling, bring on the booze, bring on the fucking sun.

Deadlines, you will not defeat me.

Finished Book Design: Loco Motion

I have finally finished my Print on Demand book and I am very happy with it! I'm hoping the quality is as good on the printed version as the preview of it that I have of it online. It's taken such a long time to do and it's caused me a LOT of problems so I'm hoping it'll be worth it. 

You can actually preview my book by following the link here!

http://www.blurb.co.uk/bookstore/invited/3406253/d9eb1a1d96caf352e768ea03561c74e3583bddeb

Here is the dust cover I have designed to wrap around my book. 

Hand Drawn Letterforms

Last year as part of my course we were given the brief of designing our own letterforms, based on anything we wanted. I designed mine around nature and trees/twigs without leaves in the Winter. 

Book Illustration: Abstract Portraits

For one piece of coursework in the first term we were given a brief to illustrate a book to help tell the story. The book was Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which if you have read it will know is quite abstract and strange in its own right. With this in mind I wanted the images I made to reflect the story and tone of the book. These are not what I have used as my final pieces as I feel the intense colours were not a true representation of the darkness of the world in which the book is set, but are part of the process to getting there.

Style Tests: Glass Frog

As part of my animation I've started experimenting with different styles in which to draw my Frog for the sequence. I found one geometric style by Matthew DiVito, which really caught my eye and made me want to try it for myself... So I did. 

As much as I love it though, I think I'd be making things more complicated than they need to be with this particular style. I do love it though. He looks like a piece of ceramic in the 4th image!

Ant Animation Sequence

Today, our animation class was set the task of animating this small ant sequence in Adobe After Effects with some new features that we haven't used before. This is in preparation for our own animation that we'll be creating over the next few weeks. 

It was a lot easier to make than it seemed when our tutor was talking through it and I think the clip is pretty cute! I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what I can manage to create with my own now.

Stencil Session

This stencil is part of a set I started making a while back for a course set project based on Fish.

The project is still ongoing due to new projects being added on top of it, but if they all turn out like this I'll be pretty happy with the result! 

This is my favourite of the few that I've made due to the packaging paper background, which gives it a more interesting look than just plain black/white backgrounds.

These are some other ones in the set I made as testers, with a plain background:

Student Elections: VOTE UNCLE SAM!

It's Students Union election time for most Universities around the country now and to help my boyfriend, Sam get the role he wants in September after he finishes his course this year, I've been making all of his election posters and promotional material to help him in his pursuit. 

This spin on the 'Uncle Sam' - I Want You poster, we decided to remove old Sam's face and replace it with MY Sam's face! So far, it's gone down a storm and everyone seems to be loving the design.

Lets hope it's memorable enough for him to win his position!

VOTE SAM! :)

Book Manipulation: Theme of Point

Half a book with pages folded into points, based on the theme of 'Point'

Postcard Design for Magazine Promotion

This is some older work I haven't had chance to upload previously, but is all to do with a CAD project that started in September and ended in December. The brief was to design a Zine, a poster and some postcards based on anything we desired. I decided my topic would be a lifestyle magazine for the dead. 

I haven't finished all of the work on this yet, nor do I have a title... But I'm thinking something like:

Afterlife Style

Front design of Postcards

Postcard 1: 

Zombie hand reaching out of the ground with a pair of marigolds on and holding a feather duster

Postcard 2:

Someones tombstone with a bunch of feather dusters as an offering sat in front

Photoshop: Back To Basics

It's been a busy couple of weeks towards the end of term! This is a small selection of my Computer based work done in class :) 

All were made using the most basic Photoshop layering and colouring techniques in an attempt to literally ''go back to basics" with our design and to find out if we can learn anything new from it. 

Koi Carp

Squid

Jellyfish

For One Night Only

As a favour to my friend, I designed this poster for his theatre society in our University although I didn't have a lot of time to do it. It promotes a show they are putting on at the end of the month, which includes comedy sketches, songs and Shakespeare within it. 

I drew the banner/curtain by hand into Adobe Illustrator and using the brush libraries, chose one effect that I thought fitted in with the theme. The skull was a found image on google that I then edited using filters in Adobe Photoshop. I think it was a successful attempt at a poster for a nights work!

Thankfully, he really liked the poster! And so do I!