Skid Spot

Skid Spot from normaa on Vimeo.

BEN NEWMAN.

 

Love how he uses simple shapes and gives them so much life and personification.

TINY MISS BECCA.

Wow.

An amazing tattooist from S/6 studios in Essex. Think I've found my artist.

THOMAS WELSH.

Been seeing a lot of his work crop up here and there and absolutely love his stunning promos and short film. Pretty amazing to say most of it's filmed on a Nikon D5000 with a selection of lenses. You can clearly tell this guys passionate about what he's doing and it's definitely evident in his work. Absolutely love the soft and selective focus used. Time for a camera upgrade me thinks.


BANKHOLIDAYBANANAS from Thomas Welsh on Vimeo.



While She Sleeps / Album Promo from Thomas Welsh on Vimeo.

TYPEJOCKEYS - TYPO PAGE.

Over the last week or so I've been getting my teeth stuck into some typography and checking out some new and wonderful typographers. One gem in particular that caught my eye was the guys at Typejockeys, a typography and typeface design company based in Vienna, Austria. These appealed to me more then any others as they use quite a lot of hand generated type as well as digital stuff sometimes combining the two together.Cheeky.

After five years of nothing a new issue of Typo Page has finally been produced with Typejockeys designing the cover. The completely hand generated piece was made using a rubber plate, photographed and then coloured. Nothing digital whatsoever. Really nice touch.

The images above are some of the concept art first thought up for the initial cover. I'm not so keen on the colour use and bubbly type. They were wanting to create a plastic toy world with fitted hand lettering that could be produced as a 3-D rubber plate. I think the idea is pretty sweet but not very feasible, in saying this I'd definitely buy it because of the concept and originality behind it. 

I think the little thumbnail versions seem to have more character about them then the finished versions. I often find in my own work I seem to tighten up when it comes to producing final pieces and think you can tell that these have done the same.

TAKE A LOOK.

CHRIS DRURY.

All My Heroes Are Undead, an exhibition by Chris Drury is being shown in Common Bar tucked away in one of the many side streets of Northern Quarter until January 2011.

Drury graduated from Salford Uni and since then has worked for many highly renowned clients such as Playstation, Adidas, Diesel, Ninja Tune, Grand Central, Jockey Slut and High Voltage to name a few. Other then Common he's contributed to exhibitions in Magma, Eat the Beat in Bristol and Smudge Gallery in London.

This is Drury's debut at Common, showing off a vile, gruesome but highly lovable gallery of his work. You can see that his work is heavily influenced by 1980's horror films and comic book art especially with his use of vibrant, block colours outlined in a heavy but confident brush stroke. He uses a variety of media and techniques but his work here focuses on working with wet media. I like the ideas behind his work and it's given me a lot of inspiration for a personal project I'm doing that can be linked with an on going brief. Cheers Chris!

I'd recommend heading down to Common as they've always got something interesting on the walls to gorpe at and equally as important a selection of many a fine ale and beverages.

CT.

CT is an Italian graffiti artist that puts a modern and exciting twist when it comes to putting paint on a wall. Originating from Torino, a town containing a large history in typography and lettering is clearly an influence that's evident in his work. He puts a crisp and slight constructivist style to his art. I wouldn't usually expect to see work so slick and "graphicky" being made in this media which is an unusual and exciting difference from his work to others.

CHECK HIM.

SOONINTOKYO.

Quirky little website full of weird and wonderful giffs by soonintokyo (collaborated with Serge Seidlitz on a previous post) with some funky tunes to accompany.

I'm not an artist

Check it.

JACK TEAGLE & BEN NEWMAN.

I was back home this weekend and decided to pop into Traveling Man to come across these beauties. The images below were from a set of short (possibly screen printed) comics by artists Jack Teagle and Ben Newman.

Each booklet was crammed full of colour and life containing various little beasties. The use of creative and well thought about cropping and composition opened my eyes to what makes a successful image.

The limited use of colour in Ben Newman's work made me consider that less is more. It comes across that the colour use is equally as important as the illustraions themselves. Sometimes in my own work I seem to forget this and the chosen colours are more of an after thought. I need to prioritise colour more from now on.

Jack Teagle

Ben Newman

JEREMY IS COMPLETE.

So after a few wrong stitches, tears and stuffing mishaps Jeremy is finally finished. The screen printed front and back panels worked a treat on the weird leather like material and felt good to be back in the print room. Been far too long. Made a few mistakes when stitching the parts together with some tight spots but that was expected. Had to do a few little bits by hand but the majority was done on the sewing machine.It went much smoother then i first predicted but definitely think this was down to me making the smaller prototype earlier on. If I was to reproduce more of these I think I'd be much more time efficient and simpler to create templates/nets for the material so that they were all scaled the same and looked professional. Altogether pretty happy with it.

As soon as I get it back from marking I'll take some better pictures in the studio using my SLR as appose to my phone.

Finished version.

Rough markings of body parts.

Pieces cut out ready to be stitched and stuffed.

Panels were stitched inside out with gaps cut through the fur to reveal.

Back branding panel.

Finished stuffed toy from the back.

ELISAVA SCHOOL OF DESIGN.

A collaboration with soonintokyo, made for Barcelona school of design. Here are the books and posters that Serge Seidlitz illustrated. Pretty awesome.

MY MUNNY.

Just a few shots of the Munny I've been painting for my current brief exploring toys. After looking into getting a small vinyl figure of my own being made professionally I soon realised it was going to cost a lot more then I first anticipated. Looking at it from a reproduction point of view it would be dead costly as well so I think this little chap will have to do for the time being. Time to focus on my big plush toy instead.

Not yet finished. Was loosely based on a wolf mask wearing tank character from the summer work.

MATTHEW LYONS.

The work of Matthew Lyons seems to appear on quite a few blogs/tumblrs at the moment and I can completely see why. His creative imagination and use of composition as swell as colour choice is stunning. I particularly like the way he uses digital technology that looks very hand generated and provokes questions into how its produced. I did a little research about his working method and its all created in photoshop using the lasso tool then using textures and home made brushes builds up the images to look as though they've been hand rendered. His use of unusual and exciting view points makes his work stand out from the crowd and reminds me very much of film still and title sequences (something I'm dead interested in).

His characters seem to contain so much personality and life by capturing posture and stance perfectly. You can clearly tell he's influenced from 1960/70 sci-fi films and their preconceptions of the future. Reminds me a lot of scenes from Barbarella starring Jane Fonda.

The use of basic shaped elements in an exciting composition looks effortless and works incredibly well with the futuristic scenes.

The work is an absolute treat to look and and has heavily inspired me in the work I'm currently making myself. I'd definitely recommend checking out his blog as there's more mind blowing work to check out.

MINI MONSTER.

Today I built a small prototype of the monster I'm going to be making later on this week. Went a lot better then I thought.

Last Meninas : Part Tres

This is my final piece for the collaboration brief set over summer. I'm pretty stoked with how it's turned out and feel I'm sort of getting to grips on how to use acrylics and touch images up in photoshop easier. I'd like to expand this a little further and include the characters in some later work either my personal or uni. All together our groups final pieces look pretty sweet as a set and you can really tell the links between them all and each persons distinct style. Glad I got my teeth stuck into it and enjoyed working with my boys.

HENSON'S MONSTER.

I managed to find a pretty awesome blog about how Keaton Henson and a mate created a massive, fluff filled version of one of his sickk illustrations (Dave) whilst doing some research for a current brief. I want to make myself one of these 9 foot bad boys for my new flat. Maybe ever bigger, depends how adventurous I'm feeling. If this fails I intend to make a  few slightly smaller versions of some characters in my sketchbook for my current brief. After making one and seeing if it's is easier then painting a vinyl toy it'll determine on which I'm going to use for my final piece. I really, REALLY want Dave.

Check out how Dave came to life on his own special blog here. It's pretty mint.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE.

Last night I had the pleasure of watching Spike Jonze's version of "Where The Wild Things Are" and fully fell in love with it. I'm not sure how I haven't ever come across it before and have never read the book as a child. The story was random but seemed to flow effortlessly and I found myself instantly lost in the wild with Max. The story follows Max as he travels into the wild with a handful of very individual monsters (Bill the bull is without doubt the coolest) ,living and exploring this new landscape having argued with his mother. After speaking to other people I didn't realise that it differed from the original classic children's story by Maurice Sendak.

I thought it was relevant with the first part of my current brief where I have to make either a toy/piece of textile/game/puzzle. I think I'm going to make either a plush toy/vinyl figure based on some characters from my summer work along side some new faces as well taking inspiration from the monsters in the film.

The monsters reminded me of a 9 foot tall plush toy Keaton Henson made for one his exhibitions last year and is sort of the thing I'd be wanting to do if I decided to work in that media. He used a combination of furry materials and images painted onto plastic stitched together to create a huge, cuddly beast. I'll put a new post up about it as soon as I find some photo's.

I looked into some of the films merchandise and found there was quite a lot of toys aimed for children however I'd buy most of it myself. Big kid at heart.

Some of the large vinyl figures look absolutely awesome with some insane detail been put in and I'm also a big fan of the soft characters and how simplistic they are,total opposites. They're all pretty expensive to buy so I should probably bare this in mind when making my own as I don't have much of a budget to go on.

I'm still undecided but think that making a vinyl figure like the black Kurbrick one above might be my easiest option, providing I can get a decent shaped blank vinyl to work with. The Kubricks are character block figures made by Medicom Toy of Japan. They're usually about two inches tall (the size I'm wanting to work with) and resemble a cross between LEGO and Playmobil figures.