Anarchy illustrations!

two very different cartoons about anarchy! one i painfully left wing, and one is very honest and true.
just interesting to see 2 different people's takes on how the world can be.

Module evaluation

Overall, this module went a bit to shit.
I thought i was doing pretty good, specifically with delving further into mac monkeyism for 4 weeks.
I'm quite happy with my final boards for "Good is...", i think that they explain the step by step process i went through during the project very successfully. No printing costs though! i need to sort that stuff out still.

Similarly, my "design for print" double page spreads are quite visually appealing, especially after how interesting i've found the typography and layout workshops, however, my back-up work is absolutely dire.

My main reason for a bit of a dip in quality of work is that i, rather stupidly, chose to live with my girlfriend when choosing my first student house and this one year relationship recently ended in a big fuck up of a mess with her still living in the house, which i'm sure you'll agree, is a tad awkward. combining this with working with Bill Hicks quotes and, over the last couple of weeks i've become a cynical, bitter and sarcastic arsehole which has led to my concentration and motivation toward work suffering dramatically, along with any organisation that i had before hand (however little that may have been).

i do plan in tying up all the loose ends that i have left in the module at some point over the rest of the year, but if i tried to do that now i think that the stress would lead me to putting my head through a window or something equally idiotic.

Hopefully these few days off will sort me out a little bit.

I'm reasonably happy with my Bill Hicks stuff, i like my idea but the monotony of actually carrying out what i wanted to do drove me up the wall. Im annoyed that i didnt sort out print prices and stuff, although i did print a few pages of a PDF but there wasn't much thought about which pages i chose. the printing company who emailed me the PDF were meant to send me a sample book but nothing came through and they didnt get in touch. this led to me not thinking about it and when it all kicked off with my recently-ex girlfriend i just dropped everything and couldnt concentrate. it was hard not to with Hicks being a miserable cunt out of my speakers for a month.

before the end of the year i will have tied all the loose ends up and hopefully retained my "dont panic" work from wherever it disappeared to. i guess im just stressed to the max at the moment.

on the plus side, im going to try to get totally involved with my work now that my free time has altered so drastically to what it has been on the course so far.

colour for print

Good is... LIFE ACCORDING TO HICKS

Arkham Asylum

I've included these images on my blog because they're very "arty" (for want of better words) for a comic book. The combination of photography illustration and painting really emphasises the intended darkness of the imagery. the layouts are also very interesting, especially because they can create a great sense of movement.

i think the most successful aspect is the way that each character's speech bubbles contain different typography and colours that match each personality. the joker is a particularly interesting case as his original campness is completely lost, and the psychotic and evil mentality that is played upon in The Dark Knight is almost overpowering, both in what he says, the type that is used, and even the way that he is presented.

Yoshitomo Nara

Yoshitomo Nara is an artist and illustrator from Hirosaki, Japan. He recently had an exhibition on in the Baltic Flour Mill (in Newcastle/Gateshead) which is where these leaflets came from. His illustrations have a very distinctive style that, to be honest, i find a little dull even though they are dead cute.

The reason i've included him on the blog is mainly because most of the info you get at the baltic comes in "baltic branded" leaflet form, which as Yoshitomo Nara must have insisted on designing everything himself. Each A5 card came in a brown envelope with an acetate window (see top image) and i was genuinely excited about opening it to see what goodies were inside!the exhibition was set up in a little home-made town (as shown in the pencil drawn map, which i thought was the best piece of work i have seen by him). there was all sorts of stuff hidden away in each room and i was wandering around his designated space for a good couple of hours trying to take absolutely everything in. good, clean, family fun.

we did it all for the don

this is lyrics taken from an Against Me! song called "We Did It All For The Don".
its not finished cos i messed up a bit with kerning and the weight of the letters but i guess that makes it a bit unusual. im quite happy with my grid idea though. making the baselines wavey and tops of letters touching bottoms creates a normal reading style which could need a lot of concentration haha.
unfortunately i messed a bit of the "friends". it should be similar weight to the "why" on the left hand side.