Tote Bags

Before the holidays I was very busy down in fabric screen printing. I made 3 different bag designs, this Ludd Brown one is the only one i have a picture of so far. (see below). Also did one with 3 layers- a fox on a yellow circle, with 6 little foxes on the other side, and a 2 layer print of a 'To The Lighthouse' design I had been working on.  I sold some at a Christmas fair and then used lots to make hampers for my family- I filled the bag with jam, chutney, fudge and cherry brandy. Delicious.

This picture was taken by Rob our tutor in Budapest. Ludd Brown is my boss's dog.

Progress

I have been very behind on my work. Before the Christmas holidays begun I decided to animate a song my friend Polly and I wrote about Sigmund Freud. I made a storyboard, but still hadn't decided how I wanted the animation to look. It's less than a minute long, so detail isn't an impossible task, but I am unorganised and very behind. Currently trying out different ways of drawing Freud and seeing which would be most effective.

Thomas Builds the Fire

This is Polly's new bear. We found him in a Salvation Army shop this afternoon. He has  HEADDRESS!!

Cabaret Project Video

This is a video of our story performance!

KEY IDEAS--TASTE

A few weeks ago we had a Key Ideas symposium, themed on TASTE.

In the morning we had a series of lectures on taste, and then in the afternoon we had to bring in an image for good and an image for bad taste, then swap images and see if other people put our un-labelled images in the same taste categories as us. It was interesting. Someone put a Lucien Freud painting in bad taste. The whole thing showed a lot how education influences your taste.

Performance Day

These photos are from a few weeks ago when we all performed our stories. It was pretty fun and there was a good mix of approached towards communicating the stories. We re-filmed our story, I will post it when I get a copy. 

Cabaret Project

For our last project we created a cabaret performance of the folk story Ivan Polypof. We performed it in a stairwell in Camberwell. Tada!

"The genius of the movie business is that the only thing the purchaser gets is a memory."

I am babysitting, and reading timeout. There was an interview with David Fincher about his new film "The Social Network", about Facebook. I just thought he said some interesting things, like

" The first scenes in a movie should teach the audience how to watch it."

And later in the interview, David Jenkins (interviewer) asks Fincher
This is your most talky film. As a director known for your distinctive visual sense, did you have as much fun sculpting words and performances?
Fincher replies-
"There are two things i'm responsible for. One is whether or not i'm presenting believable behaviour, which is totally subjective. The other thing is camera position: from where am I going to see this person? People think of directing as the Big Circus:yes, 90 per cent of directing is getting the money and getting the right equipment and the right people and departments to create the right feeling out of the right context. In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behaviour and we sculpt light. Audiences only get to see what we show them at that moment, I control everything they hear and see. I'm hoping that these elements will translate into feeling. It was Louis B Mayer who said, " The genius of the movie business is that the only thing a purchaser gets is a memory." That's what directing is. "


I think all these things are very true.  To tenuously link this thought to our current cabaret project, I think it's relevant to remember that we are presenting a visual image in our performance, and that people just take away a visual memory. How can we make that coherent and strong?

Lacombe Lucien

This poster is awsome.

Sushi Mondays

Last night we made sushi. It was AMAZING.

Story Swapping

Today in the studio we did some storyboarding workshops. We were put into groups and had to write a short story- each giving one component eg. setting, characters, then putting them together. We then had to draw a visual storyboard from the text. Our storyboards got passed on to another group, without the origional story, and the other group had to write a story that interpreted our storyboard. They then passed on the story to another group and then drew a new storyboard for it. This was our set of stories:

Once upon a time, in a sunny Nunhead graveyard five escaped prisoners were enjoying a birthday party. They were playing pass the parcel whilst listening to nursery rhymes. Mismatched, these men escaped together through a friendship built through long hours in the cells. But now, outside of the prison walls their friendships start to fray and friction begins to build.
Pass the parcel is the final straw.
The next day, police found the bodies of four men sprawled over the graveyard.

Prisonbreak! Party in the graveyard to celebrate. Someone eats the last of the sausage rolls. Tensions rise, theres a huge fight, everyone dies. Prison warden guy is not amused :(

9/10 Jerry Levitan 'I met the Walrus'.

I can't describe factually better than youtube:   "In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an interview. 38 years later, Levitan, director Josh Raskin and illustrators James Braithwaite and Alex Kurina have collaborated to create an animated short film using the original interview recording as the soundtrack. A spellbinding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit and timeless message, I Met the Walrus was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Animated Short and won the 2009 Emmy for 'New Approaches' (making it the first film to win an Emmy on behalf of the internet)."

I chose this as an interesting image as I love animations that match voice recordings, I find the subject matter really interesting, AND it crosses over my two main interests- illustration and music journalism.

Yellowstone Posters

http://www.rangerdoug.com/store/posters/posters-grand-teton.html

Awsome posters.

8/10 Sally Cruikshank

Thought this was pretty good.

7/10 Nous Vous Collective

I really admire the work of the boys at Nous Vous. This piece is by William Edmonds. I could have put up hundreds of things they have made that are excellent. They are all very proactive and good with words. I like this piece as it is simple and to the point, and it reminds me to try harder.