Update

I've been falling behind with this, chair project: my focus is the London Underground chairs.

Some from the Hunterian and Spitalfields

Here's a few sketchbook pages from my drawing visits to the Hunterian Museum and Spitalfields. Spitalfields was good, it was really refreshing to get back to drawing people again and having the definite time limit on how fast you have to draw. The excitement of trying to document a face before they move or before they catch on that you're drawing them. Definitely making more time to go out and practise drawing people though.

I need to get down to this Exhibition

http://www.kkoutlet.com/art/2010/100-covers

BARNABY BARFORD

Has the most insane work I've seen in a long time. It definitely made me reconsider how 3D is always an option to visually represent illustrations/narratives.

'Mary had a little Lamb'

'Bargain Bucket'

'Wait until I get home, they're going to go crazy!'

Yes, very inspiring. Reminded me of the playfulness and humor you can implement into work. I think I lost that side of my work over the summer so definitely making a conscious effort to get that back.
You need to watch this, immediately:

http://www.barnabybarford.co.uk/image_gallery/damaged_goods

http://www.barnabybarford.co.uk

History of Mankind

My very own response to 'How people orient around landscapes' with some help from the British Museum.

The Horned Women

We did our animation today!

Here's the flyer that Petra made:

Click on it, it moves! There was some last minute changes. We planned to have the animation playing on a laptop then a projector playing the other layer of animation on top of the laptop screen, but then realised with 60 people in our class not everyone would be able to see it at once. So we managed to set up two projectors and have them playing one over the other. This meant that unfortunately we lost some of the animation quality because of the change of size but it still worked.
The links to the actual video will be up very soon!

Designers Couch

My work recently got featured on the homepage of this website

http://www.designerscouch.org/

http://designerscouch.org/in/amberanderson/

I got asked to be a part of it over summer which is exciting as it's quite exclusive. My work should still be up on that homepage for a couple more days.

From the Horniman

Here's a few sketches from my visit to the Horniman the other day. I'm finding these trips really valuable, since I love the freedom of just being able to ignore everything and sit there and draw.
I seemed to forget how I'd usually draw until that day, recently it's all been very basic linear which was just confusing. But then somehow it clicked and I remembered how this is the way I'd naturally draw, it's actually easier and quicker for me to draw this way even though it looks more detailed.

Working 1-9

working away from Kim Smith on Vimeo.

I've stolen Kim's video a bit here, sorry Kim! But here's us working away on our animation yesterday. We got a lot done; stage, all of the filming and the beginning of the animation. Plus Kim's house is gorgeous so we had a lovely chilled out time doing work.
Here's a little fun/disgusting picture of us being confused after a few hours of the whole experience

Again, Kim's photo. I had a chance to do a lot of the stop start filming today, which I loved. I find it so satisfying when you look at the results all sped up. Since it's the first time I've even had a chance to make any real animations I'm definitely going to take this opportunity forward to create a lot more in the future.

Progress

I'm really excited about all of the work that we've got done today, it looks amazing! We got a whole scene/location of our animation all done today. More to do on Saturday, and a LOT of video editing to do after that. But we deal. It's been a good experience this group malarkey.

JAMES JARVIS

What an absolutely inspirational guy.



He hosted a lecture today, which was just insane. The information he had to offer was so valuable and motivating. Some other illustrators (for memories sake) we've seen talk so far:
Alice Stevenson - http://www.alicestevenson.com
Tom Gauld - http://www.tomgauld.com

and then, James Jarvis - http://www.flickr.com/studiojarvis

Some of the gems:
"I used to just take out a fishing stool with me and sit and draw landscapes, whatever was in front of me. Years later I returned to these sketches and realised their value, and ended up using them in my degree shows."
"Always try to reference the cultures that you love through your work, there's more passion and interest in it this way."
"I just went around with my portfolio and showed it art directors every week."
"College is where you have time to draw."

Slowly but surely

1. Character designs for our animation by Jess, these are incredible. Moving limbs and everything. All made out of card and material, little bits of smashed mirror on the front of the characters with a number on corresponding to the number of horns each character has.
2. Poster design by Pat. 

A few on site drawings from the V & A

Yes - here's some on site drawings I did whilst on a visit to the V & A museum. Some are from collections, some are from the Diaghilev exhibition and some come under the title Nostalgia. 

Props

Here's some little props I've made of card for our animation. I'm excited to see this all come together.

KIMS VIDEOS

The Witch Of One horn. from Kim Smith on Vimeo.

Open Open! from Kim Smith on Vimeo.

Untitled from Kim Smith on Vimeo.

Here's some amazing typography animation that a member of my group, Kim, has made. These are going to be cut through all of the animation when speech comes in.

Some background

Here's a pretty appalling picture of the background set I've been working on for the animation. 'The Mistresses Living Room'. It's all cut out of card and unfortunately scalpels aren't designed to be comfortable. Hopefully it will work.

Cut out card animation

Here's some videos I found relating to the style which we're planning to create our performance. Paper cut out animation will be used because it's less time consuming (we just don't have the time to hand draw animations), it gives the look which we are going for - handmade and organic, therefore successfully celebrating the talents of group members. e.g. Craft experts.

Studio Workshop

Last week we had some workshops to help encourage and motivate our ideas for the project. One of the workshops was a fast paced task in which we had to visually represent certain aspects of the characters in the play. We chose the witch to focus on, so here's 1. a shape relating to the character, 2. a room, 3. a piece of clothing. 

The fact it was so quick was a helpful experience as it not only reminds you what you're capable of producing in a short amount of time but also the difference in result of your work when you complete it that quickly. Sometimes the results can be better than you expect.

Sketchbook storyboard

Storyboard created for our current project at Camberwell, 'Cabaret'.
The story we were given as a group is called 'The Horned Women'. It's a celtic folk story about witches that invade the house of a mistress and put her under their spell. Eventually the mistress rises up to the witches and forces them to leave.
Being in a group there's been a lot of organising and confusion involved, but not all challenges are bad challenges. This has been a good experience to learn about collaboration and using your own talents to a group advantage.