He's behind you!

Everyone loves Chelsea, right.
Especially when their goals come in the form of daylight robbery.

Well, you know what they say

...You've got to pick a pocket, Eto'o.

Eto'odinho

Rough Shapes

Finished

An Executive Decision

A little doodle I did coming home from the Earl of Camden, having watched the Manchester United - Arsenal match

Oh, Bendtner is coming on. Our enemies shall be fear stricken.

Update

Director

After a good twenty seconds of trying to come up with a pun-laden title for this post, I thought I might just crack on with it. (The closest I got was some play on words of Gabby Agbonlahor's favourite band, 'One Direction')

I was given the opportunity to animate for The Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS), who are a charitable company that work to enhance the capacity and capability of the social services workforce for the benefit of people who use them, in Scotland, but I'll start with how I came to be involved.

The project commissioned by IRISS was to enhance visibility of a report produced regarding the benefits of the arts in social care. This was assigned to Pen Mendonça, a freelance Artist and Graphic Facilitator, who had works within private, public and third sectors with a history of working with charitable organisations .
I met Pen at an Animation and Graphic Novel symposium held at Central Saint Martins, and enjoyed how she spoke about her practice, and the development of her PhD. Having previously illustrated on a short video that was produced by a small team of creatives, for the New Economics Foundation, Pen asked for an animator to bring her illustrations to life, and create the final video for IRISS.

I received the brief of the project, and a script for the general idea of how it would be produced. With a short time for turnaround I suggested some changes and we met to discuss them at the CSM Kings Cross campus.

While from the outside illustration and animation seems like very similar disciplines there are various differences in the ways that work is produced between the two and different considerations that you encounter during a collaborative process.
Pen has experience of creating graphic novels, and working in a setting where all the action of an image would be told via a singular shot, if necessary, whereas I try to think of how different shot and frames move together, and how to get the best cinematic balance for them. We do, however, share the ability to storyboard and getting the ideas from script to imagery went very quickly over that afternoon. We devised characters and a basic set-up of the shots that we would eventually use for the final film.

After compiling the short animatic above, I began to sketch more detailed designs of the scene and shot layouts and sent them to Pen, so that she could start to design the backgrounds after she worked on designing the characters, and understand the camera angles that I wanted to employ for each particular scene.

Character Development

I broke the film down into five different scenes, and then a range of shots within those scenes. I'm not sure if this is technically correct, but I classified shots as each time the film changed environment regardless on whether it is a repeated environment.
To clarify, I laid the scenes as the care home, the festival street area, the home, the festival performance area, and the care home again.
From here on out it became a case of modifying, compositing and animating the shots given to me. I did most of the animation using After Effects, but found Photoshop to be a multi-purpose software as well.

Most of the shots arrived as JPEG files, meaning that the background colour needed to be erased, so that when given an Alpha channel only the characters remained visible. To cut the jargon, I had to erase the white from the background. In some cases I also cut out elements from a scene to create different layers so that individual body parts could be moved, independent of each other. For example, shot below would have been broken up into Background and Characters, then the animated elements of each character, be it a nodding head, or a moving arm. Furthermore, objects in the background that would be animated would be placed on their own layer, too. Off the top of my head there were roughly eleven moving elements from the still image below.

It's all connected

This process continued for several days and nights, receiving image files, cutting, layering and then animating them. Overall, the detail of the animation wasn't too strenuous when compared to the sheer volume of work there was to do. Regrettably, waiting for the illustrations to be ready meant a lot of my time was spent trying to tighten the development side of the work, such as animatics and considering editing techniques as the length of the film seemed to be spiralling out of control, and the time that I had left to spend animating, was rapidly decreasing.

Pen and I met again to discuss what was essential to the brief, and what elements of the story could be cut, either because they did not lend anything to the story, or were perhaps too ambitious visually, given the time we had left to us. We decided to alter the ending, interns of scaling down the animation we had planned to do for it, and also to involve the use of visual fading transitions to cut from different shots. Once these tough decisions were made we got back to working on the project, meaning even more late nights and early mornings.

How you livin'?

In the final week of the deadline the workload really began to pile up. My social calendar had long since been ditched, and family members knew I was only leaving my room for refreshments. With the illustrations still ongoing at this point, I knew that I could not complete the project without external help. To reiterate again, the volume of the work rather than its complexity was proving to be the issue. Rather than plough on alone, but live with the very real danger of failing to complete my first project as a director, I hired Jamie Kendall,  to work on some shots that I wouldn't have had time to complete, as it turned out and after an arduous weekend of working flat out we completed the animation. We survived the weekend on copious amounts of tea, and cutting sarcasm.

The next stage was to edit and composite the files that we'd finished over that period mainly using Final Cut Pro to finalise the movie, and add them to the files that I had already started to work on in the days prior. Some further changes were made, as per the request of the client, but for the most art they were editorial decisions that needed to be executed rather than having to animate much more work.

To briefly conclude, I think this project taught me the importance of having a long view of a project and being able to see any potential flaws or issues that crop up, and making the correct strides to address them.

I'd like to give special thanks to Ashley Jones and Maliha Basak for their advice during the process.

Now without further ado, here is the finished article.

Still here

Er, how does this work again?

Yet again its been a while since I've properly blogged, so here's a bit of an update.

For the past few months I've been working with one of the talented students, from the Animation Directing course, that the NFTS seem to churn out. Work has been steady, and plentiful as I ought to be winding down in the next few days. Just finishied animating a shifty looking magician, by the name of Shazam.
I'm in the process of applying for jobs, so the showreel is getting a bit of a spruce, as well as the CV.

The tiger sees all!

I'm trying to up my doodling, and managed a few thus week, even prompting a doodle exchange on my way back to Hither Green, from Bucks.

One happy gorilla

Last but not least, I'm getting a few ideas for another short, based on regret. Will give it the big reveal in due course.
Until next time, goodnight (or whenever you read this)
Karl

Fan club

A ringing endorsement.

Especially for you,one of my favourite tees by my boy @krlawson the best illustrator ☆ twitter.com/patrice_stylis…
— P A T R I C E (@patrice_stylist) February 9, 2013

Modeling Just Sucks

That was a quote from Handsome Boy Modeling School, and this is a bit of a different post from me. Unlike the vast majority of posts I've put out this work wasn't done by me however, it did end up there being a painting of me hung in an exhibition, so I thought I'd fill you in on the details.

On my last post about "We're Better Together" t-shirts I mentioned that I'd got in contact with my secondary school's art department for advice on how to get started with screen prints, and I was kindly allowed to use their facilities. After setting up the screens, and waiting on them to dry out my former teacher, Karen Plummer, mentioned that she was coming to the end of completing her MA in Art Teaching at Goldsmiths, and wanted my opinion on some photographs she'd taken, for one of her final pieces, with a model. She'd not been completely happy with them as the model she'd hired was unable to do the poses she wanted properly, due to being ridiculously HENCH, so in turn a bit less flexible.

For what it was worth, as a bit of a throw away comment I stated that if she wasn't happy with the model then it would affect the overall work and probably shouldn't persevere with him.
It was at this point she turned to me.

"Do you want to do it?"

"Erm. Don't think I'm the modelling type"

"Are you sure, I'd pay you the modelling fee"

"Erm, ok, I suppose I could try"

Let that be a note to all those looking for creative workers... I'm pretty maleable.

So that's how it started off.
Over, roughly, seven weeks, I posed for the painting for between 2-3 hours periods. Anyone who has had their picture drawn, and asked to be still for any length of time knows its very difficult not to be distracted. Fortunately, I was meant to be dead in the painting so it meant that I'd be laying down. While this was a lot easier than, I presume, having to hold a standing pose would be it still had its challenges. The positioning of my arms and, to a lesser extent, my legs meant that my body was at an slightly awkward angle and not fully relaxed. My body weight was held on my left side, and with my shoulder tensed it meant that I had to concentrate on the position, as well as the ability to block out the incremental feelings of pain and numbness in the arm and neck.
I would start off being able to hold the pose for anything from 45 minutes to an hour, but after succumbing to the pain on the first occasion it felt like I had less resistance to it, and could hold the position for much less time.

While the majority of the piece was done from live modelling, there were portions that were done from photographs, mainly due to time constraints on both parts. I can't comment on how that would have affected this piece but, from my own experience, a photograph often gives a distorted view of the forn and tonal scale of the subject matter. This seems somewhat perverse, as a photo is a snapshot from a moment in time but I believe that drawing from life is far more of an informative method of working. One could draw an analogy of watch a sporting event on television as opposed to seeing it live. The visual experience is not the same, and in both cases you can only see what the camera is telling you to see.

So far I've spoken a lot about my own experience, so here is a quote from the artist describing the overall theme of the work:

"My ontological understanding is grounded within my artistic practice in a continual exploration of meaning through the use of visual enquiry, scrutiny and recording. The artwork I create is autobiographical: it concerns looking, viewing, deconstructing and subsequently reconstructing. I perceive this as a becoming creative process, planting affective structures of reference, which are rooted in the process of praxis in order to, identify, develop, highlight, and implement the emergence of change and to transform reality.  My preferred subject matter, which, has continued to be a major preoccupation is the human form and one where difference can be celebrated.   My most recent work, a triptych of paintings, are characteristic of the way in which I work in that they are figuratively drawn from life. The work is realised through the liberation of line and colour and expressed through the language of paint. I view them as an exploratory set of paintings that combine the dialogical tension between self, other, the life of the materials and in their conversation with each other. Identity is a key theme to this body of work, which concerns the notions of self-representation, difference, stereotype and self-discovery. The images were constructed through a process of recording with sensations, mark-making and colour; a lateral mode of creating and. Appearances and sensations were recorded and built up as an intuitive, emotional response to what Bacon referred to as the ‘mystery of appearance’. The brush served as an extension of my hand and arm to my mind’s subconscious imagination in order to unlock and reveal. In this way, I have used my materials as a language vehicle for creating images; ‘trapping’ and ‘unlocking’ in order to ‘draw out’ a  ‘realisation’ that makes sense of the world, to deconstruct and re-territorialise it by using non-linguistic forms of communication." 

Images taken at the Goldsmiths MAAT Private View, 03/09/12.

Once finished the painting was displayed in an exhibition held by Goldsmiths, at St. James Church. There, I was introduced to Graham, who Karen had begun painting at roughly the same time as myself.   In the week leading up to the exhibition I was due to pose for a final time but were unable to schedule a time, so the first time I saw the finished article was hanging in the gallery. Despite having seen it develop over several weeks it was a rather surreal experience to be in a room with the painting, with other people who would have been viewing it for the first time.

On a brief note, this was a rather poignant venue, as I'd attended primary school only metres away from the gallery space and Karen had attended Goldsmiths at undergraduate level, so it was a homecoming of sorts for both of us. 

Overall, it was definitely a new experience that I wouldn't necessarily be adverse to but, I think my forté lies as the creator rather than the subject matter. 

One last Handsome Boy Modeling School reference...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle

For those of you wondering about the title, I'll take it that you didn't read the initial post about the t-shirts, and for that shame on you.
Yes, you.
I know who you are.

For those of you who've just had a hearty chuckle, due to remembering the Officer Barbrady reference I made before, welcome back.

It's been just over 7 weeks since I thought of making a little doodle into a piece of free advertising, and I'm glad to say it's finally come to fruition. So here's how it all happened

You may have noticed that often my work draws inspiration from film, sport or other strands of pop-culture, and this occassion followed that trend. A friend at work had mentioned the Jack Johnson song "Better Together", and I began to think of the world's great double acts, Petit and Vieira, Bert and Ernie, Bangers and Mash etc, but then I got a bit hungry, and moved on.
The next day, on a train journey to work the idea from the day before flashed into my head, and I could vividly see tea and biscuits as a cute couple, so I knocked out a quick sketch, and it just seemed to fit. Perhaps the food theme had stuck in my head, subconsciously.

Power couple

I thought that from this doodle I could come up with a quick animated sketch, and possibly do some sort of promotion around it. For those of you that know me, I love clothes, and had a bit of experience screen printing, so everything seemed to fall into place.

Layout phase

I contacted my secondary school's art department for a bit advice on how to set up a screen print, and they graciously offered their facilities. I headed over with my sketchbook and spoke about how I planned to layout the design, and once that was settled, photocopied it. Sizing was a bit of a problem for me, as I wasn't sure how the design would finally look until the print was done, so after a bit of guesswork we blew up the image by 180% onto acetate for it to be laid onto the pre-prepared silkscreen. I must give thanks to Karen Plummer and Graham Sayle for their help on setting up the equipment, as my printing skills are somewhat rusty, having not been put to use for about 10 years.


After a good 5 minutes of shining a bright lamp onto the image, I was almost ready to go but I had to ensure that only the necessary areas of the screen would allow the ink through, so started covering the borders and any gaps with brown tape, and left it to dry over night.

Silkscreen

Coming back to the screen today, with it having dried out overnight, I decided to test the print out on a pair of vests, some t-shirts and a tote bag. I used black textile printing ink, that I picked up from Cass Art. I put a couple of sheets of newsprint inside each item, in case the ink pressed through to the other side of the fabric, and then applied the ink with a squeegee. I let them dry for about 20 minutes, took them home and ironed on the reverse of the design.

Pretty straightforward stuff, really.

Here are the end results

Hot off the press

L to R: Vest, T-shirt, Bag

Like the handwriting?

I think the first batch came out fairly well, but I've already realised what I want to do to tweak them. Mainly to do with the positioning of the design, and how much pressure to apply with the squeegee (I love that word).


These were intended for my own use. but I've had one or two of you guys ask, so if enough people are interested, I'd consider making a couple extra to sell on, but I'd need to know by Saturday, as I'm printing again on Sunday.


Let me know what you think of them, here in the blog, or on my new Facebook page, or Twitter feed. I'm all over the place.

@KarlDrawsStuff

 Karl(DrawsStuff). x