Postcards and business cards

 

 

I have also been busy designing postcards and business cards for my upcoming degree show 🙂 One uses my Crocky-Wock illustration (designed especially for this) and the second uses published work from a Science text book for kids 🙂

Pipe-dreams

Just something i’m being made to do in one of my final modules at uni – think about my future! Sometimes I just wish I could bury my head in the sand for a little while…

Also, those pipe-dreams are in no particular order. I was told to make a list of all the things i’d potentially like to do when I leave the cosy confinements of Uni

Third Year Dissertation Questionnaire

As part of my final year, I am required to produce a Dissertation on a research topic of my choice. I have chosen to investigate the process and consequences of adapting children’s books into film. As part of my research for my Dissertation, I have produced a questionnaire asking for opinions on book to film adaptations. Your answers will help me to answer questions such as ‘What percentage of people prefer the book to the film?’ and will form the basis for my Dissertation essay.

It is mainly based upon children’s book adaptations, but includes general questions as well.

If any of you wouldn’t mind taking a look and helping me to gather information, I would greatly appreciate it.

This Questionnaire should take around 15-20 minutes.
Thank you for your help and co-operation.

Link:
http://www.rationalsurvey.com/s/9541

Contextual studies result!

So even though I required extensions on 3 of my classes, the 4th was so much fun and so easy that I sailed through and finished well before the deadline. That and the fact that it involved a lot of writing, research, printing photos and sticking them in my journal – which I could do whilst stuck in bed with a bad back.

I finally got my result back yesterday, and I was more than pleased with the 100% mark I got for my 30,000 word research project into children’s books vs children’s films. It’s the most fun I’ve had doing a written project and it will form the basis for my dissertation in September. I’m just so thrilled, since I’ve got 100% for my contextual studies this year based on this latest result and an essay from Christmas time. Maybe I should give up the practical side of art and write about it instead? 🙂

Assessments

So I’m feeling a bit nerve wracked at the moment. I submitted my Uni research project this morning – the one based on children’s book adaptations and how their illustrations fit into the films- and it was 30,000 words at the time of completion. The minimum is 1500 words so I think I’ve Leary overshot that mark. Trouble is, I’m under a lot of pressure from myself now, as well as my tutors, since I’ve always got A’s in this class, including full marks in the last essay. I’ve also to extensions for my other three classes due to the bad back I suffered in march, and o they aren’t due until July 12th. Regardless of the extra time, I’m feeling the pressure from those too… Just a lil bit stressed right now.

London Book Fair 2013

So I’m off to London tomorrow – having never actually been, but I am going on a visit to the London Book Fair 🙂 my original plan was to take a portfolio of my work with me and have it looked at by the art directors of various children’s book publishing houses during the illustrator surgery, but sadly I have bottled it. I think that if I hadn’t have had so many health problems recently, I probably would have taken my work, but I just don’t feel comfortable presenting them with a half finished concertina book and a load of random unrelated doodles.

It does put me in mind however, to think about how I brand myself. I plan to go along next year as part of my last year of study, with a whole load of new amazing, purposeful artwork, which will hopefully make me memorable and them offer me a job somewhere down the line. In order to do that I need to practice, figure out a way of self promotion and boost my confidence. Tomorrow is just a scouting trip now, bundled together with a talk relating to my dissertation, but it should all be good fun 😉

Children’s Books and Graphic Novel adaptations

Adaptations – Click to Download PDF Article

Above is a PDF of part of my personal research towards my dissertation topic of Children’s Books and Graphic Novel adaptations. I’m now pretty much focused on Children’s book adaptations, but included graphic novels in there too since I thought they were interesting. Beware, these are just my opinions, and not fact (except the bits about who directed etc.) The reviews include:

Coraline by Henry Selick
Fantastic Mr Fox by Wes Anderson
Where the Wild Things Are by Spike Jonze
James and the Giant Peach by Henry Selick
Blood Splattered Adaptations – Coraline VS Coraline by Joshua Langland
The Making of Coraline by Henry Selick
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Phil Lord and Chris Miller
V for Vendetta by James McTeigue
From Hell by Albert and Allen Hughes
The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends by Dianne Jackson
Peter Rabbit by Nickelodeon

That last one is a scathing one, I warn you…Enjoy 🙂

Part of my childhood is destroyed!

http://vimeo.com/59498390 – Link to premiere episode.

Whilst browsing for childrens book adaptations for my dissertation, I came across this…this abomination. What the hell have they done to one of my childhood favourites? This, despite being painful to watch, is a perfect example of when a children’s book adaptation has gone too far. It is just wrong on all sorts of levels.

It does however, provide a great comparison to the original Peter Rabbit and Friends series, where the images actually looked like Beatrix Potters’ drawings had come alive. If this is to be the future of children’s tv (like other awful shows such as the tweenies, Teletubbies, and any other ‘refreshed’ versions of old shows – Postman Pat, Fireman Sam, I’m looking at you!) then my children will be watching all the shows I used to watch as a kid via YouTube etc. This is just plain awful, but great material for my dissertation.

Below are the rest of my contextual notes up until December 2012. They are handwritten i’m afraid, since I don’t presently have the time to type them all out again. I hope they are of use to someone.

Notes are in PDF format.

Contextual notes

Modern Art to Post Modernism (Paul Tovey)

Contextual Studies 3/10/12

1922-1979 – Modernism
1880-1920 – Modern Art
1980 – onwards – Postmodernism

1851 saw The Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace.
Johnathan Barnbrook – contemporary designer – influenced by the styles of the past, but doesn’t think we should learn from them.
Ecclectisism of post modernist – the mixing of two or more styles in one piece of work.

Austerely Park – Robert Adam (architect)
Built in a classical style, which was the only style understood at the time. It was a balanced and symmetrical style.
Industrial Revolution – took place mainly in The West Midlands
Matthew Boulton, James Watt, The Wedgewoods
The Lunar Society in Handsworth.
Huge changes kick started design.
The late 18th/early 19th century saw Gothic influences come to light – Henry Warpoles’ Strawberry Hill.
Gothic became gothick – which was a parody on the real gothic style.
A new middle class was created, and the wealthy began to move into the Towns.

Areas of note
Delauthenburg – painting of Coalbrookdale.
Napoleonic war (end of 19th C) conquered most of Europe.
Goya – brought us Horror and Consumption. He was Spanish, which was controlled by Napoleons Mercenaries.
It was an expressive period.
Henry Fuselli – The Nightmare – introduced the Sublime.
Then there began the battle of the styles – Liverpool to Manchester Railway – 1816-1822
1820’s-1830’s saw a classical revival.
Peugin – a fundamental Christian
You can link the buildings design to the reaction of them. What an architect can do to the way people respond.
A Medieval style started to influence people.
Architecture became less balanced, and brought about more irregular architecture.

1840’s
Houses of Parliament burnt down. peugin got the job of creating the tower. Classical designer Barrie was appointed too.
The was a sudden interest in Gothic type.
Example- The Law courts in Birmingham.
There are no Gothic Banks.
The Railway companies became competitive – Euston was built in the Classical Style, St. Pancras was built in the Gothic Style.
The London Coal exchange was neither. It rung in a new era of Glass and Steel structures.
The Victorians now had steam powered printing machines.
The new emerging design was over excessive – see Punch Magazine Covers.
The Great Exhibition was to showcase Britain as the best.
It contained a lot of over embellishment.
‘Living furniture’ contained foliage.
There were no trained graphic designers or illustrators at the time.
Guild Hall in York.
William Morris was appalled by the great exhibition. He was a wealthy socialist and a failed architect and painter.
He began to draw natural forms
Was friends with Pre- Raphelites.
Philip Webb was also an architect, who built in a vernacular style (to overly decorative; made from local materials.)
The Arts and Crafts Movement.
The Red House – Morris’ house. It carried no embellishment and he called it ‘truth to materials.’
Burn Jones designed Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton.
Morris and Faulkner – a design company that created products that were considered functional and fit for purpose.
The old Wolverhampton School of Art and Design building was built in the vernacular style, and was part of the arts and crafts movement.
Morris founded a press, which naturally influenced illustration.
Chris Dresser (1880’s) brought about radical design.
Illustration took a while to catch up. There were not as many books at this time since a lot of people couldn’t read.
Kate Greenaway worked in a very Victorian, but natural style
William Caldecott dealt in Anthropomorphism and a natural feel.
The need to read began to grow, so that people could organise businesses.
Manuals had to be written to explain technical skills and machinery
Magazines and Newspapers began to be produced with illustrations.
Walter Crane
Aubrey Beardsley – worked in a flat and quite controversial style. Was influenced by Japanese art. He didn’t always use the same perspectives, and used differing line volumes to create a sense of space.
Jack Murdor – a Guildist, – curves and sways.
Charles Rennie Macintosh – studied at the Glasgow school of art, worked in no real style or decoration, but took a more industrial line.
Glass windows and doors, influenced by Morris, became more exaggerated.
Studio magazine became the first to be internationally published and distributed.
Macintosh’s work influenced European Design.
Alphonse Mucha – Art Nouveau and used further exaggeration.
Some art became highly controversial (Alan Moore)
Jules Cherie – designer from 1890-1910 had an expensive style
Peter Berens – an Architecht and was the first corporate designer (buildings, logos etc.)
Paul Cezanne – his paint took on a form of its own.
Braques – his work was angular and showed a breaking down of form.
Picasso – used Cubism, and existential art. It was considered more realistic.
Not much had an impact on Britain except Vorticism – Wyndham Lewis.
Reduction art – began to kill ‘art’ off.

The Russian Revolution – 1905-1917- was seen as a backward country.
The soviet communists introduced Russia to the Industrial Revolution.
Influential Russian Designers began to emerge.
Lissitzky – created graphical messages with shapes.
Bauhaus – 1919 – was seen as functional designs.
Gropius
Graphics were based on grids.
Bayer-Moholy Nage – ‘can’t use serifs; they are dated.’
Didn’t want historical references being used.
Kandinsky
Reductive Modernism
De Stijl (means The Style)
Schoder House
Mondrian painting
Le Corbuisier – Architect God.
Only used concrete – he named his designs, and believed that they were machines to be lived in.
Ocean liners influenced him.
His buildings were soulless
He was also responsible for early housing estates.

Before now there weren’t many female designers.
Designers were considered to be DWEMS – Dead White European Males.
Eileen Grey worked with Corbuisier.
Women didn’t get the vote until the 1920’s, and so women’s rights and equal rights for women were new.
During the war, women kept the industries going, and were then dropped when it was over.
Tamara Delempica – and Art Deco painter
Vogue Magazine covers.
Frank Lloyd Wright – American Designer.
Dudley Zoo is an example of contemporary (modernist) design.