3rd year snail: February 2016

Saturday 27 February 2016

professional practice 4

i've been doing research into business cards and promotional material today, found this great image of examples of cool business cards. problem being obviously they are more expensive to make and you need a specialist site to make them if you cant do it yourself. still it's a bit of fun to look at from an artist point of view

general

Artist

for myself i've come up with a few designs for interesting business cards and a few plain design ones for bulk ordering from a site like vistaprint. the artwork to go on them will be something new and specified rather than from my current imagebase, this ensures that the work is on my current level of skill and that potential clients see the sort of work they can expect.

obviously the website and such would need to be established first to go on them as contact information.

ive also been looking at potential artist nicknames (sudanim, persona like thing) Lawrence Matthews is a bit of a mouthful and an odd spelling. for the sake of professionalism 'snailorgy' doesnt quite send out the right message, and you never know what sort of work you may do to pay the bills and sometimes its a good idea to have a different name to go under without abandoning your integrity as an artist.

I do like the snail part of my current online persona, snails have always been a sort of spirit animal to me.

possible new names, in spider diagram for because that's what i like to do

Friday 26 February 2016

professional practice 3

forms for commissions

artist contract modified from the official AO1 form

invoice for completed works

sign off signature logos (artist signature)

watermark

(is translucent when applied)

Monday 22 February 2016

professional practice 2

a little update as to what ive been looking into for the PP

i've generated a list of art publishing websites, the more I have with the same username and description the more online presence my art has, theoretically I may even get my own google biography if they are all optimized and have the same data.
to this end here is my list, i'll update it whenever I find a new one
good places to build a fanbase

the big ones

lesser known -

obscure -

errr niche (18+) -

blogs

shops-

lots of good ones here-

not mentioned-

there is also a list of promotional blogs that you can submit artworks to:
http://nonsensesociety.com/2012/07/self-promotion-blogs/

*it is my personal opinion that with the rising popularity of VR soon we will have virtual gallery sites to visit so be sure to keep an eye out and jump on any new sites that pop up.

like this one from second life but good

my favorite advice from my research

If you light a candle in front of a mirror and repeat "Ruan Jia" three times, the god of renders will appear and give you supreme chinese rendering powers in exchange for your soul.

Monday 15 February 2016

major project 5

sketch dump so far.

rough initial sequence storyboard

rough page layouts

medieval dragon design

dragon designs

final page layout

dragon wings animated frames

the based these on the wings of a bat and how they fly (thank you david attenborough for having all this wonderful footage of animals to study) this part of the animation will be drawn using adobe flash while the second page animation will be using the puppet rig in after effects, no idea how im going to use the two simultaneously but im sure i will figure out a way.

im trying to make all the flash animations looped, incase i need to import them as .gifs or if anything goes wrong with the timing they should be able to keep going through the sequence

these sequences will aslo make up my gif tests

same principle but with a unicorn this time, the three things i'll be needing is a medieval designs, flash animated sequence and a layout for the character sequence.

unicorn medieval design

unicorn design

final page layout

im going to be continuing this format for all 7 of my mythical beasts, why 7 you ask? numerous reasons, if each gets page gets a maximum of 20 seconds that equals 140 seconds for the book, plus the 20 seconds for the opening sequence, 10 for the title and 10 for the credits, we get a grand total of 3 minutes. which is what I am told is the maximum sort of time you want for a gallery animation (any longer and people get bored) not to mention that's 4320 frames at 24fps and my time is already racing away like so many animated horses.

Wednesday 10 February 2016

major project 4

since I finally got an idea of what to do it's been all go go go in terms of research, I had forgotten just how fascinating medieval illustration was.

what i've been up to: I took a road trip to nearby Hampshire to go to the lovely Winchester Cathedral.

while im not normally one for churches and religious stuff in general, the subject matter means I need to have a look at old texts and there is nothing quite like the old architecture and art to get the artistic juices flowing.

obviously I brought a trusty pocket sketchbook for my trip and promptly have misplaced it due to its small size, so until I find it you will have to make due with some blurry pictures (it was super cold in there and it's hard to take a photo with gloves on).

the thing I mainly went to see was the old texts they had stored in the top floor, namely the winchester bible, whist photos weren't permitted in this part of the cathedral I have managed to snag myself a most excellent resource from the gift shop a whole book on the winchester bible, by Claire Donovan, with lots of nice pictures of the ornate lettering for reference.

Monday 8 February 2016

major project 3

having a look at what other illustrators have done in terms of bestiaries and I found some very nice works.

*infographics by Venere
this collection raised the question of which geographical style Im going to work in, and after looking through various historical text, i've settled on european mythology and styles.
for one this means I get to use ink as a medium which I haven't got to use for ages and I need to break in my new g-pen.

not directly related but this infographic on cryptozoology has also raised some interesting lines of research for this project. its good to know that works on this subject are still of interest to people, this infographic was used by the daily mail.

*infographic by Mark Adams

looking more at the historical context of bestiaries, unfortunately most seem to have been made but monks and artists whose names have been lost to history, it's such a shame that so many will never be credited for these beautiful and ornate illustrations.

going again to the contemporary side of things, here we can see Ana Maria Pacheco version of a bestiary, she uses screen prints to illustrate poems by George Szirtes. the format the issue itself is also a very handy reference and the animation of the pages will be very much how the bulk of my animated sequence will look.

read here :http://www.prattcontemporaryart.co.uk/a-modern-bestiary-book/

the bestiary work by edward gorey (the forerunner to tim burton) uses his own distinctive style in pen and ink to give an etched look to his work. like the original bestiary authors, some of his illustrations are more like doodles surrounding the text.