R.I.P. Gil Scott-Heron

This is a bit of an out of the ordinary post for me I'll admit

This post is a dedication to an extraordinary singer, songwriter and poet who has died aged 62.

I discovered Gil Scott-Heron and his work whilst working on a college project last term and have not stopped listening to him since. The results of the work have still not yet been finalised but, due to recent events their release may get pushed forward by the people I have been doing it for and hopefully you will see it soon. 

I'm not going to link you to any of his music, you can find it yourselves. His recent collaboration remix album with Jamie XX is highly recommended though. Instead here is a quote of his I get to see every so often painted on the wall of his record company's office.  I only wrote it down last week; to me it's perfect. 

"There is a proper procedure for taking advantage of any investment.

Music, for example. Buying music is an investment.

To get the maximum you must

LISTEN TO IT FOR THE FIRST TIME UNDER OPTIMUM CONDITIONS

Not in your car or on a portable player through a headset.

Take it home.

Get rid of all distractions, (even her or him).

Turn off your cell phone.

Turn off everything that rings or beeps or rattles or whistles.

Make yourself comfortable.

Play your CD.

LISTEN all the way through.

Think about what you got.

Think about who would appreciate this investment.

Decided if there is someone to share this with.

Turn it on again.

Enjoy yourself. "

R.I.P Gil Scott-Heron 1949 - 2011

Slowly But Surely

Yesterday we had our third meeting with our tutors about the current film brief. Now halfway through we have 3 weeks left and have just decided on the final story of our film, the real work begins now I guess but I am super happy with the idea and can't wait to make this film.

Just got back from Canary Wharf after doing some location scouting. Such a weird area but managed to take some nice photos one of which is above...

LP

Just some hand drawn type I did as as test for the LP redesign brief this week. After coming to Peter on Friday with a selection of different ideas and concepts we decided to go for a combination of all of them. Not going to reveal too much just yet as I want to do some test shots and stuff but I'll be making something physical and photographing it.

Five Leaves Left

So bar our film brief we only have one other ongoing project this term. We have been given a brief by Peter Chadwick, a pretty famous "graphic designer" to redesign a 12 inch vinyl sleeve of our choice. I chose Five Leaves Left by Nick Drake as it is one of my favourite albums but with probably one of the worst designed covers I have ever seen. Everything about it is shameful, especially the kerning of the title. Shudder. Going to try and have as much fun with this project as possible. See as vinyl is such a physical format I want to try and reflect that in my process so there will be a lot of drawing and printing going on over the next few weeks. Working with a square is not something we do a lot nowadays as well so I am really going to try and take advantage of this fact, how I'm not quite sure though. Hopefully development will be being posted up pretty soon.

Butex Scholarship

A poster I have designed as part of my application to the Butex Scholarship 2011. Each year BUTEX awards a number of scholarships to students studying abroad for either a semester or for a whole academic year. Each scholarship is worth £500 to each student and all you have to do is design a poster promoting study abroad, seeing as I am a graphic design student I couldn't turn it down. Going to print and send it off next week, fingers crossed! 

Golden Foam

Ok so time for some new projects. Last Tuesday we were given our first film brief by tutor Ed Gill who worked with some of us last year on foundation at Chelsea and who has made TV ads for Innocent Smoothies, Sony and a ton of other companies as well as some pretty awesome music videos.

We were put into groups of 4/5 and just given the title of our movie and told to produce a one minute skit based on our initial ideas. Our film title is 'Golden Foam'. We have just under 6 weeks to produce, film and edit the movie itself with the final results being screened at our very own oscar night at the end of term where we are going up against all the other films to win oscars handmade by each group. We're also going to be producing posters and other promotional material for the film which will be collated and put into a programme which will then be printed and sold on the night.

That's all I'm giving away for now, above is a picture of our group. I love the idea we have for the film so much, just really excited about this project. Below is a film I found as part of my research, completely unrelated now but so nice.

Zoetrope pt.2

Okay so here's another update on my layered zoetrope project. I am still waiting on the video to be finalised and stuff so that'll have to wait till the next time I post about this which probably won't happen till it gets all signed off.

This in short is this is basically a run through for when I present my work to my class and my tutors. Nigel has a saying that if you tell an a difficult idea/concept 10 times to 10 different people that you slowly get better at it, so that's what I'm trying here.

Above are a couple of photos of my final zoetrope and the equipment I used inside my GLAMOROUS studio (Ben's room, thanks for that) to shoot the video. As I explained in my first post my original idea was to create a triple layered zoetrope where the first layer would be a cutout shape, second a printed acetate sheet and third a printed card sheet.

I started by designing the base for my zoetrope, initially trying to work out how to have three circles, all on the same level and all spinning at the same speed. After a lot of head scratching I came up with the neat idea of a tiered base which meant I could place it onto a record player and use that for my rotation. After designing I got it all laser cut, basically to try and minimise any error I might make if I tried to make 3 perfect circles by hand in the workshop. Last minute I changed my mind about materials, choosing corrugated card instead of mdf as I was worried about weight and the spinning power of the record player.

Also got my first layers laser cut, again for the same reason. Bought some acetate and got my third layer printed. 

Sadly after a lot of long afternoons and quite a lot of frustration I still haven't got anywhere near having 3 animating layers that remotely look like they have anything to do with eachother. In the end I think I was a little ambitious trying to get one layer to work was hard enough, let alone three working all together.

HOWEVER, all is not lost...

I started thinking about playing around with layers still, but instead of animating them having something else going on instead. Light is such a versatile medium I wanted to try and incorporate it into this piece. I bought a piece of frosted plastic from paperchase and dug out my industrial light, setup my tripod and started filming. I'm super happy with the final results which hopefully you'll be able to see pretty soon (fingers crossed).

Even though the results are completely different to what I had initially imagined that was the whole point of this project. The direction I took this project in has so much potential, hopefully I'll get the chance to explore it a whole lot more soon. The point of this project was to experiment, try something new, make something awesome looking even if it doesn't have a purpose. That's where I was a little different though but all will be revealed as soon as it's all done and dusted...

Facecake

Having a trawl through my pictures earlier, came across this gem of a snap of my 21st birthday present from Francesca Pequeur. The one and only the I had on my wishlist, Facecake. Cheers m'dear.

Zoetrope pt.1

Okay, so this is the first of a series of posts about a piece of work I am super close to finishing which should have happened around a month ago but it took a different direction and proved to be a bit more of a challenge than I expected, in the end producing a totally different result than that I had first conceived. 

The brief for this project was called "New Languages", we were given the task of discovering either a brand new or already existing technology/technique and taking it somewhere new with the aim of creating something completely original that neither we or anyone else had never done before. 

Instead of try and create something brand new using loads of computers, programming and technology I opted for a slightly different and more analog approach. I came up with the idea of making a triple layered zoetrope. For anyone who is not familiar, a zoetrope was one of the first forms of animation. A cylindrical drum which on the inside has 16/17 frames of animation which when span can be viewed by eye through slits at the top of the drum - pictured below.

My idea was to reverse the zoetrope so the images were on the outside of the cylinder and incorporate three different layers of animation into one image. When viewed from the right angle it would look as though they were one image but when moved slightly then the illusion would be revealed. The first layer would be a cut-out shape, the second would be printed acetate and the third would be a printed layer. 

Look out for the next posts coming pretty soon and you can see what actually happened, hopefully with a video once it's been approved the people I've made it for. All very exciting stuff.