Illustration Degree Show 2009!

Today was the final day of our week-long degree show. It went really well and our work looked great - we are definitely an eclectic bunch! We all got loads of great feedback and on the Private View I overheard many people saying how good this year's illustration work is ^.^ hurrah!

You can have a look at the spangly 2009 Degree Show Website where a lot of us have work up. (Visual Communications > Illustration > )

Unfortunately, I was over-excited mess of glee at the Private View and I forgot to take any photos until we hit Oceana... which is no help to anyone. Luckily, my dad did, so these are all his photos. I'm going to see if Tom has any from the actual night and if he'll let me put any up later.

Edit - Tom kindly sent me some photos so here are a few of us enjoying ourselves greatly:




Click on people's names to go their websites.

Tom Ellis:




Tom is amazing at building set designs, prosthetics, freaky 3D stuff basically. He then photographs his characters in his sets to create narrative illustrations. As you can see he's a bit macabre, but a super awesome guy and my shot-drinking buddy on many a student night in Oceana!

Iain Garbett:

Yes, this is me ^^^ Oh the wonders of Photoshop...!

Jenny Smith ^

Danielle Brady ^

Iain works mainly digitally, these are all adverts for a make up brand, with a heavy fantasy theme. I think they look awesome. The models are us illustration girls - Me, Danielle, and Jenny, and the photos were taken by one of my really good friends Henry, also graduating this year from the Photography course. He doesn't really do fashion photography (he's more into war and destruction actually...) but it was cool of him to help Iain out with this.

Danielle Brady:

These are some album covers that Danielle did, using photograms. Really nice work.

Jenny Smith:

I love Jenny's work, she has two sides to her - Fashion illustration, which is mainly hand drawn and quite free and lucid, and her children's illustration, which is done on Illustrator, she's designed some baby clothes and also a couple of children's books. Really pretty stuff.

Carina Stylianou:

Carina uses found imagery and textures and collages it all together in sometimes-surreal way. She did a few book spreads and images for calendars, she's going back to Cyprus soon though so any Cypriot art directors out there, snap her up!!

Matt Clarkson:

I don't really know a lot about Matt as he didn't really come in to Uni like... ever. But his work is good, what I've seen of it.

Alex Marchant:

Alex does a lot of narrative illustration, she has quite a unique style, I don't know if she has a website or anything though =/

Pete Dunbar:

Pete's style is totally handrendered, very satirical-based. Definitely inspired by Ralph Steadman and the like. He's amazing and never touches Photoshop (as he doesn't know how) and I think that's cool.

Peter Tinkler:

You should definitely check out (the other) Pete's work, he's ridiculously good at drawing people and painting and general awesomeness. He'll go far. This work is a series of editorial illustrations for a group of famous people - from Fidel Castro to Bob Dylan.

A bit more Pete Dunbar, Kim Price, and Suriya Chadwong:

(From left to right) Kim does fashion based and children's illustration and Suriya's work was based on anti-war posters and CD covers.

And last but not least....

Me!:


These pictures are of my sketchbooks that were on display in one of the cabinets, I filled it with awesome retro stuff like lego, floppy disks, cassettes, VHS's, nokia phones... fun times. It's to link in with my 'Retro is the way forward' mobile phone project ^.^
Here I am! And in true Winnie aka DiamondCanopy form: tutu skirt (topshop) tshirt (primark) bag which you can't see (primark) and AWESOME SHOES THAT YOU CAN'T SEE THANKS DAD!! :( (new look) damn it. They were blue and awesome. Sigh.

Also, this is not the most flattering photo ever. How did I put on so much weight? I blame 24 hour asda and alcohol. And myself. Haha. That is one thing I will not miss about being a student. Health-tastic exercise plan, here I come.

Edit - Here's a slightly better photo, you can see my bag and shoes now yay:

Mum checks out the portfolios.

So there we are. Hopefully Tom got some good photos so I might stick them up here soon.

Well done to everyone who is now a BA (Hons) official amazing illustrator type person! Yay aren't we special. Everyone's worked so hard, it's really sad it's all over. Can't believe it :(

The rest of the degree show throughout the building was excellent too, well done if you managed to see it, we are quite talented in Wolves it would seem.

Next: D&AD in London! See you there.....

Awesome ways of saying hello

Well, I think it's awesome. My business cards turned up last friday, they are pretty damn cool. I used alocalprinter.com who turned them around in 5 days, and are environmentally friendly - only using FSC certified or 100% recycled stock. Naturally I went for the recycled of course, and they look ace. You can see the flecks in it as well which I love. They use Revive recycled paper, i'm super pleased with how they look. AlocalPrinter is a great printer actually, I recommend them, and it seems it's no more expensive to print on recycled paper than normal paper, and the quality is excellent.

There's way more than this, I had the massive urge to chuck them all in the air, just for the crack. Luckily, I didn't.

The design on the front of each card.


I printed them single sided, as I planned to use a stamp that I had ordered to stamp the back of each one - this was for 2 reasons, firstly it worked out cheaper and I can use the stamp again and again for future promotional materials, and secondly, it gives it that handmade quality, which is really important to me. It's going to take ages to do them all though... I'm working in short shifts lol. Stampy stamp stamp.
Each business card is then going to be put into one of these small envelopes, which I die cut with a speech bubble cutter (can you tell that 'hello' and speech bubbles are my branding thing? hehe)... except that using that cutter is so painful after a while, oh the things I do for my art....
And it means I get left with literally hundreds of these cut out speech bubbles. They look cool but not a clue what I'm going to do with them.... any ideas would be appreciated! (confetti at a wedding? maybe? who knows....)
And so the die cut hole lines up with the 'hello' on the card... isn't it lovely :) I like them a lot, and it was relatively inexpensive for the whole thing... all 500 done with envelopes and everything for about £60. Which is nice. Considering whether they need anything extra on the envelope... hmmm.

I plan to get badges and/or stickers made up, to put inside the envelopes as well for the D&AD New Blood exhibition... didn't have time to get them done for this friday though, unfortunately.

Also, I've got my promotional postcards back from the printer too, which will be there to take at my degree show. They too look cool. Hurrah! :D :D

Rachel says hello.

Sorry for not posting in a while, I keep meaning to but have been a bit busy =/

The main thing I've been doing (aside from too much socialising) is sorting my website out. It's nearly finished, I posted about it when I'd just started, so thought it's time to get it out there!

www.rachelsayshello.com

All my work is up there now (hurrah), I just need to write a bio and sort the backgrounds out. Writing a bio is hard so I'm sort of putting it off. Ha. I'll do it by the end of the week.

I'm building it using Indexhibit, which is quite brilliant actually. I can't remember exactly how I stumbled across it but it's created by the awesome Daniel Eatock (who I mentioned in my last post) and I don't how how I could have done my website without it. I have no idea how to use Dreamweaver and have basic knowledge of HTML so this was kind of a lifesaver. And, in my opinion, it looks dead cool.

Some participants have made theirs so spangly it's untrue. Mine is semi boring in comparison. But I'm sure they know all kind of interweb tricks and such. Mine is going to be a work in progress, definitely. At the moment, I just want it live and kicking in time for my degree show. Which I'm getting super excited about. We're going to start building/painting it soon hurrah.

Anyway, I'm so happy to have got all my recent work up there, including my recent editorial illustrations:

What's the greenest way to recharge my gadgets?


Olive oil is good for you, and the planet... Isn't it?


Bottled water sales drop off

Is there an eco perfume for Valentine's Day?

They are all based on articles on environmental issues. I love doing editorial illustrations, now I have more time on my hands I definitely need to do some more soon.


I'm getting a bit worried about all this recession business. Now, I know it's been like this for a while now. But while studying it was a bit like... it didn't really have anything to do with me. But now I'm looking for jobs, it's suddenly quite scary. I've applied to quite a few and haven't got anywhere yet. And I'm just looking for anything right now, design placements to shop jobs, anything. I had a call back for a 2nd interview at Topman the other day, and omg I so wanted that job. It was going to be perfect for me. But I didn't get it... bit gutting. I just didn't have enough experience. And at the moment, employers can be pretty choosey because there's so many applicants. But you hear about 50 yr old managing directors getting laid off and not being able to find a job anywhere. It's all a bit scary. I just hope I can find something soon because I have no money, and if I have no money it means I can't stay in Wolves, and I love my family but I can't go home. I just can't.

Ideally, someone will come along and be like "You there, do some awesome illustrations for me, here's a pile of money!" Haha. Or not.

But that makes me wonder about the recession and illustration. Not design in general, there's tons of stuff around about design and the recession, but illustration. That's another post I feel.

I'm sure I'll find a job. I have to, right?

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