Journal Pictures and Degree Show madness

I finally got round to scanning some more of the pictures from my journal, so mooch on over to flickr to take a look at strange scenes from my life.

In other news, my degree show is going well so far.  It all looks really good up on the walls and I think we've got a lot of good work in our class this year.  Sammy's put up some nice photos of work by the Inspired crew, which includes me, or you can find out more on the university website.

It's weird to think that we're almost done after three years of work, work, work.  It seems to have gone really quickly, but at the same time 1st year feels like a lifetime ago.  I've enjoyed the course a lot and I finally feel like I wouldn't be ripping people off if I charge them for my work, which is a big milestone.  I can't quite believe how much my work has improved since we started.  (Of course then I look at other people's work from my class like Sammy, Jamie, Nathan and Rob and think 'Waargh they're all so much better than me! Panic panic flail flail' but I'm told that's normal and healthy in a creative field.)

I hope some of you can make it down to the show!

Carver

Tada!  The last picture from Alaizabel.  It's supposed to echo the picture of Marey Woolbury from the start of the set.  I think it came out better than the other one, to be honest, the hatching is a bit tidier.

Also the cover, if you're interested.  It's an oil painting, which is a medium I have a lot of experience with, but not much skill (in my opinion).  It's supposed to be a bit indistinct, but I might have taken it a bit too far.  What do you think?

Also, singing to your plants.  Is this adorable, or a sign that you're a bit of a nutter?

Rawhead and the Wight

I saved these two for (almost) last because I'm very pleased with how they came out, despite some misgivings during the drawing process.  I'm particularly pleased with Rawhead, because I had to design him from scratch rather than relying on the mental image I had when I read the book as a teenager.  I originally confused him with another monster, Bloodybones, so I had to look up the description and follow it very carefully.

I used these for two of the postcards I made to take to the London Book Fair.

The Cradlejack and The Door

Two more Alaizabel illustrations.  The Cradlejack is one of the extra ones I did to improve the page multiple.  The door looks like a massive cop-out, right?  It's honestly not, when you've read the whole chapter that it's meant to fit in then it should be creepy.

There's only 3 more of these to go!

The Rooftop and The Wych-Dog

Two more illustrations for Alaizabel, both actually featuring the title character for once!  The wych-dog wasn't originally in my planned set, but I included to extra ones because I wanted a better multiple for printing.

The Hallow-Ghoul and The Gathering

I occurred to me that it might be a good idea to post more than one of these at once.  I like having a buffer of images so updates don't tail off if I'm too busy to scan things, but I'm making postcards and building a portfolio for the London Book Fair, so I don't think I'll be running out of scanned pictures soon.

Anyway, these are obviously still from Alaizabel.  The Hallow-Ghoul protects an old church and believes itself to still be alive.  The Gathering shows some members of the secret society that serves as the book's collective antagonist.

The church the Hallow-Ghoul is wandering is heavily based on my own church at home, if you're curious.

The Ceremony

This is from the penultimate chapter, and shows Thatch possessing the unfortunate Chastity Blaine, rather than Alaizabel.

Bone City

This is one of my personal favourites from my Alaizabel project, it's a vision Thaniel has of the future if they don't stop the plans of a secret society.

The Night Mare

Another Alaizabel illustration, this one is one of my personal favourites now that most of them are done. I do worry I may have made it a little too scary for a teen fiction novel, but Alaizabel is a horror story...

This took me 4 episodes of Criminal Minds and constant access to tea to complete.  Cross-hatching is a cruel mistress.

The Sanctuary

Another illustration for Alaizabel, showing two of the main characters (Thaniel Fox and Cathaline Bennet) performing a rite.  It's interesting how infrequently they appeared in the end, even Alaizabel is only in about three pictures out of 29.

Thatch

Another illustration for The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray.  This is actually the title character, Alaizabel, but she's possessed by a ghost called Thatch.  We only ever see Thatch possessing another body, Alaizabel for most of the book, an unfortunate girl called Chastity Blaine nearer the end.

Stitch-Face

This is another picture from my current project.  A Jack the Ripper style serial killer plays a supporting role in the story.  He drives the carriage with the white and black horses.

Marey Woolbury

Since I've spent all day messing around with the layout on here (again), I thought I should probably upload a new picture too.  This is one of the pictures for my current university project, illustrating The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray by Chris Wooding.  I'm still working on most of them, but I'm hoping to get about 15 finished (of 29 possible images).

Olio work

These are the pictures from my most recent university project that I actually submitted for printing.  I didn't think they fit the brief as well because they're much further removed from a real-life event, but my tutor liked them better and she wrote the brief, so I just went with that.  The characters are called Mei-Lee and Lin, they've escaped from a factory where they were born.  Lin can't speak.

We could submit a cover for the book too if we wanted, so I did this - 

Patience is a Virtue

This is a little comic I made to send to the Festival International de la Bande Dessinee (which was the only full name I could find).  Pittville Press has a table there and a lot of people from our class make things to send there.  Only three or four students actually go (this year it was Sammy Borras, Gemma Sheldrake and Jamie Mills), but I had so much work to do this week that I'm quite glad about that.  I thought you might like to read it, since I doubt anyone who reads this blog thus far trekked all the way over to France, which is also why I don't feel bad about forgetting to mention it until after the festival.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.  It's based on some stories I made up about my classmates.

unused work

   

These were for a project where the end result would be printed in a small book the university makes.  I couldn't decide which idea I liked better, so I did a finished painting of both and asked the tutors which one they wanted.  This one fits the brief better, but my tutors preferred the other set.  They would have been printed as one image, on a double page spread.

The brief asked us to work up images using our real experiences as a starting point, so I liked this one because it really happened to me once, albeit in an English Literature class rather than a cafe.

You might recognise Jemima from an earlier post.  The boy is her friend Franz, who hates his name and is difficult to draw because I designed him in shoujo manga style when I was about 15 and I still haven't quite worked out what kind of bone structure he should have.

animation

I thought you might like to see an animation I did in first year, I called it Butterflies, for reasons that should be obvious once you watch it.  The girl is another of my own characters, a Princess called Coda.

The hand at the beginning is rotoscoped from my own hand, everything else was done frame-by-frame, freehand in Flash.  I'm very proud of it, considering I hadn't done any serious animation before.  I hope you all like it too.

Snow White

These are from a project last year, illustrating Snow White.  They're a little gruesome, but I like them.