Ghostie

A still life skull study led to the creation of the character Ghostie that I have adapted into a cartoon strip to challenge negative emotions that stigmatise our ideas of death. To create a light hearted twist on an otherwise dark topic, whilst maintaining a dark comedic aspect to it. I have begun to create a rich background behind the character and I look forward to communicating his exploration of the afterlife in many different ways. 

Inspired by Richard Serra's, "Verb List Compilation: Actions to Relate to Oneself" [1967-1968] I took the verb "To Remove" and explored the way this could relate to the 'Ghostie' character and his removal from life, but not earth. His state of limbo is reflected in everything that is still present on the left and on the right is the imprint of his life, the impact he made and everything he is still connected to.

'Ghostie: A Ghost Encounter' - Digitally enhanced A4 sketch

Chromatography

I developed the identity, logo and CD release sleeve for the band 'Chromatography'
So as to create a striking, but simplistic logo for such a long word I used a series of very subtle changes, such as removing the horizontal bar from the 'A's and physically splitting the word up at the second 'O'. In particular the danish 'Ø' had personal relevance to the band, as their original trumpet player moved to Denmark. These slight edits and subtle details made for a strong logo that is versatile and strikes the viewer with a sense of identity.

The final design for the EP release and an advertisement banner that was used for social media purposes, serving as headers for Facebook and Twitter profiles. The overuse of the 'Ø' both reinforces the branding and identity of the band, but also artistically reflected the band's comedic and light hearted approach to music.

The hard copies of the EP release front and back.

Skull Study

My still life study of a skull with ink pen and a selection of brush pens for shading across two A5 sketchbook pages.

I wanted to delve into immortality as a concept rather than the conventional understanding of being an omnipresent living being. The only physical remnant we leave behind after death is our skeleton. Anything else is merely the mark we make on the world. The effect for these two pieces was achieved by imposing my earlier skull sketch onto the faces of the subjects through photoshop, allowing the original sketch to interact with the photo.

 Many people go about immortalising themselves through music; leaving a profound impact in the minds of many. Through the double exposure of my sketch on the face of Jimi Hendrix I have intended to show the collision of these two concepts; leaving behind the physical skeleton, whilst immortalising themselves.

Restriction.Destruction.Restructure

Following the paper study, I began extracting and sketching shapes formed from light and folds. These 2 dimensional straight line shapes formed ever-changing perspectives within the small figures created, due to the lack of shading, or any other perceptive base. With no sense of perspective, I began to interpret them as letters, instead of shapes and so began to develop a series of ambiguous figures that could all be interpreted as letters in this same way.

I expanded the extracted figures into a full A5, ink pen, evolving, low-poly style piece from which I further extracted more smaller ambiguous figures whilst experimenting with a two tone shading method to further distort perceptions. This further exploration of this method of design led me to understanding the key to these shapes lay in the origins of the shapes; everything emerging from a single point.

I took advantage of this way of interpreting simple objects as more than they appear and decided to try and portray a message through this. To let people self-realise, rather than having an opinion forced upon them, I created 11 ambiguous figures, some of which could be interpreted in more than one way.

3 words can be realised from the piece: Restriction, Destruction and Restructure. These terms were inspired by my desire to notice restrictions, destroy them and emerge restructured. This is a process I have done a lot of in the past year to refocus myself in a new direction, towards visual design.

The final piece is an A3 ink pen straight line design.

Low-Poly

I began exploring the mundane and every day through noticing angles in my lampshade. Light bouncing off the structure creates textures that change depending on your perspective. This led me to a paper study, inspecting the shapes that emerge from a scrunched up piece of plain A4 and how lighting affects a surface and the overall quality of a subject. 

The composition of the shapes produced led me to the “Low poly” technique with its similar joining geometrical combinations, and the perceived shadows creating depth in a digital environment. I experimented with this method on Photoshop to create a series of block colour impossible shapes that can give a false perception of 3D within these flat geometric links.

The further manipulation of these shapes allowed me to create an evolving landscape that appears to unfold.This piece was inspired by Mark Kirkpatrick's (MK Everydays) similar low-poly tranquil digital settings.