Disney Classics Custom Cover Collection - Series 2

Series 2 now complete. Really pleased with these, especially on some of the more obscure movies like The Three Caballeros. Oliver & Company I think looks alot more interesting than the final outcome of the movie. Disney + late 80s = :(

When the whole series is done I hope to print them as postcards and use them to write to friends/send them artwork. I need to tweak a few things like slightly increase the size of the bleed margins though.

On Easter break from uni at the moment so my next update probably won't be for the next two weeks or so.

Q1 Promotions: Valentine's Bash

Front

Back

Made this in early Feb at the end of the dying languages project. It was an afternoon's turnaround due to time constraints so feels a little rushed though I think my determination to not include the colour red or any hearts paid off and adds something extra to it. I swear this is the last beige looking piece using earthy tones on paper textures i'm going to put up in a while ^_^

Since doing the book project I've also come to fully appreciate the importance of bleed margins...really not present in this.

Fountains Abbey: A Tale of the First of Many Embarrassments in Life

Finally finished this and handed it in successfully yesterday. Really happy with the final outcome, despite hitting problems such as the wet PVA making the tracing paper wrinkle up a bit. All of the pages and their accompanying text can be seen below. As always, click images to enlarge.

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Page 1:
It was a Thursday, and the trip was almost at its end. Despite visiting the National Trust site every day that week, the timeless feeling of a frozen moment emitted by so many of the root and ivy ridden structures, held my eleven year old self captivated. A captivation of which was only spoiled by the presence of others around me. This included my family.

The half term holiday in Yorkshire was only for the week, and we had crammed ourselves into a cottage next to the heritage site of Fountains Abbey. The Abbey, founded in 1132, remains one of the largest and best preserved Cistercian houses in England. Despite operating for just over 400 years, upon Henry VIII’s order of the dissolution of the monasteries, all land where the Abbey stands was sold by the crown. (Rain had kept me restricted to the confines of the visitors’ center a few too many times before reaching the dizzy heights of Thursday).


Page 2:
Escaping with permission from the ‘look at this’ nature of the family walking party, exploration of the grounds began.


Page 3:
Running right from one end of the site to the other, was a river. Beginning as a trickle and widening out into a calm, ripple less blanket of reflections, it led me down in an eel like fashion from the Abbey to the water gardens of Studley Royal.


Page 4:
Here, statues and temples hide themselves from the prying public, conveying a real sense of secrecy to those who stumble upon them. Windows (if present at all) are clouded and dirty, giving only glimpses of whatever lives inside. Trees and foliage are creeping over the light, coarse stone. An easily noticeable structural contrast can be seen over the site, as muddy, disheveled grays exposed to the elements clash against the straight and finely crafted yellows. As the Sun got higher in the sky, a cool dampness was left in the air from the previous night’s rain, and my shadow on the path got noticeably smaller. The greatest challenge of the day so far presented itself to me; once I reached the far end of the site.


Page 5:
The stones were placed a half a metre a part from one another across the river. With the great feeling of independence attained from my morning of exploration, I began to dart over the steps. At every jump I held my breath, and then exhaled heavily at each thud of Wellington boot on stone. Reaching the other side successfully, I looked around at the tourists crossing on the parallel footbridge. No heads were turned by what was frankly, a far greater feat than any of them would achieve that day. I was on the wrong side of the lake anyway, so began to leap back across. Step after step, breath after breath, I sped across.


Page 6:
The realisation that perhaps I was going too fast had come to me upon the previous jump, and then also as I saw my foot travel past the intended stone of landing. People did at least look this time...


Page 7:
Eight years later, whilst examining a series of photos from Fountains Abbey in the hopes of rekindling some more of my memory there, I found a picture of the stepping stones where I fell. They’re massive, and really close together. I’m an idiot.

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We (my Graphic Design course) are putting on an exhibition on Monday of all the books made in the last 4 weeks for this project. I'm intending to take photos of some of my favourites and upload them here which will hopefully go up Monday night or some time Tuesday.

Now I'm in review week and the end of the term i'm hoping to do another series of the Disney pieces as well.

Page 1 Digi-mockup...

Here's a mockup/render of the first page of the book. I've made a paper version as well that's a lot less detailed. Hopefully the combination of both will be enough. There are 7 pages in total. I'll put up the final designs for them when I finish the project hopefully in a few days. I have yet to master 3D rendering in photoshop so apologies for the minor failings of the above.

Book Binding Workshop

Front

Back

These are the fruits of the book binding workshop we had about a week ago. This is an example of 'Perfect Binding' and essentially consists of you layering PVA glue on a spine for multiple layers... putting some cloth on that which includes tabs...allowing you to attach this to the cardboard covers...

Cover

Endpaper

The artwork came from some scans from the Ward-O-Matic blog where he found a nice vintage housing magazine from the mid-50s. Really going through a phase of vintage artwork at the moment I find it's simplicities really appealing.

I'll be uploading a lot more stuff about this current project later in the week. It's taking up a lot of time but it's really paying off I think ^_^

The vintage print effect...

I've finally worked out the exact style I wanted for the book. The addition of vintage graphs/diagrams I think really rounds it off nicely. Now in the process of planning each double spread out now in storyboard form, working out my technique of 3D layering on paper as well.

More book project art style tests...

Picture this 2D image, in separate layers, each layer of which pops out, and with a different font, and the transparent grey will be tracing paper. That's kind of what i'm going for eventually...

Put this together fairly quickly to show some work to my tutors tomorrow at uni. I'm planning to stylize it a lot more so that it looks more like a 'design' rather than an amalgamation of pictures I've quickly gathered/made.

More to come...