Blown away by Rob Biddulph's lecture

Yesterday we had a wonderful lecture from this year's Waterstone's Children's Book prize winner, Rob Biddulph. He spoke about his inspirations (daughters), his journey through the creative industries from graphics to art directing to children's book illustration and gave us some wonderful tips for 'making it'. 

The things that I took away from his examples were the importance of pacing and abstraction. These are things which aren't exclusive to children's books, but most books and are very appropriate for animation. I've noticed in various sources such as Rob's books and other animations that pacing is created when you step back from the details occasionally and give the reader/viewer a moment to appreciate the whole scene. This can sometimes be abstracted as well, which Rob does very well in his graphic forests, beautiful end papers and double spread layouts. Notice the simple colour scheme and use of blank space in the spread below. 

His character design is also very clearly stylised as well, but he throws in some funny little touches such as the tats on this bear... 'after all they have to appeal to the parents too', he says, 'they're the ones buying the books!'

He was also kind enough to sign copies of his books, Blown Away and GRRRRR! for us, and wrote a lovely little note in the front of mine for my new nephew (complete with an illustrated penguin holding a personalised kite). I think apart from just his obvious design and story-telling talent, Rob seems to have a way with people, and that's part of why he's done so well. He's just a nice guy making nice books at the end of the day. 

Hands On

Artist, Isobel Manning worked with the children at Great Ormond Street Hospital to produce this animated video on the importance of washing our hands. The lovely thing about this animation is that it is about the children so much! It's their voices, their drawings and their experiences making the film. It also works as a teaching tool, not only as an educational video but also probably for the children as they were involved in the creation of it, the message will have really sunk in for them and stuck. I wouldn't completely use the children's illustrations in my film, but I think this animation shows that when you're working with kids, they definitely have their place because children have an imagination that is so much stronger than any adult's!

https://vimeo.com/30153525

http://thehandsonproject.blogspot.co.uk/ < her blog has so much info on the lifespan of the project and the work the children did. I intend to get in touch and nab an interview for some tips from a seasoned pro.

More sproglets

Another sample of mini, three year old people life drawing. 

I think this is the style that I'm going to go for with my animation, but in coloured pencils and maybe mixed with even looser children's drawings and more stylised figures like Lowry and William Grill's style of people. 
I am also thinking of including the children's own drawings to get them involved in the creative aspect of the animation rather than just collecting testimonials. This will hopefully provide a little bit of art therapy for them as well and will be something they enjoy (provided I am allowed to spend this much time with them). 

The Wonderful Sir Quentin Blake

Quentin Blake's illustrations are a symbol of childhood for many people from his beautiful collaborations with Roald Dahl. Blake is more than just The Twits and The BFG though; his range of work is extensive, from picture books to adult fiction and public art. I love it all, but the series that inspired me with my current project is his work for hospitals and hospices. He creates beautiful murals and window transfers in his iconic style to brighten up the stark and sometimes scary worlds of hospitals. This is a lovely example of illustration being used in the community and for a good cause. His work is mainly displayed in children's, maternity and mental health wards; professing the power of art therapy in these sectors of health care. 

These are some that he has produced for Elliott's Room in Great Ormond street Children's Hospital. They are designed to create a calm, safe environment for families to spend quiet time together during end-of-life care. 

This article in the Guardian explain more about the reasons behind the creation of the room, Blake's approach to the challenge and the change it has made to the lives of families who face losing their child. 

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/03/quentin-blake-great-ormond-street-end-of-life

Information is Beautiful

'Information is Beautiful' and 'Knowledge is Beautiful' are two of my most prized books. If I could pick the perfect coffee table book, it would be one of these beauties. Knowledge is Beautiful might just win because it provides context as well as the facts; highlighting how facts can be distorted to give a certain impression (a nice little trick commonly used by the media).

They're books full of facts, some of which you probably never needed or desired to know, but hey! Information is Beautiful! I love these books so much because they have such a broad appeal and they cross subject borders, bringing science, politics, literature, art and so many more together. It is also a similar approach to that of William Grill (previous post mentions him more) and his visual lists. The useful and not-so-useful facts in 'Information is Beautiful' are presented in the form of infographics (data presented in an illustrative format).

Take these as examples:

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/blog/ - More wonderful stuff on their blog!

Non-fiction picture books - Teaching kids using illustrations

William Grill recently won the Kate Greenaway Medal for his children's book about Shackleton's Journey, which was hailed for it's beautiful combination of coloured pencil illustrations and factual information in an intriguing tale of Shackleton's Journey across Antarctica. 

In a talk he gave to our uni last year, he described his love of Raymond Briggs' 'The Snowman', which I think is very apparent in his choice of materials and colour schemes. This style of work and the material  choices are things I am seriously considering for my authorship animation. 

It is the way that William Grill's choice of subject matter has changed the face of picture books though. By making a book that is both beautifully illustrated and teaching children about history in fun and engaging way. I particularly love his 'visual lists', which I think are an ingenious way of making tedious information and facts immediately much more engaging. 

We are all born free

A friend of mine just showed me this gorgeous animated film, commissioned by Amnesty International to advertise their children's book about our universal human rights for children aged 5+. The book itself is another wonderful example of how illustrations can make difficult concepts more accessible, and is bang on trend with a growing popularity in non-fiction children's books on the market. 

The video combines animated illustrations with live acting on a blank white screen, which gives it a really fresh, contemporary look. This is exactly the kind of clean style combined with coloured pencil illustrative animations that I would like to achieve for Claire House. 

'Amnesty's delightful book We Are All Born Free explains the importance of human rights through truly beautiful illustrations. It is clear, simple and uplifting and makes it very easy to raise difficult subjects, even with young children. It is a wonderful educational tool and I strongly believe that every school should own a copy.'

Actress and author Emma Thompson

Tiny Life Drawing

In preparation for the animation I want to make for a children's hospice charity, I've been developing a way of drawing toddlers and children. They have slightly different proportions it seems and they tend to hold themselves differently too. Kids are generally more exuberant and expressive so I've been experimenting trying to capture that with a loose, childlike style of drawing too. 

Toodler stance

Various toddler positions

More of a classic children's book style from my childhood.

Drawing in a kid's style with coloured pencils

Art Therapy and Animation

There is definitely some magic involved in creating an animation. Animating means 'bringing something to life'  so the power of animating in art therapy makes sense, especially as stop-motion animation and pixilation techniques don't necessarily require a high drawing standard to create something beautiful. Anyone, of any age or ability can make a stop-motion film. 

Katie Hall is an artist and art therapist, who has developed animation workshops for her patients to help them deal with issues such as depression, PTSD, developmental disabilities and schizophrenia. Her blog has some clips of films she has made in her work, links to inspiring TED talks and explanations as to how her methods help people. 

http://www.katiehallarttherapy.com/blog

Learning to draw like a child

Pablo Picasso is regularly quoted as having said,

 "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."

 

 

What Picasso is really saying here is that ignoring extraneous details and simplifying everything down to it's basic components/shape/features is something that children do on a daily basis, but as adults we need to train our brains into a more abstract and creative way of thinking to return to that skill. Picasso is not actually talking about painterly skill at all, but an artistic thought process.

 

In these sketches you can see how he has simplified his drawings over and over again to achieve the simple, clean design at the end. Quentin Blake also has a similar approach and uses a lightbox to re-draw his illustrations several times until the sketch is much cleaner and less fussy and detailed than the original. This is a technique I will need to adopt if I want to capture the essence of childhood in my animation for Claire House. In the past I have enjoyed simplifying photos and film to single line styles (bunny examples below), and it works really well for rotoscoping film footage as well because it allows the movement to be the focus.

 



Moths and Butterflies

I was originally inspired to create an animation for a NPO by Moth Collective's animation for the NSPCC. Since following more of their work through their vimeo account and blog, I've come to also really appreciate their style of animation and their style of storytelling. They reach in and find the human quality in every story, be it for a charity or the New York Times. I prefer their hand-drawn and sketchier style of work to the computer-generated animations. Even though the computerised animations appeal less to me though, the colour schemes in every piece of their work have a lovely, fresh, contemporary feel. This is something I want to bring to the work I'll produce for my chosen charity, who have an internal symbol of a butterfly for all the children they help. 

http://mothcollective.co.uk

Underestimating the Disney effect

This article is massively eye-opening on the effect animated Disney films have on children's culture and in turn the future of our society. It has ruined my childhood slightly by highlighting the more sexist, racist and classist readings of our beloved childhood films, but altogether an interesting and important read! The article appears to have been written in the mid 90s, given the references to The Lion King and The Little Mermaid as 'recent' Disney films, but given that these classics are still a staple of growing up in the western world (and that certain tropes are blatantly still used in modern animated tales) it's a very relevant article on the underestimated power of animated film on culture. 

http://www.riverdell.org/cms/lib05/NJ01001380/Centricity/Domain/125/Animating%20Youth.pdf

RSAanimate, TEDed and COGNI+IVE

So I've been wondering how much change doodles can create in the real world. My other research led me to Sunni Brown's 'Doodle Revolution', which talks about the tangible learning benefits of combining various stimuli, such as words, images and sounds to help maximise our learning capacity. Using this method, COGNI+IVE have realised that they can make dense, challenging topics more accessible and therefore educate more people about important social/economic/political issues. It's almost like tricking people into learning by providing it in an entertaining format. They work alongside TED and RSA to create informative videos and talks by leaders of the fields. 

http://www.wearecognitive.com/#welcome-to-cognitive

Art for everyone

JR has been making art for the masses for years. Since starting off as your classic, teenage, inner-city graffiti artist, tagging every available surface with his friends in Paris, JR has since expanded his desire to personalise environments to invoke social change. His work in Paris gave a voice to the ostracised black youths of the city, in Buenos Aires he gave the female residents of the shanty towns a sense of community and ownership by plastering their faces 10 ft high, and in the Kibera Slum, Kenya he not only empowered women, he also waterproofed their roofs using printed lino; vastly improving their quality of life both practically and socially.

This guy and his team are my heroes. They make art accessible and show how, even if art can't change the world, it can change someone's life. Their approach is simply to make people proud of themselves and their community by allowing them to be seen and take claim of their environment.

JR's TEDtalk, where he was granted a 'wish' for the next year, explains his method, views and mentality brilliantly. Give it a watch!

The Doodle Revolution

Through my initial research into the power of images, I came across Sunni Brown and her book The Doodle Revolution, which has some great insights into the scientific advantages of using doodling and images to retain information.

Her TED talk on the subject is a great source of inspiration for the science behind how children develop a visual language, very useful when I am hoping to produce an animation for a children's charity. She's also a great advocate for embracing various learning/teaching methods, which it can definitely be argued is where school systems in the Western World fall down by valuing academic subjects over the arts and humanities. Well worth a watch!

Can Doodles Change the World? - The Girl Effect

'Can Doodles Change the World?' is currently my working title for my dissertation. I want to focus on the power illustration and animation have in conveying facts, information and ideas in a way that words alone do not.

I intend for my research to touch on the power of the image in marketing trends and how storytelling in adverts and NPO campaigns has led to a rise in animation being used as a marketing/campaign tool. This in turn links into the use of viral video campaigns and how social media has pushed the need for exciting and attractive images over words.
'The Girl Effect' is a great example of this:

3rd Year is looming!!!

For the final year of uni we have been set the task of 'Authorship'; creating a personal, self-led, self-set project over the course of the year that displays your style and standard of work uniquely. No pressure...

This should also be linked with our final year dissertations, and each should feed into the other. I have decided to invest this year in creating an animation for an NPO (non-profit organisation), to help them raise awareness and hopefully donations for their charity. Non-profit organisations rely on as much pro-bono help as they can get, and this is probably the only time in my career that I could afford to produce an entire animation for free and dedicate so much time to it.

My research began by viewing animations made for other NPOs such as the NSPCC and AA, the key in each of them is the emphasis on telling a story rather than bombarding the viewer with facts.

https://vimeo.com/77401597 - Sarah's story - NSPCC

https://vimeo.com/131107254 - 'Doors' - AA

Some shameless self-promotion

More stuff and updates about my work to be found on the RaeRae Illustrations facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/raeraeillustrations92?notif_t=page_fan