Finished Okido Page

Here is my finished double page spread for Okido - How to make a Bird Feeder.

Bird Illustrators

Since i'm making a bird feeder i thought i would look up some illustrators that draw birds and get a bit of style inspiration.

Helga

Geninne

"Bird of Blue", illustration by Seth Fitts

Amy Blackwell

3rd and Bird

Little Doodles

I cant find who did these last 2 illustration but thought i would include them because i like them.

More Research

I looked into different kinds of instructions for children, from how to make things from recycled material, and steps on how to make a cake, to find out how to make it simple and easy for them to follow. After looking into these things i found a way to make my instructions for making a bird feeder suitable for young children by using the same simple language and keeping the instructional diagrams clear and bold as i saw in the examples.

I thought about a few shows on cbeebies that show how to make things for young kids.


 Mister Maker shows how to make fun things out of bits of paper, old plastic bottles, used kitchen roll tubes, egg cartons and other recyclable materials found in the house.

I Can Cook shows children how to make simple dishes in a quick and easy way. There is a cook book out which i found useful in looking at the instructions and diagrams to see what is easy for kids to understand.

Green Balloon Club is a programme all about nature and the environment and how to look after it. This fits in with the theme for the Okido page because the bird feeder is made of recycled materials and also looking after the birds teaches children about nature.

How to make a Bird Feeder

Okido Research

Okida is an arts and science magazine for kids.

Laura Bird contributed to Okido with a really interesting design about where food comes from. I like how she has used cardboard and paper to make  a 3D image hat she has then photographed. This works really well with the recycled materials and sustainability theme.
Laura Bird's blog

Alex barrow is a London based illustrator. He is the art director for Okido and has had his illustrations in the magazine on several occasions.
alex barrow's blog
Some examples of his work:

Maggi Li has also done a few pages for Okido. I like he simple design and limited colour pallate of her growing seed illustration.

Maggie Li's blog

research for animation

A bit about a zoetrope.

A zoetrope is a device that produces the illusion of motion from a rapid succession of static pictures. The term zoetrope is from the Greek words ζωή (zoē), meaning alive/active, and τροπή (tropē) meaning turn. With zoetrope taken to mean active turn or wheel of life. The earliest known zoetrope was made in China around 180 AD by the inventor Ting Huan. Ting Huan's device moved by convection, hung over a lamp and was called chao hua chich kuan  meaning the pipe which makes fantasies appear. The rising air turned vanes at the top  from which translucent paper panels hung. When the device was spun at the right speed, pictures painted on the panels would appear to move.

The modern zoetrope was invented in 1833 by British mathematician William George Horner. He called it the daedalum  as a reference to the Greek myth of Daedalus. The daedalum failed to become popular until the 1860s when it was patented by both English and American makers. The American developer William F. Lincoln named his toy the zoetrope, meaning "wheel of life". Almost simultaneously similar inventions were made in Belgium by Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (the phenakistoscope) and in Austria by Simon von Stampfer (the stroboscope).

A really great video from Pixar showing how animation in made by using a 3D zeotrope:

Lego Batman 3D Zoetrope with diving Penguins!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfS2kGO5lg8&feature=relmfu


BBC 2 did a zeotrope animation for their intervals which was aired from 2007 - 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RbSaxF4tTo


How to make a home-made zeotrope:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHmSG1j7hXM&feature=related


The Cyclotrope - like a zeotrope only different:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A72qJid4Vt8&feature=related

Subway zoetropes:

In September 1980 independent film-maker Bill Brand installed a type of linear zoetrope, he called the "Masstransiscope" in an unused subway platform at Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. It consisted of a wall with 228 slits, behind each slit was a hand-painted panel and riders in subways moving past the display saw a motion picture. After falling into a state of disrepair the "Masstransiscope" was restored in late 2008. Since then, a variety of artists and advertisers have begun to use subway tunnel walls to produce a zoetrope effect when viewed from moving trains.

Stop motion animation :
Western Spaghetti by PES

Hand Drawn animation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJaq0T9BjvE


Rotoscope animation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63o3ENsF2kE




Aniboom youtube channel has loads of short animations, i was going to put a few clips up here but couldnt choose they are all so good! 
http://www.youtube.com/user/aniBOOM/videos?view=0





Also thought i'd put up an animation i made last year, a little cartoon of me writing my name on the screen :)

Dancing Octopus!

The video runs slowly the first time and jumps so you have to play it a few times to get it to run smoothly :) 

Research for Sequential Image Making

I found this really useful "how to" guide on the Rabbits Against Magic website:

http://rabbitsagainstmagic.com/how_to.htm

It goes through all the steps of how the Rabbits Against Magic comics are made and gives some useful tips on how to produce a high quality finish comic strip.

Comic Strip Research

Dan Berry
Dan Berry is an illustrator, designer, cartoonist and lecturer based somewhere around the middle of the UK.
Cat Island is what he made for the Maison des Auteurs in Angouleme in under 24 hours.

Alex Noriega
Alex Noriega is a 30 years old cartoonist from Barcelona.

"I recently moved to Maputo, Mozambique with my girlfriend... The story of how I decided to move here and how things changed enough in my life to dare to take such a huge step is pretty long. But, hey! I´m making a comic about it! :) Here you can see the three basic stages of how I´m working on this book. Thumbnails: Where I basically write the whole thing with lots of tiny notes, changes and ideas, a penciled page about to be inked and the folder where I keep the finished pages... It´s slowly growing." - taken from http://alexnoriegasketchblog.blogspot.co.uk/



Lizzlizz
Lizz is a comic illustrator from Birmingham. She likes green tea, knitting and cats. Other animals she thinks are good include rabbits, elves, bears, dragons, unicorns, monkeys, dinosaurs, lions, tigers and bison.

Beartato Comics.
A strange hybrid of bear and potato, he is best friends with a bird named Reginald and is a bit of goofball at times.

Cuttlefish Comics

Newcastle based Small Press Comic Creator, Writer, Artist, Cartoonist, Comic Fan.Robot Crime Casebook Comic

mycardboardlife.com
A site full of little comic strips and cute illustrations.

Phillipa Rice ^

Carl Mitchell ^

William George Wright

William George Wright was a comic artist for Disney, who drew many of the 'Mickey Mouse' stories. Wright got his education at the Los Angeles Art Center and the Los Angeles Technical Trade Institute. He joined the Disney Studios in 1937. A year later, he was assigned by the Comic Strip Department to assist Ted Thwaites on inking Floyd Gottfredson's 'Mickey Mouse' stories.Thwaites left Disney in 1940 and for years Wright was one of the main inkers on the daily and Sunday 'Mickey Mouse' pages. From 1943 he also started to do pencilling on the Mickey Sunday pages. Bill Wright continued working for Disney until his death in 1984, drawing daily pages with such characters as 'Scamp', 'Brer Rabbit' and of course 'Mickey Mouse'.

These last 2 cute strips I found on the internet and can't find out who made them!

      

Eden Project Flyer

This is the flyer i made for digital workshops in Photoshop :)

Me, my book and I

Title of your project : Me, my book and I.

How does this project continue the theme 'Me, myself and I' : It continues with the theme because my book is a representation of my imagination and shows what i think about stories and how you can make anything up and have a dream world filled with your own characters.

Describe your outcome - in terms of materials, methods, themes, content: My book is a sculptural piece, i carved out the center of the book so it was hollow and then used pages from the book to make little paper characters inside it that i painted in watercolours. I used silver string to hang the stars and words, i wanted it to look 3D and stand out. My theme was imagination, stories in books create new worlds and i wanted to create a dream like world with odd creatures within the book as thought the story was coming to life.

What range of creative communication techniques have been explored? I looked into books as 3D art and sculpture, and how a book can be more than just words on a page. So i wanted my book to be like a story without words so the characters are there in the world within the book but you can use your imagination to make the story.

How have you visually communicated your ideas through your outcome? I think i communicated my ideas quite clearly, i think when you see the piece you know what its about without having to think to much about it. I added the text 'dream away' to go with the characters in the book so it kind of explains itself.

What skills have been developed and explored through this outcome? I chose to do a sculptural piece because i wanted to try something different than just doing illustrations to go with a story. It was quite tricky to put it together with the small pieces of paper. I had never done anything like this before so i learnt alot about the way i like to work, i think ill stick to 2d in the future!

Textiles - Complimentary Studies

photograph of my finished textile piece :) 

 file with research and sketches here : https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6XhzBxNTtB4MmdSa29KSER0TkU/edit 

Busy Blowing Bubbles!

I recently finished illustrating a children's book written by Kim Elliot. It's a story about small insects - froghoppers - the king froghopper orders a competition to design a costume to disguise themselves from the winged giants so they don't get eaten. In the end an unlikey disguise becomes the best!