Tracey Chung

As you can see here, Tracey Chung has had a lot of experience in drawing people and different body positions...

With this particular piece, I like the colours that she has experimented with, because they are bright, bold and give you a vague idea of the personalities of the characters. Their facial expressions and body language give off the impression that they work well together as characters; their eye contact and mouths open suggest that they're laughing at a joke they just made, or just said something in sync with each other, which I find quite appealing to look at:

Again with this story, she has experimented with the use of colour - they are only experiments but I like her development from start sketches to the finished product. I think she should give the background more shading, to make it feel less flat. However the foreground is very well sketched, where she has developed thicker black lines as she drew several lines to get the shape right.

These sketches have an obvious form of weight to them; you can tell by the arc in the persons back and legs that they are carrying something heavy, or trying to tackle the problem. The sketchy lines give these drawings more life, and I can tell that she has drawn them quickly (which is a good thing when life drawing!) 

It's interesting how this piece doesn't include the desk the computer's sitting on, because it allows viewers to focus on the form of the woman instead of being distracted by other objects. This being said, I don't think you need to draw every aspect of the surroundings, because little indicators such as the mouse, show you where the table is; allowing us to use our imaginations! 

It works well as a cream background, since this could be the actual colour of the room this drawing's set, which could imply she's been on the computer too long and has "blended in" to the wall? Potentially, who knows...

My point is less is more, and Tracey Chung proves that with this drawing.

I like her take on the iconic character Ariel, as it's simple, only done in pencil and not perfectly rendered with colour. She has captured the form and proportions of her body well, which I imagine is hard to do as it's a mermaid!

This is a more recent image Chung has drawn. I can see the development from her sketched work to starting to work digitally, as the lines are much finer and defined. The texture of the background works well with the greyscale colouring on the woman, because sometimes completely black and white tones take something away from the drawing (in my opinion). 

I really like her style, because it's more realistic but cartooned at the same time. Her basic body shapes and positions they are placed look very accurate; dabbling into the art of drawing animals and people alike.

She has inspired me to practice drawing, and keep sketching, because that seems to be the most effective way to capture the human body accurately into an animation...

http://traceychung.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.filterfoundry.com/traceyc/

Ralph Steadman

Earlier today, the brilliant Ralph Steadman spoke to a lecture hall full of students and staff - including myself - via Skype; meaning he could show us around his studio and all the drawings he's done!

As random and bonkers as he is, he did tell us a bit about his past:
He started by saying he originally wanted to be an aircraft pilot, but he's always had a fascination with drawing, and conveying his inner self on paper.
In his early days he attended life drawing sessions, a class of 26 where the teacher would look at your work, and instead of drawing over the top of it they'd draw a new sketch in the corner of the paper. This would have given the sketcher a comparison between his work and the corner sketch, to see for himself what needs to be changed (a good learning tool!)
He worked in an art department office in London, where he had to come up with 10 ideas a day, then choose one of them to draw. This sounds like a good way to get you used to drawing and thinking in a creative frame of mind constantly.
Later he discovered that he could take a polaroid photo and distort the images. This idea captivated him, so he made a book about "Paranoid Polaroids".

He gave us a lot of advice while he was talking, one of the things that stuck out to me was: you must get first hand experience. For example: "Journalists don't write a story without extensive research - they become the story" which applies to artists as well.

Even a brilliantly famous man is saying it's important to find references, to become the references for your animations and find out everything you can about what you're trying to make.

"There's no such thing as a mistake, a mistake is an opportunity to do something else." so he doesn't recommend rubbing any lines out because it's "part of the thought process".
Following these quotes he told us for most of his work he doesn't sketch anything out first, he just goes for it with the splatters his ink makes and goes from there. Sometimes he'll know what he wants to create, but lets the ink lead the way to determine how it looks visually.

"Illustration is a diagram" which he thinks are terrible, so he prefers to call his work drawings. Many people say he is a cartoonist, but he states that he only uses the cartoons to emphasise his drawings (as he says about all really good cartoons).

He doesn't like technology too much; especially if you create a drawing from scratch on there. It's good if you paint it on paper first, then scan it in to the computer to continue working on it, because at least you still have the proper brush strokes!

Charity Work

Animal Farm

Alice in Wonderland

Here's the trailer shown at the start of the lecture, based on Ralph Steadman "For No Good Reason":



Hearing all of his advice and learning techniques has been really interesting, especially in person! (or through a screen!) It was a privilege to listen to him, and get a sneaky peak of his studio space!

He left us with a final bit of advice, which I'll leave you with:

"Dedicate your life to making mistakes. Don't be harsh, just be objective and kind to people. Hope for better things. Pledge to yourself that you'll do your best."

Studio AKA

For our task, Disseminate, we have to take something/someone that we have found, and show a presentation to the class to explain what you have researched and why.

I decided to talk about a company called Studio AKA; I'd heard their name before but never really looked into them properly until now, and I was pleasantly surprised!

I didn't realise just how much of their work I recognised! 

The most familiar advertisement is the Lloyds TSB campaign:

This has been their biggest campaign, creating over 40 adverts! It's good that they've used the same visual style for the series of ads, so both Lloyds TSB and Studio AKA could become more recognised amongst audiences.

Another famous piece is the film "Lost and Found"; based on the book by Oliver Jeffers, Studio AKA adapted it and created this stunning 3D piece: