gorilla

elephant

crocodile model

lion

Return to Tigerprint.

I returned to Tigerprint for my last week of the summer I felt comfortable going into a familiar environment and I was welcomed back into the toys team. I spent the majority of this second placement doing mock-ups and developing 3-D products, which resulted in me getting a proper stiff scalpel finger on my right hand, although I did fair amount of other stuff in between times. I felt a lot more useful to the team this time as I was given work by everyone rather than being assigned work from the managers, one of the guys I was supposed to be working with had to leave on maternity when his wife gave birth I took on some of his workload at the end of the week, which was a 3-D card Buzz Lightyear kit which was well challenging and took a lot of time and revisions to finish, I felt very proud when I was finished and I took a few photos. I also worked more on the dinosaur projects and did some designs for a Peppa Pig jigsaw one of which was chosen to be the final product by Marks & Spencer’s.
Over the week I learnt a lot about packaging, 3-D kits and working on cutters on illustrator, since I caught onto this kind of stuff fast they just kept giving me more of it to do, so I was busier and more useful than I was in the previous placement. I just got on with it and apparently my can-do attitude impressed people so I have been invited back for the Christmas break and on any reading weeks I can spare. Since they were not able to pay me I was given an Amazon voucher and a load of toys at the end of the week, which was awesome.
The best part of this week was finishing the Buzz Lightyear kit I am definatly going to work on something similar in my 3rd year. Another of my best bits was when I had a meeting with the management when I was asked if I would consider coming back again, it was great to feel useful and respected by my peers.
The worst part of the week was Wednesday night when I was picking blisters off of my cramped cutting hand. But I was most gutted when I had to leave on Friday, despite leaving with a load of toys and an invite to return.
All in all it was fantastic to return to that creative environment I really enjoyed every minute of both weeks I spent at Tigerprint, I have gained a lot of experience as well as a few contacts to keep in touch with over the course of the year.

Tigerprint placement. Summer 2008

For my second placement this summer, I worked for Tigerprint, which is a part of Hallmark that produces cards and toys specifically for Marks & Spencer’s. I worked for the children’s toys division, which included board games, craft kits, jigsaws and packaging. Generally placements at Tigerprint are sorted out through winning one of their design competitions to gain access to the card design areas, although I didn’t enter I managed to get a placement through a friend, which was quite cheeky of me.
I found Tigerprint to be a lot more creatively challenging than my previous placement at New Vision. Tigerprint had me doing a lot of conceptual work for their autumn 2009 release as well as some mocking up and testing products for research or to help assess them after printing and a bit of photography and photocopying. I came up with some pretty mad ideas and helped to develop some ideas of theirs further, I found this all to be very fun and challenging.
The studio as an environment was fantastic it was very creatively diverse in the specialisation of each individual designer working there each of them was surrounded by objects and imagery from which they would draw inspiration. Everyone was very friendly and welcoming, they were used to unfamiliar faces due to the constant presence of freelancers and placements throughout the year. At lunch I would play halo 2 with some of the lads (I got thrashed every time) or wander about the studio and chat with people about what they were doing and how it was to work at Tigerprint, I was never told to go away, so I got a good experience of what it was like to work in that studio on a daily basis.
I proved my worth when they started to work on the new dinosaur project since I was a big dinosaur geek when I was a kid, and I haven’t changed much since, I got given research and concept development for the dinosaur project to get on with for the final part of the week.
The worst part of the week was finding all the faults in the fully printed Christmas tree craft kit on my first day, when I told Sarah the manager she had get a few other people up to see and I had to show them all the miss-cut slots, this resulted in them running about hysterically checking the files sent to the printers and then phoning them to try sort it out. Apparently money was lost and it was the worst day so far this year!
The best part was getting to show off my dinosaur knowledge halfway through the week which made me feel valued and got me a large workload for my final few days, I also enjoyed the fuddle we had on Friday for someone’s birthday, everyone on the toy team bought in something to share like cakes and sausage rolls, one of the blokes who had been travelling around the wild for a while bought in a huge slab of beef jerky that everyone avoided, I had a bit it tasted quite nice.
All in all I really enjoyed my stay at Tigerprint as I got to be creative and useful to them they weren’t allowed to pay me but they have told me that they want me to come back after Leeds fest. I will be looking forward to returning.

New Vision placement. Summer 2008

I did the first of my summer placements at New Vision signs & graphics, in Bradford. Over the course of the week I found out a lot about the harsh reality of the design world. New Vision is a company that has struggled over the last few years for various reasons (for example the banning of smoking advertising on shop fronts caused a considerable loss of clients). They operate with a small workforce of 4 or 5 designers who do everything from designing and printing to metal and plastic working, often they fit the products themselves as well.
When I arrived I didn’t feel particularly welcomed by the team, it seemed that some of them felt I was going to be a bit of a nuisance, no one wanted to baby-sit the placement, I ended up assisting in the print and vinyl room for the majority of my first day. I got stuck in to prove I was a fast learner who wasn’t worried about doing a bit of hard graft, after helping to put up some large vinyl signs in Bradford city football stadium I felt my presence was more welcome around the studio. After proving my worth I suddenly had a lot of work coming my way, from polishing and assembling to some mocking up on Photoshop, and a little bit of design, mainly I spent the week doing a lot of manual jobs around the studio and workshop.
The best part of the week was putting up the sign in the football stadium, as I had a great time with the team and It was nice to see something I had worked on the previous day finished, now every time I go see city I get to say ‘I helped do that.’
The worst part was taking down a huge window display with one of the designers, it involved a lot of stinky mentholated spirit and scraping glue off stuff, it was really tedious and the fumes made me feel sick to the stomach, I got stuck in and we got it done in an hour or two.
At the end of the week I got paid a few quid and told I would be welcome back if I ever want to do any more placement work. Overall it was a week where I did a lot of grafting and felt very comfortable and respected by the employees, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to leave on Friday, but Tigerprint awaited.

evaluation

This year has been very important to my development as a designer and a person. I have discovered that I am a lot better at things I thought I was rubbish at, and rubbish at most of the things I believed I was good at. My biggest regret of the year was buying a PS3 at Easter, as this greatly inhibited my working and social life for a month or so.
As a designer I have discovered a lot of new mediums in which I enjoy to work. Primarily animation, or more accurately design for animation. This brief was one of the most influential and possibly contains my most successful resolutions.
The majority of this years work has been illustration and character based, these are the areas of design that I want to develop my skills in, as this is the direction I wish to pursue with the most interest. I have learnt how to develop a character instead of a picture, which was an important step for me as a designer. I have learned a lot about my drawing ability this year, and I have being improving and refining my ability, as I do not want to be restricted by an inability to draw outside my comfort zone.
The skills I have developed most prominently are defiantly my software skills, I have become capable of using most of the important programmes and now I am actually efficient at using Photoshop, which I hated last year. These skills have being developed due to the design process module and my use of Wacom when I work at home, I do still work mainly with drawing an am not a designer who can develop and resolve work on screen, I have combined the practical and digital approaches with much more success and comfort than I previously could.
My strengths lie mostly in my drawing and ideas development this is the area I produce most strong work in because I enjoy the development process, although I am not very good at producing the best resolutions, my final pieces are still a bit unfinished looking. I would benefit from taking a more direct approach to generating my resolutions rather than focusing most of my time to developing the ideas and possibilities.
This year has also seen me improve my organisation considerably but not to the level it should be at, I have being a lot more prepared and planned ahead to make sure I have worked most of the time as well as preparing for crits etc. but my organisation is disorganised, I am still a messy person, I like things to be chaotic and scrambled rather than neat and organised. All my planning has been done in sketchbooks and on scraps of paper rather than on timetables or in a diary, this is because I am constantly reassessing my plans by adding to them and altering them. I may or may not change this aspect of my personality.
In crits and the studio I haven’t being taking a particularly professional approach, generally I behave in a very informal manner and tend to say things I shouldn’t. This is another aspect of my personality I struggle to repress, maybe next year I will be as quiet as the rest of the group when it is appropriate. I also struggle when presenting this issue is shared by most of the group and I hope there will be some seminars/lessons to help us improve in this area next year.
I would like to work in the character and narrative field of illustration, as this is the direction I feel I work the strongest in, and I have the most interest regarding. In order to get into this area I will have to vastly improve my drawing and my ability to refine my resolutions. I like to work with a mix of both printed and screen graphics and I would like to work more with animation next year, I have a growing interest in this field and I want to develop my ability to work in it.

studio 4 C

studio 4(degrees)4 are a well established animation collective in japan whos work is clasifyed as part of the postmodern superflat movement. they are responsible for a fair chunk of the animatrix 'kids story' and 'beyond' as well as some of 'second rennaisance' most of them have experience of working on features by acclaimed director Miyazaki.
one of their most recent productions 'tekkonkinkreet' shows brilliant use of illustrative geometrical drawing and good variation of animation techniques. tekkonkinkreet is a strong example of a superflat animation with its name alone almost meaning reinforced concrete. the protagonists are a twisted modern metaphor for yin-yang.

luke chueh

Luke Chueh works with animals. He is an illustrator who has incredible narrative skill creating twisted metaphorical imagery of animals using colour to communicate the emotion connected to each painting. Some of his work shows anger or fear whist other situations such as ‘the alchemist’ shows insanity it reminds me of how tequila feels. I greatly admire how refined and tight his style is.

ashley wood

Ashley Wood is a well-known aussie illustrator who works mostly in comic books and art books. He takes a very stylised approach in his work, which is done with oil paint and often tweaked digitally. His personal work predominantly features naked girls and robots occasionally adding other weird and wonderful creatures. Although his illustration and comic book work have shown him apply his unique style to all kinds of characters, predominantly metal gear solid and a while ago he had a shot uncanny x-men. Ashley Wood has also created album covers and provided art for advertisements. He comic book Popbot is currently in production and should be out in a few years. Ashley wood is quite widely criticised for publishing work that is so stylised it seems unfinished. the main issue is that he isn’t painting as much on his comics using line and pen alongside small amounts of paint for most of his panels. To me this says he mineralizing and refining his work to make it more appropriate to the nature of the narrative.

happy tree friends

it started as a web based animations, too insane for telly. now the tree friends are quite a phenomenon the original animations are on dvd and there is a large range of merchandise. the genius was the simplicity and over the top violence combined with such innocent characters, the design of these characters reflected the idiocy of most children's tv characters from childhood memories, and the pleasure comes from seeing them sadistically destroyed in all manner of creative ways. the short animations and simple design serve the purpose of getting across the insanity.

amanda visell

An illustrator who has recently being working in merchandise, converting her painted characters into hand painted wood or vinyl toys. Her work shows strong influences from old Disney imagery where she captures the innocence of fantasy; her art is not innocent though it’s pretty dark and scary. She works very well with colours and shapes giving her work a very geometrical feel very refined and dynamic whilst also chaotic and full of narrative property.

kiwi

Kiwi is a short animation by a bloke calling himself madyeti it’s a lovely short animation that has gained quite the internet fanbase.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs

purple-productions

Purple Productions are a French animation group responsible for various advertisements and short films, it’s all very French with penguins eating crepes and such. My favourite would be the tooth fairy mouse short animation.
http://www.purpleprod.fr/index.html