Belfast Vis Com Vs. Banksy

(one of many banksy blogs)

After a long day of travelling from Belfast to London then to Bristol we finally arrived to a very large queue welcoming us to the back of it. Not really the first thing you want to see after a long journey to get to this point. But we soon entertained ourselves with complaining about the wait, shaking hands a guy trying to break the world record for hand shaking (weird) and lots of games of Eye-Spy. Awesome!

Then after 2.5 hours waiting in the queue we had made it to the entrance... and then to another small queue, But this moved on quick enough. standing inside the entrance you could see small glimpse of the exhibition ahead, statues and the amazing ice cream truck. The truck looked like a part of a cartoon, quite surreal in the middle of a traditional museum. We spent the next few hours looking at every detail of his amazing canvases and sculptures.

I have been a huge fan of Banksy's work for years now, I love everything he does. His work is very controversial especially by people who still don't consider graffiti as real art. But Banksy has a way of capturing things that seem like a really obvious idea in such a simple way, yet we all miss it until we see his work. He seems to know how the world and people work. I was blown away by this exhibition, I never imagined how well thought out and quirky it would be. well worth all the hassle of travelling and waiting around.



More Photos

The banksy mission

So we left for london from belfast @6.30am, one 1 hour flight, to a 45 minute train journey, onto the tube, then off that and on to the right one (silly people got on the wrong one), then another 2 hour train journey ... then finally a 20minute taxi ride and FINALLY. ... we are now waiting in a 2 hour que to see the banksy exhibtion. Really long day but we'll soon see how worth it all this travelling has been.

Picture up date soon.... if I survive the waiting

you call this a blog?

...so work has taken me hostage, i havent had much time to look at much design stuff, and definetly havent had time to write down the small amount i have seen. I will try much harder.

i am currently looking for new design books to fill my beautiful ikea book shelf that i built all by myself!! ... any suggestions please let me know!

Stop Motion Video

I randomly came across this video on youtube when I clicked on the wrong link by accident and I was pleasantly surprised by my find. I think this is a wonderful video, very imaginative. I also thought it was a great find as it relates to our daydream animation project we were assigned.




Fun Facts:
* The video was shot all stills - roughly 3225 still photos for the entire video, using one camera, hanging from the ceiling for the main body of the movie.
* It took 4 weeks before shooting to create an animated computer generated storyboard for the video, with 3d dummies for the characters.
* It took only 2 days of shooting for the live actors on set to re-create the 3.5 minutes computer sequence, frame by frame.

Yet more illustrations...Matthew Woodson

I found this illustrator while looking for work similar to the style of Russ Mills, an illustrator I really admire.

At first I just briefly glanced at a few images from Matthew Woodson, It didn't excite me at first, the images seemed quite plain, until I came across this image of a woman smoking a cigarette in which the smoke takes the form of a skeleton with it's arms around her
I thought this was a really powerful image with a subtle message. Like I said before I love illustrations that tell a story, ones that make you wonder what happens next and alot of Matthew Woodson's images make me think this way. The illustrations are all very cleanly created using illustrator, and they look like they were all really well thought out.
Woodson's illustration style reminds me a lot of the movie A Scanner Darkly it's very weird but I recommend people having a look at it as the style is awesome.
Matthew Woodson
A Scanner Darkly Trailer

Local Artist - Ryan O'neill

Here is some work from a young up and coming local artist/illustrator Ryan O'niell, who actually happens to be a friend of mine.

I've admired his work for sometime now. I'm always in awe when I see a new piece of work he has created. Although he would mainly be praised for his beautiful, realistic oil paintings, I feel his illustration work is just as dynamic. They're so simple yet powerful and imaginative, each one tells a unique story. It may not be to every ones taste, but i'm a big fan of quirky illustrations. Illustrations that you could look at for hours wondering what is going on and what will happen next. Ryan brings a sense of humour to his work, so you don't have to take it too seriously.

I love the amount of detail in this particular illustration. It is drawn with such precisson and attention to detail using only pens and markers. I think its funny how he incorporates Belfast into his work, it makes me think of someone sitting at city hall waiting for their bus and day dreaming about this event. I think the illustration is trying to show how much people are like zombies on their way to work.



He is also a big fan of the sketchbook. He always has his with him at all times ready to sketch out his ideas.I believe his work is just as strong as the number of illustrators on the illustration agency website we have come across. I think it's great that there is still such strong talent coming from Northern Ireland and many new artists that have still to be discovered.

Sadly his online illustration portfolios are limited but I think they are worth a good look around and i'm sure he'll add more soon.

About-Things
DeviantART

Progression.

Thanks to twitter, I found a link to this post showing how far a select number of designers have come in the design world. I thought this was really interesting and quite inspiring as it reminds us that not everyone starts out as a great designer with dynamic ideas, It takes years of practice and dedication to develop unique ideas and designs.
Enjoy

Logo Designers Share Their First And Last Logos