Elephant Poo and Dinosaurs

I recently bought a note book made out of elephant dung. The paper is quite nice, and i decided to check out the company, The Tropical Paper Company, as I have been looking for recycled stock to use for the final printing of The Acoustic Coffee Shop stuff.

I ordered a random pack of 30 sheets of paper, I was disappointed that there wasn't
any board, and that a lot seemed for 'novel' than of any use, but some were still quite interesting.

Heres some scans from some of the good ones.

Recycled Bank Note Paper (I think)

Hair Paper (I think)

Really worth checking out if your after recycled, or just strange, paper.


I started putting together a website yesterday - kylebibby.co.uk Heres some screen grabs of what I've done so far.

Click to Enter

Main Page

I discovered the Fudge Studios website last night. They are a design studio in Bolton. I quite like their work, escpecially the logo design, some really simple but clever ideas.





I have also been working on a DVD interface (for college). Its a DVD about dinosaurs, by a fictional company called 'Fun Factory'.



I tried making the word 'fact' stand out from factory, and my target audience is 'snotty 10 year olds that like playing with worms'/'the type of kid that reads 'Horrible Histories''/Monkey Dave...(inside joke), so reversing out 'fact' in some kind of 'splat' seemed appropriate for the logo.

I have been trying to find images that represent what I'm aiming for, and who I'm aiming the DVD at. My cousin has this dinosaur/dragon thing that spits slime, but I couldn't find a picture of that, so I went on the Horrible Histories website, and took 2 screen grabs of the flash animation on their home page, and recreated it (poorly) as a GIFF... ME-ONE. THE SYSTEM-NIL...



The interface will be based around the pages of a book. Here is an experiment I did using After Effects (I've never used it before), to see how I could make the pages of a book turn.



Heres a screen grab of how the main menu will look.




So yeah, thats about it for now.

The Acoustic Coffee Shop

Me and Merlin went along to the networking night for musicians and design students before Christmas. Afterwards a girl called rachel got in touch with us asking if we could do some work for her. She is going on a course to help her set up a small business. She wants to start a coffee shop that would have live music as well, called The Acoustic Coffee Shop, so she needed a logo, menu , business cards etc. Merlin sent her a questionairre to try and establish what it is that she wanted (fun, organic, friendly) and put forward a few logo ideas. Merlin then went snowboarding and it was mostly left to me.

Here is the logo I did for The Acoustic Coffee Shop. I tried making it look friendly and organic. I made the 'a' swirly to represent coffee in a mug.

I decided to keep the menu and business card designs simple with the focus being on using nice, recycled board. I have put the board in the background to better represent the feel. For the initial print outsof the menu and business card I scanned in some nice recycled board and printed it out onto textured paper, then printed my designs over that. This seemed to work really well as a mock up, because it felt really nice to touch. It pretty much looked real.

Menu outside (back on left, front on right).



Menu inside



Business Card front



Business card back



So thats that. Hopefully everything will go well for her and she will get the business set up. So sometime in the near future ill have to do letter heads, refine the menu, change the business cards and get everything professionally printed.

New books!

Recently (the last couple of months) I seem to have aquired quite a few new books.

Here are some pages from my favorites:

Neasdon Control Centre - Lost Control

I got this while I was in Berlin. 45 euros. There is some really interesting, visually exciting, experimental illustrations and collages. I really like the NCC style but find it a bit 'samey', its hard to remember one page of this book to another. That said it is still a brilliant book, well worth investing in if you're interested in illustration.

Ideas Have Legs - Ian McMillan Vs. Andy Martin.

Cat got me this for Christmas (She remembered me saying I wanted it - good girl). Ian McMillan writes pros (mostly in the form of poetry) and Andy Martin 'visually interprets' the writing. This a really great piece of collaborate work. McMillan writes in such a simple, but absurd way that you cant help but like it (similar to Spike Milligan, or a David Shrigley illustration). The design/illustration/layout/'visual interpretation' reflects this sense of playfulness and simplicity. A really good book (even if you've no interest in art/design).




How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul - Adrian Shaughnessy

I read about half of this book and am finding it extremely useful, as I have to start trying to sort out a work placement over the summer soon. It has straight forward advice about interviews, portfolios, self promotion from someone who has been in the industry for a long time. I really recommend this to any one in my position (my house mates have all read it and will say the same).

The Obituary Tango - A selection of writing from the Caine Prize for African Writing 2006.

My mum got me this from the Fair Trade Shop in the Isle of Man. It has some really good short stories that offer insight into the mind of other cultures, trying to make it in the western world. Here is the quote on the back that helped sell this book to me (with my mums money).

"We played by their rules, Ej Haj said. That was our mistake. Back when we had the chance the change things we played by their rules. We wanted what they had. We wanted Regents Street and Piccadilly Circus. We wanted Oxford and Cambridge. We wanted Westminister. instead of thinking for ourselves. Nowadays, he said, no one even remembers that there was much thing as a colonial period. The English today are tired of hearing what their forefathers did and besides, they say, look what happens when you are left to your own devices."

Dinosaurs - Robert Sabuda & Matthew Reinhart

I got 'Dinosaurs' and I bought Cat 'Prehistoric Sharks and Sea Monsters' (she was doing a brief on pop-up books). These pop-up books are absolutely stunning. As well as the main pop up in the middle there are other one that fold out from the corner. I think that anybody would find this books fantastic (even though they are kids books). Seriously, its amazing.

Thats it. Bye bye. X.

Final simple food co pics, and flash

I got my Design4Design work back, i managed to get 83 on it, so im pretty pleased with that. As promised here are some (poor quality) photographs.







This week I got my flash animation finished. Really enjoyed working with flash and can't wait till the sign-up flash sessions so I can learn how to use interactivity.




They are supposed to show that small things can be scary to. I just tried to have a bit of fun with them. The sound isn't amazing, most are done by me using my iMac microphone. Hopefully they play alright because I had a few problems uploading them.

Flash, school discos and Karl Marx

I have been learning to use Flash for out new brief. I need to show microphobia (the fear of small things/microns) using the number two. I think that i will start with a small number two that will get bigger when a magnifying glass moves over it and will growl/roar. Here is a few initial animations of the number turning round and roaring:








I have also just designed a quick poster for the graphics and digital media party.

The first one i did was this




I think it has potential, but as it is I don't really like it. I decided to take a different approach and do something similar to my simple food stuff.




I did my presentation about Commodity Fetish last week. I was the first person, but I feel that it went pretty good. If you want to read it click below. The first version I did was nearly twice as long as it should have been, meaning that i didn't really get to cover as much as i would have liked, so i have posted that too.

Short version

Long(er) version

Bibliography

Animation

I've been looking around the internet for some interesting animations (both Flash and otherwise).

Heres a few of my favorities:


Ugly Duckling - The Drive Thru



Wierd Al Yanovic - Hardware Store (in lego!)

AtomFilms.com: Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | Comedy Central

Peter Lacalamita - The Red Kite



I'm not sure what this is called, but its amazing... (I could make a joke about how using Flash is like a battle, or something funny like that, but I won't)

And I found a game based on it

AtomFilms.com: Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | Comedy Central

For loads more animations check out www.albinoblacksheep.com and www.atomfilms.com

Also, have a look at www.simplifyyourwork2008.com, its a really good Flash site



from simplifyyourwork2008.com

Berlin

I have just spent a few days in Berlin. I really enjoyed myself. Heres a couple of compulsory tourist photos:

The Brandenburg Gates

The Reichstags

We timed the trip so that it was at the same time as the Pictoplasma Animation Festival (check out the Pictoplasma website). This was quite good timing as we are about to start an Flash animation brief. A lot of the animations were really amazing. Some worked because they were so simple, whereas others worked because of how complex the animation was.


This one is by Ginny Robertson and Garth Jones, and was an entrant for the E4 sting competition. I like it because it it so simple. Go to Ginny Robertson's website for more info.

We also attended a lecture with 2 directors from Studio Soi, a German animation studio. Although I don't intend to try for a career in animation, it was still very interesting. The thing that i found most interesting and inspiring is that all of the founding members were a group of friends that went to art college together. Setting up a business with friends is something that i would really like to do. Check out Studio Soi's website.

Berlin was really interesting in general. There was graffiti every where. We found a few really interesting shops and galleries that were basically in run down buildings and squats.

This was the entrance to a really cool little book shop that sold lots of german art books as well as homemade books and zines.

This was a building that had various different artists' shops and exhibitions.


We spent a full day at the zoo, which was amazing, except all the animals were really angry and trying to escape.

Heres a few photos from the zoo:







I took more photos at the zoo, to see the rest click here.

I didn't eat a meal for the first 2 days i was there, but we managed to find a really good vegie restaurant on the last day. Everyone went out for a meal there, which i thought was really nice of them.