summer summary

Summer is officially gone: it's 3 degrees every morning and the leaves have fallen to the ground. I thought now I'm officially back at uni it could be nice to document what I made design - wise over summer here in a little post, especially as I haven't shown or discussed my own work in any blog posts yet. I'm going to rank my top 10, from 10 (not so exciting) to 1 (the best thing since sliced bread - of this selection, anyway) so here goes!

10. Looping car animation

This was my first attempt at animating with the iPad app, RoughAnimator. I hadn't quite got the hang of it yet and so this animation feels pretty choppy and cobbled together. I think it was slightly ambitious for my first attempt in a new program, but I had fun while learning how to create automatic cycles and time each element to create a loop even though they all had different durations. I also really liked the hand - drawn feel to this one. It was okay for a practice!

9. Llama illustrations

This was my (re) warm up when opening Procreate again for the first time in a few years. I had recently bought a really cute multicoloured llama plush (don't judge me) and I wanted to make a little illustration of him. I originally wanted it to be an animation, but I'm not sure I'm ready to animate characters properly yet so I left it like this. I thought the illustration style and colour palette were cute, and I really like my use of grainy shading on the eyebrows and ears.

8. Chronicle advert photo edit

Aside from creating the pages of the paper, I was sometimes asked to do other design - related tasks at the Chronicle; this was one of them. I manipulated a photograph of our office in order to make it appear abandoned and ruined for use in an advert urging the local people to continue supporting their newspaper, visualising what could happen if they didn't. My managers really liked the outcome and I had fun doing it - it also served as a refresh on Photoshop for me!

7. Comissioned roughs for knitwear book

This was a great opportunity courtesy of the great Helen Merrin - a few of us were asked to create specific diagrams with potential for them to be used in a book on knitwear that was being written by some of the fashion / textiles tutors. I loved the opportunity (thanks again Helen!); this is only at number 7 because I wasn't really happy with how my diagrams turned out, but I didn't have time to change them. It helped to keep me busy over summer regardless.

6. Tea, sugar and coffee holders

A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. When you can't find those spacey - themed jars you want, you have no choice but to make your own! Hence this mini project where I drew on my glass mason jars with some Posca pens (it's honestly more difficult than you might think, especially on thick glass like this!). It was good fun sketching out some different styles then picking the one that was absolutely clearly me from the beginning - and it was fun to work on a 3D object as I don't really do that too often.

5. This blog!

You might not believe this but I have actually put quite a bit of time into designing my blog. I even did a little bit of coding to get it how I wanted (I didn't code the whole thing though obviously - I'm no coding expert!) and tried a few different colour schemes before settling on this one. It will probably change eventually, but the original form is now preserved here for eternity. I like the simplicity of this and how it works pretty well on both desktop and mobile versions. It just feels like a very casual, secluded place that I can waffle in without anyone watching. That's what I tell myself, anyway.

4. My Chronicles (30th August edition)

I haven't talked much about my experience working at the Chronicle (I do intend on writing a whole post about it - I just need to scan some pages from my big pile of Chronicles first) but the culmination of my time there involved me producing the week's 48 page paper (with a few different pages in each town's edition), alone, on a week with a bank holiday meaning I had even less time than usual. It was a pretty mammoth task and it was stressful at times, but I did it! So I know the Chronicles are far from the prettiest or most modern piece of design you've probably seen today, but I'm really quite proud I did this on my own in the space of a few days.

3. The Suppliers to the Confederacy Series flyer

I've produced a few flyers for this series before (as my Stepdad is one of the authors), as well as the logo but I can really see an improvement in how I tackled this one compared to the ones I did when completing my A levels. I really like the simplistic colour scheme and the slight use of texture in the title, too. I found organising the quotes and picking out the words to highlight quite fun - and I actually made this one in Illustrator this time (woop!).

2. Personal Instagram icon

This should really be part of my personal branding series (spoilers!) but I wanted to include it here first because I really liked how this turned out. This little self - portrait illustration was completed in Procreate (as another warm up task) after I'd sketched in this style on paper. Afterwards, I returned and added the neck and shoulders so I didn't look like the weird floating head from Power Rangers - and then made it my Instagram icon. I really like how there's a little bit of texture here, but not an overwhelming amount. And my hair looks really cute like this too!

1. Looping hourglass animation

This was the easiest choice for me to make in the whole of this countdown; I knew from the beginning that this would be my number one. I actually created this by drawing each frame in Procreate, exporting them all individually, then putting them in order in Premiere Pro in a stop motion fashion. I made about 50 frames to get this result, and it took a while, but I was so pleased with the outcome! I really built on my passion for animation during this little project and I felt so proud the first time I saw it (and even now, which is unlike me considering I made it over a month ago...) so I feel really inspired to continue learning about animation and have been watching any videos about animation I can get my hands on ever since.

So that was my little summer countdown; I hope you enjoyed it! I think it could be quite nice to do these every now and again, maybe at the end of each term, to keep a record of the things I'm most proud of in second year. My next post should be on the brilliant Jonny Hannah; he's an incredibly inspiring guy. Until then: thanks for taking a look!