Other Peoples Lives is a band based in Leeds who approached me requesting visuals for a live performance they had scheduled for later in the month. They wanted a looping animation that worked along side their aesthetic for vintage stock imagery of people. I offered to do the job for free, as the band members are very dear friends of mine. I began by filming the band rehearse, focusing on their silhouettes. I had an idea of using silhouettes for the visuals, with perhaps a few looping poses.
Once I'd filmed about an hours worth of footage, I took the films into photoshop and used the rotoscoping method to create a contrasting silhouetted of simple movement. The first rest animation I did took far too long and seemed overly complicated and visually busy to be used as visuals, considering we were also planning to use stock footage as well.
Rejected style
I then produced a design/concept board to show the band. Instead of using rotoscoping I suggested using a simplistic silhouetted character in different poses that looped over the performance. After I got the thumbs up I began animating, animating about 4 different silhouettes in total. After animating I made a loop of 5minutes of stock footage, so each loop didn't seem too repetitive. I animated on photoshop and used after effects to finish off the animations with the footage. I also added the bands logo over the top of the finished looping animation in the final day. I was unsure with what effect to go for, so came up with a compilation video of the full loop with different effects to their icon. You can find the video below, which shows both the different logo effects and looping animations.
Outcome
The gig was hosted at the 360 CLUB leeds (above the library pub). Before the doors opened I turned up with the band to set up the projection. I hadn't used a projection computer set up before, previously I'd plug my laptop into an HDMI and hoped for the best. The sound guy and I attempted to work out how to get the visuals moving from the 360 CLUB logo to my animations seamlessly on their computer. Because of the small booth, I wasn't able to trigger the animations myself. All together, visuals were successful. Here are animated GIFs from the visuals below...
I was asked by a friend who was opening up a blog focusing on Jazz performances in Leeds to design and create a illustration for the blog, as well as the logo. As this was for a friend, I did the brief for free. After a short chat the client was leaning more towards simple bold white and black illustrations of jazz instruments, arranged in a 'open curtain like shape'. I first began by doodling instruments associated with Jazz. I had never drawn many instruments before, so this was something new for me to draw. After a few doodles I moved onto layout paper to ink out some small illustrations. After scanning each in and creating it's own PNG file, I used those files to arrange the illustrations in the pattern the client asked for. I digitally inked the logo across the illustration, to finish the blog header off.
Outcome
Final illustration
The client loved the illustration and it's recently been uploaded onto Jazzinleeds.com and their facebook page. I really enjoyed working on this brief and even treated it as a 'draw these things you've never drawn before' exercise.
I was approached by a relative about a possible illustration job he had for me. The brief involved me storyboarding a sequence for them for a live action advert, with illustrations they could also use by themselves. 'Virole' is an app/website which helps advertise jobs easily on mobile devices which my relative was setting up. I hadn't worked on a storyboard project before for a business before. After discussing with the client we agreed an animatic wouldn't be much help, as the script just needed to be visualised for reference. I used photoshop to create the illustrations. I used very basic colours to bring across mood and lighting, referencing little details. I would reference the script here but I've included the script in the storyboard pages I developed. I was asked to make changed several times to different illustrations, including adding additional key moments that weren't written in the script.
Outcome
Below are the storyboard pages I developed for this brief as well as additional illustrations I was asked to create. I found working on this brief enjoyable and working as a storyboard/illustrator for a business was a great feeling and I became more at home within Photoshop layers as a result of using the software.
