Dedicated Follower of Fashion.

I hinted at it a little while ago - I've been working on an exciting personal and self-divised project.
I've wanted to try and make an animation for a while now. After attending these two conferences in, respectively, November and December last year, I became especially keen to give it a go.
The final 'kick' to start it was when listening to The Kinks's Dedicated Follower of Fashion - I suddenly decided this had to be the song I animated.

Over the next month I will be posting regular updates from the process.

Here's the first installment: The very initial development of characters.

Single line portrait.

It is just as the title says.

Parts.

I frequently draw portraits and so often practice drawing specific elements of the human face and body. Here are some pen and pencil drawings.

Ten portraits.

For my first university project I had to create a series of ten A4 pencil drawings exploring people, their personalities, and how to communicate this through drawings. I drew four family members, four ‘new’ university friends, and two images of items associated with my family members.

Here is a photograph of the layout of all ten drawings (please do excuse the background – as it was the first presentation at uni, I didn’t think to bring my camera with me and photograph the presentation ‘in situ’.

The complete set

Here are some of the portraits, showing the slight differences in techniques and representation.

Body of Work.

In high school I studied Visual Arts and in my final year I produced what is referred to as a ‘Body of Work’. Mine was titled 'Iconoclassics' and consisted of a series of seven portraits, produced using Adobe Illustrator. I based my portraits – of Che Guevara, Twiggy, Andy Warhol, John Lennon, Grace Kelly, Allen Ginsberg, and Queen Elizabeth II – on photographs found as a result of simple Google searches. Each individual was chosen for their status as ‘icons’ of the 1950s and 1960s, an era which I have long been interested in (read: obsessed by).

The portraits were exhibited in the end of year exhibition supported by a collected of badges that I designed and made myself. Each badge corresponded to the portraits, such as ‘Paul Who?’ for John Lennon, ‘Touche’ and ‘Cliché’ for Che Guevara, ‘Monarch-o’ for Grace Kelly, and a reworking of the famous ‘Feed Twiggy’ badges of the era. Six of these portraits – all except for the Queen – were then printed in a second edition for a fundraising exhibition with three being sold.

A Che Guevara print is currently hanging in the foyer to the History Department of my old school, apparently provoking some conversations!

The prints in their original state were A1. The final image in this post is of the proof strip framed.

Allen Ginsberg

Andy Warhol

Che Guevara

Grace Kelly

John Lennon

Queen Elizabeth II

Twiggy

The complete set framed