Chicken Empathy

I seem to be ahead of myself today and have just finished my illustration for the editorial brief.

We were asked to bring 3 magazine articles to uni and choose one to work with for the brief. The chosen article would then be illustrated using metaphors and placed in a mock up magazine layout.

I found some really interesting articles including "Placebo's", "Chicken's Showing Feelings Of Empathy" and "Data Mining".

I liked all 3 but in the end decided to choose Chicken Empathy as I thought empathy would be a challenge to illustrate....and it would be fun drawing chickens.

The article wrote:- "A new study found that chickens feel empathy. Researchers in the UK ruffled the feathers of chicks by exposing them to puffs of air. The chicks became distressed and the mother hens showed signs of stress including an increased in heart rate, lowered eye temperature, increased levels of alertness, preening and clucking at their chicks." 

An important result for chicken kind! It proves that not just humans can feel empathy and has raised awareness for the welfare of farm and laboratory animals. I doubt it will lessen the amount of battery hens in our world of consumerism, but I hope their welfare will be improved. 

Haha chickens have always freaked me out but now I'm showing signs of empathy towards them.

Anyway below is my final for the brief. I did loads of sketches to begin with including Hamlet chicken, Rambo chicken (freeing battery hens) and a chicken watching a sad film.

I had in mind a chicken that resembled a 1950's housewife with a really theatrical swoon.
I originally had her cradling an egg in her other arm, but then decided It would look better if she was holding the chick out of the way and then decided to have the chick covering it's eyes for extra effect.

The Wellspring

Last Wednesday we had a group photo taken with our pages for The Wellspring project which ended a while back now. We were each assigned a page to illustrate for a publication, which we produced to raise funds and awareness for The Wellspring Project in Stockport, a resource centre for homeless and disadvantaged people.


The final printed newspaper arrived the other week and it looks really impressive, everyone worked really hard which has paid off big time.


My page tells the story of Aaron, who was 16 when he arrived at The Wellspring and was sleeping rough. The Wellspring helped him to turn his life around and he now has his own place and is studying construction and plumbing.


Design


I chose to focus on the positive side of the story and wanted to create a character made up of the tools he might use in his trade. I used the skills I had learnt on the Disney brief and did lots of thumbnail sketches of the character. I decided to keep it black and white and looked at comics for inspiration for the shading. Below is the final printed page which I think turned out really well.

Jump Test

Here is my test for the jumping movement of my alien character which I will add to my sequence later and get him to do a crazy dance.

Animated Turnaround

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I thought I should post this up as I couldn't submit it for the final piece. The brief didn't ask for an animated turnaround but I thought I'd do it for fun. It's a little bit jerky, but I think that's because I had to upload it to photobucket to get it on here. Ha-ha It's quite hypnotic

Playing with Photoshop

Last night I thumbed through an old copy of Digital Arts magazine and found a Photoshop tutorial using the masking tool, watercolour washes and textures.

Following the techniques described in the tutorial I painted some quick watercolour washes scanned them in and found a photograph to use.

I added wallpaper texture and floral brushes to add a bit of depth. I really like the end result but think it would look even better with a hand drawn sketchy portrait instead of a photograph.

Up top is the tutorial example created by Murilo Maciel followed by my own creation.

Manga Pens

My first attempts with the manga marker pens. I like the effects I can achieve but it doesn't look as good now I've scanned it in, the imperfection of the black line and bleeding really show up at this scale......not a total loss though I now know what not to do next time.

Paper Cut Experiment

I decided to try a paper cut experiment whilst I had some time on my hands this week. I wanted to do an illustration of a cat sat in the kitchen. I think I overcomplicated things by trying to bend the back into a kitchen counter but I still like the results I got with the shadow of the cat.

Seasons Animation

Here is a short animation I collaborated on entitled 'Seasons'. We used oil paint on glass and used cut outs to create the changing season.

Exquisite Corpse

Here is a piece I did for a brief last year called the Exquisite Corpse.

For the brief we were asked to form a small group and pass round pieces of paper which we each wrote an adjective, noun or verb. These words would then form the basis of our corpse or Le Cadavre.

The words I chose for my corpse were:

• Rapidly
• Dead Rat
• Hammer
• Nicely
• Bouncy
• Hat

My inspiration came largely from Lou Beach an amazing collage artist, whose artwork can be very surreal much like the work of Terry Gilliam.

Fear of the dark

Some of my sketchbook roughs for a project on phobias, where I chose to portray 'fear of the dark'. My final image was screen printed @ A2 in black gloss on matt black card.