Friday, 11 March 2011

The Grammar of Film & Storyboarding

Excellent video tutorials on the Grammar of Film kindly provided by my friend/colleague Eleonora (check out her blog here)

The Grammar of Film Part 1 from Eleonora Rose Abela on Vimeo.

The Grammar of Film Part 2 from Eleonora Rose Abela on Vimeo.
And here's some information on Storyboarding - just in case there's no time to cover this in class :) The final few slides are a summary of the above videos.Storyboarding
View more presentations from Moira Zahra.

Saturday, 5 March 2011

Illusive Contemporary Illustration - mesmerizing Illustrations

Sometimes, my friends/coworkers Ruth and Eleonora (check out her new film blog here) come over and we sit down together, drink, eat, sing loudly and draw/paint :) Recently we've been going through 'Illusive - Contemporary Illustration Part 3' for inspiration, before starting our drawing sessions. So I've decided to share with you some names which have kept me looking at their works for the longest amount of time. These are not necessarily my favourites, because there were various other excellent illustrations, but I guess they did mesmerise me slightly more than the others. I have to admit I am a bit of a sucker for figurative and delicate likes, so you'll be seeing more of these.

Pietari Posti

The colour scheme of 'Storm' by Pietari Posti is so simple and yet astonishingly attractive. What I like about this: the line quality of the waves, the 'rough' colouring of the tentacles, the little dark corner in the top left nails it.
Mocchi Mocchi
 This was one of Ruth's favourites. There's something about illustrations of poppies - I guess it's the random, asymmetrical shape, and then the little black spots in the middle. Strikingly addictive,
Joe Mclaren
 A very popular style which is emerging locally as well - 'imperfect' illustration which puts the focus on the line and less on the rendering. Must admit I find its naivety very pleasing.
Bovey Lee
 What's not to like about this one? Beautifully detailed tactile illustration! There were other really good tactile illustrations on the book, but again, the lines in the one got me!
Nathan Fox
Really like the adrenalin and energy in Nathan Fox's illustration - very American-comic but in a different context. Reminded me a bit of the works of Winston Rowntree one of my favourite internet comic artists.
Laura Laine
Laura Laine is a Finnish fashion illustrator. Her works blew me away. Figures distorted in all the right areas. A little bit Tim-Burtonesque, but more refined.

Sabine Pieper
 After detailed lines and figures, collages are next on my list. I like the mixture of detailed faces with rough ink and paint smudges in Pieper's work.
Marguerite Sauvage
 Don't you think Marguerite Sauvage's name is perfect for her style of illustration? :) I was a bit undecided of whether to include her works her of not. Then I looked her up and found this illustration (which was not in the book) and I was hooked instantly. Love the pastel colour scheme, their faces, the hair, the food! (I love food illustration) and the whole Parisian-feel of the illustration.
Nao
I want to buy this as a print one day. What I like about it: the effortless line drawing, the running ink effect which I think is perfect for the context of this illustration. The writing, the hair...
Gabriel Moreno
 Gabriel Moreno's line quality reminds me of Daniela Attard's (who goes by the name of Iella) one of my favourite local illustrators.
Eva Sun-sil Han
 More collage work. Eva's work is a mixture of ravaged collage faces and thin architectural lines.
Marco Marella
 Marco Marella's work reminds me of these IT magazine illustration (perhaps he does do illustration for IT magazines, not sure). Also reminds me of coffee-shop artwork. Either way, I love the mixture of type with his rough-yet-clean figure illustrations.
Vincent Bakkum
I wanted to include a more traditional illustration, and I chose Vincent Bakkum, who does beautifully rendered figures, most of the time - accompanied by birds. I'm not a big fan of animal illustrations but I decided to make an exception for this one.
Yoko Furusho
Last but not least, Yoko Furusho has some amazing works comprised of clean-line figures. I really like the content of this illustration as well.

Please feel free to share your own favourite Illustrators :)

Wednesday, 2 March 2011

What I'm doing

What I'm doing: Combining traditional and digital. Trying to take the best of both worlds :)

Tuesday, 22 February 2011

Sharing Love


My latest illustration that I brought to life after sketching it on my return flight from London. I did it while thinking about love and staring at a girl that looked like my ex girlfriend. Where these two are in love, it florishes to the left and their love continues to grow. The little bubbles are blossoms that are flying off, sharing love around to others.

All done in Adobe Illustrator and finished at 2am woooot

Thursday, 17 February 2011

Bernhard Gál lecture and performance

Sound Art Project 'stadtklaenge | klangstaetten', Allgemeiner Konsumverein, Braunschweig; May 7th - June 28th, 2009
Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend a short-notice guest lecture and performance by Australian sound artist Bernhard Gál after he got in contact with one of my friends to hold a lecture/performance at the St.James music room. Would have loved to advertise it more but unfortunately there was very little time.

I have to say that the lecture was so much better than I had expected. I was waiting for an interesting but perhaps dragging lecture on sound installation, however it was more of a visual journey and explanation of the artist's installations, complete with hints on how to carry out a public-space installation and general details on the implementation of sound.

Site-specific audio-architectural installation in collaboration with Yumi Kori. Minoritenkirche, Krems, Austria, April - June 2005

The above clip is a short video that I took yesterday during the presentation of 'Stadtklaenge' - quite bad quality actually but I was more interested on what he had to say rather than worried about getting it on video :) Performance at the end was nice and atmospheric with a few surprises here and there, such as mingled voices close to the end, and a mysterious accelerating noise somewhere in the middle which felt like such a contrast from the rest of the calm audio piece. 

Overall it was an interesting experience, and even though I was dead tired after work, I enjoyed every minute of it. I hope we have more of this, and I suggest you look Bernhard Gál up if you're interested in sound engineering / sound installation & architecture / general audiovisual installations.

Tuesday, 15 February 2011

FCUK in Malta

Today I was reading RedWhite (a local design blog for those of you who are not familiar) and came across this great article about FCUK's new campaign based in Malta and Gozo. Click any image to be directed to the article.

MCAST 3D & Interiors Portfolio

Click to view

Sunday, 13 February 2011

Chad Wys

Chad Wys gives a new meaning to traditional VS contemporary, check his work out


Thursday, 10 February 2011

Behance

Well since it looks like I will never find the time to have my own website... it always feels like such a burden to even start thinking about a layout. I've decided to start uploading my portfolio on behance.net rather than on facebook. I used to update my deviantart account regularly, but for various reasons I have fallen out of love with deviantart. Behance has a much more professional look and is essentially a big portfolio of great graphic work, I urge you to have a look when you have time. There is even a nice clean version you can send to clients so that they won't see all the ads and extra stuff (just add /frame after your name) so here's my under-construction portfolio:

I'm pretty sure some students have a behance account, if so - link me :)

Saturday, 5 February 2011

Alphonse Mucha Exhibition

"Over 100 works by Mucha, under the banner In Quest For Beauty: Alphonse Mucha 1860-1939, will be showcased at the Salon of the National Museum of Archaeology in Republic Street, Valletta between February 25 and May15."
Read more on the Times of Malta


You probably already know about this but just in case you missed it. It doesn't happen very often that we are graced with such an exhibition in Malta. I hope there's more of these events. I'd rather see a corner of a work by Mucha rather than go to Isle of MTV ;)