Save the Children Animation

I am so pleased to finally be able to put this out there. I spent the better part of my christmas holiday  squirrelled up in my bedroom working away at this project. The project was for Save the Children I knew this was the right brief for me as for anyone who knows me personally I am absolutely mad about books. A project about encouraging fathers to read to their children?! YES!

As I started to dig in to the brief and read Save the Children's statistics it was quite upsetting to see a lot of children aren't reading well by the age of 11 and struggle. Save the Children's campaign is to get children comfortable with reading so it helps them during primary school where the key developmental stages for basic reading and writing start. Their mission is for every child by 2025 to be leaving primary school as confident readers. the statistics shown were children from poorer income families were the ones that struggled.

We see so much on the news about horrid things happening all over the world which are important, but we are forgetting what is happening at home with all of our children? By just giving 10 minutes of your time per day to sit and read with your child and help them along you can help them become comfortable and confident with reading and also show it can be fun. I made it my mission to show how beautiful reading can be.

Save the Children had already made a video about their campaign but I found it far too over the top and exaggerated. The shock factor was far too heavy.


I wanted show the positive aspect of reading and how it can light up the imagination to not guilt trip fathers but shed some light on such an important subject. As creatives we need our imagination and reading has been a large part of my development creatively.

I worked along side Joseph Standen again who is a wonderful Motion graphic designer but this time I was the creator and in control of the story. It was a huge step for me to try something totally out of my comfort zone but this project couldn't have been better suited for an animation. I don't think a poster or a zine would have had the same effect. What a fantastic experience it has been and I have learn a lot from Joseph about how to draw for an animation.

Please do leave a comment as I would love to know what you thought be it good or any criticisms you might have.

My negotiated brief 2nd year.

As I have previously said in my last blog post I am uploading some more work from last year (academic). This project was really quite special to me because I had set myself really high goals and I was determined to produce this final and manage my time well. 

This was the first time I had been strict with myself and confident in my own idea. This was towards the end of the year as was the lie project and I had come leaps and bounds in the space of a few months with my confidence in my self. I have always struggled with it but I was proud of this project. (I still to this day hate showcasing my artwork but the joys of being behind a screen)

It's not perfect but it never is the day after let alone a few months! 

The basis of this project was to do create my own brief and execute it. I chose to do a recipe for children. As I want to become a teacher, I wanted to experiment with learning materials and instruction. I thought the recipe would be a really easy place to start and I could choose whatever is best visually as well. I wanted it to be colourful and bright so I chose the rainbow cupcakes which are simple enough. The final format was to be double sided A3 and then laminated for a wipe clean surface. 

I was also determined to hand draw absolutely everything in this project and I am pleased I did. The only thing that wasn't was the type for the instructions and the arrows for direction. I went all out and spend a lot of time making sure everything made sense. The only thing I completely forgot to take into consideration when placing on photoshop was to leave a few millimetres for bleed and the final print had taken a little bit off of the side to right. The biggest rookie mistake and I made it after all these years. I am glad I did though because next time I will give myself even more extra time towards print to make sure it is correct so if there is a problem I can tweak it. 

During the interim crit quite a few people commented on how they liked the drawing of the Vanilla extract I did and to be honest it was my favourite one to draw. 

We make mistakes to learn from them and for this project I had made plenty before during and after. 

Tell a lie collaborative project.

I haven't uploaded a lot of my work from last year as I felt really overwhelmed. I was pushed so far out of my comfort zone i wasn't sure at all how to feel about the work i produced and whether or not it was good enough or not. 

I have been sitting here tapping away looking through a lot of my artwork, old and new,  I have seen the good the bad and the ugly and to be honest last year had helped me evolve into the artist I want to be and that is free and confident in my own work. 

I had to collaborate with a few of my fellow illustrators in class and we decided to do a project on telling lies. We wanted to see whether or not the general public would expose their dirty little secrets to us and then we could present a visual representation of their lie. The project was based on national tell a lie day and we jump straight in and got to work, bouncing ideas off of each other and working as a team. 

We had some wonderful lies and I think in total we ended up collecting over 100 lies in a lie box we had left in a small boutique tea room in a small town called Puckeridge just west of Bishops Stortford. The incentive to submit a lie was a free piece of home made tiffin. 

If you're interested in visiting this beautiful little Tea Room head over to their Facebook page and show some support to the lovely ladies. 

https://www.facebook.com/Somethinglovelytearoom?fref=ts

My chosen lies did make me laugh but that was what we were aiming for.

“I ran over my neighbours cat. I can’t tell them what happened, they would be devastated. I buried it in the garden under the lavender bush. I was called Whitney. I told my neighbours I hadn’t seen their cat”

“I gave birth to a unicorn”

“When I was little I would eat any chocolate in sight like most children would, but I got caught one day and said it wasn’t me only for my dad to point out that I had chocolate all over my face. Whoops :P”