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The Monarch’s Way: Sussex

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:11:17 +0000

The Monarch’s Way is a route that Charles II took when escaping from Oliver Cromwell after the Battle of Worcester in 1651. Part of this route is along the South Downs. For more information visit – http://www.monarchsway.50megs.com/

A group of us decided to spend one night camping and two days walking part of the Monarch’s Way, starting from Amberley and ending in Shoreham-by-Sea. We lo-impact camped on the South Downs using Hammocks, Tarps and Bivvi Bags.

Photographs taken with a Holga, shot on out of date Velvia film, X processed.

The Monarch's Way

gh & op

20three pin badges

Owen — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 19:40:14 +0000

One thing we are planning for the 20three site is to eventually set up a shop. We plan to sell screenprints, letterpress prints, one off pieces of art etc. I have always been a fan of the button badge and plan to sell some badge sets designed by your truly as well as inviting designers and artists to supply artwork for limited edition badge sets. I see the badge as a lo-fi way producing design that can be acquired on the cheap, accessible to all.

Below are sample 20three pin badges, produced by those very nice people at www.weebadges.com.

Winshluss: Pinocchio

Owen — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:12:19 +0000

Winshluss (Vincent Paronnaud) has taken the Pinocchio stories of Carlo Collodi and dragged it through the hundred or so years of popular culture that has passed since it was first written and given it a surreal dark twist. The results are quite an amazing comic book: Pinocchio by Winshluss (Amazon UK), an award winner, picking up book of the year at the French Angouleme festival.

Winshluss: Pinocchio

The book is published in French but mostly without text, the story told in descriptive panels in that classic Bandes Dessinées style intermixed with with full page and half page panels that also form part of the narrative. The only parts of the book with words are a few sections in black and white drawn in a loose sketchy style that nicely juxtaposes with the colour artwork that makes up the main body of the book. These black and white passages involve Jimmy the Cricket who has taken up home in Pinocchio’s head, and with my bad french I managed to just about understand what was going on, although you could easily understand the story with little or no french (like me).

The majority of the book is colour and wordless. Winshluss draws and paints in several mediums and there are several full page panels that I was amazed by. The coloring has that desaturated nostalgic feel that perfectly matches his drawing style.

Winshluss: Pinocchio

The lame fox and blind cat from the original Carlo Collodi Pinocchio adventures become a smack-head and blind beggar, Monstro the great whale becomes a polluted toxic mutant fish destroying a Titanic style liner complete with white bearded captain and string ensemble who not only carry on playing when the ship goes down, but as they are being dissolved by the acidic bile in the stomach of the toxic fish.

Winshluss also makes several nods to Disney; Snow White and the seven dwarfs make an appearance, the dwarfs are a gruesome set of perverts and their involvement in Geppetto’s comeuppance is particularly twisted. There is even a film noir element, a hard boiled cop with a head like an Easter island statue who tracks down Geppetto and the seven perverted dwarfs. The book is certainly dark, but full of humor.

Pinocchio himself is a mute robot-boy, created by Geppetto to be a war machine who he initially tries to sell to the military. Pinocchio goes wandering after short circuiting while Jimmy the Cricket enters his robot brain. Pinocchio tumbles through this story, staying resolutely mute while the tale unfolds around him.

Winshluss: Pinocchio

Vincent Paronnaud is also credited as co-writer and co-director with Marjane Satrapi on the film adaptation of her comic series Persépolis. What a talented chap.

You can see more artwork at a larger size here at http://www.bdgest.com.

Photos of Saltdean coast

Owen — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 07:58:09 +0000

I finally got myself out of Brighton for a while at the Easter weekend. Being a confirmed pedestrian I don’t often get the chance to visit the Sussex countryside, and Brighton can seem a very small place sometimes – gives me cabin fever.

So, the wife and I took the number 12a bus to Rottingdean, just out of (but officially part of) Brighton. After a disappointing pub lunch at the Badgers Watch we walked along the cliff tops to Saltdean, were we did a U turn and walked back along the seafront back to Rottingdean and the bus stop.

I took my Holga and a couple of rolls of film, here are the best shots:

Saltdean cliff tops

Saltdean sea walk

Rottingdean bus stop

Saltdean cliffs (film slipped with this one)

Saltdean cliffs

20three prototype t-shirts

Owen — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:17:11 +0000

When 20three had it’s first incarnation around 2000 we produced a short run of t-shirts that we mainly gave away to friends and clients. Now that this site lives on in blog format I thought it would be a good idea to resurrect some of our old design work and produce a couple of prototype t-shirts. I didn’t want to create ‘new’ designs – rather I wanted to give some of our old design & illustration work another lease of life. A bit like this website. Rinse the past.

These shirts were printed at a Brighton copy shop using heat transfers – not the greatest quality but good enough to get an idea of how the shirts could look.

This design I originally produced for the cover of a 12″ record sleeve for Hermetech Records around 2002. As the 12″ cover was intended to be screen printed by hand the design was a simple two colour job – perfect for a t-shirt. The two images I ripped off appropriated for the design came from this book: Animals 1,419 Copyright Free Illustrations of Mammals, Birds, Fish, Insects, etc (Great title).

T shirt design based on Hermetech 12" sleeves.

The Original design:

Hermetech 12" covers, 2002

This second design was created from collages made from the ‘positives’ we used for our first hand-screenprinted t-shirt run – so I am effectively mashing up the original t shirt designs to produce this one.

T shirt design based on collages

Original design/collage:

Sketchbook collage, 2002

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen-printing

20three generative work 2002

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:54:20 +0000

During 2002 we started experimenting with generative graphical concepts. The notion was to create small algorithms with simple rules that would generate different images time and time again.

The general process for these generative experiments was that of using a single image, and then manipulating that image by rotating, stretching, skewing and duplication.

The real goal was to use as simple an algorithm as possible, and then from this set of simple rules allow complexity to emerge.

At the time we were using Flash and ActionScript 2 for the development of the images, this was chosen as it’s a nice simple language, and allows for rapid development.

Screenshots:

All the above examples can be seen live by clicking here

After experimenting with generative images that move and rotate, we decided to experiment with images that just create instances of static images. The reasoning behind this was so images could be generated that then could be translated into a palette for design.

As well as being featured in the 6th Generative art Conference in Milan (organized by the Generative Design Lab) we also managed to use these generative experiments for several commercial projects. The most successful application was a collaboration with React snowboards. We created a set of visuals based on our generative programming and one design went into production – the results of which can be seen below. We also used the same generative programming to create downloadable screensavers and graphic assets for Adam Freeland’s 2002 version of the Marine Parade record label (no longer live).

React Snowboards, 2002

gh & op

Wordagon: A Kerb iphone app

Owen — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:01:51 +0000

I have not posted work from the agency I work for before on this blog, (Kerb – website due for a face-lift soon) but thought I would make an exception in the case of our iphone game Wordagon, mainly because it is a project we produced internally – it is not attached to a client, therefore not trying to ‘sell‘ anything – and it’s free.

The design was produced by Kerb designer Will Weaver and the game concept came out of the head of Kerb strategist Carl Hodler. There are still a few tweaks to be made: some re-working of some of the interface elements, extra work laying out the instructions (and re-writing them too) and a little bit of colour correction. We are also going to implement a global high score table with the next Wordagon release – and we will possibly then start to charge for the app.

With absolutely no promotion apart from Kerb employees spreading the word, Wordagon has managed over 900 downloads with a user rating of 4+ (as of Febuary 2010).

Some screenshots:

From the itunes store description: (please excuse the excessive use of exclamation marks!)

Wordagon is a game of high pressure and mental agility. Battle against time and space… and by space, we mean words!

With each letter tile having a value, the bigger the word, the more points you score! The longer it takes it to find a word and submit it, the closer you get to falling foul of the onslaught of new letters taking their place.

Before you get trapped beneath an alphabet avalanche, you need to find words and remove them, but as you progress through the levels, the words you must come up with keep getting longer!

Key features:
Bonus tiles for letters
Bonus tiles for words
5 levels of difficulty
Highscore table to allow you to challenge yourself or your friends

Get it for free from the itunes store here

No related posts.

Dan Drakeford: Writer, illustrator & cartoonist

Owen — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:41:14 +0000

Dan Drakeford is a talented chap. Writer, illustrator, cartoonist. His work is quite varied, but one set of cartoon strips really stands out for me. I love his Claude, the sad pigeon series. Over three panels Dan manages to make these strips melancholic, nostalgic and like the title, a little sad…

Be sure to check his flickr page to see more strips & illustration work (be sure to check out his strip Barry, the life and times of… )

Booth Museum of Natural History

Owen — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:41:58 +0000

The Booth museum is just down the road from were I live – it’s a Brighton institution – The collection housed in the museum is an extensive array of British birds from the 19th century, all housed in mini dioramas. Edward Booth built the museum in 1874 and bequeathed the museum and collection to the local authority in 1890. I took my Holga down there the other day and took these shots:

Booth Museum, Brighton

Eric Gill, a onetime Brighton resident, used to visit the museum when he was a child. Here is an exert from the biography ‘Eric Gill’ by Fiona MacCarthy:

There were many opportunities in Brighton for Ruskinian self-improvement. Just around the corner from the Gill’s, in Dyke road, stood the Booth Bird Museum (known in the Gill household as the birds’ museum, since the children imagined it belonging to the hundreds of stuffed birds displayed within it, Warbles and Buzzards and Bitterns).

The Booth museum was and still is an extraordinary monument to Victorian enthusiasm, the urge to collect and collate. Edward Booth, who formed the collection, was a wealthy man whose preoccupation with birds approached mania: he once kept a train under steam in Brighton station for a week waiting to rush him to the highlands as soon as his gillies had informed him that the white-tailed eagles were nesting.

(I had no idea what a ‘gillie’ was so I looked it up – here’s the definition from dictionary.com: ‘a male attendant or personal servant to a Highland chieftain.’)

I recently found out from the Brighton Prestonville blog the sad news that the opening hours were being reduced because of cuts in public spending, a situation that would be hard to revert. You can read more about the situation and find out how to help here.

FlashBrighton lecture: Typography and the modern

Owen — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:12:53 +0000

I was asked if I would like to talk to the Flash Brighton developer group, Flash Brighton about typography. The talk will be on the 19th January, the first Flash Brighton talk of 2010.

To keep my talk manageable I have decided to talk about the development of typographic design in relation to the birth and growth of Modernism, starting from the early 1900’s and up to the present day.

Details about were and when my talk is happening can be found here.

Find out about Flash Brighton here