Fill- Horses Inspiration

Phil from band Fill (confusing yes?) has asked me to make a music video for one of their songs called Horses. I've been pretty busy at work but now I have some time I've started thinking about what I might do.

I also asked my best bud Will, who's an awesome artist in his own right and works in the games industry to give me a hand with the technical side. I've not done a huge amount of animation/motion stuff in the past so he's gonna help me with that side of things. (Check out his tumblr at http://ussop-ussop.tumblr.com/ ) 

My first thoughts were about doing something understandably horsey...but the underlying tone of the song is about oppression, the system and a world of overlords! Err...something like that. I'm looking to have a frenetic animation style like Raymond Briggs Snowman and Will showed me this very effective Radiohead video which uses minimal animation and focuses on simple artwork that might factor into it. The song makes me think dystopia, very V for Vendetta style full of riots, protests and uprisings. 

Hopefully I'll get some drawings done soon!

Saltburn

Some of you from the North East may have heard of the Olympic themed knit bombing that took place on the pier in Saltburn. If you don't know what knit bombing is it's basically ninja knitting, people who secretly knit things and attach them to things like lampposts. It's totally anonymous and whilst it's similar to Guerilla advertising and graffiti people it tends to make people smile rather than get irritated since it's a little like putting a jumper on a landmark. How could you not smile at that?

It's a really surreal sight and has hugely increased their tourism as people flock to check out the weird little characters lining the railings. Apparently somebody even knitted little Olympic torches for the torch bearers in Saltburn and posted them through their letter boxes! A while ago they were subject to tricksy knit terrorists who destroyed a lot of the characters, cut some off and left it pretty wrecked. I don't really understand the thinking behind destroying something that was doing good for the town but then I don't think there is much sense in things like that. As you can see they recovered and the secret knitters have replaced and fixed all the damage. They also added a new piece (the last photo) about how they survived the rascals...they even added some knitted CCTV. That'll tech you pesky rascals!

GP Pilot Scheme

I'm currently rebranding our GP pilot scheme at work. This is the poster so far and I'm working on the leaflet. The idea is to make it stand out and catch attention but also make it stand out as different than all of our other service literature. I stuck with the same colour scheme but drew inspiration from a target (because the whole thing is very targeted) but I might rejig the type a touch to make it a little easier to read!

Hartlepool's Beautiful Mind photos part 2

 Here's a couple of photos from the Finale event for the Beautiful Mind. We were so lucky with the guests and bands who came along and performed at such minimal costs and the whole evening of guest speakers talking about mental health, mocktails, performance poetry and amazing music. Definitely check out all the bands including Mercedes and Fill. Check out our service blog for more information on everyone involved. I run that blog and I don't fancy copying it all out again haha! http://choicesforlifehartlepool.blogspot.co.uk/

I was so proud of our Development Officer Maureen for pulling this all together and thankfully wasn't dying from my cold by then! Yayyy...Here's to next year's event!

Also keep an eye out for my work on Fill's music video for their awesome song 'Horses'. I should be putting some stuff up on here and on tumblr soon!

Hartlepool's Beautiful Mind photos

If anyone was in Hartlepool town centre on October 6th they might have spotted me and my crew from Creative Support, along with loooads of other partners and fun chaps hanging out, giving out information, taking part in fun activities and getting everyone in the town centre to know more about mental health.

Below you can see some of the stuff I was involved in creating. We had a Wellness tree, where people could hang promises based on the 5-a-day for Wellbeing (be active, be curious, learn, give and connect), a Big Draw Wall (created by myself and Service Users) that invited people from all over Hartlepool to draw how they felt or what made them happy, willow flower site decoration, a banner including my logo and the tranquility garden I helped create in the centre for Kirsten to give little shiatsu massages in!

It was a really great event but sadly I was mega ill x.x! I had that pesky virus and ended up sent home early and not really being able to enjoy all the wonderful things going on because I was slowly drowning in phlegm. I was not a happy bunny but we had great feed back about everything! 

Hartlepool's Beautiful Mind

As part of my work with Creative Support I played a big role in our recent Hartlepool's Beautiful Mind event. I was pretty much in charge of the branding of the event and I'm gonna show the process I went through in coming up with the colour scheme, the logo and the leaflets.

We wanted to take inspiration from the Time to Change campaign because they have a lot of amazing and funky resources that promote the removal of the stigma surrounding mental health issues. I used the colour scheme in order to make our promotional material work together with theirs.

Here are some of the logos I came up with. Everybody hated the ones with the old school head graphics on them hah! In the end we decided on simplicity and this is the logo we decided to use.

I think it worked well although I had a lot of problems getting the 'Hartlepool's' part to fit in with the rest. I might have done it differently given more time.

Crucial Crew update

Here's a couple of photos of my Crucial Crew illustrations in use. Reports say that they were really well received and everyone enjoyed using them as a resource so that's awesome! Glad I got to see them in use too.