Scope

This illustration is published in the December issue of 'Scope' - an Irish medical magazine. The article is about boyhood and the challenges faced by boys on their journey to adulthood.

Frametastic

I've recently updated my website www.ainecassidy.com. I've refreshed some elements and introduced a new motion section. It's always a bit of an arduous task updating the site because I originally built it using frames (the website developers out there are no doubt scoffing at my old skool methods). I wanted to have a horizontal scroll (as a lot of my work is landscape format) so decided when I designed the site last year this would be the best way to achieve it without using anything more fancy than HTML. Because essentially each page you see is actually 3 pages (3 frames) it means 3 times as much work when it comes to making edits :(

Four Seasons

I like experimenting with materials and mixing media in my illustrations. These pictures are of the four seasons - Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. 

Urban canvases

I'm interested in the textures of cities and and am always on the look out for interesting urban 'canvases'. Here are some pictures I took recently in Dublin (near the U2 recording studios).  I'm interested in the combination of the hand drawn (or hand sprayed) with more formal graphical elements such as signage. Within the urban landscape there are two levels of expression taking place simultaneously - the formal communication of official signage, and the informal, personal proclamations in the graffiti type. 

Showreel

After navigating the choppy waters of Final Cut Pro over the past couple of weeks I'm pleased to have completed my showreel. It's a mixture of mostly recent work made in AfterEffects and Flash. The music is Boards of Canada 'An eagle in your mind'.

Spinning Tongues exhibition

My animation 'neCessITY, capaCITY, toxiCITY' will be shown alongside a host of other films and video art pieces as part of an exhibition entitled 'Spinning Tongues'. The exhibition is organised by Rotareliefs and takes place from 11th - 16th October at the Vibe Bar on Brick Lane. Here's a little bit about the event: 

"Derived from the formal idea of ‘multidisciplinary’, the work commissioned by Rotoreliefs has the objective of creating a platform for the exchange of the different languages that exist between disciplines and cultures, with the aim of enriching all of the arts by means of the influence and exchange of each with the others. It is not just a question of promoting one discipline with artists from one country, but rather to create a network of connections between other cultures and disciplines to encourage, enrich and fuel art in all of its senses."

The video arts, films and live performances will take place at the Vibe Bar on Brick Lane on Sunday October 11th from 11am to 5pm with the gallery exhibition taking place until October 16th. The opening day event will cost 5 pounds and 80% of the earnings from the door will go to the artists.

Playhouse

As part of the Dublin Theatre Festival, Dublin's tallest building Liberty Hall is being turned into a giant canvass.

“Powering the display are 100,000 low-energy LED lights, installed into 330 windows on the south and west faces of the building. These lights can illuminate each window as a solid colour turning it into a tiny pixel that’s part of a giant display.”

PLAYHOUSE is currently running from dusk till dawn for 18 nights since the 24th of September until the 11th of October. Using the tools on the site you can design and submit your animations. Here's the clip of my animation 'take off' which was displayed in the wee hours of Friday morning in Dublin's fair city.

Drawing

Here are some drawings I did in the Victoria and Albert museum last Sunday. I'm relieved to be getting back into the habit of drawing after working mainly on the computer over the past few months. It's basically looking and thinking, but it's something that requires constant practice.

Thames festival

I'm involved in the 'Play Room' collective and this weekend we'll be selling our wares at the Thames festival on the southbank. This is the flyer I designed for the event. For more information visit the Play Room blog.

Web Updates

I've finally managed to give my website a good spring cleaning! I've taken down a lot of my older work to make way for the shiny new stuff. Have a look here.

Big in Japan

I've got some work in a group show currently taking place in Japan until 31st August. Check out the funky website for the show.

MA Show

Here are some pictures from the MA show last month.

neCessITY, capaCITY, toxiCITY

neCessITY, capaCITY, toxiCITY from Aine Cassidy on Vimeo.

Show Time

Our MA show is just around the corner! eeeeek. Here is the group invitation designed by me and my good friend Lizzie. You can also check out the rest of my talented classmates on the lovely blog www.camberwellmaillustration.blogspot.com 

My other life

I've been leading a bit of a double life over the past couple of months! Coinciding with my MA I've been doing an additional course in called 'New Creative Ventures' which is a joint venture between the University of the Arts and the London Business School. Over the 10 weeks of the course our team of 6 (some art students, some MBAs) have worked together to write a business plan for 'Own Label' - a new channel for up and coming fashion designers. Taking the course was a challenging but rewarding and I've learned some things which will hopefully stand to me in the future. To find out more about Own Label click here.

Crazy Bird Girl

I'm currently working on the sound for my animation. I want to use quite subtle, ambient noises so I set out on Friday to collect some sounds of the city. I felt a bit conspicuous at first walking round with all of the kit - headphones, furry microphone, the recorder and a mess of cables, but I soon got over the embarrassment. I started near London bridge and recorded some traffic, building site and train noises and then recorded some sounds on the underground. I wanted to record some crow sounds too so I went to a park near college. At this stage I really did look like a crazy - chasing crows around the park with a furry microphone!

One thing I noticed, especially in the park was that these sounds are around us constantly but I never hear them because I never listen to them. This everyday 'soundtrack' is made up of a cacophony of noises some of which are  natural, but most of which are man-made. The crow sounds I was trying to capture kept being swallowed up by the sound of over head planes. But it was the constant interruption by human voices which proved the most troublesome. Even in quiet places it was near impossible to get more than a few seconds of ambient sound before the interruption of human activity - talking, shuffling past, chatting on the phone. The whole experience made me think about how population dense large cities like London are and how we live all tightly packed into this grid. As the world continues to urbanise, this phenomenon becomes more and more prevalent.

Rotascoping fun!

I've been working solidly over the past few weeks on a moving image piece for my final MA show in July. I've been working in AfterEffects which was a new software for me so the initial learning curve was more of a learning vertical! It took me a while to get my head around the concept of the 'z' space, the third dimension as it were. I've gotten a handle on it now and it's all coming together. Now that I've got the basic structure and movement of the animation I've been investigating ways of adding detail and interest by introducing other techniques. The animation is primarily illustrated but I'm keen to overlay elements of video into the piece. When I'm mixing media in this way it's important that two elements gel together and there isn't an obvious clash. I used rotascoping to better integrate the video into the illustrated environment. I found this process extremely time consuming and rather tedious. It involved exporting the 12 seconds of video as a film strip at 15 frames per second. This essentially created a stop motion animation (of 180 frames) in photoshop which were each drawn over individually. I was surprised i didn't have repetitive strain after it! This image is a section of the film strip. Despite the labour intensiveness it was useful technique to learn for future reference. 

You-Me Artists

There's a bunch of us taking part in an exhibition in Osaka, Japan in a couple of weeks time. The title of the show is 'You-Me Artists'. Here are a couple of images I submitted to the show.

Future scenarios

The idea behind these four illustrations are possible future scenarios dependent upon the actions we take today.

Crows

Birds are a recurring theme in my work and I want to bring some birds into my animation.  I was doing some research into the symbolic significance of crows when I came across this TED talk about the amazing intelligence of crows.  We are very aware of all the species that are becoming extinct but aren't paying attention to the ones that are living. Crows in particular are adapting really well to our increasingly urbanised world and are actually thriving.

Man-made landscapes

This is a scene from the project I'm working on at the moment for my final show. Throughout this year I've been working on ideas about man-made landscapes and and exploring the human imprint on the natural environment. I've been keen to bring these landscapes to life through animation and have recently started using After Effects to achieve this. I'm really enjoying the process though it is a steep learning curve. 

New Sugar

I'm in this issue, click here to have a look.

Bristol Artists' Book Fair

A group of us from the Camberwell Illustration MA had a stall at the Bristol Artists Book fair last weekend. It was a fantastic weekend, lots of great work to see and interesting people to talk to. I also sold some work too which was a bonus including a copy of 'The Book of Pogonology' to The National Irish Visual Arts Library.

Myself and Lizzie certainly didn't come home from the weekend empty handed! We met a very nice man named Bob who virtually sold us his whole stall including an Adana printing press and an entire case of Baskerville 10pt type. It was quite a struggle getting everything back to London on the train but we just about managed. I'm really excited to test it all out.

A - Z of Beards and Moustaches

And here is the final book! 'The book of Pogonology (A - Z of Beards and Moustaches)'. It's printed in an edition of 15. I'm delighted to have completed it :>

Pogonology in progress

I've come to the conclusion that things take approximately four times longer to do than I think they will! Producing this book has been a very labour intensive process and involved a lot of planning. It was a step by step process - Screen printing the illustrations, aligning and overprinting the letterpress, trimming down to size, folding the sheets, embroidering each page, binding the sheets and attaching the cover. Each stage posed different challenges to be overcome and I've learned a lot about hand-made processes.

Upscaling

I find my work is getting larger and larger as the MA continues. This is image is a current work in progress. The actual size is approx 180 x 42 cm but I can envision this growing some more! I recently made some screen prints on the largest bed in the print studio so now I'm tempted to make something really massive. I want to create a continuous landscape/cityscape using printed and hand made techniques, and use digital animation techniques to unfold some sort of narrative within the panorama.

Book binding

I've just completed an evening course in book binding at the London College of Communication. Over the 10 weeks we learned 7 different styles of binding.

Lock and Load

I've been working over the past couple of months on a limited edition hand-made alphabet book about different types of beards. I've developed a real appreciation for hand-made things over the years and I've been striving to strengthen the craft element in my illustration and design work.

I think I underestimated the work and precision involved when I started this project. As I designer I'm very used to using InDesign. This makes it easy to make changes and edits to the layout and typography right up until the job is printed. Creating something that is entirely hand-made is a very different process. It's definitely more restrictive but it forces you to really think and plan and make definite decisions before you start. It's a lot more labour intensive but that's what inevitably makes it more satisfying.

The job is well on it's way now. I've screen printed all of the illustrations and have almost finished printing all of the letterpress. Setting the press to align the letterpress with the screen prints was quite an exacting process (I'll never take InDesign for granted again!). Once all of the printing is completed I intend to embroider over the prints and then hand bind the pages.