Justin Bieber No Fear

That was our brief. "Justin Bieber No Fear".

First thing that comes to mind is JB combined with the No fear logo, but that just seemed too easy. Especially after having had a pep talk earlier in the day saying we really ought to push ourselves, those that push the furthest will have the most interesting out comes. So I decided to make a film about killing him, as personally he's the sort of thing that just makes me harumph with apathy. I'm not saying that what's on my ipod's better than any of that pop crap (but it obviously is) but it's just the way that he's just a kid that looks right and sounds right enough for teenage girls to scream over him. I mean, there's a 3 year old girl (granted she's american) that cries because she loves him so much. It's annoying that someone who's basically just a cash cow that'll come and go with the breeze has so much media attention. It's like high school musical, Justin Bieber isn't a muscian he's a fad.

Anyway, so because I'd be quite happy if the next bit of media about him was that he'd died (or perhaps not, as they'll probably play his music even more on the radio as a tribute, it'd probably be better if he disgraced himself by sleeping with one of his fans and breaking the law (as I can't imagine anyone over the age of consent appreciates his existance other than the people that profit from him)) I decided to make a film about killing him.

I made the props myself from balloons, a biscuit container, paper mache and some of my own hair that I had lieing around:








I then enlisted the help of Jack and Coral to create my film:



After filming, to celebrate we went out and scared some people, here are some photographs of people wearing the Justin Bieber masks:









They all look quite creepy, sort of like Cartoon Head from Ideal but more surreal because they're more human.

Anarchy in the UK

This was a really fun project, basically invent a high concept band and design 12", 7" and cassette cover art work for it.

My initial idea was a metal band that uses a lot of runes. I should've known that's been done to death, so I dropped it.

My next idea was trance music that puts you into a coma, inspired by the artwork I'd created whilst under the effects of Methoxetamine which is legal drug.





The problem was I stuck with the artwork I'd created too much, instead of looking instead at what I was really doing, which was TRANCE music that put you into a COMA.





So I went to a trance rave and a hospital to get some photographs of people raving and hospital beds. I then combined these together, along with a hideous bubble font and my initial concept drawings to create:












The most successful of these images is the single cover, where I made a breathing thing out of filter tubes and took the photo of myself just after I'd woke up so I had messy hair (like people in comas).

Things to change:
-Lose the zombie nurse, as she doesn't say "TRANCE music that puts you into a COMA" she says undead hospital music, which I'd assume is a different genre entirely (zombie nurse backing singers and skeleton doctors with guitars made out of bones, it'd probably be like dull, all consuming heavy metal).

-Change the font to something that says trance music more, I've already experimented with this

-The title tracks are all inspired by what I wrote under the influence of methoxetamine, I ought instead to look at words that say coma, as the methoxetamine reference only relates to me. I've tried this as well as the new font on my single cover:








I like this quite a lot, my current plan is to bring the other pieces up to this stage. Current ideas are someone (most likely me again) passed out with big head phones on for the album. I may keep some of the trippy art work, but only if the image already says: COMA TRANCE. I mean, the stalagtite image on the back of the single just looks like a turd.

I've fixed some of the problems I had with this project before, here's how it looks now:














The poster is the most drastic change, but there's still problems (as there naturally would when you've already spent 30 quid on a project and just can't wait to spend more.) like when I printed it the backgrounds went really shit, which is weird. I also forgot to save the changes to the cassette tape inlay, which means it still has all the old track names in the old hand written style on there, which is a massive annoyance.

This project's getting there, but it still isn't what I wanted it to be. I did borrow my mates camera to get some better photographs, and it just highlights how peck my camera is now. For drawing from there's no issue, but large prints just seem to come out looking abysmal, and I need to figure out whether it's cheaper to continue printing out bad quality work because I'll "fix it" when I get a better camera and pay to do everything twice, or just get a good camera. The thing is next year I'll be living with 3 people who all own DSLR cameras, so I just can't justify it when there's 3 to choose from, unless we find ourselves at a photography convention I don't know how the 3 of them would need them all at the same time, and I wouldn't go to a photography convention anyway.

My Favourite Dress

The brief here was to design and make a dress for a girl I know. This was one of those projects that just made my head explode. I hate sewing, and I'm not a fan of fashion (I can appreciate it's a skill, just not one that I'm really interested in at all), AND the girl that I would have had in mind was no longer my girlfriend, so I left it and left it.

Then it occured to me that I know a girl who does fashion, and that she'd be the perfect candidate to design my dress for, as anything I needed help with she'd be the person to go to, and I also had this notion that she'd spent all her time designing dresses for other girls to wear, perhaps she'd like a chance to model herself (I later discovered that posing for photographs was her worst nightmare, so I was somewhat off the mark with the "chance to model herself" idea, but the rest was right).

So I waited for Chloe to return after the christmas holidays and we got cracking. The only problem was that Chloe's sleeping pattern was the opposite to mine, she'd turned nocturnal over the holidays, but there were a few hours (between about 9pm and 2/3 in the morning) where we had a cross over point of both being awake.

As Chloe is quite a dark person (she likes somewhat macabre things (not to an extreme, she isn't a goth) and has a somewhat sinister sense of humour) and a little out of control sometimes we decided that a dark colour (black or charcoaly) would be right, and to show her crazyness we'd try to use a straight jacket for inspiration, and adding a hood would up the sinisterness of it.










I'm really happy with the dress. Chloe admittedly did most of the sewing (I was told that sewing is something that can't really be undone very well, and with my limited funds I couldn't really afford for it to go wrong) but I helped out with all the rest of it. Originally I'd wanted more buckles, as they show the straight jacket feel the most, but money was a limiting factor and so only 1 on each arm and one on the back were possible. I like how it can be worn in a variety of ways, hood up, hoody down, arms through the sleeves, arms through the shoulders, and all tied up if you wanted.

The rest of the photos from our modelling shoot (which was a horrible experiance for Chloe, but quite fun for me) are below: