The Personal Blog of Dr Banksy*.

So it's the last week of college for 2015 and I'm starting out of the first section of my final major project. It's called "Realising Reality" and is focussed around the production of documentaries, both photography, animation and film-based. I'm looking to explore two main areas - cel shading / rotoscope animation and a continuation of my obsession with raw, black and white, colour-popped photography, such as the work of David Bailey . My interest in cel-shading comes from a series of Belgian thriller comic books known as XIII (thirteen), which was adapted into a videogame of the same name in 2003. The integration of cel-shading to give the game a comic book feel worked superbly, creating an experience like nothing seen before (the headshot animations are to die for - sorry), and leaving a firm imprint on my artist's mind. Additionally, I was introduced by my tutor to a new photographer - William Klein. Like Bailey's, Klein's work is very ...

Yes I did - you can now (finally) view all the photos I took whilst on the college's Penzance trip in November. Enjoy!

Just finished the fine art taster unit, really pleased with how everything went. It's the first time that anyone has called my work good enough to sell! Chuffed to bits with that. Now it's time to go back to Photo Media for my main project - and guess what? I've already completed one of the two short Christmas break tasks. I'm just that good ;)

Back in with Steve today to start the Fine Art project, and I'm already very excited and producing some work. There is a lot of freedom with the approach to work here, which leaves the possibility for some really interesting results. We're encouraged to just go for it, embracing a wide range of materials to create some visually stimulating artwork. It's all go again!

So Photo Media has just ended. I can honestly say that this course is getting better and better with every new topic - my mind has been opened to the incredible world of photography and I'm very enthusiastic about the prospect of studying it further. In terms of my final piece for this project, it unfortunately can't be viewed here because of file compatibility problems with Final Cut or whatever. Irritating, but at least it's finished. Mostly. No sound. Don't think anyone will mind too much though because we're presenting our work to the rest of the group and I have a feeling that verbally delivering my script with the film playing in the background could work really well. There was a bit of clipping that had to be done in order to get the (almost)-finished product down to thirty seconds in length. Unfortunately I had to say goodbye to the David Hockney part, but all the Bailey/Shrimpton stuff is still there, which is the element that inspires and excites me the mo...

Alright - this is it. This is what we've been waiting for. For the past couple of days I have been shut up in a small, dark room to record the stop-motion sequences of my short film. I used a program called Dragonframe (as also used by Aardman and  Patrick Boivin ) to do this, as well as a setup of a roster and two very bright lights. A sheet of white styrofoamy stuff made for an ample background and I was good to go. Slightly irritating was the fact that my camera decided to develop a fault while I was working, but thankfully I had all that I needed by that point. Some shots of literally just my hands make up the main part of this short film (along with a roll of masking tape), but the finished effect will look superb. Probably. I've anticipated that some footage of a young adult male's hands is not really enough to sway even the most captive audience, so I'm using my recently-learned "skills" with Adobe Illustrator and Flash to produce some vector graphi...

So we had a little peer review in college today, and I'm ashamed to say that I'm coming up a bit short (again). I've drilled my research pretty hard with this project, but it's time to show you where it's going. I could make excuses about the weather being poor for shooting and finding the right model in a short space of time being a big ask - but I reckon I'm above that. I mean it! Really! I am ! Maybe not. So let's set things going - fast. Here are the studies of Hockney's work that I promised. I went out and took some photos outside the college, trying to get some studies that would be interesting to "Hockneyfy". Rearranging the little squares can bit pretty frustrating (breathing is the worst thing ever sometimes - whoosh!), but I finally got it nailed. I used a laminate background because that's the surface I'd like to use in my final film. The lighting isn't great but I'm still experimenting with my setup. I'd love to ...

So today we took to the studio to experiment with some very useful setups, and finally know how those models get to look so good. Knowledge of lighting was paramount here - light can either make or break your photo, so you've got to know how to use it. I was introduced to all sorts of new words for things that were surely called something else if you were to use their correct name; gels, snoods, soft boxes, and brollies. To be fair, that last one isn't really debatable - it's a brolly, no bones about it. Below are some diagrams which map out the setups we practised. I made them using a website called " Online Lighting Diagram ", a really useful piece of computing that was very easy to use and even easier to understand. The setups below are detailed with photographs taken of models, which show the results of using each lighting arrangement. The above setup features very bright light focused directly on the model by means of twin umbrella lights angled inwards. It c...

I love it when stuff that I've looked at in the past comes in handy in the present. As part of my Geography A-Level, I studied cold environments and had to collect research for an essay-style report to be written in exam conditions. One particular source of my studies for this topic came from a 2012 documentary called Chasing Ice . It was made to communicate that, with sound visual evidence, ice melt and climate change are very real and very serious matters that are taking effect at an alarming rate. The documentary was created by nature photographer James Balog and his autodidact team of fellow photographers and technicians who make up the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) . The group travelled to many different locations across the frozen north to photograph and record the movements of some of the planet's most impressive - and volatile - glaciers. These enormous expanses of ice have been changing dramatically over recent years, receding more and more as time goes on. Balog has then ...

I've been looking into my personal inspiration lately and now turn my attention to stop motion animation. I have always admired this technique as I feel that it is an extremely effective way to give life to static objects and looks very impressive on screen (as can be seen through the work of world-renowned "claymation" studio Aardman .   Their work with Nick Park to create Wallace and Gromit , as well as feature films like Chicken Run  and television series like Morph is superb, and really showcases what stop-motion can do when realised to its full potential (which basically means: "with time, experience and money"!). However, when these three factors aren't present, the ability to produce effective and captivating animation / short films is diminished. This makes the work of YouTube personalities Patrick Boivin and Keshen so impressive. Boivin is a French-Canadian autodidact filmmaker who uses limited technology and equipment to create incredibly impres...

Started looking into more inspiration for my photo media project and have come to David Hockney , a British photographer and painter who, like David Bailey, has a distinctive style in his pictures. I had previously studied Hockney's work as part of my GCSE Art course during the cubism segment and loved this style. Hockney begins by photographing a landscape as it would be seen, then prints the photographs. Another photographer my call this a job well done, but Hockney is just getting started. He then takes the printed photo and cuts it up into squares, rearranging these squares to created a distorted but still recognisable image. I'm inspired by this technique because I think it really adds another dimension to an already-impressive photograph. Some famous examples (and my favourites) are shown below: I'm currently working on some of my own Hockey-inspired pieces, and will be uploading them soon.

"No. You're wrong. It's not about the poxy clothes. It's about the street, in actual fact. It's about - the noise, it's about that drunk guy over there. It's about the steam! It's about that, big plastic sign that says 'Twist', which will appear three to four inches above Jean's head in a magazine spread. It's about - the vibe !" - Aneurin Barnard as David Bailey, We'll Take Manhattan (2012). Wow. I have just started my new Photo Media project on the Art Foundation course and I am already absolutely buzzing. I have always had a somewhat hidden passion for photography, and I delighted to finally have the opportunity to realise it (in all it's glory, to be modest :P).  As you can see from above, I adore the work of David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton. They may not be household names (or even that popular with the photographers of today), but oh my, they should be. In 1962, Shrimpton and her then boyfriend/photographer Bailey trave...

And we have come to the end of Visual Communication. It's been a pretty crazy ride, but I have thoroughly enjoyed every second of this double-project, um, project. Found myself working backwards at times (having to complete some artist research halfway through), but I am massively pleased with the end result of both projects. I had to scale back my graphics ideas in particular, using less detailed drawings and more shapes to give a better "graphic" and "branded" feel, which made my packaging look more official, professional and a lot less cluttered. Then there was the little hurdle of Creative Suite, where I had to frantically remember everything I'd learned from my work experience in order to get the final design I was looking for. I still think I could've made a tonne of improvements, but three weeks is not a long time, and graphic design is hard . As for my editorial illustration, things were pretty smooth from the off. It was great coming up with the...

Haven't posted anything for a couple of weeks, mostly because my new course project has kicked off with all guns blazing - Visual Communication. A mixture of graphic design and illustration, it is proving to be my favourite part of the course so far. Having to juggle two different projects at once isn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. This is mostly due to the fact that graphics and illustration bleed into one another quite nicely, so I have been finding myself taking elements from one project and flipping it into the other when my imagination level starts to run dry. The two projects are relatively simple to describe. The graphics project involves designing the packaging decoration for a carton containing a certain commodity, which should be influenced by a specific location (both of which we were given at random). The illustration project's aim is to provide the illustration for an editorial. Really quite simple briefs indeed. I had "Australasian" for m...

I had the ultimate surprise when the tutors announced that we would be visiting Dismaland. I hadn't been able to get tickets for ages, and there was some really inspiring artwork on display. Here is a link to my Flickr account - I could just talk, but photos speak louder than words.

Second week of the course. We visited Bristol on Tuesday and went drawing around the M Shed docks. I'd been there before, so it wasn't a total breath of fresh air, but I did get some good work done. We were lucky enough to spot the Matthew, a ship which I have always wanted to draw because of my interest in 17th-19th century vessels (like the Victory , which I have also visited down in Portsmouth ). In each of the studies I created, I wanted to give a sense of age whilst keeping an industrial feel to suggest the strength that the objects I drew once had in their everyday use (particularly the cranes around the M Shed). To do this, I chose, in accordance with the brief, to work mainly in black and white, which gave my drawings a foggy, smoky feel. However, in order to show that there was still some life (and indeed a lot of history) in these objects, I employed the same method as with Birnbeck Pier, injecting sparse amounts of bright colour into the pieces (all present in real ...

Alright -  Dismaland is in full swing and still at the peak of its ticket sales and media popularity. But...  why did all that hard work have to be done to the Tropicana when there are plenty of other purpose-abandoned, crumbling ruins along W-s-M seafront? The Birnbeck Pier is situated about ten minutes' walk from the luckier Grand Pier, to the north. It was opened on 5th July 1867 and was eventually closed for business in 1994 (though the final official excursion was in 1979). In its heyday, Birnbeck was an extremely popular tourist attraction with hundreds upon hundreds of visitors each year - some of which never actually left the pier and its attached "island".  It also boasted a number of attractions including a carousel, a licensed bar (putting newsagents everywhere to shame) and a  shooting gallery (why don't piers have those nowadays? I wonder). It was even used secretly by the Admiralty as HMS Birnbeck in 1941, and was involved in the testing of the infam...