Eyebrows Cat #5

Meowy Christmas!


Jamie

Avenge Vulture Attack Music Video.

Hello Hello.


Action packed weekened! I'm currently doing a music video for the band Avenge Vulture Attack at the moment, I'm doing a cross between a hand drawn animation and a stop frame animation. This weekend we did the stop frame animation part which was fun to do, but very tiring. Especially as the snow kept challenging us on the Saturday like an annoying little brother (a cold one at that, maybe the type that flicks your ears when they're cold).

(All photos haven't been edited by the way)
Above, the guys are getting their make up and hair done. Over Saturday and Sunday it took between 2- 3 hours each day to get ready, which seems long but considering it's 3 guys and a gal getting their make up, hair and clothes done, seems about right. Especially as we were up really early on both days.

Here are some 'action' shots of the shoot. We had fun with it and that's what it should be about. If we tried to be too serious with it, we would risk coming across as cheesy or trying too hard and ultimately it will backfire on us and we'll be the laughing stock of the whole music world!! (Okay not QUITE that bad, but it wouldn't be nice for either myself or the band to look cheesy!). Overall,  a lot of fun in the cold snow and I'm aiming for the hand drawn animation that accompanies this will portray the same tone.

Group shot! (L-R clockwise) Juss - Bass, Ella - Vocals, Jenny - stylist, Lee - Make up, Ben -drums, Drew - Guitar. And myself right in the middle.


All in all a fun weekend but ever so tiring. I took a total of 738 photos, which will be just over a minute's worth of footage. Going to be fun to organize!


That's all for now folks.


Jamie

Birthday present.

Hey guys,


This has been a bit of a 'work in progress' if you will. Let me explain, on the 24th September I went out for some birthday drinks, (my real birthday is 27th September. Hinty hint hint) went to pub, (where I thought my friends kindly bought me 2 pints, little to my knowledge they put a shot of white rum into each of them. Cheers guys! Gah.) then we went to a gig then onto the Electric Ballroom in Camden.
By this point you can imagine I was rather squiffy. Well, my good friend Adam persuaded me to go moshing to this 'rockin' song - I forget which, my own voice sounded 'rockin' at this point. So, I get well into the ol' moshing-a-roo, it was rather fun but then out of nowhere - BAM! As I was turning round in momentum to said moshing, I smacked my foreheard, into this HUGE Irish MAN mouth, but to be more precise, his tooth.
I was left with a bit of a Harry Potter-esque scar on me noggin. Bleeding only a bit. I felt fine, everyone wanted to have a butchers though and make sure I was alright (thanks to Louis and Laila in particular).
It was rather a surreal experience having people looking at your forehead, then shuffling away for the next lot of customers to see. I was like an attraction at the Zoo. But anywho, I documented the healing process as I didn't get stitches (We would of, we went A&E but we waited for 3 hours, when we were the only ones there! Ridiculous.)
So yeah, it's a grand total of 84 days, I took a photo nearly everyday, but you get the jist. 


Enjoy!


Jamie

Frustrament 1/2.

Hello Hello.


Gosh I have been busy as of late, good busy, I'm not over-working just yet. This post is related to the previous post(s) of the the critically acclaimed 'PAPER SERIES'. I did this drawing I'm about to show you a good fortnight ago, which I would of posted sooner, but as you know I get easily distra- HAHA KITTENS! LOOK AT THEM!


Yeah.


Paper-hoy!

You're probably thinking "Er wha?", especially if you click on the pics and have a closer look. Don't worry I'll elaborate with this and hopefully you'll get where I'm coming from. This idea stems from quite a personal experience I've had and I'm sure many of you can share this feeling/experience with me. It's the one of knowing even though you put in a lot of effort and hard work into something, it doesn't get the respect/credit it deserves. For me in particular this relates to when I did A-level Art. I put my heart and soul into the whole A-level, literally worked on it everyday, I enjoyed it. I was predicted an A by my teachers and my peers thought the same too - without sounding too arrogant I knew I would get a good grade. Then some subjective numpty comes in and marks the work and gives me a C. This didn't jeopardize my Art school credentials as I was already accepted to Chelsea Art College with an 'Unconditional' offer. The principal was that it was more for myself than anything, I needed it. When I received this grade I was really disappointed and thought "Ok, fair enough if they didn't like my style, technique and ideas." Because I can accept that, it's just the sheer amount of work I put in, so so so much work.

I filled 2/3 A3 sketchbooks to the brim per project, a ridiculous amount of work, and it went unnoticed (That's not including paintings on canvases and sculptures etc). This has happened in other circumstances which are too lengthy to get into but I'm sure a few of you have had a similar encounter under different circumstances and can relate to the frustration experienced.

So using the A3 paper I had obtained, I set about doing a repetitive pattern, over and over again, almost in a sort of frustration of continuous circles, like when you scribble out a mistake. So the piece itself represents the actual hard work that I put into it by doing it (it did take quite a while I must admit) but also showing frustration of how hard work doesn't always get the praise it deserves and might as well just be a big scribble.

In my opinion, without the 'meaning' behind it that I explained above, it actually looks quite nice as a background pattern.

This is 1 of 2 pieces with a similar theme, the other near-ish to completion.

TTFN

Jamie

Paper fun.

Paper update! I did this a while ago but you know how much of a silly billy I am, I forgot to upload it. 
The concept behind this one was, well, nothing. I intentionally forced myself to not concentrate or be inspired by anything and be distracted as I drew this (If this sounds like a contradictory idea, that's up to you). I just wanted it to be a complete random mess and see what the result would be.

I don't think it represents anything.
Maybe I really crave Spirographs.
Probably that.
Actually, yes!
Ha I dunno, if this does in fact represent my sub-conscious, and you are a budding psycho-analyst, I would be really interested to hear from you. Even if you're not one for that matter, I would be interested to hear an interpretation all the same.
Saying that, I'm expecting someone to message me with "Well, with the evidence provided it means you have issu-GAAAAAAAAAAAY!" 


Hur hur hur.


Toodles.


Jamie

Comicollab.

Myself and my old buddy old pal Illustrator Adam Grant came up with a collaborated comic when we  were bored in the wee hours of the morning. The rules are as follows: one character each, stick to the one box panel, black and white only and 5 minutes to draw. Here are the results, Adam went first:

Jamie

Busy all of a sudden.

Latest on the job fronts, after a quiet past month or so, I have numerous things on the go now. My workload never seems to be gradual or consistent, it's always all or nothing. (Oh who am I kidding, I love it really, I get to brag more to you lot!) All big headedness aside though, later today I'm meeting a band to discuss doing an music video animation for them, quite excited, hopefully we'll get to bounce around a lot of ideas and get things rolling straight away.
As well as this, I was recently interviewed for an arty designy magazine about blogging and promoting my work via this blog, really excited about this. I get to illustrate some of the layout of my interview spread so watch this space as this should be up and running online in the next few weeks.
Also I have an internship lined up in January at this independent record label as a Digital Designer. 
I know I'm not giving too much information away, I will in due course as they come about, I just thought I'd give a little teaser for upcoming events.
ALSO, I've got over 1,000 views on this blog! Excellent stuff man, I'm surprised as this blog only kicked off proper in the summer, you faithful readers you. I knew we could do it.. together... and... and.....I LOVE YOU ALL! *whimpers* Well chuffed.


That's all for now folks,


Jamie 

Eyebrows Cat #4

Jamie

Paperfection.

My Mother came across these rather creased pieces of paper and asked if I wanted them. Being quite a paper nerd, I was all like "Oh yah" so I took them and have them proudly on the floor of my room.

I noticed something, now, to the normal eye, creased paper is often coined as bad, ruined paper. 

Not at all in my opinion. It's better if anything. Creases get bad press (ba dum der tish). You know the term 'There's no such thing as perfection' well surely it must work the other way round, binary opposites and all, so there's no such thing as imperfection either. Zing! Take that, logic! 

So basically, I wanted to develop on this crease logic. Creases, even though they are imperfection on a smooth sheet of paper, you wouldn't actually notice them. Look on your desk for example, there's bound to be a piece of paper there, does it have at least one crease in it? I bet it does. And I bet you didn't notice it until now. I know, I know, I'm showing you the light! But there's more..

I wanted to make these creases more obvious. So, quite simply, I drew over them. It looked like this:

Looks cool doesn't it? (I think so). The way it's positioned on my desk compliments it by how the light is catching it, giving different tones of white and grey.

I then thought what would be really good is if I could replicate the above look, but in a 2D digital form, so it's almost like an optical illusion. 3D paper captured on 2D! I do believe this is quite possibly the most Post Modern piece of work I have ever worked on. Go me.

I started on the digital version, but it's proving to be a tad more difficult than I originally thought. More to follow. I hope this has quenched your paper philosophy for the day.

Jamie

'It's all fun and games until..' #4

By Jamie Kyle and Louis Valenzuela

Oooh.

A torn out page from my moleskin. Quite cute really. 
Or lucky.
Heh.
Right?
Right..?
Right...


Jamie

Plumbing.

So basically, we had some plumbers in to replace our knackered radiators. The one in my room is conveniently behind my desk(s). You can imagine I struggled a bit.

Hmmm.....

Yeah that's definitely stuck.

But sure enough I prevailed (after turning both desks upside down, yeah I know, I'm not quite sure how I did it either).

Jamie

Eyebrows Cat #3

Jamie

Living Room 65.

Living Room 65. from Jamie Kyle on Vimeo.


Jamie

Good beer bottle design.

Just look at that blue. Isn't it just vibrant and fantastic? Sounds silly but this is a rarity to have a blue of this depth for a glass bottle. It's very well considered. The Silver is a great choice on top of it for the text also, it looks very sophisticated. Good beer as well.


Jamie

Writey Writey.

Hello!

Right-o I thought I'd do a written post seeing as I've been doing quite a few image based once recently, i'll talk about these bad boys I've been doing. (Drawings, not actual bad boys, you perverted individuals..)

So, recently I've taken on 3 different types of Illustration mini-projects, I'm not sure why 3 to b exact, I've always tended to work in 3's so it just naturally made sense. I think it's usually because if I get bored of one thing, I move to the next, then the next, then come back full circle, it actually works quite productively I must say. But back to the main point, I just want to write a bit about each of these mini projects, explaining why I'm doing them and my thinking/theory behind each. I'm aware I may come across as a bit fruity and pretentious so apologies if I do, this is just good practise for me to talk about my work - to deconstruct it and to remind myself why I'm doing it. SO here it goes:

3 panel comic strip -  This is my most recognizable side of my illustration personality, my little characters. The style behind them is a strong link to how I work in general, abstract expressionist. I like to try and convey a primitive emotion through the way the characters are drawn, and give them a movement about them so they look like they're coming alive, twitching on the spot. Same goes for the writing, read it and tell me that you don't read it in a certain, different way than you normally would than with neater, lower case letters. This style allows me just to go with it and not worry about being 'funny' or 'clever', it's just what your interpretation makes of it.

"It's all fun and games until..." -  This was a concept that my friend Louis Valenzuela came up with more so than myself, we're in the pub just bouncing ideas for some branding concepts for his new band called 'Chronophonic' and one tangent led to another and came up with this. It'll always have the set up "It's all fun and games until.." followed by an illustration and the punch line. The humour itself is a bit strange but that's what we're aiming for, rather than laugh-out-loud funny, just to get a bit more of a "Ha what?!" feel. It's drawn in a simple way, as it wants to help deliver the 'joke' across without being too abstract nor taking detail away from it. So simple lines, shapes and forms are what's needed, with a bit more detail in some areas when required. The writing adds to this by being fairly easily to read but also have a nice aesthetic touch to it (I think so anyway).

Eyebrows Cat - I forgot how this idea came about exactly, I just remembering doodling them in my little moleskin book during a talk at Camberwell. They're fun to draw, relating to the whole cats-are-funny-on-the-internet craze that's taken many shapes and forms over the past few years. For this I'm just going for a Surreal look. Nothing realistic, just exaggeration. Eyebrows are funny ones because they can convey so much emotion with just a flicker and can even pitch a persons personality. Plus, since I have quite thick and dark eyebrows I must have an awesome perspective.

May add to this in a bit but it seems okay..

Tar Tar For Now

Jamie

Eyebrows Cat #2

Jamie

Eyebrows Cat #1

Let's see how long I can keep this going for as well.. I present to you.. Eyebrows Cat!

Jamie

'It's all fun and games until..' #3

By Jamie Kyle and Louis Valenzuela.

Awfully smug.

I was retweeted by D&AD.
:)

Jamie

'It's all fun and games until..' #2

By Jamie Kyle and Louis Valenzuela.

'It's all fun and games until..' #1

New series by Jamie Kyle and Louis Valenzuela.

Roast.

Jamie

Went to Brighton, forgot I went, took some photos, here they are.

I forgot all about these photos, think I went just under a month ago. Dad was visiting a client about some print job so myself and Ma thought we'd join along for a day trip and plus we would get a chance to meet up with Matthew's (That's my younger brother, currently studying for a year in Spain incase you didn't know, how nice and informative of me eh) girlfriend Faye for a spot of Wagamamamamamama.
Lovely trip, I really like Brighton, I could see myself living there if I don't end up living in the big smoke. Lots of nice small shops and pubs, came across this little music shop where I got 2 relatively newish albums by Grizzly Bear for a tenner overall. Win. Took a few snaps along the seafront, it was a really grey and undercast day so I messed around with the exposure and aperture on my camera with some okay results - not blog worthy but a nice exercise for me. 
Note to self, should visit again soon.


Jamie

Homage.

A la Masum Khan.


Jamie

I went walkin' with Ma.

This was about 2 weeks ago, we took a long walk down the Thames from Elthorne Park to Brentford lock, it was a nice crisp autumny morning, you know the one where it's not freezing but you feel your face pores have awoken. Deep cleanse. It was a really good walk although I was quite knackered when we settled down for a coffee, it was as if I hadn't ever walked before. On our quest we came across this abandoned warehouse, Mum said it used to be part of a bigger building that they've got rid of due to it's lack of activity - think it was kind of a storage/loading bay from what I remember? It was really unlike anything I've seen before, this huge sheltered space, sheltering water, there was something really eerie about it. I liked it. It made me think of all the potential film shots you could do round here, atmospheric for sure. I love the photo of the twisted metal, how on earth did it get like that? 
Jamie

Cool piece of DOOVD Design.

Just lovely and simple, it seems so obvious, doesn't it?  But that's the thing, DVD design is so lacking sometimes, it's usually just some simple text and a random image of the protagonist. Well played High Fidelity DVD. (Awesome film, even better book, do both)


Jamie

My favourite Facebook status in a while.

BATMEEEN.

I did spend a good hour writing a post about the latest Batman 3 news of Tom Hardy being cast as 'the villian', and how it would be a bad move if he turned out to be 'The Riddler' which is the biggest rumour going round. I mentioned that Joseph Gordon - Levitt would be more suited to the role.

But then it dawned on me.

The more I wrote about how Tom Hardy isn't suited for 'The Riddler' role (He's a great actor don't get me wrong, I was going on a purely superficial note, he doesn't look at all like the typical evil genius archetype) the more I grew to the idea of him being 'The Riddler'. It's a genius idea! Remember how everyone was quick to dismiss Heath Ledger as the Joker because he was good looking and generally a goody-too-shoes but when photos came out with him in make up as the Joker everyone was very quick to change their opinion (Myself included). Tom Hardy is very good at playing intense characters, imagine the same intensity he portrays in films like when he was in Star Trek and Bronson, and put that on top of 'The Riddler' character whose constant need to out smart Batman is his driven nature. Now on top of that, imagine slapping on that purple bandana thing across his eyes and slicking back his hair,  in that green one-piece suit, with an evil smirk and a crazy laugh. He'll be immense!

So I've come to the conclusion he'll probably play 'The Riddler' and I'll be happy with that. Although if these other rumours of JGL being cast too in the film, I reckon he'll be Robin. Who's with me on that?

Also, as a back up, if Tom Hardy doesn't end up playing 'The Riddler', my money is on him playing Dr Freeze. Mainly because he always (Okay only about 3 times) plays a bald guy and does it very very well. You know you can see it too... Also another good shout would be the villian Clayface, a good looking actor mutated into the all forming all shaping Clayface. Hmm.

TTFN

Jamie away!

Wut?