Narrative Project work

For one of the modules for 2nd year  "Narrative Illustration" , we were given the chance to illustrate a short story or narrative .
For my project, I chose to illustrate a story song that was written and is performed by Performance Group "Steam Powered Giraffe."

I chose to illustrate "The Suspender Man" due to its surreal quality and the amount of detail included in the song which lends itself for people to illustrate . As the project progressed I found myself enjoying the project more and more, as the  creative nature of the band and the fact that they have such a large online presence made it incredibly easy ask questions and watch them work which in turn inspired me to work even harder in my sketchbooks. 

I started by researching into the people who make up steam powered giraffe , The main performers are "Robots" and due to their extremely animated and unnatural movements , I found them really interesting to research , these are some of the drawings I compiled into my Sketchbook for this project

Rabbit - Vocals , Accordion and Melodica

The Spine- Vocals , Guitar , Bass, ( and in some cases Keyboard)

The Jon- Vocals, Bass, Mandolin(  and
in some songs Drums) - now a past member

Hatchworth- Vocals, Bass - (Former drummer of the band )
The Newest Member 

              

Further into this projects development stage I began to experiment with other media and some of my images leant themselves quite well to programs such as Photoshop .....

"The gators where all drinking tea, in a dreamy Pantsless Glee"

Two versions an image for " The air was sweet and the fog was Violet " where I experimented with ways to convey fog and beams of light from the robot's optics , something that the group have experimented with themselves for music videos.

Photoshop has always been a last resort for me ,  as I prefer the look and effect of traditional media , but I realise that I need to experiment with it and learn basic photoshopping skills for future work, as it will prove useful and will probably enhance my own work .

As I was constantly drawing these characters over and over again, I found my own drawing skills were developing and I began to generate images that were in a different style that I had not used before, I  really liked this as it made my work look more personal instead on the style which I have used for several years ,  it was a refreshing change .

As the project progressed I would watch live streaming  art sessions with Bunny Bennett ( Rabbit from Steam Powered Giraffe ) who is also and illustrator / artist who creates a lot of the artwork and logos for SPG as he is currently working on the newest instalment of the Steam Powered Giraffe Comic, I would watch these live streams and get an idea of how he structures the faces and bodies of the robots, while watching I would try out these structures myself for my own drawings and found it much easier to use as a guideline for characters like Rabbit who's face can be structured out of shapes which you then can elaborate on.

These a few pages were I explored different possibilities for face structure and body shape as well as exploring the outfits worn by the band members .

                                              

I was experimenting with ways to convey the effect of metal onto the page to push the emphisis on the characters of Rabbit, Spine , The Jon and Hatchworth and the fact that they are robots , with features crafted from metal and gears. It was then that I discovered Metallic Copic markers.

Copics are a material that I am quite competent with and enjoy working with and therefore it seemed like the best option to experiment with and gave the drawings the lift they needed, giving the robots that metallic quality without being too over the top .

Having to look at different view points for this projects really stimulated my creativity for this project , In my sketchbook I had various viewpoints : one from the Gators point of view, One from the Demonic Banjos point of view , One from the Jons point of view which I found really liberating as I decided to convey his side of the tale through him drawing images out on pages in a very childlike manner as he was considered to be the youngest and the child of the group .  This exercise  brought me back to my own childhood of drawing on lots of pages in a very crude manner but still able to get recognisable characters and images .

I was able to complete most of my final images for this project but there were certain elements that I would want to work on more , that is why I decided to try to finish the images as part of Authorship .

Some finished coloured segments from this project