Paper craft, Box of Passions with animation car advert

After having a guest lecturer talk to us about his work a a pop up book and paper craft artist. Our brief was to create a box of passions using paper or card, which had at least 6 items in it that reflected our passions or interests.

I decided to combine my two passions which are my family and cars.

I started off looking at cars and the nets that are used to make them. I played around with creating my own nets then eventually producing a car that would fit in with the family scene

I then looked at nets for the family, which would be mum, dad, baby and dog. The way I did this was variations on blocks which then had details added to them with coloured paper

I wanted to create an animation, since one of my passions was cars,it seemed natural to create an animated car advert.

Since I am not in anyway experienced in animation, I created a storyboard and then took still photos which were then put into a powerpoint presentation, with a sound clip, then converted into an mp4.

The result is below:

For higher quality, link is attached: Elliee Stefani - Paper Animation Car Advert (Box of Passions)

Floral Relief

This project was to study flowers to produce a series of reliefs. My interpretation of my study of a single rose, drawn multiple times, which was then transferred onto acetate then I etched this design into brass

Using Cath Kidston as an inspiration, I created a design based on the petals of roses and the petals of plumeria flowers. I then experimented with colours.

Whilst creating the designs using plumeria petals one of the designs created almost like a bow tie shape which caught my eye. I then followed this repetition and rotation technique to create new designs.

Having decided that I didn't want to be too literal about my design being related to flowers. I looked at the work of Lesley Haliwell who uses Spirograph to create designs. I used the technique of repetition and rotation to produce a series of images that stemmed from basic shapes found in my flower studies

My design on a series of surfaces 

Experimentation with size of design as well as how many designs are placed next to each other 

Experimentation with colour based on Farrow and Ball colours which are known for their timeless appearance 

Image transferred to fabric trials

Favourite colour variations that match material, prior to applying to the foreground cream fabric.

Coloured image transferred to a finished piece related to tableware and table runners

Another coloured  image transferred to a finished piece. This time I altered the composition to see what effect this had on the piece.

Architectural Cut

For this project I made 50 postcards based on drawings of elements of buildings.

I used 4 layers for each postcard, brown paper, cartridge paper, tracing paper and masking tape

The images are a selection of some of my favourite outcomes.

Using my two favourite images I etched the designs into metal

Wire Project

Natural and mechanical forms of inspiration for my wire project. 

I chose the leaf mainly because of how readily available they were given the time of year. When I gathered the leaves, they were soft and pliable which appealed to me, because I thought this would enable me to twist it into a variety of shapes.

I chose the kitchen multitool shortly after studying the leaf in drawings, where I had found out that the leaf was not as simple to position as I had first thought. I felt due the complexity of the multitool, this would be a more interesting study subject. 

Studies of natural and mechanical forms; using opposite hand with ink brush attached to a stick 

I noticed the leaf started to resemble a map or network (such as London Underground Tubes) when incorporating all the veins. Using tracing paper I experimented with adding liners to my leaf studies first in the style of a tube map then in the style of a road map.

I next went on to explore contour lines using various parts my two inspiration objects. I found the lines reminded me of the veins running through the leaves but also allowed me to express shape, something I felt was lacking with a basic line drawing.

Here I practised using wire to copy some of my drawings. I initially found this very fiddly because I found it difficult to work out where to start. When I used wire to replicate a contour line drawing, this made the process slightly easier in terms of working out a starting place but it was still difficult to achieve the precision I had hoped for 

I notice that certain elements of my inspirational items reminded me of a car bucket seat. So decided to research a few current bucket seat shapes then study elements of my inspirational items that were of particular interest in order for me to come up with a design. 

I initially created a design in my sketch book, incorporating various inspirations from my sketchbook.

I realised that the way I had designed the edges of the seat would not only be difficult to achieve using wire but would also not be practical considering it would be a seat, so decided to smooth off the edges .

Another issue I realised whilst experimenting with wire earlier on is that when there are a lot of layers of detail the piece can look very messy. Because of this I decided to use wire for the base and general structure of the seat then to sew into foam to create the design for the cushion. Towards the end of making the final piece I wanted to make the seat self standing so used two additional loops of wire to balance the chair above the surface where it is sat.

To avoid being too literal, I created a second seat design based on one of my wire experimentation pieces. The idea was that it could bend and twist like a slinky to mould to the shape of the person using it. This links back to my thoughts earlier about a leaf being a structure similar to a map of some sort.

Illustrations to demonstrate both of my seat design ideas. 

I then looked at the fabric designs of Emily Feaver who uses repeat patterns in her work. From this I created my own fabric designs using the initial studies of my leaf, below are the fabric samples I created along with colour variations for each one.

Journeys

First project of the year, our brief was to use 15 playing card sized to portray a journey.

Since this was the first project, I felt it was an opportunity to reflect a part of me, introduce myself and show my personal journey.

I thought about the idea of portraying 15 significant events in my life onto each of the individual cards. Although this would represent me and give a good introduction and background to me, it doesn't necessarily represent a journey, not to mention the fact that we only had one night to complete the task!

I then decided on using a single event in my life which ironically was journey itself. A physical journey that I made when I relocated from my hometown to where I am now, which, to me, changed my life completely, I met my current partner, moved into our own house, bought a dog and had a child. I then discovered what I ultimately wanted to do in life was art & design, and am now pursuing this at university. I do believe that had I never made that journey I would be in a completely different situation to where I am now, so it really is significant to me.

My idea was to use a map showing my physically journey's route, split into 15 sections. I didn't want to leave the cards as separate units as I felt a journey should be represented as a chain of steps. So to incorporate this idea I stung the pieces together using string.

This piece of work has quite a rough feel to it, the limited timescale did play a part in this but I also wanted to portray the fact that in my life journeys I deliberately don't like to plan too much, I very much believe in fate and my life's journey is effectively a series of seemingly random steps when looked at individually looked at but ultimately it builds one full piece at the end.