Final Pieces

Above, shows my final exhibition at UWIC. The pieces are scaled to A1 and are made out of acrylic and foam board.
My main aim with my final pieces was to create a sense of layering and depth, just like a story has.
I was very fortunate to have been selected by tutors to exhibit my work at New Designers in London.

Outcome of Final Major Project

'Fabricated Tales'

Fabricated Tales is a collection of laser cut designs based on Greek and Roman myths and legends, with particular concentration on the story of Cupid and Psyche. This story was chosen for its romantic quality steering away from my usual monster like illustrations. I wanted to achieve a collection that was aesthetically pleasing with elaborate swirls and beautiful silhouettes something similar to that of Robert Ryan’s illustrative cut outs. Robert Ryan has a drawn quality to his cut outs which I love; his quirky figures not necessarily are in proportion but his very unique folk style carries the image off perfectly. At the beginning of this project I attempted doing my own hand cut outs within a concertina book. I was happy with the overall outcome but the intricacy in my drawing was lost so I was thrilled when the opportunity came to use the laser cutter.

Although there were numerous problems in understanding the new machine and programme such as how to allocate different segments of an image to laser different effects, I pursued with the help from Martin the technician and we managed to eventually overcome most problems. However, this did not come as a disadvantage I feel as my constant experimentation on the machine enabled me to become confident enough to design my final samples and pieces on my own. In order to translate my designs on to the APS Ethos programme I had to first convert my drawings into a vector line on Illustrator. As this programme was also not familiar to me I found this a challenge to get to grips with the different tool buttons. My final collection has been designed for the purpose of stationary items; however, as I have continued growing in confidence on the machine I would love to design for more adventurous products maybe with the use of metal – outdoor features? I would also like to play with light more as the shadows cast from my cut outs really interest me and has opened up a whole new avenue of design work to go down.