Here are a few images of the background and logo I designed for it:

And the homepage of the site:

The site was built using WordPress and designed using a modified version of the Peekaboo WordPress theme.

It’s a really great cause to support. They need a lot of money to keep the sanctuary running so take a look at the shiny new site and give what you can.

If you missed out, you can see the work on my portfolio and my books and prints are now available to buy through Etsy.

And here are a few pictures of the work of others in the show:

I was asked to design a character for Spicy Hen – www.spicyhen.co.uk. The company provides dance packages for private and corporate events and parties. This project was great fun to do and I’m really happy with the result-even though it is VERY pink!

I thought it might be interesting to show a few steps in the process of the design so this is the initial sketch I created for the character:

The character was then traced in Illustrator and imported into Photoshop for final shading. This is the first attempt at colour:

This is the final logo with head and feet a lighter pink, so as to stand out when the character is reduced:

Have a look at my illustration portfolio to see close up and large images of the Spicy Hen character.

Visit the Spicy Hen site to see the character/logo live, and let me know what you think!

You will get to shoot little androids and your defenses will be Phones 4 U shop fronts. I will post a link to the final game when it goes live-really excited about playing it! Below is a preview of the elements which I designed (background, logo, androids, canon, flying saucer etc.). Apologies to my friend Ruth for using her Facebook profile pic!

I recently completed the design for a new section of the Maverick Books site I designed about a year ago. Maverick Books had an idea to create vidcasts for parents to download for their kids to watch. They decided to call them “Talking Books” as that’s essentially what they are: books which talk to you whilst showing the images from the book- Jackanory style.

I did some of video editing for this project, which I’ve not done for a long while. I had forgotten how much time and patience it takes! I created one taster video and a full-length video available to buy and download.

The start and end of the video, and the background are all based on illustrations of an old bookshop. I had the idea that the narrative for the Listen With Maverick section would be that the books in the bookshop come to life when you switch off the light.

Hopefully the first Talking Book will be a success and I’ll get to do more as it was such a fun project to work on.

You can have a look at it at –www.maverickbooks.co.uk/listen-with-maverick

And view the taster video below:

The Four Little Pigs from Kimara Nye on Vimeo.

The Project

I want to create a book, which will make people think about visual perception and how they view their world. I would like the book to appeal to a large audience and use various types of visual communication such as: graphic art, writing and perhaps sequential photography.

Research Into Illusions

I am interested in the way in which illusions they trick our perception and make us realise that we may not always (or ever in fact) be able to believe what we see. Upside-down faces and ambiguous illusions such as the giant in the landscape particularly fascinate me:

Books

Some books, which I found useful, were:

The Paradox Box (Image from book- contains two hidden profiles):

Noma Bar’s Negative Space (Image from book-Business in War: a symbol of warfare, with an element of business secreted within):

Flatland (a satirical story about a world which is flat inhabited by shapes):

The Fate of The Artist by Eddie Campbell (an investigation into who The Artist was and why they were killed through various media -uses comic strip, graphic art, sequential photography and writing):

Drawing Loop

I became quite stuck in a continuous loop of drawing things (sometimes random), which were of interest. I had been holding myself back to some extent, as I wasn’t really sure where I was going with the project at that point and thought that something may magically appear to me through drawing if I carried on. But it didn’t.

So after a few discussions with tutors and peers I thought that it might be a good idea to categorise my research bringing it all together so that I could see what the hell was going on!

Categorisation

I did this in the form of an A2 diagram, which was a categorisation of the different types of illusions:

Distorting

Paradox

Ambiguous

And Fictional

It’s not the best drawing but it really helped me to find connections between the types of illusions:

Narrative

So where is this going? Well I knew that I needed a narrative, something to engage people, which wasn’t just a series of images. The connection between the four types of illusions was a key element.

I could see the crossovers between them but I needed a way to visualise this. So After a lot of sketching and thinking I came up with this key symbol, which could be used to make an illusion of each type:

Once I had the connections sorted I wrote a draft for a simple narrative. It was set in a dream room where the protagonist has to discover what the connections are between the symbols. Below is an image of the dream room, which the protagonist is trapped in with the symbols on each of the walls:

At first they think that it is their personal dream, which they are trapped in, but then they soon realise that it’s belongs to someone else who is trying to solve a problem through dreaming. They can’t wake up until they have solved the clues. Below are a couple of pages from the narrative, which I’ve drafted out in rough graphic style:

I showed the story to my sister, who is a typical 23 year old and she liked it but didn’t understand how the protagonist knew how to solve the clues.

At that point I realised that the story needed some more body to it so I decided that Act 1 would explain to the audience how the protagonist had all of the information, which they needed to solve the puzzle.

It’s about a guy who…

I spoke to a writer friend who recommended a couple of books for me which could help me with story writing. The one I’ve found most helpful so far is “Save the Cat” (the title refers to having a “save the cat” moment where the protagonist does something nice so that we like him/her) by Blake Snyder.

It breaks down the process into parts and also tells you about how to use a pin-board to plan out the acts. With 10 cards, which are scenes, for each of the 4 sections.

So at the moment I’m still working on Act 1. I’ve had a few ideas, one of which involves some slightly grotesque stories, which explain the types of illusions and was presented to the protagonist by his/her parent when they were a child:

I really want the narrative to be engaging and to basically work well so I want to spend time planning it properly. I’m not sure at this point what the final book will look like. I’d like to use a variety of media to communicate the story and I’ll choose whichever method I feel would be correct based on the narrative.

The Synchronicity of Jung

I had decided to go back to the work of Jung recently as a lot of the themes contained in my narrative relate to his work on dreams, the collective unconscious and synchronicity.

I discovered through my research that his “Red Book”, which is a collection of his drawings of his dreams and hallucinations and notes about his work. It had only been published last year. It’s about £100 to buy, however the Guardian site had some of the images of his pages on it and I found this one, which is quite similar to the dream room in my story. It has chequered tiles on the floor and the tiles on the wall seem to be an optical illusion. Weird.

Advice to new students

I’d say be open-minded about your project at this stage. I think I waited a bit too long before planning my narrative but definitely do your research and listen to the advice of tutors and take in the lectures which you are given.
I think that the most important thing is to remember that the onus is on you to do the work and that you really will need to push yourself at certain stages to break out of what you are doing and try something else if your project isn’t working. Try not to get stuck like I did!

Unstruck Qu - Why don’t dogs wear shoes?

Playing with some Photoshop brushes. Illustration for the Unstruck blog, for the question What can outsmart a bullet?

Bear.

Should people agree to disagree?

Why is there so little political resistance/activism these days? We know about the lying and cheating and they still get back into parliament – why?

How would you explain videogames if you time travelled and met someone in the early 1900s?

If you keep ageing at normal speed and george Osborne getting younger at normal speed when will you be exactly the same age as George osborne and what will happen?

Lucy FUR says Meow

What is the line between introspection and obsession?

Is it better to put on three staggered alarms and snooze through them all, or to put on one alarm and get up straight away? ie. Why’s it so hard to get up in the morning?

Can a man shit sculptures?

How many roads must a man walk down, before you can call him a man?