College Projects

The Cu Sith

Kelpie Prize Project

Kelpie Prize 2020 - The brief for the Kelpie Prize was to create a cover and 2 double page spread on what Scotland meant to us. I chose to look as Scottish folk lore, coming across the story of the Cu Sith (meaning demon hound in Scottish Gaelic).

In many folk lore stories of the Cu Sith its said to be a large dark green haired Dog with a platted tail. hunts silently in the highlands and its moors, devouring travellers who ventured to far off the path. The Cu Sith only lets out three barks said to be so loud you can hear it away out at sea. If heard you have to get to the nearest settlement before the 3rd Bark. if you are unsuccessful you would die from shear terror.

As a child I loved making up spooky mythical creature with my friends and pretending to run away from them, usually getting me into a state by the end actually believing they were real (of course they weren't real) but remembering it made me realise how powerful imagination can be. I was very into the supernatural when I was younger and I still am so I was very drawn to the idea of designing and drawing the Cu Sith for the project.

After Effects project

After Effects project 2021 - For the After Effects project I decided to work with a character I was already familiar with rather than spend most of the project designing a character to animate. I chose to work with my original character Katlynne Grimaldi from my comic series I'm writing since I had just finished updating her design.

While researching I came across these animated cards for card games. I really liked how they were a action pose of a character stuck in time, however the animation breathed life into character. I decided I wanted to try and recreate that effect with Katlynne...

Turns out most of these animated images where created in programs such as Spine pro and Dragonbones, both of which I didn't have access to so I had to get creative with after effects puppet tool... Several layers and compositions later I managed to rig up Katlynne into an animated 2d model. It was a very tedious task with multiple errors I had to go back and forth with but over all I managed it. Sure it wasn't as flued and easy as I'd imagine the other programs where but I made something never the less.

I'm pretty pleased with what I made with the outdated version of after effects I had access too. I was very pleased to bring Katlynne to life with the animation which I'm sure In University I will have ample opportunities to do the same with other characters.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Graded unit

Graded Unit 2020 - out of the selection of briefs we were given I chose to do the book brief, where we had to make a cover, spot illustration and double page spread of classic penguin book of our choice. I chose Louis Carrol's Alice's Adventure in Wonderland. I'm a huge fan of the movie adaptation by Tim Burton, loving the gothic fantasy aesthetic. another inspiration was the game Alice: Madness Returns by Spicy Horse with beautiful paper cut out cut scenes revealing the lore for the game. I enjoy the twisted nature of the worlds created by both Tim Burton and Spicy Horse, learning about some theories into the origins of the story (however bazar and incorrect they were).

One of my favourite time periods is the Victorian era when the story was written so naturally I based my character design off the fashion of that time period. The story its self lacked descriptive information about the characters appearance them self so I had a lot of room to work with.

Unfortunately due to Covid-19 out break the Graded unit was cancelled and never I truly finished the project. My favourite part of the project was by far the Character design element.