Here is a nice idea: Handmade business cards

Ok, so you are attending an event or a meeting and just realised you got no business cards left and no time to print more. Here is an idea... just make your own! What's more caring and personal than that? I know it might be time consuming but it's not so hard to make about 10 for fun. Between us, I know anyway that you will spend days trying to make up your mind on a design when it's time to print...

So set your mind free, open your drawers and take out your pencils, old cardboard, stickers, stamps or whatever you can think of! It's wonderful that you don't have to think square anymore. You can have triangles ones, round ones or even bunny shapes if you dare to cut the shape. It's up to you. You can make them all different or keep them in line with the others. Just try to keep a size that would fit comfortably in a wallet, and that's about it!

I'm posting my own experiment for you to see, as many as I have got left. I just had some cards printed finally but I really loved those ones I made by hand, and I will still be giving them out too!

People I've never met and conversations I've never had!

These two illustrations are a cooperation between me and my friend Steven Chan for the Nobrow Competition. The competition is calling for artists to illustrate people that they have never met and conversations they never had.

That was a great fun project and my first collaborative illustrations. The work has been traveling between us back and forth until some hours before the deadline! It was fantastic and I think If there wasn't a deadline we could keep playing around and passing it to each other forever!

Steven Chan and I will be an illustration couple under the name Fairytale Asylum and this work is our first one! Be aware there is much more on the way!

Our Illustrations on Flickr:
People I've never met
Conversations I've never had

The Nobrow submissions on Flickr

Enjoy Ste's work at:
www.stephen-chan.co.uk

Wrong Love at the A Foundation

After some long nights working on the design and video for the DJ set at the alternative Valentine's party Wrong Love in Liverpool held at the A Foundation, finally came the reward!

The event was mainly great and I really hope we will see more edgy and artistic night events in Liverpool again. I enjoyed observing the installations set up on the night and I also enjoyed a dreamy-like, one to one performance I experienced talking to a mysterious person while being blind folded and fed cake into my mouth. My imagination and curiosity are ready to explode since then, wondering about who was the person I talked with, and the environment where the experience took place.

One of my favorite moments was the kind puppet and his master Colin Eccleston in a sweet yet funny puppetry show.

The only unfortunate moment of the night was that I couldn't enjoy as much as it deserved the performance of my friend Kim Bumstead, as by the time he appeared a lot of people were behaving badly and drunk. One thing I would hope for for future events would be some sort of security for the artists and performers in these situations.

So, enjoy my video compilation played during the event, and have a closer look on some artists and performers of the night, Kimbal Bumstead, Jayne Lawless and Improvisation Laboratory w/Fool's Proof Theatre.

Many thanks to Come into Land that brought as the event.
Looking forward to see more!

The owls are not what they seem...

Last year I decided to decorate my christmas tree with handmade owls, so I gathered a creative team together and we brought to life a lot of cute creatures! The result was a lot of different personalities... smarter or sillier, handsome or short, geeky or fashionable. The owls have been watching us for a short time from the christmas tree, until the day I decided to let them out into the real world!

TIME MACHINE REACHES FUTURE!!! … nobody there …

Inspiration and creativity is like a virus and spreads quickly... I was siting with my friend and she said to me about an article from "Wired" magazine that talked about stories that were only six words long, from sci-fi to fantasy, horror to romance.

Only the six words were enough to create an explosion in the imagination.

We decided to take a picture so that she could illustrate one of the stories... the pictures became 100 and in the end I found my self somewhere between illustrating some of the stories too and making a self portrait.

Thanks to Druantia for her beautiful photography and don't forget to have a read through her article!

The colourful world of Betsy Walton!

First post of 2010... So Happy New Year!

I know It's been a little while since I've written, but you have to forgive me! It took me a long time to adjust after Christmas break, and I always enjoy keeping a distance to technology for a while.

Today I'm writing about Betsy Walton! A native Kansan who now lives in Portland. She decided to leave her full time job back in 2006 and dedicate her soul to her paintings. Her world has pulled me in there and I can't stop looking at her paintings and flying in those worlds. I'm fascinated by the way she is using the colour, the colour schemes and of course the dreamy drawings.

Have a look at her website and her blog which is very insightful as she talks in depth about her sources of inspiration such as novels and breath meditation.

Stop-motion@Liverpool Screen School

Yesterday I had the honor to work within Liverpool Screen School's teaching team in order to run a stop motion workshop for the students of The Huyton Arts and Sports Centre school.

The procedure we followed was to show them some inspiration links, brainstorm with them, and then get them to make their storyboards.

It was a great experience observing people that do not have any previous experience with New Media and how easily they can become motivated to start developing ideas.

I think I saw the biggest excitement and focus in the team while working on the animation aspect, while moving things around. It allowed them to experiment and get a quick response by watching it every couple of minutes.

So after this experience I realised why stop-motion workshops are so fun and successful for new people. It is just that the result is quick, rewarding and impressive.

I was very pleased with the final outcome of only few hours fun and effort.

I hope that the little artists enjoyed it as well, and good luck in their future!

Have a look at my teams' movie Cardboard Xmas, as well as the work of the other teams.