Case Study: Fred Deakin

In our theory lesson we were asked to present a case study on a designer / artist of our choice. I have decided to do Fred Deakin (Lemon Jelly/Airside).

I have always been interested in Fred's work, I discovered his music first, he is one half of the electronic music duo Lemon Jelly. I went to see them live many years ago and the visuals were absolutely stunning. I then discovered that Fred was behind the artwork. He studied English Literature at Edinburgh University, whilst putting on student club nights in the city, this is where his interest in graphic design began. He created all the artwork for posters and flyers for his club nights and also created moving visuals for the dancefloor.

After graduating he moved to London where he became a lecturer at Central Saint Martins teaching Communication Design.

He then started the design studio Airside which is still going strong today, they have produced work for clients such as Nokia, Virgin and Greenpeace to name a few.

I have made the short 5 minute presentation below

Roy Litchenstein and others...

As I said before I want to have different textures and colours in my illustration to make it stand out, I immediately thought of Litchenstein's dots... I thought this could be a good technique to use maybe on the cape... Looking at his work has also made me think more about the title of the film. I wanted to keep the style of the Miami Pink script Drive typeface, but thinking about it maybe I should use a bold comic book style type laid on top of the artwork like the 'Whaam!' below...

I found these images below of sketches of Litchensteins work. I really like the style, especially the loosely coloured in crayon colour on the second image...

Pitching my idea...

I wrote a basic plan to pitch my idea... I covered the following; The brief, what it is asking me to do, summarise what I am doing, why I am taking this approach, how am I going to do it and why its different. I had a quick run through with Chris and he suggested to change the order.

Below are my pitch slides...

Briefly introduce what brief I have chosen:

"I am going to create a portrait of the driver as a superhero. I will do this in a comic book style but using mixed media with digital, painted and hand drawn elements..."

"I have always thought of ‘the driver’ in Drive as a kind of superhero character..."

· "The heartthrob good guy protecting the ones he loves..."

· "The iconic Scorpion jacket acting as a Batman type emblem..."

"The main feature song in the film singing the line ‘A real human being, and A REAL HERO'"

"I then started researching the film in more detail and discovered this is exactly what the directors intensions were, he compares the film to a fairytale, he says..."

“Well, the driver character is a mythological character, he’s like Shane or John Wayne, he’s part of American folklore, the hero that comes in and protects the innocent from the evil that men do.”

"After researching old Little White Lies covers and many different illustrators I think using different materials and textures bring a lot more depth to the work, making it more interesting to look at..."

"The words ‘A REAL HERO’ will be written on the cover as part of the illustration."

"The title ‘DRIVE’ will be hand drawn but in keeping with the infamous hot pink script typeface used in the film..."

"I’ve played around with different layouts and views, its pretty annoying that the Little White Lies masthead sits right bang in the middle of the page!"

"I think I’m going to go with the driver standing in front of the car holding the bag of cash. The background will be dark with lampposts shining…"

"After watching an interview with a designer from Little White Lies, the most important element of this brief (although not actually highlighted much in the brief itself) is to have a great concept, a hidden meaning…. Little White Lies covers all aspects of movies whether it be the music, art or culture."

"The magazine is read by ‘adventurous film fans’ who are ‘design literate film geeks’"

"I think my idea brings something different to the brief, it isn’t a classic portrait of a famous still from the film, it has a concept that the ‘design literate film geeks’ will have to think about and appreciate..."

I think my pitch went down well, they seemed to like my idea. I got some good ideas for the drawing style from the feedback, I am going to really emphasise the 'superhero' stereotypes on the character, for example making his muscles super large and maybe turning the iconic jacket into a cape.

Comics & Superheros...

As I have decided to go down the comic book route, I thought it would be wise to research comic art old and new... Looking for various ways in which I can pursue the film to become comic book like. I will be studying superheroes especially as this will be the only character in my scene...

The classic Superman art below without colour helps a lot with drawing the framework of my character. I will need to really push this superhero idea to make it work, hugely emphasising muscles and maybe tweaking parts of the driver character such as turning the scorpion jacket into a cape...

I really like the way the below image is coloured. I was done by hand using acrylic, you can tell this in the rough texture of the rich blue background. I like the idea of using such a rich colour in the background in my piece, maybe using bright headlights or lampposts shining through lighting up the driver...
These were done by the same artist, the same method has been used with colour, it almost looks as though it has been applied with a sponge...

I will be using some kind of comic book style type to say the words 'a real hero...' Either in a speech bubble or in a block corner like in the image above with a handwritten comic book typeface.

There is a series of comic called Commando based on stories and tales from the war. It was made in the 1960's and continued to be produced until the late 80s... They have now launched an iPad app with static images from the original comics themselves, this has been very helpful to look at, there aren't too many comics with actual figures of normal people in, they are all monsters and superheroes so it has helped me understand drawing peoples faces...

I bought some comics online for ideas... I got a selection of Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, a Vietnam war one and the graphic novel GhostWorld... They have been super useful as they all use different styles and have various characters whether it be a superhero, animals, architecture or real people...

The main thing I found in these old comics was how prominent the CMYK dots are. I absolutely love them and will definitely be using that kind of style in mine, there is a halftone dot effect which I can play around with in Illustrator, using various types of gradient I think it could create a really nice effect.