Little Monster

My Dog Sighs Workshop

An empty cigarette packet found flung into a park, transformed into a little chomping monster who was soon returned to his home for someone else to discover.

Grizzly Bear - Octavia Herdson

My chosen animal was the brown bear or grizzly bear as they're more commonly known as.

To me these creatures are incredible, their strength and power is phenominal as is their will to protect their young and their territory.

 After a lot of research I discovered people either described bears as fearsome or cuddly.

However I have come to realise that both of these are in fact wrong; the bear is simply misunderstood. It's a wild animal and should be respected. So I decided to make an animation of a two-faced coin spinning with both the fearsome and cuddly side of the bear, to illustrate 'misunderstood' in this context.

'There's what you expect a bear to do and then there's what a bear does. Sometimes the two don't match up"

Sarah Starr

I chose to look at the Magpie for this unit.

 They are beautiful, intelligent creatures which seem similar to us humans in that they mate for life, are protective of their family, enjoy attention and affection and can recognise themselves in a mirror.

I love the way they use things they find, are adaptive to their environment and eat things that other animals discard or would otherwise go to waste.

I wanted to make an image that would illustrate their resourcefulness. I used found and recycled objects to reflect this.

Bearded Dragon - Leah Keatley-Phoenix

Pencil Sketch

3Doodler 

Pencil Sketches

Final Piece 

My chosen animal was a Bearded Dragon. What particularly interested me was their shape, skin texture and their ability to change colour. I was especially happy with the 3Doodler experiment. If I would've had more time I would have loved to experiment in more detail, even making an actual 3D model of a Bearded Dragon, however, this would have been too time consuming. The 3Doodler really described the Bearded Dragons size which worked well. I decided for my final piece to focus on 'What is a healthy Bearded Dragon?' to show owners what they need to look out for if their Bearded Dragon was to become unwell. I thought this would be a good idea as it offers humour but with useful, factual information.

Workshop with Los Dave

Earlier this week Los Dave worked with the first years to explore the movement and balance of the animals being studied in our current unit 'Research Methodology' and express it in found materials, (namely barbecue grills, wire, sticks and string) He outlined an initial modelling technique using Blu Tac to capture the movement in 3 dimensions, before developing it using the intended media.

For more info on Los Dave see www.losdave.bigcartel.com

My Dog Sighs workshop

This week there has been a really inspiring workshop run by My Dog Sighs about upcycling a piece of found flotsam and jetsam and reworking it into a character and returning it to where it was found to fend for itself. Many of the first years developed animal characters from their found piece - we are looking forward to seeing the photographs taken of them back in the place they were found.

For more info about the man behind the workshop see; mydogsighs.co.uk

Illustrated Menagerie Exhibition

Interview with the University News.

Watch an interview with three final year students exhibiting in the Menagerie.