Net Magazine and AFAR

We had some recent magazine work come out for two great clients through our UK agents Handsome Frank. The first is a cover for the Wordpress 4.0 launch for Net magazine and a spread and drop cap for AFAR magazine's feature on fashion label Suno. We also answered some questions about our embroidery process for Net Magazine over at the Creativ Bloq website.

Unexpected Collaborations: Robocrop process

This week's post is about the Robocrop video and the process behind making it. It was quite a different approach to Sweetfighter with the entire video this time shot in camera. We used lighting techniques and wired props to tell the story of an agricultural / robotics collaboration. Our concept was to present a futuristic vision of nature through the symbiotic relationship between science research and nature. The idea was to use plants but have them glow, Avatar like and also be wired electronically to sway as if swaying in the wind.

Having proposed all this in our storyboards we then had to figure out how to build it so began nightly tests using fluorescent fluid to make the flowers and plants glow. After finding some helpful tutorials online we settled on using two recipes. One based on highlighter fluid and the second on tonic water. The difference between the two was the colour of the glow they created. Highlighter fluid created a more toxic looking yellow glow while tonic water produces a more softer blue glow.
Even the clean up produced some interesting specimens. The close up of the tissue looks almost cosmic.

We also tried different methods for getting the plants to soak up the fluid, A – through the cut stems which took a bit longer to take affect and is less effective, B – soaking the flower blooms directly in the fluid. Much more vibrant and the effect can be seen within hours. Just watch out that the blooms don't start to disintegrate! The variegated devil's ivy was soaked through the stem in highlighter fluid for about a week and you can see the glow start to spread through the veins in the leaves. It was really interesting doing these experiments. We'd love to do another project using similar techniques. Not that plants aren't already naturally beautiful but it's amazing how they can be transformed through a relatively lo-fi technique. Down below you can see some of our glow tests on kale, fox glove and the garlic flowers.



Although for glowing purposes white and pale pink flowers worked the best we had to make sure the plants we used were edible. Luckily were able to source some pretty interesting plants at the Eveleigh growers market as well as the Chinatown markets where we scored garlic flowers which we'd never heard of and the enoki which looked amazing under the blacklight.

Meanwhile my partner luckily has started to tinker in electronic gadgetry so offered to build the contraption needed to wire the plants. He used an arduino board with a manual trigger, some of the early tests show a bit of experimentation with how to get the wires hooked up to the plants elegantly. We initially used metal collars which gave a nice motion but looked a little too steampunk. In the end we wrapped the wires directly onto the stems and crossed our fingers the force wouldn't snap them. 

Some shots below on set of the plant set ups in 'daylight' and under the blacklight. The same plants were used for both sets. One of the advantages of using the tonic water to make the plants glow is that it's clear in daylight (unlike the highlighter fluid that gives off a faint yellow tinge).

Unexpected Collaborations: Sweetfighter process

Earlier this week I posted up about the video campaign we worked on for the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre. As briefs go this was a treasure to work on. The campaign centres around the theme developed by The Monkeys, of 'Unexpected Collaborations', as the centre fosters collaborations across deliberately diverse fields to encourage progressive research and teaching. With this theme in mind we brainstormed ideas using a visual play on the subject matter that would allow us to tell these stories in an engaging but informative way. The concept for Sweet Fighter (diabetes experts working with gaming programmers) was to focus on the theme of balance as it relates to diabetes and the constant need to keep blood sugar levels in check sometimes with the aid of insulin. Balance also tied in well with the other half of the collaboration - gaming - as there's often a sense of using physics and balancing interactions in gameplay.

The end product (view video here) is a series of carefully balanced sets/still lives incorporating fruit, vegetables, sugar and medical paraphernalia. We wanted to continue on the theme of unique insights coming from unexpected collaborations by also including a visual play at the end of the video that would hopefully surprise the viewer and have them question what they were viewing. With this video the mirrored reflection reveals itself to be a whole different world - another nod to gameplay and virtual realities.

We thought it would be nice to share the process behind making these videos as we always enjoy seeing the behind the scenes of other animations and the steps in getting to the final product. Also we had a lot of fun with this project so it's nice to have a record of how it went! For this post i'll focus on Sweetfighter and follow up with Robocrop.

Below are some of the very first storyboard frames created for the pitch. Early on in the pitch process we decided that a mixture of stop motion and live action would be the best way to handle the production as timings were tight. I think in all we had 3 weeks for pre production and shoot (3 days) so a full stop motion production would have been impossible.

It was important that we use as many found 'ordinary' objects as possible but have them behave in unconventional ways e.g. the glowing mechanised plants, bouncing ice creams. Not just thinking laterally but behaving laterally too so to speak. So it wasn't going to be a case of fabricating our props from materials like paper/clay etc like we had done in the past. Initially we thought this would make pre-production simpler. As long as we could source the objects we were fine. But after thinking through the sets (3 alone for the Sweetfighter) we realised how wrong we were. We were going to be dealing with a lot of fresh fruit that needed to be attached together without spilling their guts onto the set, make semi-solid jelly that could be used structurally and figure out how to make ice-cream that wouldn't melt on set and could be manipulated for stop motion.

Luckily the internet taught us how to make fake ice-cream (frosting and a lot of icing sugar) and we had access to Barnes nearby and found jellywax. What turned out to be the trickiest set to make was the first scene and the fruit molecule. We had about three goes creating the sculpture, the first to test the technique of connecting the parts, the second on set for the pre-production shoot to test the rotating base and then on the actual day we had to make it again from scratch. Timing was important so we had a lot of back up fruit raided from the all the supermarkets and green grocers in my neighbourhood plus Paddy's markets. After a near meltdown at one point when I couldn't find a perfectly round and green melon I went upstairs to the supermarket and found the mother lode of perfectly sized round melons. We came home with about 5 and used 0 in the end.

The rigging for the props was one major hurdle especially with the fruit. We thought gluing might work which shows what complete DIY non handypeople we are, but luckily had skewers on hand to spike them together. With clever rigging designed by Mel Pragassen for the spinning hoop (disco ball) and turntable we were able to make the first scene live action.

The next two set ups were a mix of stop motion plates comped together and a bit of live action to capture the exploding balls. With a lot of elements made to look like they are floating in the air rigging turned out to be a bit of a headache! Charlie, Sam and Maricor did a great job on the rig removal. The shaky behind the scenes video of the spinning molecule above and the photo below shows how much had to be cleaned up for the finished video.

So that's how we made Sweetfighter, next up will be Robocrop!

Embroidery process

Some photos as we were embroidering the Paulette, Vogue and Eye on the Coconut pieces including the watercolour sketch we started off with. With the Paulette job we had to sew at a quite a small scale, about half a cm high for the small type

Meanjin - process

The Meanjin cover we embroidered last year was easily one of our most enjoyable commissions to date. We were able to explore our growing plant nerd-dom plus reimagine the traditional embroidery motif of florals. When Zora the editor of Meanjin first contacted us about working on this issue, the brief was both simple and complex. This issue was unofficially a women’s issue with content provided by female writers. Our brief was to use our embroidery to play on the idea of “women’s work” but other than that the Zora was happy for us to propose anything that fit within that broad scope. The challenge was to avoid clichés and not be superficial in our message.

We presented a few ideas, one of which was to subvert traditional motifs and in place of pretty daisies and roses, embroider fleshy, gruesome plants (or Frankenflowers as we grew to call them while sewing).

We've posted some of our process below. Firstly some rough initial sketches we presented with our first round concept. We didn't sketch a layout for this stage but provided a written treatment outlining our idea along with some support imagery showing how the plants could look. We proposed toothy flowers as well as scrotum buds, and amazingly got the go ahead on everything.

After the concept got the go ahead we started collecting some reference material for the Frankenflwoers. As you can imagine we had a lot of fun researching weird, unusual and gross looking plants. The last preview we sent to the client was a coloured tight sketch which you can compare to the finished piece. Since embroidery is so time consuming changes after the final coloured sketch is approved is rare and usually requires some extra time for the delivery schedule. The coloured tight sketch we present to clients shows them exactly how the embroidery will look so that they'll be comfortable giving a final go ahead. It shows composition and colour but not texture which is something we can build organically as we embroider. For instance we introduced a lot more dimensional stitching techniques in this project to give extra movement and depth to the flowers. We padded out the stitching to create a fat stem for the lower hero flower and added hairlike red fringes on the conophytum inspired globular flowers. We also loosened some of stitching and instead of completely filling in shapes showed some of the black background fabric to imitate shading.

We’re often asked how our embroidery sits within contemporary illustration and we usually struggle to eloquently answer this. I’m really happy we were able to create this piece because it represents what we try to do with our work. Embroidery is an age old medium but like any other technique or mark making medium - like painting or drawing - it can evolve. We try to add a different perspective to the craft with our work and see how much of its tactility we can exploit.

Macho Distrust - process

Thought it would be nice to share some of our process work in the lead up to our exhibition. I really enjoy 'making-of' videos and looking at process work and seeing how ideas develop. Not to mention it's always great when artists/designers share tips, I hope we can do the same.

This piece is one of co's and is inspired by Blondie. The words aren't meant to be taken too seriously. We were drawn to them because our work has often been described as cute, feminine etc and we used to think that was a bad thing. We've realised we do what we do, trying to act differently (in this case macho) or be something else is a waste of energy and also maybe insincere. I was reminded of this after reading a blog post by Lilly Piri this morning.

Co worked up the type in a series of pencil and pen sketches. The type is then refined using water colours with some adjustments in Photoshop. Sometimes we'll start a piece knowing what colour combinations we'd like to use but the water colours help add some randomness and some interesting gradients we'd not usually use.