V35: Storytelling

varoom #35, 2017 | The Storytelling Issue

The Storytelling Issue

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varoom 03 Tool Tales #35, 2017

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Ralph Steadman: “Ink tells me what to do”

08 Tell Me a Story Loup Blaster: Tati and Godard give you space to think

25 Top 10: Covers

38 The Innovators

Designers and Editors on the book covers that made the book

32 The Commission

62 Making Virtual Reality

David Foldvari on a harrowing but vital project

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Experts select top work in Advertising, Books, Fashion, Motion and Reportage

The Agency, The Studio, The Illustrator, The Test Pilot take us inside the Matrix

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Tool Tales

Varoom #35

Ralph Steadman varoom

What is your favourite drawing material?

And how long have you been using it for your artwork?

Ralph Steadman Ink is my favourite – for the past 60 years!

It’s good as the first blot hits the spot!

I use Diamine Inks, which are very strong but take days to wash off your fingers.

Also acrylic paints, soil , dirty oil and anything else that makes a mark.

But also going through my ‘Dirty Water Period’! Using the water I wash my brushes out in, though sometimes they are nearly colourful!

The ‘Dirty Water Period’ I began earlier in early 2016 – laying a clean sheet of paper on a sponge porous underlay – to protect my wooden floor – then I slop some of the water from the jar I wash my brushes in – and sometimes sprinkle or spray a touch of pure colour over that – then have to leave it at least three to four days to dry – even lift a corner and let a wet blob run across – e ven blot off some surplus – depending on creative decision making as it dries. Got it!??

v How does it make you feel when you are working with it, using it? What makes this particular product version the right fit for you?

RS It tells me what to do sometimes and suggests things I would not otherwise have thought of…

v How does it extend your creativity and imagination?

RS It doesn’t necessarily ‘fit’, but it gives me the chance to say “What the HELL!! Try it!!”. ralphsteadman.com

Tired Hedgehogger, Ralph Steadman

Tool Tales

The Storytelling Issue

Felt Mistress AKA Louise Evans varoom

What is your favourite material? How long have you been using it for your creations?

Felt Mistress It’s no surprise that I’m saying felt, and my favourite has to be 100% wool felt. I really loved eco felt too (made from recycled plastic bottles), but I changed over to wool felt quite a few years ago as I couldn’t get the colours I needed in eco felt. Since then I haven’t looked back. Wool felt is more expensive than other felt, but it is so worth it.

v How does it make you feel when you are working with it, using it?

FM It handles beautifully, it’s lovely to sew and cut so it’s a joy to work with. Like all felt, you do have to show it respect though as you can easily pull and stretch it out of shape.

v How does it extend your creativity and imagination?

FM Wool felt comes in an amazing range of colours. You can cut quite intricate shapes from it and it’s malleable and so can be moulded with careful handling.

v What makes this particular product version the right fit for you?

FM I think the quality of wool felt shows in the end product. A lot of my pieces can take a week to make, with lots of time-consuming hand-stitched details so it’s good to use a fabric that reflects this. feltmistress.com

Bonteeq in Harajuku, Japanese project, Felt Mistress

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Tell me a Story

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Julian Glander

Broom. Zone series of 12 minute-long “time lapse” plant growth videos, animated in residency at the Folly Tree Arboretum

A 3D animator, illustrator and ‘art person’, Julian Glander is celebrated for his dazzlingly coloured, humourous GIFs and illustrations. He recently created a dozen intriguing time-lapse plant growth videos while in residency at the Folly Tree Arboretum (a collection of rare and unusual trees “devoted to nature's sense of humour”), which transform hypnotically as one watches

varoom

What compels you to tell stories?

Julian Glander Narrative is the most powerful tool an artist can use to get their audience personally invested in a work. When you’re held in suspense and curious to see where a story is going, you become totally open and let that story into your mind completely. It feels like magic. As an artist, I just really like that I get to be part of someone’s day in that way.

v Which storyteller, from any medium, do you most admire and why?

JG Miranda July, a filmmaker, artist and writer.

Everything she does feels so alive and intimately personal, and she makes it work across every media you can think of.

v What are the most important elements in a narrative piece?

JG The ending. To me, narrative is a promise and fulfilment of that promise. Every narra-

tive piece starts with a ‘promise’ – s ometimes it’s a plot goal: our heroine sets out to kill a crocodile, etc. In my work it’s more often a tonal promise – you can expect from the first frame that the piece is going to be funny, or be Zen and hypnotic.

A lot of great narratives deliver on these promises directly, but just as often the best ending is one that subverts the expectations you set up. The heroine can get eaten by a crocodile. The heroine and the crocodile can become best friends.

In a tonal piece, the subversion might be more of a shift in atmosphere: a serene and calm nature scene getting interrupted by a tractor running through it, for instance.

But for a story to feel satisfying, the end has to be connected to the beginning in a meaningful way.

v With new formats and new tools, how is storytelling changing?

JG On top of comics and short films, more and more of the work I do is non-linear: animated GIFs and games.

A looping GIF is totally closed – the end and the beginning are touching each other,

one frame apart and sometimes indistinguishable. This format lends itself really well to certain narratives: circular movements, Sisyphean struggles, slapstick comedy.

It seems limited at first but there’s quite a lot to expand on within that restriction.

A game is more open – my view of my role as a game designer is to create a world, a mood, and a set of rules. This gives players tools to make their own endings and create their own meaning.

In a sense, both of these new types of stories could go on forever, if the person ex-periencing them wants them to.

v Could you tell us a little about the storytelling devices in your Folly Tree piece and what you like most about this work?

JG My Broom.Zone is a series of a dozen minutelong ‘time lapse’ plant growth videos, which I animated in residency at the Folly Tree Arboretum. They’re inspired by some of the mutations and bizarre tree forms that I saw there.

It’s funny you should mention that particular project because I don’t think of it as a narrative piece. It’s more of a Zen toy – you can stare at these weird trees growing and

The Storytelling Issue

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We might not judge a book by its cover, but we often remember a book by its cover. Great illustrated book covers frame our reading, creating a unique ecology of storyteller, image-maker and reader. In the following pages, designers and editors select the cover image that shaped their experience of the book in profound and surprising ways.

Top 10

Cover Stories

Ham On Rye, Charles Bukowsi Illustrated by Barbara Martin Published by Black Sparrow Press, 1982

Voices In The Night, Steven Millhauser Design by Janet Hansen Published by Knopf, 2015

Alexandra Zsigmond Anna Gerber

Art Director, Sunday Review, The New York Times

Voices in the Night: Stories

by Steven Millhauser Designer: Janet Hansen Steven Millhauser’s short stories explore reality’s dark undercurrent: the rift between surface appearances and the disconcerting truths that lie beyond them. This cover by Janet Hansen beautifully illustrates that rift between light and darkness, fantasy and reality, while also being a striking abstract design in its own right.

Founder, Visual Editions

Black Sparrow Press Founded in 1966 by John Martin Designer: Barbara Martin Back in the day, I worked for a hippy-spirited book distributor in Oakland, California where staff used skateboards and roller blades to glide around the warehouse.

It was there that I discovered Black Sparrow Press – the smart, irreverent 1960s publisher that had beautiful designs and who we can thank for putting Charles Bukowski and John Fante on the literary map.

I bought everything I could find and I still have my collection to this day. John Martin was the editorial brain behind Black Sparrow and it was his wife, Barbara Martin, who was the design force behind every single cover.

I interviewed Barbara years ago for Print magazine and amidst talk of lush typography, modernist influences, Californiadrenched colour palettes, tactile paper stock, a refusal to ever include barcodes on back covers (because they were ugly), she also told me that all of her designs were done amidst her daily house chores.

And I am still struck by this – that these design gems could be created between doing the dishes and ironing.

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Top 10 | Cover Stories

Gerry Brakus

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Creative Director, New Statesman

series. To me this cover art is an effortless piece of visual communication.

Where the Wild Things Are

by Maurice Sendak

John O’Reilly Editor, varoom

It’s rare that I have the chance to read a ‘grown-up’ book these days. As the mother of a nine-year-old girl, the only time I really sit down and dive into a book as when I’m reading to my daughter.

I remember very clearly when I first bought Maurice Sendak’s Where the While Things Are, not as a child but as a woman in my early 40s! I absolutely loved the cover illustration and I remember flicking through the book and looking in complete wonder at what was inside . I don’t think I actually read it at first, I just looked at the beautiful drawings. They look just as good to me now as they ever did and the book remains a favourite.

James Lunn

Designer & Art Director, varoom

Nineteen Eighty-Four

by George Orwell Art Director: David Pearson In times such as these with the ever pressing political and social shift towards a populist right wing agenda, I am always drawn to the warnings in this book. The design of the book cover perfectly communicates the content within whilst seamlessly keeping it in line with the rest of the Penguin classics

Murphy by Samuel Beckett Art Director: Gary Day-Ellison Illustrator: Russell Mills “The sun shone, having no alternative on the nothing new.” That was Dublin in 1983 and we laughed along with the grim humour of Beckett’s opening line in Murphy. Being a first year English Lit student was a ray of sunshine in the grey theocracy of early 1980srecession Ireland. Murphy was published in 1938 and it seemed not a whole lot had changed in our outpost of Rome and London.

Beckett’s Murphy takes place in London, where myself and fellow students would end up in search of home, and like one of my best friends, the central character ends up getting a job in a psychiatric hospital – t he ‘Magdalen Mental Mercyseat’. The research for the book was partly based on Beckett’s analysis with Wilfred Bion in the 1930s and partly by visits to his friend Dr Geoffrey Thompson who worked at the Bethlem Royal Hospital in Beckenham.

The cover image of the book was as spacious, fluid and stifling as Beckett’s story, a commission by Pan Art Director Gary Day-Ellison of illustrator Russell Mills (see Rick Poynor’s feature on Russell Mills in varoom 30).

Where The Wild Things Are, written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak Published by Harper, 1963

Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell Design by David Pearson Published by Penguin, 2013

Mills’ suite of images entitled Murphy – Zones was one of a series of five Beckett covers by the illustrator. In the novel, Murphy describes three zones of consciousness – light, half-light and dark – zones of the imagination/reality for him to play in. Beckett both rigorously teases out classical philosophy and laughs at the sophisticated hoops and loops we wrap ourselves up in trying to fathom life’s meaning.

The most striking thing about Mills’ images is the drama of figure and ground, a gloomy and lively vertigo, a space of uncertain borders. In Ireland (and now in Brexit Britain too), Republicans, Loyalists, Unionists and Nationalists are all great at marking territory and fixing meanings in borders – unlike Mills’ cover images. The visual rhythm of figure and ground challenges our sense of self and space, imitating the rhythms of Murphy.

‘Home’ needs continual [re]creation and movement otherwise we wither from inert stereotypes and arid nostalgia. As Beckett writes in Murphy, “‘Murphy, all life is figure and ground.’

‘But a wandering to find home,’ said Murphy.”

Murphy, Samuel Beckett Illustrated by Russell Mills Published by Picador, 1983

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The Commission Process | The Commission, the Client, the Creative.

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In the professional relationship between client and image-maker, nailing the brief depends on everything from the client choosing the right creative for the job in the first place, to the imagemaker responding to feedback

Illustrator David Foldvari varoom

Why do you think Save the Children selected you for this project?

David Foldvari Initially they saw the subjects I was interested in in my personal work, and they thought I would be a good choice for the issues they cover, both stylistically and thematically. I try to make work about difficult issues without resorting to too much shock or condescension, and I think they were just looking for an illustrator who could present this stuff with some legitimacy.

v What was the brief? What kinds of direction and research info were you given?

DF

Character sketch

Save the Children (STC) wanted to build a campaign around child witchcraft in Liberia, which is essentially a form of abuse where children are accused of witchcraft and mistreated if they suffer from behavioural problems.

They wanted to do this by taking an existing story from a victim (whose voice is featured in some parts of the animation) and turning it into an animation as well as a series of illustrations to be featured in The Telegraph.

The template for the project was based on the previous job I did for them which was about the refugee crisis, so we already had a vague idea of the kind of thing they had in mind.

The visual direction was 99% down to me, but certain aspects were specified: 1. We were not allowed to show the identity of any of the characters, which is why the characters are almost always in silhouette.

2. We could not show any scenes of torture.

3. We could not involve the church in any way (even though the church and pastors were mentioned in many accounts).

4. The story had to work with a wide target audience, which meant it had to be ‘familyfriendly’ – not the easiest task with such a grim subject matter.

In terms of research I was given the audio from the interview and a transcription, as well as some photographs which Save the Children took in Monrovia, which were of the actual people and locations in the story.

One thing we had difficulty with was the sound – we could only feature small segments of the actual interview because the recording had a lot of background noise on it, so we couldn’t decide if the rest of the story should have a voiceover or not.

I ended up making two versions, one without a voiceover, and another featuring a reading by Dele Sosimi, a legendary Afrobeat musician (the man at the helm of the Dele Sosimi Orchestra) who very kindly offered to help out with the project. I preferred the voiceover version, but The Telegraph preferred the version without. Both versions are online.

v What was the key to developing and framing the storytelling?

DF The first thing was trying to make sense of the story, which was very convoluted in places. It was not a story with a clear beginning and end, but more of a snapshot of a series of ongoing events. So we had to find a way to turn that into some kind of narrative.

We did this by focussing on the child’s background, then on the things that lead up

The Storytelling Issue to the main point of the story, (for example the torture and abuse) and then we had to find some kind of resolution at the end.

This was especially hard, as the child in the story is still treated as an outcast, but he at least received some help and is not being subjected to physical harm now.

Then I sketched out a very basic storyboard [see page 36], and after that it was a case of figuring out what could be done in the given time – around three weeks. All the artwork, animation and sound was done by me and I don’t have a team of people working for me, so things like this can take time.

But saying that, I like to work fast and a big part of my practice is finding ways to get things done in a very short space of time.

So I wasn’t that worried about it – I just had to follow the storyboard and timetable everything so I knew what I had to do every day.

v What kinds of feedback do you get from the client along the way, and how did you fold that in?

DF I sent progress almost every day. One notable point was that I made the characters a bit too skeletal and lifeless to begin with [see rough character sketch on page 34], and that didn’t go down so well. I was told the boy looked like a zombie – this is an aesthetic thing, but I always like drawing empty white eyes, partly because it does make characters look a bit zombie-like, so putting big eyeballs in there was a bit jarring for me at first. But once they were in motion I got used to it.

Caption sapeliq Quundebis sapeliq uaspictus dis eossi doles periat.

Image from ‘Tamba’s Story’, illustrated and animated by David Foldvari Commissioned by Save The Children, 2016

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Melanie Reim, Illustrator Brief Reportage provides a unique insight to current events that become a part of our living history. The 2016 presidential election in the USA had already promised to be historic. The way that Election Day unfolded was surprising to most, and unknowingly, provided a unique series of opportunities to document reactions.

Idea To record Election Day, and (subsequently and unexpectedly) the myriad of rallies and protests that ensued – and continue to do so.

Materials Cartridge pen/ink, colour pencils, brush pen.

← Protest outside Trump Tower

New York, 2016

Research I am always studying my drawing heroes – t hey might be masterful draftsman, animators, reportage artists, significant mark makers, or pen and inkers. They all resonate with me and come along every time I go out on location.

Insight The raw emotion of the reaction to this historical time is magnified when you take the time to draw it, as opposed to a clicking a camera. I feel connected – and empowered, as much as we can be under the circumstances.

Process Get in the middle of it all and draw!

Distractions Once I am in the midst of it all, there are few distractions – only more stories!

Resistances Access to certain areas was occasionally frustrating, but there was a story everywhere.

Nunbers One in a million. That is me, feeling the power of like-minded people, especially the sisterhood, around the country.

Storytelling The 2016 presidential election.

↓

Love Rally Washington Square Park New York, 2016 sketchbookseduction.blogspot.co.uk

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A Maker's Guide: Storytelling Virtual Reality

Varoom #35

ii. Drawing with VR Tools: The Test Pilot Roderick Mills is an Illustrator and lecturer in visual culture During the summer, I had a couple of experiences of virtual reality. One was an invitation to take part in an event organised by Dan Chrichlow, of the agency Dutch Uncle, to try out Tilt Brush by Google. The headset that you put on is very immersive, akin to wearing a scuba-diving mask, with wires trailing behind you – a guide helps talk you through what you are experiencing and warns you of any ‘real’ obstacles.

You find yourself in a gridded room, situated in a landscape – you vaguely see the landscape beyond this room, but the grids themselves define the limits of the actual space. You become totally absorbed and accepting of this new virtual space, this imagined world.

The drawing tools themselves are very much like being placed in Photoshop – in one hand you have a changeable brush, in the other a virtual palette. Being a figurative drawer, I chose the narrowest brush to replicate how I draw with a pen, and drew a fairly representational character holding a bunch of flowers.

Intellectually, I had thought that I had drawn in layers, or that Tilt Brush would

mimic Photoshop in that way. But you immediately realise that you are not drawing on a flat piece of paper. Instead, every gesture of your arm affects the drawing in the 3D environment and throws the line into perspective; it feels very sculptural.

The only way to describe the sensation is to say that it felt as if you were in Cornelia Parker’s exploded shed [the artist’s 1991 Tate Modern video installation, Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View]. You inhabit the drawing itself, with each line suspended before your eyes. When you shift your position it throws the drawing off.

It’s the strangest of experiences to walk around your own drawing and for it to become unrecognisable, because you worked on it as an image from one fixed viewpoint. When you consider notions of audience and ownership of viewpoint, it is a profound shift. But that is true for your own understanding of your work, too.

I had always believed that my lines were fairly regular, but to see the many gestures and marks created in front of me made me realise how diverse the lines ar e – that they’re only ‘regular’ when viewed from one direction. roderickmills.blogspot.co.uk

Melvin Gallapon, Google Tilt Brush demonstration Photograph courtesy of Dutch Uncle agency

The Storytelling Issue

Noma Bar, Google Tilt Brush demonstration Photograph courtesy of Dutch Uncle agency

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Roundtable | Storytelling

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Long, long ago, in a room far, far away, three people sat round a table and discussed the changing forms of storytelling Pen Mendonca is an illustrator and graphic facilitator who, for 15 years, has worked helping communities, organisations and policy-makers tell their stories through unique narrative visualisations. She is also a cartoonist and her current research explores new hybrids of these different storytelling formats.

Olivia Ahmad is curator at the House of Illustration and, in the two years since its opening, has helped to transform the public story of illustration.

Jack Sachs only graduated in 2013, but his original approach and use of new technology has drawn prestigious clients such as the Tate to his door.

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Moderated by varoom editor John O’Reilly

Roundtable John O’Reilly Sometimes you have to remind yourself of what kind of story you tell of yourself beyond Facebook or LinkedIn. If you had a story to tell about yourself, your skills, who you are, what would it be?

Pen Mendonca A kind of ancient graphic illustrator is how I would describe myself! For the last 20 years I’ve been capturing conversations live at conferences and meetings, sometimes facilitating as well, and I think that the skill I’ve developed over many years is very careful listening. That is the most important thing that I do in my work and my practice, more important than drawing skills, more important than spelling – just listening. In the facilitation work I do there is often a lot of emotion – q uite difficult stories about people’s lives. For example, abuse in care homes or policies that have had major impacts on families and communities. So I have learned to read emotions and perspectives and try and bring them together in one energy. That is how I probably tell the story with what I do.

Olivia Ahmad I find that question quite difficult because my work is really about other people. I tell stories with words and pictures though I don’t make the picture myself.

John O’Reilly You’re telling a story in space.

OA Yes, I did an illustration degree and I made short books and I thought doing an exhibition was the same was as doing books,

because you are telling a story in space. If you are putting together a series of artworks you have to ask, “Which works do you want people to see first? Do you want to show one picture later than another?

What colours do you have on the walls?

What kind of lighting? What is the rhythm of the exhibition?”

Usually you always start with a story, and that might be something as simple as trying to tell somebody’s story faithfully through their work, or you might have some kind of narrative or agenda. Maybe you are saying something about a specific discipline, or particular period in history, but there are also other things that are at play. I think the politics of curating is really interesting.

JO’R Is there much politics? There must be a conversation as to how to make a show more accessible, or how to ensure that people understand the story around the curator’s narrative?

OA Yes, it begins with what you choose to show in the first place, how you choose one artist and not another. There are people who have been sidelined in the histories; quite often the work of women, for example. In early 2016 I did an exhibition with Paul Gravett called Comix Creatrix: 100 Women Making Comics…

PM …Yayyy!

OA Thank you! It addressed this popular idea that comics are made by and for men, and

read by men. That isn’t always the case, so sometimes you are setting up a direct challenge as an exhibition. You have these conversations when you are planning an exhibition and you are accountable as well.

Are people going to come and see this exhibition? Are the press going to like this exhibition? And you have to make a case for that. I think that is where the politics begins in what you decide to show.

JO’R So there are people within the curatorial process with different stories driving them, in their role as curator, director, journalist?

OA Exactly. Maybe they are thinking about visitor numbers, maybe they are trying to represent illustration in a particular way.

The Comix Creatrix exhibition may seem like a bit of a riposte to the idea that women make a particular type of comic, or that women have only really been leading in auto-biographical comics, doing really amazing work in that field, but they also do sci-fi and erotica. So when creating that exhibition co-curator Paul Gravett and myself tried to break it up into themed sections, so it was quite clear that, for example, this section is autobiography, but let’s look at all these other sections too.

JO’R That’s very interesting. What we did in varoom 32 on the canon – the official story of illustration – we asked illustrators such as Cat Morgan and Grafik editor Caroline Roberts to invent a new tradition. The received tradition is a cultural story, such as the idea we have that women don’t do

The definitive statement on visual communication re-­‐launches in 2017 in magazine format with new design With eye-­‐catching cover artwork by illustrator of the moment, Jack Sachs, rich imagery and insightful comment, Varoom the illustration magazine re-­‐launches this February 2017 with a fresh new design.

Designer James Lunn is a Type Directors Club award winner, and in collaboration with Joe Hales has created a new masthead and design for the magazine.

International rising stars and established names in this Varoom Storytelling issue include USA gif maker Julian Glander, French animator Loup Blaster, Swiss Design studio Apelab, fashion illustrator Marie Jacotey, Pavneet Sembhi, Felt Mistress and Ralph Steadman.

Supporting all this are Varoom’s industry insiders who select and comment on the Innovators in their fields of Motion, Fashion, Advertising, Children’s books, Public Realm and Reportage.

USA Subscription: £39

Subscriptions available online: www.theaoi.com/shop/staging/index.php/theshop/products/varoom Single issues also available at £12: www.theaoi.com/varoom-­‐mag Varoom is published by the Association of Illustrators Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA Varoom website info@varoom-­‐mag.com