GivethemHEL - Sought After Soc Zine. IPP

 When me and Helena were at the Re-Fresher's Fayre for our Illustration Society. Will we were sat behind the table I ended up drawing the Fishing Society (that were opposite us) because one of them was dressed as a fish. And that sparked the idea to draw societies that we wished would exist, such as the Milkshake Society, Horror Book Society and Clowns vs Mimes Society. We passed the zine back and forth and doodled our dream societies, and then for the back we had to add a homage to the LOUD Weightlifting Society that was on the table next to us (and were quick rude). 

We showed some people and got a positive reaction, so we turned it into in actual zine by scanning it in an printing on some nice paper.

Me at the fresher's fayre:

Drawing Fungi Zombies

 After doing a few doodles of fungi zombies I wanted to draw some more finished zombie designs for my comic. I wanted to sketch them and do black line art but I found that using a pen over my blue pencil usually clogs up the pen and ruins the pen. So I tried a different approach and took inspiration from my work using the lightbox. I sketched on my usual sketchbook paper and then layered over a thin Layout Paper that would allow me to see the sketch marks through the paper. 

I used a mixture of gel pen and Pentel brush pen. And I LOVE IT! The brush pen is something that Ceri introduced me to and I have been practicing with it in my little observational book I take everywhere. It can do really thin lines all the way to big black areas, so I create a lot of contrast by adding lots of dark.

I've drawn the zombies with patches of fungi on them, the patches are round and I imagine them to have the texture of curdled milk blobs. The protruding blobs can create an interesting silhouettes that are unsettling, from afar the zombie might look like they have a huge head or a huge hunchback.

I also found that on the first couple pages of zombie drawings I had only drawn men. :|    Which is not inclusive and goes against everything I wrote for the visual culture project (all about the representation of women in horror). So on the next page I settled on fixing this issue and drew lots of female zombies, this also got me thinking about all the different body types that I should show in my comic. 

This is also a good place to mention the nakedness of my zombies. I want the reader to be a bit unsettled and uncomfortable with the zombies and I thought them being naked would be a good way to do that, I also thought that its a good way to nod to how long the apocalypse has been going for (a while) and could also hint to the zombie ant fungi and the zombies needing the optimal conditions to grow and spread fungi (which would be to have no clothes covering the skin where the fungi is growing all over them).

Fungi Research and Adding Fungi to my Story

 I had the thought to look at parasitic fungi because of a group tutorial in which Ceri asked me questions about the origin of my zombie virus and how the apocalypse started in my story. I didn't think it would matter that much to my comic, but I decided to think about it anyway. 

I've watched a LOT of zombie media and know just about anyway that a zombie apocalypse has started, and although I haven't watched the show (or game) 'The Last of Us', I have heard tales of the Clicker Zombies that started due to a fungi. I thought it would be interesting to mix fungi/nature with zombies so that they would have a unique look (and I could also make my zombie extra disgusting). 

I thought back to something I'd see on TV about ants/insects that would be taken over by fungi and die, but I never looked further into it because it was freaky and scared me a bit. So, I decided to watch some documentaries on Youtube about Zombie Ant Fungi (which is a sick name), and some other crazy parasitic things in nature. 

The story of the zombie ant fungi was a HUGE inspiration because the behaviours and changes the ant went through gave me ideas for my story. For example, when the ant is 'infected' with the cordyceps(fungi) it forced the ant to go up to a high place so that it can find the most optimum conditions for the fungi to grow, and so that the spores of the fungi can spread further. This is called summiting. And that is the name I chose for my comic, because I wanted to have this aspect of the zombies climbing to a high place and at same time, and maybe the main character can follow and that would be her being othered. 

The Sting of Doom | MindsuckersYouTube · National Geographic48.3k+ views · 11 years ago

'Zombie' Parasite Cordyceps Fungus Takes Over Insects ...YouTube · National Geographic5.7m+ views · 6 years ago

Group Tutorial 29/1/26

 

GivethemHEL - Festive Face-off Zine. IPP

 Helena came to me with a funky zine she made at a zine workshop, and it contained a battle of the bands between some Elves and Clowns. She wanted to make a proper zine of it and thought it would be a great way for us to experiment with a smaller zine (she also knew that I loved clowns and music).

We decided that we wanted to draw on the same paper at the same time, so we got an A1 piece of paper and folded it as if it were an eight panel foldy zine. We then had a fun few hours drawing with big markers, and then scanned it in using the big scanner in Open Access. I then thought that it would look great with some red accents so we edited it in photoshop together (I did most of it, as I have more experience with photoshop). 

We gave them out to people as if they were Christmas Cards, which was really fun and everyone responded to them really well. It is a great way to get our name out there!!!

Visual Culture Outcome

 

GivethemHEL - Two Birds, One Stone Part I. IPP

 After some feedback on the first artwork we decided that we would turn this collaboration into a zine. We would have to reformat the pages so that we could fold an A4 into the A5 pages we wanted for the book (because you can't print double sided with risograph). And because we didn't like the black and mint of the first prints, we chose to change the colours of the fluro green and black, which suggests 'zombies' much more. 

We cracked on with the other illustrations when we had the time, and made sure that we planned out each of the colours we would use for all of the work. As we wanted to test out as many of the colours AS POSSIBLE! 

Every week or so we would then prepare the masters for the two colours and then headed down to the riso machine. We became regulars down there and got lots of help from Rob and Dom (They ended up building some of the A3 prints we did). 

We then had to design the front and back cover, which we looked for inspiration for in the zine library room. And we found some REALLY old architecture books that had some cool illustrations of creepy windows and such, then we found a creepy two sided door knob and it clicked for the both of us that we had to use that on the front cover.

We then went all in on the old timey and witchy themes, because this suited both of us! And coming up with the title came naturally, as we were brainstorming witchy sayings and phrases that could express the two sides of us. Two Birds, One Stone... The birds are us and the stone is the prompt.

Making the final zine:

The final product and photography we did for our socials: