Joy Lofthouse and Mary Ellis. The women who flew Spitfires

 

Joy Lofthouse (93 years old) and Mary Ellis (99 years old) pictured, were part of the ATA, Air Transport Auxillary, during the second world war. During an extrodinary time they flew, solo, grade I and grade II planes. Delivering them to airfields across the country. Grade I planes were single engine fighters such as the Miles Majester, pictured lower right. Grade II were twin. Mary also flew bombers including a Wellington, on the left, and Lancaster’s. For Joy her favourite were the Spitfire’s.

 

Development

As a starting point from the research I would like to create packaging of a model Spitfire with Joy and Mary as the pilots. I felt this was a charming interview and from further research discovered that Joy has a love for speed including sports cars.

  

Illustrated are some examples of model spitfires including an orthographic construction of the interior. In addition are some World War II posters. What is striking is the simplicity of the design. As a development process I would like to recreate the packaging to include Joy and Mary as pilots using this style as a starting point. From here I would include a brief outline of their story, the missions and routes that they would take with the statistics of how many planes they delivered

Rough Ideas For Posters and Packaging

The illustrative concept would need a portrait of both pilots in the style of the posters that I had researched. The initial sketch was a first draft of the main concepts I wanted to include. The layout was intended to be clean bold design with type.

The following are examples of posters I had reviewed and my fist sketch of ideas.

             

 

Final Outcome

The Final poster that was rendered in Photoshop and with the original hand lettering replaced by computer text.

Reflection:

I wanted to keep many of the original elements such as the RAF symbol and the London skyline that I had originally painted. One of the main challenges was the portraits of Mary and Joy, which I attempted as part of the original painting by removing unnecessary details. The Spitfires were sourced from the internet and pasted into the artwork.

In conclusion, I was not happy with the final result. Although the attempt at the idea was realized the final product looks poor. Trying to communicate the brief was using the format of a poster was not the best way to convey so much detail. I limited myself to this idea partially out of time. And having spent so long researching I failed to manage this project as best as I could have.

 

 

This collaborative project developed around the idea of David Greenberger monologue ‘Snakes’. The principle concept was divided and then articulated  based around various styles and how that can be achieved in context. Some members of our group explored gifs and landscapes. I attempted to create a short animation of type.

Background

David Greenberger

 

Click on link below for the first rough cut

 

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Rough Cut

Hummingbird

In addition to the sequences of type I also complied a sort animated piece of a hummingbird that could be used during the monologue as part of the visualisation of narration.

 

Collabe

The following are pieces that were emailed for later discussion.

 

Further to the work I attempted digital collages, again to be used with the dialogue. Timing the work to the speech patterns of Snakes was an real challenge. There are sections that are slightly out of time. This was very frustrating. Each piece was then edited to both George and John for editing. There were issues regarding communication and time management which did impact on this project.

Edited Work

 

Trees

 

Rough Cut

 

Final Cut

 

Critical Analysis

The introduction to utilising our environment and therefore structuring a narrative was really a frustrating process.  Using  key elements of the dialogue, once edited,  built a more semantic short film relying  on these components to propel the narrative which seemed hectic and disjointed. Visually I think my animation is scrappy and underdeveloped however it does convey the general idea. Developing technically the ideas needed to be more coherent. The overall composition was still not completed by the time of the final crit. In the presentation another version had been shown that had further edited my work out of the film, which was with out my knowledge. This was a very steep learning curve and was an extremely challenging project.