The other week, we got down to Acmi in Federation Square to check out a new conference put on by Australian INFront and the Jackie Winter Group. The Field Trip Creative Conference caught our attention right from the start with its unique format – a collaborative exploration of a bunch of artists from the Jackie Winter stable; we realised from the start that it wasn’t going to be your regular design forum, and we were proven right in that regards!

Field Trip was different for the fact that one of its primary focuses was on collaboration and how different artists, designers, photographers, animators and other creatives are able to work together. Along with a detailed look into the presenters processes, they also attempted to show exactly how all of these things fit in with each other in terms of creative “projects”. It was, for the most part, successful – and though we were familiar with a lot of the applications, techniques and mediums that they used, we also learnt a truckload of new tricks that we’re sure to be adding to our own personal arsenal of techniques.

Here’s a breakdown of the day in order of the speakers – we decided on a point format for this, as there was a hell of a lot of wisdom imparted throughout the day, and we want to give it to you in bite sized chunks … we hope you creative types derive a little inspiration from all of this, as we did.

Beci Orpin

First up for the day was Beci Orpin, whose work most of you are probably more than familiar with! Showing us through a whole bunch of illustrative compositions, she focused mainly on the design of the Field Trip flyer and how her process enabled its creation.

Beci is a great artistic talent, and it was really enjoyable watching her describe all of her processes to us.

Things Beci Said …

She loves Japan and enjoys travelling there once a year to check in on their awesomeness

• She generally works from home, and can sometimes have trouble maintaining focus, but she sets herself a “reward” after accomplishing tasks, be it looking at blogs or checking out eBay. She does love working from home, but “if you’re not feeling it, you can get easily distracted”
• She always puts how many changes there should be with a design brief in the initial contract – usually two or three.
• Clear briefs from clients at the beginning of a project are very important, as are references!

Beci Orpins Illustrative Processes …

• Beci is a big fan of Adobe Illustrator, it is her primary drawing tool these days
• She spends a lot of time playing with her characters faces and modifying things, trying different combinations
• She uses a lot of clipping masks in illustrator for textures and placement (watching this was really fun, as a non-illustrator fan it was cool to see the various techniques she utilised in her work)
• With her textures, she uses the “dither diffusion” technique a lot to distress the artwork a little
• Works with a lot of details. A lot of her work has a “hand drawn” aspect to it rather than the disinfected Illustrator style – it looks like she achieved a lot of this by concentrating on the small details and not making everything perfect, but leaving some things up to chance.

Jeremy Ley

Jeremy Ley is a pretty cool dude, and a rad illustrator. You are probably familiar with Jeremy work, we’re actually big fans of his tape  piece that you can find in Melbourne Central. He’s a funny fucker too – he spent a lot of the process joking around and engaging the audience as he worked.

He is also well known for his storyboarding techniques, which he showcased within the forum. Continuing on by taking some of Beci Orpins work and  adding it into a storyline, he offered us a unique glimpse into the world of sketched out motion and action.

By the end of the session, Jeremy had blocked out an entire storyboard depicting Becis creations flying out of the computer to attack her – it looked like a hell of a lot of fun.

What Jeremy said and what we got from it:

• He started out drawing as a kid growing up in England – he was a huge fan of Tin-Tin (though he hated the film) and got a Rolf Harris drawing book that set him on his path.
• Jeremy studied advertising at RMIT, but ditched it fairly early on. He spent a solid ten months at home drawing, just to learn how to do it – and then landed his first job with Levis
• He’s had a few studios, one with with fellow artists such as Nick Parker and Eveline Tarunadjaja, but he has since moved home to work there
• Jeremy loves collaborating with other artists and designers
• He’s currently working on a really cool little web series with Nick Parker called Draw Draw – an online how to draw series for younger audiences.
• He has, believe it or not, storyboarded a porno for Sasha Grey. Lucky bastard (err, if that kind of thing floats your boat, of course).

Jeremy Leys Illustrative & Drawing Processes

• When sketching, he starts loose and rough, going from small and simple without any details
• With faces, he tends to draw in shapes and implement movement early on. He draws the eyes on the face first, and then the mouth, the nose will always fit between those – eyebrows are last!
• He then bumps the opacity of the image all the way down, create a new layer.
• He figures out his light source, and then begins to apply blocks of colours via focal tone swatches. He then adds a shade layer, and puts a bit of blue and brown in the shadows – as they are not hard black.
• He suggests you keep the layer number down if you can, but it’s also good to have the separation, uses multiply a lot for blending textures.
• Jeremy uses the three camera storyboarding technique. Internet, External and MTV. The internal camera moves with the character, the external camera is like in Indiana Jones, following the action, and the MTV camera just kind of moves around like a shakey cam.

Dom Bartolo & Flutter

Now, we do love ourselves a bit of animation, so the presentation from Dom Bartolo of Flutter renown was pretty interesting. Flutter has a trove of skilled individuals that represent all the facets of animation. Texture designers, concept artists, directors, music composers and animators all work within a well oiled machine. They’re done a whole heap of ads that you’ve more than likely seen on TV here in Oz, and they’re damn good at what they do.

The only issue we had with this talk, was that there there wasn’t much to join it up with the rest of the event – it was mostly spent describing the process behind the creation of a Telstra ad. Where the first two talks had a flow-through, as did the last four, the Flutter session stood mostly on its own. We get that animation takes time, but we really, really would have loved to have seen something that tied this talk into the rest of the conference.

Nevertheless, it was still pretty intriguing and it was a great breakdown of the whole process that goes into creating an animation – the ad itself is pretty cool too. Let it be said, that animators are some of the most patient creatives ever born!

What Dom said and what we got from it …

• Things don’t move quickly in animation, but you just try to move as quickly as you can and many hands make light work – all of their projects have multiple team members. They spend a lot of time waiting for things to render!
• There are two stages to the animation process – Concept & Storyboarding, and Design and Direction.
• In Stage 1, they create rough designs, the eventual style may be different but they try to show the story in actuality with the storyboards.
• In Stage 2, Production takes the story board blue print, and everyone gets to sign off on it
• They use a lot of tools to do their animation, in this example they utilised 3D Studio Max
• They started out on the Telstra example by texture mapping a face onto a cube, with character studies the team will often work on different components and develop little tricks, collaborations and scripts.
• Then usually apply some bump mapping to give the surfaces of the objects texture.
• They predominantly use Adobe After Effects to apply depth of field mattes.

Travis Price

Travis Price was definitely one of our favourites for the day –  but, of course, we are a little biased as we have a thing for illustrators, obviously!

Price lives out in Ballarat – not the usual place you’d expect to find an illustrator of his calibre, but, with the internet and all, these days it doesn’t really matter where you’re based. He is, admittedly, a bit of a control freak and enjoys being able to work at home. He’s a guy that has worked hard to get where he is (like all the creatives in the conference) = “Life isn’t easy,” he remarked. “You have to work at it. You might not be in the right place – but what are you doing to get out of it?”

Price changed a lot of jobs during his life, and worked as a designer for over ten years – and didn’t think it was all that spectacular. He approached the Jackie Winter group several time after he decided to strike out as an independent illustrator, and it took a long time until they eventually brought him on board – he had to work at it, really hard.

For Field Trip, Travis took an owl that he was working on, and stepped us through his entire process from the very initial sketch – and it turned out absolutely fantastic.

What Travis said and what we got out of it …

• Vector isn’t a dirty word, according to Travis. It has a stigma attached to it that it isn’t as good as traditional illustration – but a good vector illustration shouldn’t feel like a vector – it should feel loose.
• He doesn’t feel like his folio should stick to one style, so he tries out a bunch of different things.
• Price once went to an Illustrators studio and asked him about his techniques, and the illustrator was very secretive – so he likes to show everything he can about his own process – we loved this.
• He always has movies playing in the background while he works, and enjoys using them as references. He spends his night on the couch drawing and sketching – something we’re familiar with!
• Price is pretty humble, one of the things he said was that “You can think you’re pretty good, but you just have to walk down the street and there will be someone better than you.” – and he is so right. It just means you have to keep working, working and working to be the best that you can.

Tricks and Techniques in Travis’s arsenal …

• Often starts out with a Mind Map of ideas. 
• Look at textures and use references and multiple images to find ideas in images to insert into your creation.
• He often uses the warp tool to get non-standard shapes and forms
• He used to dismiss “Brush strokes” in Adobe Illustrator, but is now a huge fan of them. He thinks that brushes themselves are one of the coolest things and are very powerful – especially when you have the ability to drag patterns over to the brushes and use those to paint with.
• He thinks one of the nice things about Illustrator is the ability to use the gradients and fills.
• Uses the “Multiply” function a lot to help blend things together. For texture lines he uses the soft light function.
• He also loves the “Blend” took – he uses it to add texture and form between separate pieces
• Feathering is also regularly used – almost every object or layer has at least a little bit of feathering on it.

Tin & Ed

Really, these two guys are completely au fait with what is cute, cool and hip in the world of design. Tin & Ed are multitalented – their skills range across illustration and installations. In this forum, you just got the sense that they have a shitload of fun with what they do. Having been working together for over ten years, the synergy between them was palpable.

Throughout the piece, they just seemed to work together seamlessly, like a multi-appendaged creature they cut, stuck and folded two head pieces. Seemingly very simplistic and looking, to begin with, like something that anyone could do with a bit of clag and coloured paper, there was something about the materials that they chose to use, as well as their design aesthetics that propelled the pieces they constructed to a different, vibrant level. This was professional, playful paperwork at its best.

Tin & Ed are highly experimental in the way they work, and they find themselves often getting design related work that they have no idea how to implement. Constantly innovating and developing new processes,  they relish the beautiful mistakes that can occur along the way – because theirs is a true love for the learning process.

Words of Wisdom and things we learnt from Tin & Ed … 

• They work with a lot of deconstructive methods, often using computers, but they really see these things as building blocks for a final product
• A lot of their work is all about the end result, as well as the function of the piece. They enjoy things that people can interact with
• One of their favourite places to find materials is in Ringwood, called Reverse Art Truck
• They enjoy the “Happy Accidents” that occur during the design process
• Basic shapes play a big part in creating complex designs
• They also often start with very basic, bright colours
• Most of what they do involves collaboration of one form or another, they think its good to be pushed and questioned by one another, as well as clients, because its good to have differing opinions in the process. “You can have incredible conversations and fulfil the brief but sometimes it doesn’t always go the way you want – it may not always be the most exciting end point, but working out the process is the fun part.”
• They think its a good idea for artists and designers to team up with a photographer, or have some basic photographic skills – it helps with presentation or conveying ideas
• “Design is anything you want it to be.”

Jo Duck

Now, on a personal note, as I’ve said before, I’m no expert on photography, and don’t claim to be. For me, photography consists of taking an absolute shitload of snaps on auto (fstop, aperture, iso, wtfbbq?) and hoping to get a small amount of ones that aren’t shithouse. Which is why when I see someone who has so obviously mastered the art, and should be called a photographer (as opposed to someone like me, a mere camera owner) it’s a real treat. Especially when you can see a distinctive style in their work.

Jo Duck has a distinctive style – its recognisable, and we really liked it. After graduating in her early 20s, Jo threw herself into the harder-to-make it world of editorial photography. At the start, she would shoot and submit, very rarely receiving anything back for all of her hard work – these days, however, she is much sought after for her unique style. Hard work and little initial gain seems to have been the order of the day, but its exactly people like Jo who prove that persevering with your creativity can help you attain your dreams – listening to her talk, it was all pretty inspiring (yep, inspired, yet again!).

She also started out doing a lot of work for street press magazines, due to her brother being big into urban culture when she began shooting – a lot of her photographic work has echoes of this urban feel to it.

For her piece in Field Trip, she took the work that Tin & Ed had done, and conducted a quick photo shoot – you can tell that it was bare bones, but the result was pretty fantastic; sometimes minimal is good.

Things we learnt from, and about, Jo Duck …

• When  she started out, she used to put together a soundtrack for all of her shoots, and share it with the models, stylists and others. It helped to set the mood of the shoot. We really loved this idea, and, though Jo doesn’t really do it anymore, it still sounds pretty cool.
• Before doing a shoot, Jo does a lot of research into the subject matter – for Field Trip, she researched a lot of owls. One video in particular, this one of an owl on Youtube, was really inspiring (crazy great video!)
• She shot the entire piece for Field Trip to the song “Twist Again” – love it.
• Enjoys playing with double exposures and movement
• She shoots really fast, and with a good tempo – you can tell she loves music and loves working with some tunes on.
• Jo doesn’t use Adobe Lightroom at all. Her primary camera is a Nikon d700, and a 35 mm Minolta – she also uses a large range of film camera.

Toby & Pete

Last up for the day, but certainly not least, was Toby & Pete. Toby & Pete is a Sydney based creative agency, with a huge range of talent and creative services. Of particular note in this session, was there digital compositing skills – taking various different images of different sources and blending them together in photoshop. Have to say, as well, their compositing skills are fucking rad – you know those Spring Valley and Daily Juice images? Yep, that’s them.

They started out doing photo retouching, and a large majority of their work was high end stuff, including cars and digital retouching. Pete had studied photography and 3D, and Toby had been working at Sachi and Sachi – in 2009, they decided to go into business themselves, and the rest is history.

For Field Trip, they took all the images from the afternoon, Travis’s owl and Jos photos of Tin & Eds dancing headwear dude and meshed it all into one image. The result was, for a fairly quick job, pretty spectacular and just goes to show exactly how well multiple people with various different talents can produce a collaborative piece of cool.

Stuff we thought was cool about Toby & Petes panel …

• They source things here and there, but only if it is legally available. Otherwise, they will take all of their own photos.
• One of their primary focuses when doing compositing, is to ensure that all of the light sources are correct – this can throw things off really easily. The photography is really important, the shadows must be consistent – they also showed the simple “skew” method for doing shadows.
• They use lots and lots and lots of layers, as well as a lot of channel masks in Photoshop to help break things up.
• They never flatten any images until the very end – its very important to keep all of the layers intact, because you never know what you will need to change
• They suggest using the “Noise filter” as a good way to help keep different elements cohesive – they spend a lot of time “messing it up? and then recompositing things.
• They suggest that if you really want to learn how to do it, just work stupidly long hours – they’re all mostly self taught!

The first instalment of Field Trip was a huge success – if those who attended (and the event was a complete sell out) walked away without feeling a little inspired or with a new idea, then they probably need to reduce their prozac intake.

We only really had one very minor gripe with the event, and that was with the lack of cohesion. We had just hoped (or expected) that there would have been a little more continuity between the morning panels, and the work that was produced in them, and those in the afternoon. Of course, it is hard to co-ordinate so many people from such different walks of design and art into a cohesive whole, but, if they nail it next time, then this event will quickly turn into a must-attend event for creative people from all spectrums. Hell, it already is, and we’re probably way too hung up on the continuity part of things – the panels were fkn grand – and the afternoon, where each panel flowed right into another, was a perfect example of how cool this format can be.

Field Trip was, at its heart, primarily a showcase of the artistic and design talent for the Jackie Winter group – and though it did at times feel a little like an info-sumer dump on the range of talent they have available, and who really cared? Not us. They are a vastly talented group of individuals, and the JW group has done an incredible job at “collecting” them all together. We learnt a shitload, got to see some great art and design, and came away wanting more.

Most importantly, it was a great showcase of home grown, enterprising and creative individuals and teams. We’re looking forward to the next instalment – hopefully we can get up to Sydney in November for it! 

Big thanks to Jess Brohier for helping out on the day. Any errors in this article are purely unintentional – we had a shitload of notes to go through … and if we got it wrong, just let us know!