visual literacy

HORSEMEAT PAGE

I wanted this one to be informative. I paid a lot of attention to peoples reactions to ‘the great horsemeat scandal’ as it developed, and it was interesting to see peoples reaction to the thought of eating horse. it ranged from how cruel! those poor things! to ugh that’s disgusting! i can’t believe people might have eaten a horse! and this weird species hierarchy is totally lost on me. it’s like eating a cow, but it’s a horse.

anyway, i thought i’d throw in some fun facts about time of digestion, and how some race horses are sold off for meat once deemed 'useless’ by the racing industry, and the corporations who were cheap enough to go with companies who cut corners and throw horse meat in their burgers to bulk it up it the first place.

i drew a picture of a horse in a huge blender/burger making machine. i think i was inspired by the simpsons video about meat, i’ll link it after this. the simpsons is always at the back of my mind for most things.

i wanted the drawing to be gross and the text to be bloody and emotive, and i think i’ve done okay.

but yes, this picture was the result of hearing peoples feedback about meat, so i totally took the audience reaction into mind when drawing it. i enjoyed jumping on the horsemeat bandwagon.

HORSEMEAT IN BURGERS

amazing, couldn’t have been discovered at a better time (for me)

a way to make my work topical, and a good way to get everyone thinking about the food they eat

totally getting on this

i’ve had to do the weirdest google image searches since starting this thing. i’ve always been very squirmish about meat, but i’m starting to not be bothered by it so it’s at least having an impact on me if anything.

the chicken piss page

throughout the zine all text will be handwritten, it’s just a lot more ziney and nicer, i think. plus, i’ve figured out i really like drawing lettering. lettering and people.

so all the text for this image i wrote by hand and then scanned in, coloured it and tweaked it to read properly on the page. i’m really interested in typography and it’s so important for me that i am able to develop a skill in creating readable hand written type.

the text needed a lot of altering, but for all of the images i decided it’s best to draw what i needed to and edit it digitally as it’s much more time efficient when i have so much work to do. it took me a while to structure the text to something i was happy with, and then i went through line by line resizing the letter so it didn’t look LiKe tHiS, so was much easier to understand. I always get Graham’s voice in my head doing a sarcastic voice of how a line doesn’t read well, and once it goes away, I know I’ve done it right!

the butcher page. this is a double spread, hence the seemingly odd placement of the text when viewing it as a whole image. these pictures show the process i generally go through for every page - initial sketches, character/image development, more drawings, scanning in and colouring of the linework, placement, colouring, text and adjustments.

the woman drastically changed because after the first drawing, i asked kai’s opinion and he said she didn’t look stupid enough.

the ‘meaning’ behind this page is just to remember that meat is made from a living thing, i guess, and an excuse to draw a really disgusting looking butcher.

front cover development. i wanted the text to look like it was made of grease, or other chickeny fluids. I wanted to keep it simple overall, with only one image and the text dripping from it. it took a while to decide on the chicken leg, i was thinking other things like sausages, a whole chicken, etc, i sketched two chicken legs crossing in a jolly roger kinda way, but it looked pretty awful, so i decided to just stick with one leg, and tried to make it as simply gnarly as possible with the bone and veins/flesh lines, and keeping the foot on the end of it.

The text was originally all a flat colour of the beige at the bottom of the text, but it didn’t work, especially with the colour of the leg outline, so i added a fade. i think it works.