Brand Identity Designer Mark McCorkell » Film & Animation

Illustration by Kotryna Zukauskaite

Mark McCorkell — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:15:23 +0000

Last week I was fortunate enough to stumble upon Kotryna Zukauskaite, a Lithuanian born student of Illustration and Animation at Kingston University, London. Kotryna emailed me directly expressing a sincere appreciation of my blog, and asked if I would be interested in sharing some of her work on my blog.

After taking a look at Kotryna’s portfolio, I was both flattered, and delighted to inform her that I would have no hesitation whatsoever in sharing some of her wonderful work on my site. I think there is a real creative originality with Kotryna’s work and pretty different to a lot of work I have seen from other current Illustrators, which I think has a lot to do with Kotryna being from a more Eastern European influenced background.

“I would describe my style or at least direction to the side of non-character based illustration based on basic shapes, bright colours, abstraction, a little bit of 3d stuff in some cases.” Kotryna Zukauskaite

Kotryna’s influences include, Johnny Kelly, Sean Pecknold and Russian Futurists. I have previously posted about Johnny Kelly’s work, and there are clear parallels between Kotryna’s work and Johnny Kelly’s work, but I can safely say I prefer Kotryna’s – her work has a much more off the wall vibe to it.

“I am particularly interested in fashion illustration, statistics/data illustration and any genre that could be designed using basic-shapes based collage/montage style. But having said that, I am trying to go forward and not to stick to that kind of direction only.” Kotryna Zukauskaite

With so many pieces of beautiful artwork to choose from in Kotryna’s online portfolio, I just picked out some of my favourites to share with you all – check them out below, and if you would like to see more of Kotryna’s work, visit her website here.

And a few more

‘The Seed’ Stop Motion Animation by Johnny Kelly

Mark McCorkell — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:38:46 +0000

One evening last week I took a digital stroll over to Vimeo to have a look for some beautiful stop motion animation type stuff, and I found this little gem. I really love this stuff, so creative and really shows what can be achieved when artistic minds apply themselves to the technology that is Adobe CS4.

This is an award winning piece of stop motion animation by Johnny Kelly of Nexus productions, which Johnny describes as:

Johnny Kelly: “A two-minute animated voyage through nature’s life cycle, following the trials and tribulations of a humble apple seed. The film was kindly funded by Adobe, made using their CS4 range of software. It was produced at Nexus Productions and features a soundtrack by Jape. It was made using a mixture of stop motion papercraft and 2D drawn animation.”

For me this ticks all the boxes, and exactly the like of stuff I like to see, where hand-made artwork and creativity meets the digital film arena. If you enjoyed watching the video above, then check out the Making of The Seed video below for a glimpse into the work involved in the production.

MARVEL Spider-Woman Motion Comic Trailer

Mark McCorkell — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:23:51 +0000

I love Graphic Novels, and I think the concept of Motion Comics is really cool – for me… in many ways it’s a lot cooler than the Hollywood CGI movie versions of the stories. I watched the Spider-Woman Episode 1 on the Marvel website and loved it – I think it has a very “film noir” vibe to it. Check out the trailer below.

Danny Yount Showreel V2 2009

Mark McCorkell — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:25:34 +0000

Danny Yount is a self taught Graphic Designer that has become internationally recognised for his work in feature film and television main titles. Danny has designed intro movie titles for huge films like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, RockNRolla, The Reaping and many more. Check out Danny’s awesome 2009 showreel!

SE7EN: Title Sequence by Kyle Cooper

Mark McCorkell — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:43:55 +0000

I know that I’ve been banging on about typography quite a lot as of late, but after watching Seven last night I couldn’t restrain myself from posting about this one. For most this is old news, after all, the film was out in 1995… but well worth a mention since I’ve been talking a lot about typography recently.

Seven was one of the first movie’s to use Kinetic Typography for the into title sequence. The wizard behind the type treatment was Kyle Cooper, a pioneer in motion graphics, who later founded Imaginary Forces in 1996 with Peter Frankfurt and Chip Houghton.

It is a really creepy title sequence, but that’s whats so great about it! Nine Inch Nails were responsible for the eerie soundtrack… check it out below!

A Clockwork Orange Redeux

Mark McCorkell — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:05:26 +0000

Following on from my previous Stanley Kubrick post, I stumbled upon this little gem – A Clockwork Orange Redeux. It’s really cleverly edited and it has shows some of the funny side to the Kubrick masterpiece. This is a really good example of what moving image arts is all about!

Stanley Kubrick Bloopers

Mark McCorkell — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 09:26:29 +0000

I have always been a big fan of Stanley Kubrick, particularly throughout my University years when I chose to study “A Clockwork Orange” and “The Shining” as movie topic’s for my Moving Image Arts class. He was a film artist, and one of the first great ones, in my opinion.

Everyone has heard of “The Shining”, and “A Clockwork Orange”, but only a fraction of people actually understood what they were actually about.

I found this funny video below on Vimeo and it’s an animated sequence of bloopers from some of his most well known films – check it out, if you know the films then you’ll find it as funny as I did!

The all-seeing eye of Big Brother

Mark McCorkell — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:38:24 +0000

With only a few days now until Big Brother 2009 starts I thought I’d post about the phenomenon that is “Big Brother”. Every summer Big Brother dominates the tabloid headlines and unless you reside on the moon, then you will have seen big brother on TV at some stage.

I don’t particularly enjoy the eccentricities of the housemates, or the bizarre tasks the housemates participate in each week, but I am always intrigued by the Big Brother branding. Their designers never fail to impress, and every year the brand is re-born with really cool visuals.

Maybe these visuals will help compensate for the fact that Davina McCall is a total annoyance?! Only time will tell.

Star Trek: Return Of The Trekkies

Mark McCorkell — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:20:44 +0000

With the release of the new Star Trek film, the Trekkies are back! When I was at school… Star Trek was somewhat of a taboo subject, and if you were a known “Trekkie” then you would be shunned by the cool people! But is it different for the younger generations now?

The new Star Trek film looks very cool, and certainly looks worth a watch, so will this mean the school kids of today will view Star Trek differently? It’s unlikely that one film will undo decades of cheesy Star Trek movies and TV episodes, but will be interesting to see how it unravels!

P.S. I actually do want to see this film!

Prison Break… so addictive!

Mark McCorkell — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:59:50 +0000

Unless you have been on the moon for the past few years, then you will have heard of Prison Break! I’m completely addicted to watching it at the moment, and patiently wait for every episode to be released for me to download! It’s not long now until it’s all over… what next?!

You know something is HUGE when The Simpsons are doing a parody of it…

The all-seeing eye of Big Brother