“It was an honour to be chosen to go to Angoulême on behalf of Exeter City of Literature, and a huge surprise to win the Literature Award! I was so inspired by all of the French comics I got to see, and everyone else at the Festival, too. I can't wait to take everything I learned from this trip forward into my own work. Thank you to the UNESCO Creative Cities!” James Taylor
BA (Hons) Illustration graduate Reuben Lane has won first place in the THU 2019 Desirable Future Golden Ticket Challenge, student category.
"I am absolutely over the moon to have won this challenge! It started just at the right time where I could really invest myself into it, and it was a super fun journey! Perhaps the best aspect is seeing what everyone else is contributing alongside you in real-time, and being able to see how their unique interpretations of the brief also grew and came to fruition. I felt instantly inspired by the theme of Desirable Future, which compelled me to explore mixing forms from nature with functions of the future! I am so excited to have the opportunity to visit beautiful Malta and go to THU!”
Every year the course submits work from Year 3 students into the WIA and every year so far we have been successful. It's a terrific confidence builder and launch to their careers to be accepted into the Awards.
I created this project in collaboration with visually impaired (VI) members of the Royal National College for the Blind (RNC), to expand public understanding of VI. Based on interviews, I created a series of portraits of people with different VI, in the way that they see.
This portrait depicts artist Lennie Jordan, who has Keratoconus - a non-inflammatory eye condition in which the normally round dome-shaped clear window of the eye progressively thins causing a cone-like bulge to develop. The purpose is to educate people about the different types of VI people have.
A personal response to the book, 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas' by Ursula K. Le Guin. A story of a utopian city with a dark underbelly. A child must be kept in constant misery in the basement of the city, so that the people of Omelas may live in a perfect society.
This is a webcomic and I wanted to use animation to suggest an atmosphere of disquiet, which is foreshadowed in the book. I utilised a limited colour palette to illustrate the beauty of the city changing as the city's dark truths and the reader's realisation sets in. The story poses a moral quandary and it was this aspect that I chose to explore further, with a character and his decision to leave.
Chronic lung disease is an increasing concern in developing countries. Working with Professor Rupert Jones and The Fresh Air Programme illustration students created educational materials aimed at reducing the risk of health complications from biomass fuel consumption in Uganda.
The ‘Smoke Monster’ animation by Illustration student Angus Ulyett, made in collaboration with Professor Rupert Jones’s Fresh Air Programme in Uganda has been adopted by the Ministry of Health in Kenya as an education tool to help Community Health Extension Worker (CHEW) training following a recommendation from the World Health Organisation. The Ministry of Health met recently to discuss final plans for the CHEW curriculum to be rolled out in January as part of Universal Health Coverage. There are also plans to use the animation in other countries including Uganda, Cameroon and Ghana.
The decline of the critically endangered European Eel (Anguilla Anguilla) has had a significant impact on a staggering breadth of species, including birds, mammals and fish, and both marine and freshwater species. The Eel Suitcase collaborative project engaged with the plight of the eel by creating a series of eel related artworks and publications.
In 2018 The Eel Suitcase ran several student projects, one of which took a group of University of Plymouth students from illustration, creative writing, documentary photography and publishing to exhibit eel artworks at the European Parliament in Brussels and create an eely guidebook of the city.
More recently the Eel Suitcase collection was exhibited at The London Wetlands Centre, The Dutch Church and The Natural History Museum.
Year two Illustration students have been working on briefs set by scientists from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History relating to the museum collection and public display. This year student artwork relating to the very first living organisms, has been put on display as part of Interpretative Panels within the Discovery Aspiring UNESCO Global Geopark, situated in Port Union, Newfoundland . The site will be visited by UNESCO evaluators later this year as part of the process of the area securing full global geopark status. One student took the opportunity to visit Port Union where she undertook a week-long residency.
