I attended a talk with Hattie Newman who is an artist that works with paper to create perfect structure and landscapes by hand. She explained that her role in what she does is quite varied as she has worked as a set designer and has worked with animation occasionally and says that she is a 3D illustrator.
She explained that she studied illustration at bristol university and while studying she said that she always liked to bring her 2d creations to life by making them 3D and pop out of her sketchbook and always likes to put a lot of her personality into her work (which can clearly be seen in her work).
She went on to explain that her first job that she had that started her career off was with a company called make stuff. She said that for this job she made some paper sets for their windows of ginger bread men and worked with them for 6 months.
At the start of her career she got in touch with Fedrigoni, a paper supplying company, and convinced them to let her make an installation piece for them to display in their show room. It was an unpaid job and she spent 1 month making it.
She made a paper mountain scene for the installation which was inspired by where the paper is sourced from which is in a part of italy.This shows how her motivation and levels of pro activity have helped her through out her career as she personally seemed out this company and convinced them to let her make this piece for them (even though it was for free) which is getting her name and style out and showing her passion for her craft.
From doing this installation piece she explained how she ended up getting commissions from other companies and said that her first big commission was that from Honda for a brochure.
She mentioned that she received a lot of editorial commissions and advertising commissions however she preferred the editorial commissions as she had more creative freedom for this as the client would tell her what she would be making work for and she would come up with the visuals and concept on how to show their idea. Where as the advertising commissions where more like she would have to pitch her ideas and compete sometimes against other artists to get the job and their was less room for creative freedom as the ideas the clients gave were quite fixed and it more more about just how she could make their idea. This sounds similar to that of the world of animation and motion design from what i have have heard other companies such as the neighbourhood and centre screen talking about when they had to pitch ideas to clients. In hate new mans case she has quite a unique and astounding talent in regards to how perfect her pieces look and how they can be physically (it would seem to be quite a difficult thing to make paper models look like they have been digitally created in real life as the amount of precision and care she would have to take when making these pieces is hard to imagine with regards to the craft).
Some examples of the editorial works she has done:
Savilles magazine:
Stylist magazine:
Washington Post:
Behind the scenes photographing the paper models
she said that the editorial work she did was good as well as magazines don't usually need the work so fast say as newspaper companies and she needed some amount of time to make her pieces as it was all hand made and physical, which she said usually took her about one week to make and one day of photographing. She also said that editorials cover more of the budget she needs as what she does costs money as she has to use physical materials to make her work such as all the paper and colours she uses in her work but on top of this she explains that she uses a later cutter to create an internal 'skeleton' structure to hold the paper and shape of her models out of acrylic or plastic. On top of this there is the costs of photographing her work.
When hattie was younger she mentioned that she did voluntary work with set designers working as their assistant for experience and mentioned that she worked on a couple of music videos etc with these designers. (this again shows her productivity in the industry).
She spoke about how she has moved her work especially more recently into the world of animation and said that the demand from clients for this format of work is becoming increasingly higher.
One example of her animated work is this advert for GAP kids that she has created the set designs for and directed with regards to the movements and the sound. She said that she did get an animator in to animate it and a sound designer to make the sound but she directed and explained how everything should be in it and she enjoyed the role of directing her work:
Editorial Set Design For GQ:
For this she had to create a large scale set for GQ in which some of their clothing items and products had to be placed in such as in this image the brief case and the handbag etc. She said it was a challenge as she had to make the set to scale but she didn't really know the actually sizes of the products until on the day and so had to work around with the compositions of the set to make it work.
Paper dress shoot for the March 2011 issue of Madame magazine"it was the most fun, and most challenging to date"- Hattie Newman.
Photographer: Matthew Brodie
Accessories editor: Natalie Manchot
Art Direction: Hattie Newman & Matthew Brodie
Sketches she did for the dresses before making them:
Another client that requested her work to be animated was Chic Outlet Shopping Centre who wanted her to replicate their shopping centre village with her paper models and to animate clothing items moving through this village.
Chic Outlet Shopping from Hattie Newman on Vimeo.
Newman said that this animation took a week to make the set and a full day to do each animation for each scene even though they only last for seconds as the process of the animation is slow. This animation was done using stop motion.
Hattie newman has had lots of work creating maps in her more recent years of her career and explained how she has always loved drawing and designing treasure maps etc when she was younger.
This piece she made for The Times 'High And Mighty' is what started to lead her towards her map pieces as it got her commission for a design for Clerkwell Design May 2013.
She said that this project was challenging more so than her previous work as it actually had to be geometrically correct. And she got quite a few other projects on map work after this.
Queen Olympic park Map :
Personal works and projects:
Hattie explained that she enjoys working on her own personal projects and pushing her self creatively to create sculptures out of found objects to see what she can make. She said that "clients like to see that you are always pushing your own work further swell" showing how the industry likes eager and interested employees as it would show an interest in the industry, this is a good piece of inspiration to take away for my self as i would like to spend more time on my own work in my spare time and should probably spend more time on this as it could end up even being used to show to clients to demonstrate my skills eventually.
This is an installation piece that Newman made for Cannon to be exhibited in paris and to use as a subject for viewers to test the cameras on and shoot. There would be lots of trail cameras all around this installation and customers could try the cameras out and see the picture quality by taking pictures of this 3D world.
to make this sculpture hattie explained that she had to hire 4 assistants and gave them templates to work from to make the different shapes for each building one of her assistants just making the palm trees for the world as there were lots of palm trees required for one of the areas of the world it took 6 weeks to make and she created the templates for the shapes of the buildings as she does with most of her work in illustrator first and them hand cuts them.
Hattie spoke briefly towards the end of her talk about how she has in the past lost job commissions to the likes of CGI artists as they can make what she would make but digitally and quicker. This shows the speed demand and competition within the industry and how it can be very important to be able to work efficiently and fast while still keeping quality in the work and how you need to have that edge in the industry and try and work with a method that is the most effective and time saving.
Fast passed:
She also mentioned that when she was a student she thought that a 2 week deadline was not very long at all and even not do able with regards to creating decent work however now that she has been in the industry and working for 8 years she said that 2 weeks is a long time to be working on her pieces for a client. This shows the work ethic i will have to prepare for when i come to entering the industry myself.
Words of advice:
"being able to visualise your idea is so important, draw up your ideas, storyboard etc, it will help especially with deadlines"
she said that having a good energy and enthusiasm to the work is always a notable thing and is encouraged and admired by clients and employers.
Relationships with people that you are working with is very important as you end up working with the same people again and you can come to a universal and more appealing result if you get on and communicate well. Also she said that she ended up learning so much from the people she was working with as well such as the photographers teaching her things she wouldn't have thought of about photography and set designers also inspiring her and she often feels as though she is still learning herself.
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