Adventures in the land of Otilee

The number of the Feast!

Written by Otilee on September 5, 2010 – 1:57 pm -

REVAMP – REUSE – RECYCLE! This was the theme for the second Feast Your Eyes exhibition Brendan and I were asked to contribute to. Deciding once again to collaborate instead of exhibiting individually we set out to find otherwise unusable / undesirable (i.e. shit!) opshop finds and redesign / repurpose / hack up and frankenstein them into something else. The ’something else’ being a feature garment and 5 plushies.

The first Op-shopping expedition produced a bunch of random shit including tablecloths and bedsheets we intended to use for fabric to make some plushies along with a brown / gunmetal grey tarten kilt, then the second trip unearthing and truly hideous orange skirt suit which would end up being the basis for the main garment.

THE ORIGINAL HIDEOUS SKIRT SUIT

I forgot to take a ‘before’ picture of the tarten kilt… but its a kilt I’m sure you can picture it!

SKETCH FOR THE RE-DESIGN + PARTIALLY TRANSFORMED

The original idea was to put the bustle on the back of skirt (above left) – but after finding out the zip was at the back I scrapped the idea because I suck big ones at sewing zips and didn’t have a lot of time to put this thing together so it instead became and interpretive ‘bustle’ as a coattail feature on the back of the jacket.

Its a bit hard to see on the design sketch but we’ve got two faces over the boobies with long tongues coming out of each to tie the front of the jacket together. Brendan’s male / female faces below as initial shapes and after painting.

FACES!

The mannequin we used to display the garment for the exhibition was significantly smaller then the dressmakers mannequin I was using to make it so it didn’t really look the way we had hoped on the night – not enough happening in the boob compartment to fill it out! Garment is size 8-10 – my kneeling mannequin must be a 4 or something equally as terrifying but it was a bit of fun so we weren’t too precious about this one.

THE FINAL PIECES – FREMANTLE ARTS CENTRE

Yes, I know the face on Brendans slug looks suspect… he’s a strange boy.

Thanks for everyone that made it down to the exhibition opening last night and to Sarah and Sophie for putting it on and asking us to be a part of it. Well done girls – it was an awesome turn out and you both did a fabulous job with pulling it all together! Everyone’s work was awesome!

Plushies and garment are available for purchase – if interested hit me up with an email.

Tags: art, beard, Brendan Ninness, exhibition, fashion, Feast Your Eyes, Fremantle, illustration, otilee
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Its all make believe, isn’t it?

Written by Otilee on July 19, 2010 – 4:30 pm -

Back in early Feb, talented local designer Priera Russell contacted me to sort her out with some imagery to market her latest collection ‘It’s all make believe, isn’t it’. A wonderful ‘Alice in wonderland’ inspired collection with that vintage flavour and sex-kitten appeal that this label seems to always bring to the table. This latest collection is in the final throws of being launched so as soon as I’ve got info on stockists I will most certainly edit this post with where you can get your filthy paws on Priera’s silky drawers!

Having recently also been hand-picked to exhibit new work at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, Miss Russell and her label ‘Skankihoo’ is definitely one to keep an eye on!

I still maintain that I want to eat the brocade jacket from the range (a mad tea party – below)…. scrumdiddlyuptious!

THE FIVE FINAL COLLECTION IMAGES

POOL OF TEARS

A MAD TEA PARTY

WHO STOLE THE TARTS!?

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

JUST LOOK AT THE TIME!

CREDITS;

ART DIRECTION + PHOTOGRAPHY + HAIR | Otilee,

FASHION DESIGN + STYLING | Priera Russell,

MODEL | Allegra Keogh, MAKEUP | Melissa Donald,

ILLUSTRATION | Brendan Ninness

THE PROCESS

After the initial briefing where it was ascertained that the five main garments of the collection were named after / and inspired by different chapter titles from the Lewis Carol book I started brainstorming around the possibility of reinforcing this with the art direction for the images. Really wanting to steer clear of doing the typical ‘Alice’ inspired story (especially with the Tim Burton film being released around the same time and the inevitable Alice-inspired-everything anticipated to follow), I wanted to try and do something different and a bit special with which to showcase Priera’s amazing clothes.

I therefore set out to individually art direct each image to reflect the title of the feature garment in each… taking cues with hair / makeup direction and image styling from the dominant character in that role with a fashion twist. So, instead of the model being representative of Alice in all 5, she was styled to be an interpretation of Alice, Queen of hearts, the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter etc…. then in the execution following through with a ‘make believe world’ in the illustration / photography combo in a kind of book illustration style.

Then, roping in my other half and illustrator Brendan Ninness to take care of illustrating the environments where we worked together to plan out how I would shoot each image to tie in with what we had planned for the illustrations in the post process. So, on the day of the shoot armed with sketches for each image composition / pose etc and how they would all work with the planned environments (illustrations) – Priera, Allegra, Mel and I spent a good few hours redoing Allegra’s look for each one (our makeup artist Mel, was fantastic – really nailed each of the looks!) which was then followed by shooting each look separately infront of a very MacGyver-style makeshift infinity wall! For example; with the Pool of Tears – We used a box for Allegra to put her foot on to get the height of the lip of the cup (with the cup etc all illustrated after the shoot) and directing Allegra to pose as if she was teetering precariously inside a massive tea cup bobbing around in a pool of her own tears… which I think she managed to pull off the look perfectly! If you want a model that’s going to give 110% to a character – Allegra is your gal! She’s fanfriggentastic!!

For those interested in Brendan’s illustration process – he’ll be posting it on his blog in the coming days, will edit and link when its ready to rock

Tags: advertising, Alice in Wonderland, Brendan Ninness, designer, fashion, illustration, otilee, Priera Russell
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Accordion what?

Written by Otilee on May 23, 2010 – 5:56 pm -

Beardo Australian Illustrator Brendan Ninness (also known as my other half) has undertaken the most insane but awesome task of attempting to unearth the best of the weirdest illustration / illustrators the world has to offer with his blog ‘Accordion Face‘.

Only online for going on two weeks now but it is fast becoming a relative gold mine of all things ‘ewwww’ and ’seriously wtf!’. At a time where anything illustration that gets any exposure / pimpage seems to be either street art or naive indy styles (not that I’m saying that there is anything wrong with these!) – its a breath of fresh air to see something different.

So, in an attempt to share the love / fat rolls / vomit / deformities – Check it out!!