Harriet Buckley – Illustrator and Animator
CURRICULUM VITÆ
February 2004
1993: Foundation Art Diploma (Distinction) from Kent Institute of Art and Design (Maidstone)
1996: B. A. (Hons) in Visual Communication (First Class) from Edinburgh College of Art. Degree Exhibition featured full-colour picture book How They Built the Cutty Sark, which I wrote and illustrated, and a short animated piece, Screwtape, based on one of The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. Dissertation on the illustrations accompanying the work of 16th century anatomist Andreas Vesalius – highly commended by E. C. A.
During 1993-1994 I was commissioned to design and execute a large scheme of trompe-l’œil mural decorations for the student common room at Heriot-Watt University’s Newington Halls of Residence. The work was unpaid, but was recognised in a monetary award from Edinburgh College of Art for the purchase of art materials.
Also during my time at college, I was employed on live briefs for The Times and The Scotsman newspapers and Scottish Book Collector magazine.
Summer 1996: I was commissioned to design and execute trompe-l’œil murals in the entrance porch of a private dwelling-house in Utrecht, Holland. These were classical in style and represented Oedipus answering the Riddle of the Sphinx.
Autumn 1996 to end of 1997: Full time employment as an illustrator and animator by Inner Workings Ltd. of Glasgow, a multimedia CD-ROM and games development company. During my time there I worked on interactive CD-ROMs for children, using Macromedia Director and Adobe Photoshop: Dorling Kindersley’s Bible Stories and Reed Publishing’s Jolly Postman (based on the stories by Janet and Alan Ahlberg). I also worked on character design / concept visualisation for several other computer games.
From the end of 1997 to the present I have been self-employed as a freelance illustrator and animator; descriptions of client briefs that I have worked on follow, in chronological order (though this is necessarily approximate as some projects ran concurrently with one another).
Detailed line illustrations of bones and muscles for Musicians’ Injuries: A Guide to their Understanding and Prevention (Nicola Culf), published by Parapress Ltd. (a work on repetitive strain injury in musicians).
Summer 1998: Work selected to appear in the Association of Illustrators’ Images exhibition and its accompanying book.
Illustrations commissioned by Writers and Readers Ltd for English Language for Beginners, one of their popular series of idiosyncratic “documentary comic books”.
Poster and worksheet illustrations for educational pack on the subject of the Millennium, sent to all schools in Scotland, commissioned by the Scottish Churches Millennium Project through the Scottish Storytelling Centre at the Netherbow, High Street, Edinburgh.
Series of 12 full-colour double-page spread illustrations for proposed children’s picture book The Adventures of Sharky (Norry Taylor), a tale of the restoration of a battered old Citrœn 2CV into a souped-up racing car. Interest in this story has since been expressed by an Edinburgh publisher.
August 1998 (Edinburgh Festival Fringe): Exhibition at the Netherbow Centre, with two colleagues, entitled Time and Tide. This featured 15 pieces of my screenprinted and drawn work.
A number of illustrations commissioned by Scotland on Sunday during 1998, including work for their Edinburgh Festival Fringe supplement, and also for The Scotsman (full page Scottish Power advertising feature).
Colour cover and black line page illustrations for Tod in Biker City, a children’s novel published by Barrington Stoke Ltd. of Edinburgh, who specialise in highly-illustrated fiction for children with reading difficulties.
Cover illustrations for several books of sheet music, commissioned by Thames Publishing.
Assistant animator at Red Kite Productions, working on Beelines (dir: Rachel Bevan-Baker), a short animated film featured on Channel 4.
Autumn 1998: Line illustrations (maps, historical reconstructions, renderings of artefacts) for Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms (Alastair Moffat), published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. This book argued that the figure on whom the legends of King Arthur were based lived in the Scottish Borders shortly after the Roman occupation, and the illustrations required research at the National Museum of Scotland and from other sources.
Cover illustration for A Royal Ring of Gold (Eileen Dunlop), commissioned by Floris Books Ltd. of Edinburgh.
Early 1999: scenery painting for community play David’s Gift at Edinburgh’s Theatre Workshop (voluntary work)
Architectural drawings for Hamilton Design Ltd., for the production of a property brochure for the west Edinburgh Shandon Mews development.
Illustrations commissioned by the Netherbow Centre for the 1999 Scottish Storytelling Festival brochure.
July 1999 to March 2000: Assistant animator at Red Kite Productions, working on The Green Man of Knowledge (dir: Rachel Bevan-Baker), a 12-minute film which formed the Scottish contribution to Channel 4’s series of Animated Tales of the World.
Since summer 1999 I have had occasional work through representation by the Graham-Cameron Illustration Agency. Clients: Aetos, Evans, Bluestone Press (book packagers); Folens Publishing, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Collins Educational.
Line illustrations for children’s novels Malu’s Wolf (Ruth Craig) and Lucas Whitaker (Cynthia Defelice), commissioned by Floris Books.
Animated sequences for CD-ROM games Disco City, Spellogram and Fast Food Frenzy, part of the Pocket Money Software range developed by Agile Radish Ltd. of Glasgow.
Line illustrations for children’s novels Alien Deeps (Douglas Hill) and Bicycle Blues (Anthony Masters) – for the latter I also illustrated the cover – commissioned by Barrington Stoke.
Autumn 2000: Lead animator (Macromedia Flash) for 25 second TV commercial for Inverclyde Tourist Board, produced at Red Kite.
From September 2000 to December 2002 I studied part time for a Master of Design Degree in Visual Communication (Illustration) at Edinburgh College of Art (Degree Exhibition: December 2002, with graduation in July 2003). Concurrently with this I continued my freelance work to support myself financially; I was, however, awarded an Andrew Grant Scholarship to pay my tuition fees and assist with a part of my living costs. My Degree Exhibition featured a 40-page graphic novel, Straight to Video (Part I) - this interpreted a script, written by my colleague Rory Olcayto, which described the action and dialogue to be included on each page. During this time I was also employed by Edinburgh College of Art as a postgraduate teaching assistant, teaching First Year students on their Illustration elective.
Assistant animator at Red Kite Productions for Cineworks-funded short films Nightwindows (dir: Anwyn Beier) and Lunar Jig (dir: Rachel Everitt), which were broadcast on Channel 4 in their 7.55 slot after the 7 o’clock news.
Lead animator at Red Kite Productions for 30 second TV commercial for Dundee College (Macromedia Flash).
July 2001 onwards: commissions from Red Box Multimedia Ltd. of Glasgow to create splash screens and graphics for touch-screen computer games for children. These feature on units installed in Gatwick and Glasgow airports, among other locations.
Animator at Red Kite Productions for 8 second drawn sequence overlaid on live action footage, included in a TV commercial for a board game (The Magic Tooth Fairy Game). Client: Greenroom Films.
2002: Cover illustrations for Floris Books: children’s novels The Doll (Cora Taylor), A Stranger Came Ashore (Mollie Hunter), The Thirteenth Member (Mollie Hunter) and Six Lives of Fankle the Cat (George Mackay Brown).
Cover and black line illustrations for children’s novel Tod and the Sand Pirates (Anthony Masters), published by Barrington Stoke.
Further projects at Red Kite Productions at this time included:
- working with the Artlink organisation to help a woman with mental health problems create some animated film sequences
- teaching 2 x afternoon courses on using Macromedia Flash as a tool for broadcast animation, for the benefit of other animators at Red Kite.
Summer 2002: assistant animator on short film Lula Fantastic (dir: Ellen Deakin), produced under the annual Channel 4 MESH scheme for innovation in digital animation.
Spring 2003: Creative co-director of a team of 6, working on a 25 second animated TV commercial, Sketch Show, at Red Kite Productions: the advert was for Quantum Claims Ltd., and was ommissioned by Faulds Advertising. The style of this piece mimicked the pastel drawings of courtroom scenes that are seen in news reports; this was a difficult style to translate into animation, so some quite innovative work was involved, using traditional lightbox drawn animation in conjunction with Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. As well as co-directing the team, I created the storyboard, designed the style and characters, did research, and generated all of the keyframes and some of the drawn animation.
Summer 2003: Lead animator for one of the 2003 Channel 4 MESH films, Glasgowland (dir: Alex Hetherington), working with Blackwatch Films and ISO of Glasgow. Interpreting the director’s concepts for this 2 minute 50 second film, I produced a detailed storyboard for the film, worked on the character designs, and animated much of the film in Macromedia Flash (other elements – live action sequences and 3D computer-modelled characters – were later added by ISO in After Effects). The film was broadcast on Channel 4 in their 7.55 p.m. slot in November 2003, and has since also been shown as a projection on a vacant shopfront on Woodlands Road in Glasgow, and as part of an installation at the exhibition Memory at the Salina Art Center in Kansas, USA (Feb-May 2004). It received a very favourable review from Victor Lewis Smith in the London Evening Standard:
'the sheer beauty and detail of the drawing here soon won me over...'
'a story that was as wild as it was lyrical…'
'poetry and anarchy were the forces that inspired last night's Glasgowland...’
Autumn 2003: Animator at Red Kite Productions for 2 second sequence, included in a TV commercial for the board game, Impact ( client: Greenroom Films). This was highly-finished work emulating the painterly style of the game’s box-lid illustration, and brought to life two fantasy warriors in the design.
January 2004: Contributed work to the WASPS studios’ exhibition at Alexandra Parade, Glasgow during the Celtic Connections festival.
Spring 2004: Extensive work for French and German school GCSE textbooks (Voila and Na Klar respectively).
Spring 2004: Time spent publicising my business as illustrator and animator – I developed my website www.harriart.co.uk, undertook a targeted publicity pitching campaign, and advertised in a number of major publications including Yellow Pages and the Contact Illustrators 20 annual and website. Arising from the Contact advertisement I have since worked for: RCN Publications; Thunder Design of Milton Keynes.
May 2004: Commissioned by Traffic Design of Glasgow to provide rapid marker visuals to be used in leaflet layouts for NHS Scotland, to indicate the content of future photography to be commissioned. This was a one-day project, the brief being given to me first thing in the morning for six A5 drawings, to be executed before the end of the day. In the event, I turned around these drawings in 4 or 5 hours.
June-July 2004: Commissioned by Collins Educational to produce 50 illustrations for study guide Do Brilliantly Shakespeare: Macbeth, in full colour throughout.
August 2004: Commissioned by Randak Design of Glasgow to produce large (A2), detailed aerial visualisation drawing of projected visitor centre for Buccleuch Estates.
Commissioned by Pearson Education to produce two full-colour comic-strip pages for a Penguin E. F. L. textbook.
From August 2004, I found many portraiture and caricature customers among members of the public, arising from an advertisement in Yellow Pages.
September 2004: A one-day visualising brief at Traffic Design of Glasgow, providing visualisation drawings for their client’s projected promotional box-pack.
November 2004: Cover and black line illustrations for children’s novel Starship Rescue (Theresa Breslin), published by Barrington Stoke.
January 2005: Commissioned by North Ayrshire Council to design cartoon characters, and to produce twelve short comic strips featuring these characters, to communicate the message of "IT Security" to the Council's employees.
March 2005: Line illustrations for children’s novel Mutant, commissioned by Barrington Stoke.
From April 2005 to the present, I have been employed on various contracts for Ink Animations in Dundee, where I have worked as an Inbetween Animator, Storyboarder and Inbetween Team Supervisor.
August 2005: Line illustrations for children's novel The Doomsday Virus (Steve Barlow and Steve Skidmore), commissioned by Barrington Stoke.
November 2005: Commissoned to produce some small cartoon-style drawings for use on the cover of children's novel Catscape (Mike Nicholson), commissioned by Floris Books.
April 2006: Line illustrations for children's novel Alien (Tony Bradman), commissioned by Barrington Stoke.
May 2006: Line illustrations for Getting the Point (J Haddon & E Hawksley), a humorous guide to the correct use of punctuation, commissioned by Floris Books.
August 2006: Line illustrations for The Knocknobbler - the memoirs of the Worcester civic Dog Warden (Bernard Cartwright), commissioned by Parapress Ltd.
August 2006: Commissioned to paint a mural design involving a large blue dragon and some hydrangeas, to decorate a family friend's garden shed, by way of an improvement on its original brown creosote appearance. This commission involved some technical research into suitable primers, paints and varnishes in order to ensure adhesion to said brown creosote, and also a weatherproof finish to the completed artwork.
September 2006 to present: Working at Ink Animations as In-Between Animation Team Supervisor for Sylvain Chomet's projected feature film The Illusionist.
November 2007: Cover and interior illustrations for Time Out magazine of London, which required "courtroom drawing" style artwork for a fanciful depiction of Ken Livingstone on trial for his record in office as Mayor of London.
Interests:
Rugby, playing harmonica, cycling, etc.