Swearing Budgies of the World - Finished!

So I finally got the self-adhesive vinyl cut and applied it to each of my twelve budgie posters. It was a real pain to do, as the static caused them to fold or cling to my arms, and they were a nightmare to line up with the artwork. Luckily the stuff is quite forgiving and I managed to pull it off and reapply it a few times without destroying the images. It might seem a lot of bother but I think it has really added something to the project and it means that each poster is a one-off, as I am highly unlikely to go through the whole process again. I will price them accordingly when I show them at our exhibition in June.



It's not possible to get the full effect in a photo but you can definitely see where the vinyl is catching the light. All in all I am now happy with the project. However, I have always thought that as I had twelve budgies it would make sense to make a calendar. So I set to work in Indesign and made up templates, checking and double-checking all the dates for 2014. I am pretty happy with the design now and have given it to Steve to print, although he moaned about the format and said he didn't have a stapler long enough for the job (what a surprise). I am sure I can overcome.



That's the cover, which should end up printed on a thicker, glossy stock, if Steve follows my instructions. If all else fails I will pay through the nose to get a few run off at Opal or Ripe. I'd obviously rather not have to spend a bunch of money.

I had to make a little paper mock of the page layout in order to get this designed correctly, as it was a pretty weird one to get my head around in terms of spreads and how the two-sided prints would match up. Again, I left very explicit instructions with Steve, so fingers crossed...

Swearing Budgies of the World - Finishing touches

With my lovely birds almost ready to fly, I decided I wanted to add a couple of flourishes to make them something more than just flat digital prints. Firstly, I took the stamp device from the original poster design and adapted it to work with the more modern feel of my final posters:



I then sent the artwork to One Stop Stamps to get it made into an actual self-inking rubber stamp. There was quite a lot of messing around the get the artwork right - it's only a 24mm diameter, so I had to adjust the font weight so that it was legible and not too thin for them to make up. I must admit that I am not entirely satisfied with the end result, as the innermost line has a definite wobble to it. I am surprised they didn't tell me to thicken up the line before they made the stamp to be perfectly honest. Anyway, I guess it adds a bit of handmade charm (or something). I will place the stamp in the bottom-left corner, to balance the graphics over on the right.



For my next trick, I decided to add some value and authenticity to the pieces by screenprinting a thick spot varnish over the budgie artwork, leaving the rest of the poster flat. I spent a day setting up twelve different screens and printing but was very disappointed with the result - the varnish just soaked into the paper and it looks like I have done nothing to them. Perhaps if we had a full-time screenprint technician with loads of experience, I would have been told this would be the case before I even started, saving me a lot of time and bother. I have since heard that the problem is because of the paper I used (thick cartridge), the fact that the water-based varnish is rubbish compared to the old oil-based ones, and I should have given it at least two coats (although it still would not have been very good).

I have not given up though! I have decided to get the shapes of the budgies cut from clear self-adhesive vinyl, which I can then stick over the top. I tried a piece of the vinyl over some bright artwork as a test and although it doesn't have the lovely brightening effect of a spot varnish, it does a pretty good job of making the budgies "pop" without dulling the colours too much. I should get the vinyls soon and will add some photos of the finished posters as soon as they are done.

Swearing Budgies of the World - Poster ideas

My vision for this poster series is that they will be A2 portrait, with the budgie in the middle of a nice bit of white space. The budgie will be "doing a swear", connected by a line and not a speech bubble. Beneath the budgie image I want to show some secondary information - the name of the budgie, his country of origin and a map showing it, just like you would see in those old bird-spotting books. Something, in fact, like this:



I printed a few of these out on various paper stocks, including some really expensive "Somerset 300gsm" that I bought from Penny in etching. I think it was about £3 for an A1 sheet. The poster looked pretty good but I wanted to make it to have a bit more of a contemporary graphics feel. I like the modern stuff alongside the more traditional cartoony illustration. So I redesigned the secondary information and positioned it bottom-right.



I really like how this looks. The name is in HelveticaNeue LT Std 55 Roman (24pt) while the country is in HelveticaNeue LT Std 25 Ultra Light (18pt), all caps. The little map comes from a big vector map of the World that I drew just for these posters (I couldn't find anything suitable to use online), and the QR code, when scanned with a smartphone, gives you a literal translation of the swear in English!

Here's a bigger image of part of the map that I created. Perhaps it will be useful for another project in the future too...



I did briefly toy with the idea of making each poster in a single solid block of colour, perhaps the dominant colour of the featured budgie. It looks pretty good on some of them, especially Pierre shown here, although for birds with two main colours it kind of fell apart.



I really do like the idea though and it is something I may revisit in the future.

Swearing Budgies of the World - Further development

Although at this point I am pretty happy with my budgie illustrations, I still felt the need to play around with the elements and see if I was missing a trick. The budgies have a cartoon-like feel to them, which I like and which I think owes a lot to the bright colours and thick black outline. However, I wondered what they would look like with a lighter touch or perhaps a more geometric, "graphicky" feel. It was at this point that I looked at Charley Harper's beautiful work. Here's an example:



I really do love these ad it would probably be quite easy to do something like this with my budgies. However, they do look very sixties and I don't really want to go for a retro/kitsch look. Besides, I also don't really want to rip off another designer, so I had better come up with something of my own.

This budgie is my attempt at something altogether more geometric:



He has a certain charm but I am not convinced that this will work as a whole series. Perhaps I could just remove the thick black outline...



Again, this is interesting and certainly worth playing around with, but I don't think it really works. It's probably time to move on with the rest of the poster design.

Swearing Budgies of the World - Final budgies

I spent the weekend working on these and have finally come up with twelve budgies that I am happy with. Yes, twelve budgies. I decided that twenty was always just an arbitrary number and I have no idea why I picked it in the first place, so I figured I may as well stick to twelve. Perfect if I want to turn this into a calendar at some point!

Anyway, here they are in all their glory:

Swearing Budgies of the World - Flying budgie!

I think I spent too long on this one. My hand is really aching now!

Swearing Budgies of the World - More sketches

Despite the festivities and finishing off my dissertation, I managed to do a few more sketches of budgies. Here are the latest ones I did in Illustrator using my Wacom tablet:

And here are some that I did on my iPad:

As you may have noticed I didn't like the last one very much. Anyway, I am concerned that the styles are not consistent - sure, I am just experimenting at this stage, but the finished series of 20 must look like part of a set.

Swearing Budgies of the World - Drawing Styles

I have drawn my first two budgies and am quite happy with them. Here they are:

That's my first idea. I have also done a version of both of them without the thick black outline. I am not sure which style I like best. Opinions anyone?

Swearing Budgies of the World - Poster Idea

I knocked up this prototype A2 poster using one of the budgie illustrations I did for Artshole.

This is Beppe from Italy and he is doing a swear, in italian. I am pretty happy with the overall layout. I think that the stamp in the top-left corner could do with being an actual stamp, so I will look into getting one made up. I might add a flag of Italy, or perhaps a little outline map of the world with Italy picked out in solid black, like you might get in a book about birds. Yes, that would be a nice touch. Very graphic.

I am still to decide on the actual illustration style for the budgies - all I know is that I want it to be a consistent set of twenty. I think my next step is to experiment with my Wacom and Illustrator and see what I come up with. That's primary research right there.

Swearing Budgies of the World - The Swears!

I love swears, especially creative or traditional ones, so I spent a fair bit of time compiling a list of all the greatest insults and rude words in the world, then checked them with friends and other resources to check that they were really used in the countries specified.

Here are the best ones I found for each of the budgie nationalities I have chosen. I have included translations here, for your pleasure, although I think I will leave them out of the book/posters:

France - Putain de merde! (literally 'whore of shit')

Netherlands - Kut! (cunt) and Klootzak! (scrotum)

Italy - Vaffanculo! (go fuck yourself) and Fatti una pugnetta! (have a wank)

Germany - Arschloch! (asshole), Arschgefickter! (ass-fucker) and Fick deine Mutter! (fuck your mother)

Spain - Joder! (fuck) and Coño! (cunt)

Russia - Хуй тебе в роть! (a dick in your mouth) and Заткнись, иди на хуй! (shut up and fuck you)

Poland - Kutas! (prick) and Odpierdol siê! (fuck off)

Czech Republic - Hovno! (shit) and Piča! (cunt)

Denmark - Rend mig i røven! (fuck me in the ass)

Ireland - Póg mo thóin! (kiss my arse) and Dúil mo bod! (suck my dick)

Japanese - くそったれ/kusottare (literally 'shit drip') and 屁こき/hekoki (farter)

For good old Joey and Peter from the UK, there are loads of brilliant swears to choose from. I will probably go with something from this list:

• Bellend
• Minge
• Tits
• Prick
• Ballbag
• Shithead
• Wankbag
• Twat

Swearing Budgies of the World - Names & Nationalities

After a lot of research and a painstaking process of elimination, here are the names and nationalities of the twenty swearing budgies that will feature in my project (in no particular order):

1. Joey (UK)
2. Peter (UK)
3. Joost (Netherlands)
4. Pieter (Netherlands)
5. Pierre (France)
6. Beppe (Italy)
7. Pietro (Italy)
8. Josef (Germany)
9. Pepe (Spain)
10. Pedro (Spain)
11. Iosif (Russia)
12. Pyotr (Russia)
13. Józef (Poland)
14. Piotrek (Poland)
15. Pepča (Czech Republic)
16. Petr (Czech Republic)
17. Peder (Denmark)
18. Seosamh (Ireland)
19. ヨセフ/Yosefu (Japan)
20. 日多/Petero (Japan)

Okay, that's that sorted. Now I just need to come up with some brilliant swears for each of them. Should be fun...

Swearing Budgies of the World - Initial Idea

I have been struggling to come up with inspiring project ideas of late, so I was delighted when the Swearing Budgies of the World popped into my head. It didn't exactly pop fully-formed though. I was thinking about my pages in the Artshole 'zine and how much I enjoyed drawing budgies accompanied by surreal statements. I figured it would be nice to try drawing budgies in different styles, other than the two I did for the 'zine. My idea was for a series of, say, perhaps 20 budgies that would eventually form a rather lovely book. And then it hit me...

When I was a young lad in the 70s and early 80s, a few of my friends' grandparents kept pet budgies. Now, and this could be the effects of time on my poor brain, I seem to remember that they were nearly always called Joey or Peter. Sure, there were probably a few exceptions but by and large that was what budgies were called back then. So I started thinking that it would be nice if all the budgies in my book were called Peter or Joey.

And then my second flash of inspiration struck - if the budgies are theoretically from all around the world, they could have a regional version of the two classic names. So, in France we would have Pierre, in Spain Pedro, in Italy perhaps Beppe, being a shortened informal version of Giuseppe (Joseph). Suddenly I had the makings of an original and interesting project. I compiled a list of countries and found the ones with the best Joeys/Peters. Some of them were too close to the English to be interesting - the French for Joseph, for example, is Joseph, albeit most likely pronounced "sho-seff" by a sexy lady smoking a Gauloise. A French budgie would probably be swearing too... OMG!

That's it! An added layer of pleasure could be had by having each budgie swearing in his own language! Budgies and swearing in one project, what could be better? This idea is so strong that I think I will make a series of A2 prints as well as a book.