Yesterday I  made me way up to London to see part 2 of the Royal College of Art graduate show. The RCA is in such a great place; next door to the Royal Albert Hall, opposite the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park, just behind the Royal College of Organists (a pretty glitzy building), and across the road from the Royal College of Music, so I always feel pretty inspired even before I've arrived there. This year's show definitely didn't disappoint, here's a quick round-up of my favourite bits.

Daniel Frost really impressed me with his beautiful book illustrations for Gulliver's Travels. His illustrations were made with pencil crayons, with a limited red / yellow / blue colour palette, which he overlays to produce further colours. In this way, he seems to construct his illustrations as a printmaker would, an aesthetic that really appeals to me. Some lovely ideas for images too - 

Another student from the Communication Art and Design course, Jack Gibley, had made an 'illustrated' version of Italo Calvino's 'Cosmicomics'. Rather than illustrating the text in the usual sense, he played with the typeface throughout the book as a way of illustrating the story. It's an interesting idea; in my mind the point of an illustration is to enhance the text, to add another level of meaning, rather than to simply describe the text with an image. Gibley's work certainly seems like it does this - at least on face value, I'd be interested to see what it's like to sit down and read the entire book. I wonder if he's seen this book that Andy spoke about in his Pecha Kucha last week?

Next up was some work from Adnan Lalani, from the Animation course. He had made an Augmented Reality pop up book (using Fiduciary markers, if you're interested). He had set up the pop up book in front of a camera and a screen. There were markers on the backs of the pop-ups that the camera would pick up, and the screen showed a live image of the book plus an animation relating to the relevant part of the story, that had been triggered by a marker in the book. 

To me this was successful not so much for the final product, but because he's tried crossing the physical and digital, with a nice level of interaction from the user. Unfortunately I cant find a video of the final book in action, but here's a prototype of the book, to give you an idea of how it worked: 

RCA Work In Progress Show - Pop Up Book Prototype Documentation from adnan lalani on Vimeo.

There were a few more animations that I really enjoyed, the first by Daniel Chester, called 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen'. Here's an excerpt - 

Mad Dogs and Englishmen from Moth on Vimeo.

The second, 'Little brother' by Callum Cooper, was one of my favourite things in the show. It was a live action film, and in places the actors are used as puppets, filmed within a studio environment. The two modes of film were used to differentiate between the day to day life of the main character, and the times that he chose to switch or take off the hearing aid  that he wore.  Unfortunately it's not online yet, but fingers crossed for the future. In the mean time, here's a still from the film:

James Chambers was part of the Design Interactions course. He had created a fictional company called the Attenborough Design Group, 'charged with investigating the use of behaviours found in nature to defend products from threats in their everyday environment'. So for example, he'd created a desk drive that stands up on it's legs when a liquid is spilt nearby - 

Floppy Legs Portable Hard Drive from James Chambers on Vimeo.

And this radio that 'sneezes' every six months to clear it from dust. 

The Gesundheit Radio from James Chambers on Vimeo.

He had lots of really playful, well executed ideas. In fact, Chambers has teamed up with last year's RCA graduate Tom Judd who I mentioned in last year's RCA round up who have formed Chambers Judd, a collaborative 'Design, Interaction and Moving Image' studio, which will definitely be a studio to keep an eye on.

As ever, the show is really worth a visit - but you'll have to be quick as it's only on until the 4th July.