For our latest edition of The Spark we turned to an 18-year-old aspiring illustrator and graphic designer Jess Dryden, who hails from Derby

Jess is currently studying Level 3 art and design at the Joesph Wright Centre. She created artworks to appeal to an audience and gauge a reaction from them with characters and illustrations ect.

Jess studies graphic design because it’s ‘something she wants to pursue in the future’.

“I do a lot of digital pieces and I aim to create a comic in the future,” she says.

Flamingo

Jess says the animation’s context is behind overconsumption. The character is a flamingo; I drew inspiration from a mug that was left in a charity shop and subsequently was going to landfill as it was sat there for a while. I wanted to characterise it as it has a story behind it.

I believed the mug had so much life to it that wasn’t being used so I wanted to bring life to it in a new way. I made a sheet for it, in different perspectives and shapes. Shape language was important for me in the making of this as the original mug is quiet rounded, I wanted to keep that narrative but use hexagons, other sharp rounded shapes to explain that yes, this nimble mug wasn’t being used, but it’s tough.

The message of the animation is that so much waste builds up overtime, just like items in charity shops that don’t get bought or landfill that’s left to rot, and if we look at usual household items in a different context, you can bring a lot of character into them.

I wanted the flamingo to be looking at the waste building up as a sort of recognition, a reflection of what humans are doing. Its all about sustainability!

You can follow Jess’s work on Instagram: @sun_star111

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