Whitechapel- Influences for narrative and cinematography

Over the last couple of years, The ITV series 'Whitechapel" has aired with much success and and interest. The series itself is a Crime/Mystery series where Detectives in London's Whitechapel district are given the task of dealing with murders which are replications of Historic crimes which with modern policing and forensics they try to solve and catch the culprit.
Most of the crimes featured in the show are well known , for example the first and second series where the murders echo the work of the infamous "Jack the Ripper" murders and in the second season "The Krey twins", both series were ingeniously done so the audience would go along with the characters and see the crime scenes or events taking place that were shot in such a way that they were incredibly similar to the original crimes , even down to location in some places. The audience is also given an indepth insight into the original crime through the help of the Detectives , though mainly through Edward Buchan, a Ripperologist from the first series who through the course of the next two seasons has provided everyone with detailed documents and research into each murder that takes place with the help of his archives of information, he often provides the protagonist DI Chandler with original documents on the cases ect which they then use to track the modern murderer.

The show is brilliant for engaging its audience and keeps us in suspense until the very end, it treats the audience with a mulitiude of interesting and often scary shots such as POV's from the Murderer and jerky editing that startles the viewer and confuses or misleads them .

I found this series incredible to watch as It subtlety gets the viewer interested in the crimes so that they then go and research into it to see if they can predict what will happen in the next episode, it engages the audience and coincidentally in the third season used three obscure stories as influence for crimes  : The Ratcliff Highway murders, The mysterious Themes Torso Mysteries that dominated illustrated newpapers only weeks before the Ripper Murders and the notorious Berkely Square and Bloody Bones/Bogeyman tales that shocked and frightened  the victorian public .
I felt very happy watching this recent series as these stories are ones that since beginning  this project had been looking into as potential stories to illustrate, although when I told people about them prior to them being on the show they weren't that interested , since being shown on Whitechapel these stories have become talking points for some people and people have been looking into what little information there is on them.



featurette on the first series of 'Whitechapel"






This gives me faith in my own work of illustrating the stories from this era and making it interesting for a modern Audience and  also shows me the difficulties i'll face in order to make the story exciting and engaging for them without straying too far from the original tale .

Research has begun....

finally having a topic to look into, I began work in my sketchbooks , looking at clothing from the period, machinery and films/ programs based around the period to get a better idea of what victorian culture and life was like in terms of fashion, policing, novels and technology.........

here is some of the work from my books, mostly pencil drawings

looking at technology like the steam engine and that how the invention of steam powered locomotives meant that people could now travel longer distances much faster and were also able to transport goods to places that before would have taken weeks in a matter of hours or days 

 

visiting the Sherlock Holmes museum a number of times has meant that I have gathered quite a lot of images and photographs from this location, one person who I have taken a lot of images of who when  I think of the museum I associate with is the actor me and few friends have affectionately  nicknamed as "Clarky" , the police constable from the Guy Richie Holmes films as he is often dressed as a Victorian  Policeman and stands guard at the front door of 221B Baker street to assist tourists, take photos and to generally talk to the public. He proved to be a fantastic reference for Victorian Police uniforms as he loves to have his photo taken in costume and will often pose for you if asked , his uniform will vary also depending on the season and the day, he will sometimes wear a different hat, different badges or will wear a cloak during winter months as it can be quite cold standing outside for hours on end .

Watching films based on the period such as "From Hell" and " Young Victoria" proved a valuable form of research as I was able to find a lot of references for fashion of the period, in particular , Clothes and Hairstlyes, My favourite character to draw was Prince Albert from "Young Victoria" as his hair was really fun and interesting to draw and his costuming was varied and always stunning and great to draw 

finally , as Im a big fan of Doyle and Sherlock Holmes it only seems right for me to have some sketches from a the Granada Holmes Series which in my opinion is the best for getting an insight into the Victorian Period which Holmes and Watson were apart of , everything about this series is reflective of the era , from the costuming, transport and lighting , it sticks close to the original d

Doyle stories and is broght to live by the  superb acting talents of Jeremy Brett as Holmes and David Burke and Edward Hardwicke as Watson.

This particular image was one that I drew from watching the series and when pausing it , noticed how beautifully lit the scene was and how Brett was positioned in his Iconic "Thinking Pose" as Holmes, I felt that I had to draw it as it was a true example of how the Granada Holmes brought the Victorian era to live though Lighting and how Brett's astonishing acting has made him one of the most famous portrayals of Holmes .

                                                   

                                       

Russian Holmes Animation

When looking for different adaptions of Holmes other than the Guy Richie Films and BBC adaption I came across this charming animation from Aleksandr Bubnov, Irina Kovtun and Zoya Trofimova which featured in a few film festivals a few years back, the way the characters are drawn and the fun almost whimsical script and plot suggests that the animation was aimed at children but also had quite alot of adult themes such as an affair,
This version was a great spin on the Holmes Canon, a slight parody of the Russian and Rathbone adaptions from the late 30's and late 70's which affectively pokes fun at Holmes' trait of being able to deduce from the tiniest bit of information


full animation with english subtitles




some stills from the animation

Updated Manifesto

My main goal is to educate and inform people of topics / stories that speak to me and find interesting so that my audience are then encouraged to look for similar things that interest them and broaden their knowledge on topics that we as individuals find intriguing.

There are many ways to communicate a message though image, whether its film, photographs or hand drawn images, everyone reacts differently to an image and for some people, the image may have such an impression on them that they then decide to find out more about it , this is what i want to achieve through my work, I want to make an impression on them, giving  them information which they then digest and encourage them to look into it a little more, the reader is unaware that they are learning and if they find the topic intriguing then they will research into it as its human nature to be curious about the world we live in.

I would hope to cover a wide range of audience with my work and vary my work so that it is focused on a different audience depending on the topic, for example: i’m interested in Victorian crime and policing but some of the material would be inappropriate for small children and would probably be aimed for a slightly older audience.

The target audience is open to anyone who is interested in the topic that I decide to base my work on.

I find that by broadening peoples knowledge on a subject that they find intimidating or know little about, they will begin to understand that subject a little better and be able to pass on said knowledge to other people with a similar predicament, by doing this , people become more open minded about the world around us and begin to accept things that before they considered to be “strange or boring",

 therefore I have decided to base my project around the Victorian era and possibly the Story Papers and the sensational stories that were included within its pages, I feel that the tales featured in this period are overlooked nowadays and they shouldn’t be , some of the most interesting stories and characters are featured in within he pages, some are so incredible that they are still studied today but others have been left neglected when they should be explored, we should be able to learn from our past, and Story papers and sensational fiction from this era , with their surreal and macabre atmosphere are an interesting way of doing so. I want to be able to engage and enlighten people on these tales and give an insight into why they should be preserved for others to research and learn from.

The dark and often surreal images concocted from these papers and books effectively invoke shock, humor or fear into the reader and this is the point I want to bring across in my work, I want to experiment with different ways to communicate this and try to bring out this emotion on my audience so that they are aware of how brilliant the tales are to still be able to accomplish this after nearly a century of them being documented.

Alot of the work I produce at the moment is Hand drawn , which I feel would work well for creating images based on this era, 

I also want to explore printing as many of the story papers where mass produced through printing machines ect and might add to the “olde world” effect that I want my work to have.

I enjoy working with pencil, pen and ink as well as water colour but it wouldn’t hurt for me to also try to experiment with digital painting and manipulating my images though the help of a computer. 


By the end of this project I would hope to have produced either a series of images or a short comic / illustrated paper  that would pay homage to the Victorian Era and its illustrated newspapers unique and surreal style of storytelling and layout .

Here is a brief breakdown of what I now need to do for my project in order for it to work and for me to refine my skills:

* To research and explore Speculative fiction and real live events form the Victorian period and stories that feature in illustrated Newspapers as well as film , television and narrative adaptions.

* To look at different ways to engage and inform and audience 

* To find different ways to communicate emotions such as shock. horror, humor ect

* to experiment with a range of styles and media in order to convey these emotions

* Extensive research on the period,not only looking at the topic i choose to illustrate  but also various other aspects of Victorian Britain’s Culture, Law and order, Technology, Government ect 

* focusing on what i need to improve my drawing skills on, such as: 

-Costume/ Fashion from the period 

-Portraiture 

-Hair

-Machinery

-Architecture of the period

-Lighting

-Human Figure

something quite interesting .....

Being a big fan of Steampunk and Victorian culture , I always love to find comics that combine a bit of the two, usually with little success as there are still only a small amount of good steampunk comics that i've managed to find, this i one of the reasons why I would love to create one myself, but I really need to research into it before I could even attempt to do so.

Finally Success!!!! after purchasing "The Steampunk Bible" a book chocked to the brim with mad scientists, airships and inventions. The very essence of Steampunk, this book gave me a vast amount of ideas and various artists to start looking at.

This is where I found Sydney Padua and her amazing comic "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage"

"The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage concerns the odd footnote* to history that was the unrealised invention of the computer in the 1830s by the eccentric polymath Charles Babbage, and his accomplice the peculiar proto-programmer and daughter of Lord Byron, Ada, Countess of Lovelace."

Her comic contains the surreal adventures of Lovelace and Babbage , two inventors from the Victorian Era but she has then added a unique and surreal twist of them fighting crime, Vampire poets and Street Musicians while the reader is transported into a crazy steampunk enviroment with familiar names such as Sir Isambard Kingdom Brunell , The Duke of Wellington, The Bronte sisters and even Queen Victoria.

Padua  backs up her story with hordes of information about the period and amazing links to other interesting tit bits of Steampunk with her comic,  which to me is a ingenious idea ! 

I really like the idea of giving a surreal and comic view to famous people who we know have led extremely individual lives and went against their status in society to achieve what they want in life 

I would definitely recommend reading this series and I for one will be using this comic as inspiration .

http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/

I've been a massive fan of Sherlock Holmes and mystery novels for some years now and enjoy watching and reading the vast amount of adaptations that have been made of the books. One of the more famous adaptions of the Holmes Canon in recent years has been the Guy Richie films featuring Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes and Jude Law as Dr. Watson. When watching this adaption in the cinema , I was taken aback by the End Credit Sequence which has now become one of my favorite bits of the entire film.

Jeorge Almeida and Chris Sanchez  were the illustrators responsible for  this magnificent title sequence , for which i believe he used pen and ink or graphite which were then put with photo filters and photoshop.

I really enjoy watching this sequence from  the fluid transition from film footage to drawing the the way that ink seems to move around and splatter across the scene , giving the images a gritty, almost olde world newspaper quality, the style of the illustrations reminds me of early story paper and illustrated newspapers which is probably why it appeals to me so much

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Illustrated Newpapers

Penny Dreadfuls and other “Story papers” and illustrated newspapers from the 19th century such as the Illustrated Police News  which combined text with illustrations of sensational stories and speculative fiction to capture the publics attention and interest. Some of the most well known stories and legends form this era are recorded within these papers and publications which could be purchased for a small fee such as a penny , Stories like Sweeny Todd ( named the “string of pearls”), Spring Heeled Jack and the infamous murders of Jack the Ripper are all recorded here and survived the test of time because of their “shock factor” which was all the more enhanced by  the illustrations 

example of one of the pages from Police Illustrated News which covered the Jack the ripper murders in detail

One of my favourite illustrations from the boy's standard, featuring the story of "Spring Heeled Jack" a Victorian Urban Legend about a mysterious being that terrorized london Citizens from 1837 onwards. This story is still well known today and is a prime example of English Folklore and speculation.

Sweeney Todd : The Demon Barber of Fleet Steet or "The string of pearls" is probably one of the most famous stories featured in the Penny Dreadfuls

 These images from illustrated newspapers and Story papers give us an insight into the media and views of the victorian era and i find this fascinating ,  the images are interesting to look at and incredibly detailed  and informative if not a tad surreal and i think this I why I find them interesting