GRAFIK MAGAZINE FEATURE

Buy October issue of Grafik to see a feature of Gerry x

Show Off: YCN at RSA Exhibition & Eat Sleep Work Play

A collaboration with EATSLEEPWORKPLAY exhibited at the YCN Show OFF exhibition

Featured on YCN and CREATIVE REVIEW websites.

Giraffe featured on design website...

woop woop,

gerry is being featured as the cover image for a story on the graduate degree shows, hurrah... check it out. www.designersarewankers.com

Shoot2 complete...

I like the colours and crispness in Laura's photobest, but I'm finding it difficult to recreate them in the other. Does anyone have any advise?

Lee Fasciani (Senior Designer, Fold 7)


Suzie Hydon (Designer, Fold 7)


Robert Urquhart (Editor, Designers Are Wankers)


Angharad Lewis (Deputy Editor, Grafik Magazine)


Laura Clayton (Staff Writer, Grafik Magazine)


Henry Holland (Creator / Designer, House Of Holland & Fashion Editor, Bliss Magazine)


A little kid who couldn't resist


Zezi (Editor, Super Super), Kesh (Fashion Editor, Super Super), & Chromeo (Canadian pop sensations)

Reccy

I went on a reccy today to find locations for the shoot on Wednesday when I'll be taking the giraffe round London to photograph people in the industry.

Here's Fold 7 near Old Street:


And here's the pub I found nearby that has a beer garden. The manager Chris said that I could use it in the morning:


Then I went to the Grafik offices:


And funnily enough I found another pub very nearby that is very suitable as it has a very wide and semi-private ally way beside it that I can park Gerry:



I know the orginal idea was to photograph the industry people outside their offices, but it was proving to be impossib;e. I wasn;t allowed to photograph outside the Channel 4 building, Some peoples offices are in Soho and the streets are v small and busy, some people wanted to come over to their friends offices and do it together at the same time. And it's probably going to rain again knowing my luck, to make proceedings even more difficult!
So, anyway here are the people definately getting on the Giraffe:

Lee Fasciani

Angharad Lewis (Grafik)

Laura Clayton (Grafik)

Henry Holland (House of Holland / Bliss)

Jo Dillon & co. (Channel 4 / E4)

Nigel Bents

And probably:

Zezi (Super Super)

Designers are Wankers

And maybe:

Anthony Burrill

Bryony Birbeck


If anyone else has any contacts who might be interested then get them to get in touch. It should be fun x

One Shoot Down...

So yesterday I had such a hectic day...

I bought two swimsuits from american apparel:


Spent £10 on bubble wrap... got 20m worth of extension leads. Double checked location and asked a nearby house if I could use their electric, collected the camera, and went to Ed Thomasson's house for a spot of lunch and as a meeting point to meet Tom Giddings, David Bradley, who kindly helped out, and Elarica, the beautiful model from Models 1:






She's amazing, with long limbs and neck and lovely afro, she's perfect as the model on the giraffe. Thanks to Tom for getting her involved.

It was raining, which turned out as a plus actually because we wanted to go for quite a sinister, dark look, but with all the glamour and gloss of a guy bourdin picture:



After the shoot, soaking through, Bambi picked me up in the van and took me to Rob's house to drop off the giraffe (which we bubble wrapped to high heaven), and the Mishel's house to store the base till Wednesday.

Basically it all turned out really well. Tom is busy retouching the photo's as wel speak. He's spent a week working at Vogue seeing how they do them, so he should be amazing at it! The pictures are to follow in a late post.

Thanks to Ed Thomasson, Tom Giddings, David Bradley, Elarica, Bambi, Mishel and Robin for all their help! I couldn't have done it with out them...

havin' a giraffe

Phone Call

Unknown number.
'Erm hello is this Anna Rhodes who's just had a paint job on a giraffe?"
"Yes"
"WEll, I'm afraid we've had a fire in the factory and it seems to have melted."
"WHAT? Oh MY GoD, WHAT?"

At this point i get palpitations, tears start to come, and my life is over.

"haha, only joking it's me, rob"



This is my boyfriends idea of a joke... dog house.

IT'S BEEN PAINTED..!

I can't believe it... I'm so happy with it! This is one of those times for the overuse of exclaimation marks...






Gareth from Kiddy Rides has been an absolute star doing this for me. And only for £80! He's been so kind and helpful. Without him and Steve Cole, I never would have been able to do this project. HUGE thanks to both of them... Now it's just all about the base xxx (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Orange Gerry

Shoot2

I have just secured two people for the editorial shoot featuring influential people from the design, fashion and magazine world.

Henry Holland



That's him on the right on the cover of Japanese Dazed...

he designs these House of Holland T's and is also fashion editor of Bliss magazine


And also Zezi, who's editor of Super Super magazine



She's on the right, on the left is the fashion editor Kesh, and together they form DJ extravaganze The Coconut Twins. I'm thinking of getting them to do it together

xx

I went to HERTFORDSHIRE (again)

Just got back from Steve Coles studios in Baldock. Giraffe is fully cast in fibreglass now, has been rubbed down, sanded, filled and primed. I can't believe it - it looks great! Pictures to Follow.

This is now basically what I have to do:



FRIDAY 11TH MAY: Go to Coventry - collect the wooden box mould for the base - drive it to Steve's studio in Herts so that he can fibreglass it - pick up the giraffe - drive to Leeds - give giraffe to Gareth to paint over the weekend - (Gareth is the amazing guy who gave me the mechanism for 50 quid and he's agreed to paint the giraffe for 100 [that was his job for 7 years!]) - drive back to Coventry to drop of the van....

HAVE A RELAXING WEEKEND AT HOME WITH MY PARENTS IN STRATFORD-UPON-AVON (in reality stress out all weekend organising photoshoots)

MONDAY 14TH MAY: Drive to Leeds to pick up painted giraffe - drop it off in Coventry - return to London

SOMETIME THAT WEEK: Go to Herts to paint fibreglassed base - drive it to Coventry.

Now... then my project manager will kindly put all the elements together, and i'll have a fully working giraffe which will be delivered sometime in the week of the 21st in london, ready for the Tom & Thomasson shoot on Friday of that week, and the Robin Mellor shoot the monday after.

PHEW!




The red spots are where it has been filled, and the bottom picture is underneath the giraffe when it had just been fibreglasses - before it was rubbed down, filled and primed.

Invoice

Unfortunately, the first of many...

Backdrop For Shoot. Plus...

everything you ever wanted to know about giraffes:
http://www.nature-wildlife.com/girtxt.htm

On another note, i'm trying to source a large photography backdrop for one of the shoots i'm doing. I want one of those really cheesy sky ones that everyone has in their old school photos. I think it would look great against the giraffe.

Evil Herbivore

On the Rob...

I was burgled last night! The blighters took my laptop and camera............... ROAR! I can't bloody believe it!

An idea of the scale....

That's my hand by the way

Mechanics

The difference between this mechanism and the original Gerry Giraffe mechanism is that there are two mounting shafts here instead of one. This doesn't really change anything or pose any problems in terms of manufacture or the end experience, whih is great, it just means it'll be stronger.

Another Trip...

I went to Articole Studios today in Hertfordshire to check that the giraffe was OK before they started to fibreglass it. I was worried about the legs being too short and the giraffe being too small in general because the photos steve cole sent me didn't really show the scale very well, but it turns out it looks great! I'm very happy with it. Here's me and Steve Cole riding the polystyrene giraffe:


I've arranged for Steve to paint the giraffe and I'll be going back to the studios to help sand down the fibreglass once it's been cast.

Shoots...

Yesterday I confirmed the photographers for the two shoots I'm planning for the giraffe. The fashion shoot will be a collaboration with the delectable photography duo Tom & Thomasson... here's an example of their work:

We want to shoot on location, find a garden somewhere and drape a load of beautiful, tall, long necked, long limbed, long haired girls over the giraffe. We want to play on the kitsch idea, keeping it quite lachapelle/jeurgen teller.

The other shoot will be more of an editorial type shoot with famous (hopefully) faces from the design world riding the giraffe, which will come packaged somehow with an interviews asking what they felt about the experience etc. This will be a much simpler shoot in a studio probably (to be confirmed). The photographer I will be using for this shoot is Robin Mellor. Here is a sample of his work:

Giraffe Model

So here it is... the pictures Steve Cole has sent me of the polystyrene model. I'm going up to his studio in Hertfordshire on Friday as I'm not entirely certain about the length of the old giraffe legs...

exciting though!