Hasta La Ideas

Jane Stockdale and Sean Freeman created the cover for our Illustration Annual using a large letter ‘i’ and an infinity mirror. Here’s a short film of how they produced the cover image pretty much straight from the camera…

“This was a big team project,” explains Stockdale who photographed the set-up, co-created with illustrator, Sean Freeman. “It was great to collaborate with mates and combine different skill sets from carpentry to art direction and product design. After we finalised the idea, we spent about a week prepping and researching the best way to create the structure. The build itself took about two days of sawing, gluing, clamping and drilling to create the frame.

“We knew from the start that this shoot was going to be really experimental so we spent a long time researching things we’d like to try and test. For the shoot itself we loaded up on anything and everything we could find that we thought would work – confetti, glitter, plastic swords, glow in the dark paint, fishing wire, LED lights and 1000 glowsticks.”

“We spent a day testing with versions of the letter ‘i’ made out of card and metal and a day shooting,” Stockdale continues. “The final cover image was created at about 5am. I think we all knew it was going to be the cover shot when we sat back and stared at it on screen for about half-an-hour thinking ‘how on earth did we just do that…?’

“The images might appear at first to be CGI but the cover image is pretty much the photo straight from the camera. If you look closely you can see how we did it. Big thanks to Toby Summerskill, Toby Stockdale, Clare Elliott, Matteo Fogale, Hugh Stockdale, Gunter, Liam Ricketts, Cassiano Prado and Ray from Ray’s Glass for their kind help and assistance.”

And here’s the finished front cover of the July issue (Stockdale and Freeman’s back cover image shown top of post):