Soni Speight

So what's it all about?

Two years ago I started a MA in Visual Communication at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. This site represents a sample of what work has come out of my research into picture book illustration and using shadows as a visual tool.

Along the way I have looked at paper engineering, paper-cut art, shadow puppets, illustrating narratives, made mock books and storyboards, gone down several dead ends, come out the other end really excited about what I've achieved and still coming up with further ideas to try.

Shadows - This section contains two galleries showing some of the shadow imagery I have created or captured. It is a mixture of paper-cut, puppetry and photography. The images may not tell a story, but they may suggest one or communicate a feeling or atmosphere that provokes something in the viewer.

I am interested in the transient, ethereal qualities of shadows. They can be bold, patchy, translucent. They can communicate time, the presence of something otherwise unseen, they can conceal detail or misdirect your attention. They can be scary, otherworldly, personal, comical, entertaining, everyday and yet they have no substance.

Be Brave Oscar - This is the picture book I produced as my final project, I've displayed the images over three pages. It is not the entire story but a sample of the illustrations produced. The story is about Oscar, who can't sleep because he is afraid that there is something scary in the dark. With the help of his toy lion he decides to face his fear and hunt down whatever is lurking out there.

I painted the main features,cut them out so that when I layered them up they cast shadows within the scenes and then I photographed the results. I also used paper stencils to cast further shadows which I layered on top using photoshop. The idea was to use shadows as a constant theme representing the spooky or unknown element that was bothering Oscar. The qualities and subtleties of shadow becomes part of the image and experience for the reader.

Monsters - This is where the monsters are. They evolved first as something to give my early shadow trial a shape and then became characters in their own right. I am still producing imagery in this area and probably always will. Everybody loves a monster... don't they?