… a guest blog by Arts University Bournemouth student, Matisse Howells.
Buglife worked with Matisse to create a pop-up book on light pollution as part of their ‘External Brief’ unit. The original pop-up book will soon join our Advocacy and Social Change Manager, David Smith, on the road while raising awareness for the impacts of light pollution on invertebrates. This fantastic tool will help us engage with people in a memorable and humorous way and we can’t thank Matisse enough for their hard work on this!
This was my first experience creating a model for a live brief – which felt both daunting but also exciting! My style of making is a bit different to the hyper realistic models that other students have made for Buglife in the past (See Medicinal Leech and Fen Raft Spider models), but I was still very interested in the idea of raising awareness for lesser-known creatures. So, I shared my past work with my client, Jamie Robins (Buglife Programmes Manager) to see if my cartoony style would still be appropriate for the brief. Jamie explained that my work would be perfect for provide humour and draw attention to lesser-known issues like Buglife’s light pollution campaign which looks at the damaging impacts artificial light at night (ALAN) has on invertebrates.
After sharing ideas back and forth with both Jamie and David Smith (Buglife Advocacy and Social Change Manager), I settled on creating a pop-up book that illustrates the ways that light pollution impacts different invertebrate species in a fun, simplistic cartoon style. This is a tactile model that David and Jamie can take to events and have people interact with as a bit of light-hearted entertainment.
I began my project by creating a storyline for my book, developing ALAN (artificial light at night) into a range of personified lights that antagonises different bug species. The book describes how ALAN negatively affects different bug species and ends with an important message on how we can all help to protect these invertebrates by pledging to keep our curtains closed at night!
From here, I worked on creating mini versions of each page to envision how the pop-up mechanisms would work (these are called maquettes). This was quite a long process to get each of the measurements just right, so that everything would rise and fold together smoothly.
Once I had obtained all the measurements I needed, I could start my favourite part… the illustrating! Giving each of the bugs and the ALANs their own personalities was such an enjoyable experience. I took care and effort to make each of the characters really feel alive and memorable for the readers.
After Jamie and David had the chance to view and approve my designs, I was able to print! Next came the most difficult part of the process: laser cutting all the pop-up pieces, folding, gluing and attaching every element perfectly. It was quite a time-consuming process but fun and educational, nonetheless. Now that all pages had their mechanisms attached and fully working, I was able to glue all the pages together to make a text block. Using the help of the staff in Arts University Bournemouth’s book bindery, I wrapped the text block in grey-board, book cloth and finally, my front cover design.
What a fantastic experience it was to work on this project! I would like to say a massive thank you to Jamie and David for all their help and support on the makings of this book, you have helped me push my creative boundaries. I hope this model becomes a useful aid for Buglife’s Light Pollution Campaign.
© Matisse Howells
© Matisse Howells
Find Matisse on Instagram @matissesmakes
Interested in working with Matisse? Contact them here: [email protected].
In Matisse’s words, don’t be an ALAN! Pledge to keep your light inside and say Curtains to Light Pollution.
Keen to take it a step further? Help us call on governments, planners, and the public to take urgent action and protect the half of nature that we are ignoring. Add your signature to our Don’t Neglect the Night petition.