Designing Dundead 2024

That's a good question - I watched all of the films programmed for the slasher retrospective at this year's Dundead festival and narrowed the ideas down into a common theme. The most common element of these movies was just absurd weapons, like a guitar that is also a power drill and a porcelain plate. I decided to stick with something more simplistic and classic - a knife. 

I followed this up by creating designs using strong bold linework commonly found in early 2000s Cartoon Network cartoons such as Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. I decided that I wanted to also incorporate my own style into the logo -  I commonly use halftones and gradients to create texture. The halftone here is referencing many album covers from the 1980s, such as Thin Lizzy, Black Sabbath and The Clash. 

My art style is influenced by James Hewlett’s Gorillaz artwork, Frank Miller’s Sin City and Stanley Donwood, who is most known as the artist behind Radiohead’s album covers.

My favourite film that's played as part of Dundead actually showed earlier this year: Ravenous, a movie about cannibals in the 19th century featuring Robert Carlyle and Guy Pierce. 

Since the screening, I have watched it about five times. I've become obsessed with the music, the way it's shot and the story. This film is all over the place, but it just works. The fact that this is an underrated gem is awful - I feel that everybody needs to see this movie.

I'm a big fan of Gorillaz so it makes sense that I would love the film's soundtrack as it was composed by Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman. When I hear the song Boyd’s Journey  I just feel this sense of calm in whatever I am doing. It’s a happy feeling and it’s weirdly all thanks to this movie. I just love it, it's so good and it was such a good experience seeing it in the cinema - the crowd in DCA was also amazing and I hope I have the same experience again soon at the festival.

My final project for Abertay is a 2D animated pilot with the hopes of pushing it towards a television network. The project is called Deadwood and it’s about hunting monsters such as the Mothman, Fresno nightcrawlers and other mythological creatures. 

It takes elements from the graphic novel Hellboy and the television show Supernatural to create an entirely new story based around these concepts. My main ambition for my project was to try and make a show that was funny as well as creepy. I have created merchandise as well as our pitch Bible to further help the understanding of what the show is. 

If you are free between the 16th and 18th of May, I'm part of the Abertay Digital Graduate Show, showing off all the production material created for the show. I'll be handing out free merchandise at my stall, so come along. And, if you wonder who is in a Mothman onesie at Dundead, it's probably me! Come up and say hi there too.

Next up - I'm looking for jobs in the industry of film and television and in the meantime, I plan to develop the pilot for Deadwood further as an internet short, with the idea of pitching it to television networks.

As part of creating the Dundead 2024 logo, we invited Liam to join us in the Print Studio to see the team turn his design into a limited edition screen print. 

Print Studio Coordinator, Claire McVinnie, separated out the layers of the two colour design and printed them both onto A5 card stock. Mixing the perfect pink was really important to capture the vivid colour that Liam had envisioned. Once the prints had dried, Liam got to work editioning and signing each one on the back. This limited edition prints are part of our Full Pass for Dundead 2024 and will also be available to buy.