Hamelin

"And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered;
And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats..."

The Pied Piper of Hamelin, by Robert Browning

Our third project this semester was to produce a piece of self promotional material. I wanted something that should off both my 2D and 3D skills, but that wouldn't be too costly to produce and that could be sent by post. My tutors said keep it simple...yeah, that I ignored.

I have a taste for the macabre, if you hadn't already noticed. In real life I'm a happy person, but I guess I go to "the dark side" with my art. And macabre is at it's best in a good old, creepy fairy tale. I chose The Pied Piper of Hamelin because it's not so overdone as say Red Riding Hood, and it is certainly creepy. There's some vague factual basis to it; there genuinely was a lack of children in Hamelin in the thirteenth century. The tale begins to spread about a hundred years after. 

In the tale the Piper removes the rats from the town, but when the town does not pay him, he also takes the children. The reference to the rats links this tale to the plague, the rats would have bought it in and many would have died, particularly the young. The Piper is symbollic of death or the devil. This is a proper creepy tale, however it's told. 

So I chose to make a fold out card, with foreground and background images. This way, I got to show off some print making, and also have a three dimensional window display/stage set type element in it. It took hours of painstaking cutting to get this right, but it was definitely worth it. 

I used a yellow and black palette. I know yellow is usually associated with sunny dispositions, but I wanted to use it to create a sundown, flaming, feel against the shadowy rats.

And, of course, a piece of self promotion needs to have some information on it. 

It still needs a little tweaking, but I am really considering using this a promotion. What do you guys think? And does anyone know of somewhere in the south-east/London area that does laser cutting? Because my fingers will drop off if I have to cut many more of those rats out!!!