OUIL603 Extended Practice - Assorted Briefs Evaluation

Looking back on the work i've done for these - there is actually a significant amount of work here, more than i'd realised i'd actually done until I compiled it all together. I tried to really throw myself at variety of different challenges and briefs this year, which I think is reflected the most in these assorted briefs more than anything. 

Throughout this year i've had a lot of heavy criticism about the work I was producing - particularly in the first semester (which I got told wasn't much better than a lot of the work i'd been doing in Level 4). This effected my confidence in my ability a lot - and a lot of these projects were my way of trying to explore past my older methods of work, going back into analogous work and trying to identify the strengths in my practice a lot more. 

I think i'm better working analogously than I perhaps have thought I have been in the past - and I do actually think my work loses something when I rely too much on digital media. My more recent work has found myself sliding back into the digital frame again, and I want to see if there is a way to use more of my analogous work to create stuff that would be suitable for other applications.

OUIL603 Extended Practice - Assorted Briefs, Part 7

A super quick turnover brief (as in - I saw the opportunity less than a day before the deadline was, and decided to go for it) - there was a callout for a range of work to exhibit in Wakefield, so this is what i've submitted!

Because the deadline was so soon I had to come up with a theme, set and series of images in less than a day - and the exhibition was called 'The Creative Caffeine Fix', based about cafes, and drinks in wakefield (even though it didnt have to be a super 'concrete' thing, a lot of people in the exhibition didn't coffee or drink themed work - it was just nice art!) 

Due to this, I just wanted to do something fun and personal, and see if WE ARE (the ladies running the project) like it as well. So came up with this pinups based on milkshake flavours.

I've been inspired a lot by a lot of 1950's/1960's illustration for greetings cards and books, and i tried to channel a lot of this into the work I made - keeping the digital shape work but adding texture to add dimension to it. 

This was one of the first few times I'd started using brushes from Kyle T. Webster's Brush Megapack, which I found are really 'natural' to work with (definately the closest digitial dupe i've used for analogous media) - which made them really fun to draw with. I'm definately going to continue using them.

My work actually got picked for this which was nice! My sister found it before i'd seen it in the flesh (which was funny) but the exhibition as a whole was a really nice idea, and a great way to unify the different cafes and bars of Wakefield with some nice art. It was really awesome to get a foot in the door in the creative scene of Wakefield, since there seems to be much more of a creative growth spurt going on round there at the minute, and I definitely want to play a bigger part in it. 

Are these the best thing's i've ever done? No. Did I enjoy doing them? Yes - Am I happy with them? Yes and no. I was really happy at the time I made them but in hindsight I do think there are still restrictions with this method of working that I need to keep pushing. I do think theres strength in this sort of work that I do - I just think I need better applications for it other than nice drawings of ladies in dresses. 

OUIL603 Extended Practice - Assorted Briefs, Part 6

A Local band from Wakefield, Called 'Wolfe Trap', wanted some artwork for their promotional material. They're a indie/folk band, and they liked the work i'd been doing and wanted something similar for their stuff.

This was some quick, spot-illustration type stuff, so I knocked them up fairly quickly. Because of the genre of music they make, I didn't want to do anything too heavily reliant on digital artwork because I didn't think it would fit with their tone of voice - so I chose to do this all analogous, with digital media being used to clean up the scan files ready for screen and print. 

I used watercolour and pencil for all of these. They're designed to work on numerous formats - record covers, t-shirts, mugs, more merchandise...etc.... heres what some of them look like mocked up:

When I first did these, I was kind of on the fence about how I felt about them - but putting them in context, they look pretty good! I didn't think they'd look good on merch - being analogously generated and all - but I think they actually do look quite professional.

My main worry for this kind of stuff is for printing - since textures and opacities don't always print very well, especially on T-shirts. I'm still trying to find a way of working that incorporates a lot more of my analogous work - whilst still being appropriate for printing onto stuff. 

OUIL603 Extended Practice - Assorted Briefs, Part 5

As a quick turnover competition brief, I entered the 2016 V&A student Illustration awards. You can enter pretty much whatever you want, and I felt like attempting some book illustration - so I chose to do some work based on scenes from a book called 'A Dirty Job' by one of my favourite writers, Christopher Moore. 

'A Dirty job' is about a man called Charlie, who - through no fault of his own, discovers that he has become a Grim reaper. The contrast between the normal, mundanity of his life and the crazy supernatural invasions to his privacy that are caused by this make for some really good imagery, so I thought they'd be good to illustrate. 

The front cover is a illustration of this (mundanity vs crazy supernatural) - the spot illustration is directly drawn for a chapter in the book where charlie is given a cigarette case from an old man called James O'Malley, who has been killed by a vampire, called Jodie (a main character in another of Moore's books). The feathers are raven feathers, which are another symbol that repeatedly appear in the book - all of these are things that first make him discover that he is a reaper. 

Initial Scans:

These are a mix of pencil, watercolour and white acrylic paint. I was inspired a lot by Brett Helquist's Illustration work  and I wanted to see if I could incorporate more analogous media to reflect this:

I was really eager to see if I could push my analogous skills for this - and i'm really proud of how these turned out as images. I think in the past i've swayed from submitting purely analogous imagery because i've felt that my technical skills aren't strong enough - but I do think that they're stronger than I perhaps realised, I just have to hone them a little bit more. 

Finalised Digital files (Plus no-text submission)

 

I got rid of the type on the front cover because I felt it wasn't working - and left it blank for type to be added digitally. I cleaned up the scans in photoshop, using the clone stamp tool (as per usual) 

I definitely think that technically these are really strong for me, and whilst their suitability for book design and publishing is questionable I think as images this technique is starting to become a lot stronger. I want to see if I can hone this mix of media more to make more improvements. 

Submission Screenshot

OUIL603 Extended Practice - Assorted Briefs, Part 4

These were a series of christmas cards that I made for the Illustration staff for christmas. They were really simply done - with watercolour and edding fineliners, but I wanted to give them something nice to say for christmas as thanks for the semester so far.

I really like this as a set - and I took scans of each of them before sending them so I could clean them up and use them as a formal set of greetings cards. I ended up cleaning up two of them - which are here:

When scanned, the hue didn't look quite right so I changed it to a red and blue instead. I also cleaned up a lot of the paintwork with the clone stamp tool, and re-drew any lines that had bled or didn't quite look right.

I really like them! even now - at the time I finished them I couldn't stop pulling apart the imperfections in them but they look really nice cleaned up and printed. I think my work is sometimes better when it starts out analogous in some form (either as a painting, or a drawing on paper) and then cleaned digitally. The only problem with this process is its incredibly time consuming, which means its difficult to experiment with it. This brief also gave me an interest in greetings cards and motif patterns, which then informed the work I started doing for my 'Big Kahuna' Project in the second semester. 

OUIL603 Extended Practice - Assorted Briefs, Part 3

The character design challenge is an artist facebook group that sets themes and challenges every month for artists to design characters. Even though it's a facebook group - the thing that sets the CDC out from other similar ones is that the page is run by artists, who get acclaimed artists and art directors to judge the submissions every month. The person who 'wins' the monthly theme gets feedback/mentoring and other goodies by the judge of the month, which makes it a nice little challenge to take part in.

This was the first entry I made - for their November 'Greek Gods and Goddesses' theme. I chose to draw Hestia - who is the Greek Goddess of the Home and Hearth. 

Because a lot of her 'symbolism' is in warmth, fire, and homeliness (she was kind of regarded as a bit of a protector/goddess for housewives) - I wanted to make her design literally look like a flame. However I also wanted to sway away from looking too much like The Flame Princess from Adventure Time, who is also a 'flame' inspired character, like this:

I gave hestia a larger build to reflect the silhouette of a flame more - and I gave her a more 'earthy' colour palette to give more of a feel of homeliness to her.

I have mixed feelings about it because I don't think its the strongest character design i've ever done - her pose is really stiff, I think her face could have drawn a lot better. My technique of drawing shapes and adding texture to them digitally has moved on a lot more since doing this - but I do like the texture, its probably one of my favourite parts. I think this was a turning point in my practice, because this is where I realised I didn't have to rely so much on heavy black digital line work as much.

Fast-forward to March - this is what I did for their 'Legend of Zelda' monthly theme! Here I chose to redesign Midna - one of the characters from the game 'Twilight Princess'. In the story, Midna is a ruler of the 'Twilight realm', who gets turned into an imp and banished to the protaganist Link's world by someone called Zant, who is jealous of her and wants to rule instead. 

As a point of reference, this is what Midna and Zant look like in the game:

I really like Midna as a character - she's really funny and sarcastic, but I feel that there is a marked difference in her character design compared to the other Twili characters you see (like zant) who are much darker, a lot creepier to look at. Whilst her beauty is a large plot point, I wanted to create a look for Midna that firstly wasn't a glorified sarong (not that theres anything wrong with that) - but also reflected her more as a leader, and made her look more powerful.

I wanted to give her a big, shadowy cloak that covered her entirely. The twilight realm in-game looks a bit like this: covered in shadows, with hints of light around it, and I wanted her clothing to reflect this. Midna's original design is very curvaceous - and even her imp form is made up of round shapes. I wanted to make her as sharp to look at as possible - with lots of edges to her cloak and points. 

From an image perspective - I think this looks much stronger than the Hestia one does, and you can see how my work has improved between the November of last year and the March of this year. I feel like i'm starting to understand and work with shape a lot better, and trying to simplify my images as much as possible is making a good impact. 

From a character design perspective - I still have a lot of work to do. I think this is a better silhouette and pose than the Hestia one, Midna definitely looks more powerful in it but I do think that this isn't a practical design - especially for a character in a video game. More exploration with physics in mind could make it so - but this is very much an illustration of a character than it is a character 'design', which a lot of the CDC entries tend to be.

I've repeatedly come under criticism for the way I draw characters on the course, but I do think i have teeth and skills in character design still, its something that I just have to hone a lot more. I think this challenge will prove to be something useful to explore character more with when I leave the course in June. 

OUIL603 Extended Practice - 'Assorted Briefs', Part 2

Through the duration of Thought Bubble, there was an opportunity for us to put on an exhibition of a select number of people's work at Travelling Man, the local comic book store. There were up to 16 A2 spaces for people to hang posters, with no stipulation about the theme or what the posters contained, so long as they were suited to the sort of work that Travelling Man typically deals in. 

The project was managed by Joe Shiels - which was a mixed experience (but not necessarily by his doing), because Matt (the manager) was somewhat difficult to get a hold of, which made it difficult to put queries through to them. 

In between this there was a lot of difficulty deciding themes amongst everyone (in contrast to the Engineer's brief, where this was a lot more straight forward) - some people wanted an overall theme, some people were really against it. Everyone's work was very different from each others, so many thought giving it a 'theme' would unify it - but others felt it would restrict people too much. In the end, it was decided that we'd try to create some cohesion through a vague sense of colour scheme, and leave the subject matter up to us as individuals.

I tried to do something really different and out of my usual 'style' for this - choosing to draw a poster based on the game series 'Metroid' (since the original plan was to go for a sci-fi theme, which 80% of people ended up doing anyway).  The colour palette we'd been given had been limited to the pink, blue and cream/white colours seen in the poster - so I was inspired a lot by Matt Taylor and Olly Moss' poster designs - especially in the way they both used colour and texture, which you can see in there work here:

Even though this was fanart I was really proud of how this came out, and I still really like it. I like the contrast between the white and the heavy texture; it gives Samus a focal point and makes her stand out from the background, which gives it a depth I hadn't really managed to create before. The textures were created with a mix of gradients, textured brushes (from Domareen's set) and used to build up contrast.

I think more than anything - I think this was a surprise for me, in that I can actually do a lot more complex and detailed work than I previously had done. I think compositionally this could have been pushed a lot further, but I do think that it's an improvement on what i've done previously. I've been told before that i've been relying too heavily on old methods of drawing and making pictures - but I feel things like this take those methods and tries to do something differently, which makes the images a lot stronger.

Over the course of the exhibition I made one sale - so a nice £15 (it cost me about £12 to print all 5). I'm going to try and sell the others privately, since i've had quite a few queries about them since advertising them on my art pages. 

OUIL603 Extended Practice - Assorted Briefs, Part 1

'Assorted Briefs' is a compilation of different competition, live and smaller one-off briefs that aren't big enough to be considered significant by their own merit. I've done a number of these as the year has progressed - and i've decided to compile them into one larger brief, as the volume of them is quantifiable enough to make them significant as a whole.

One of the first live briefs that I took on - Matt sent us an email telling us about an opportunity to create the posters/flyers for Hyde Park Picture House's debut showing of 'Made you Look' - a documentary directed by Anthony Peters, about the rising hybrid between digital and analogous means of working as a creative, and what that meant for the future. 

I like doing posters - having done a lot of them previously in both Level 4 & 5. You also got a free ticket if they liked your posters! which is always nice - even if you're not being paid. 

I kept the colour scheme of the promotional illustration work for the actual film and tried to keep in the analogous motif of the pencils and tools given that I made this poster digitally. I was largely trying to hone my hand-drawn typography skills - and I think although this isn't the most successful poster i've done (my work has moved on a lot now and I don't really work in this 'digital line/cartoony' manner as much) I do think that this was one of the first times my hand-drawn type started to look a lot neater and professional.

Me and Adam Allsuch Boardman's posters got picked for the events and we got free tickets (and guestlist!) entry for it which was nice! The owners are really lovely, and it would be great to get to know them more at a future date after doing this. 

The event itself was really informative - I got to ask the guest speakers some questions (including Matt, who was one of them) - and overall it was a really fun experience. I'd love to get the chance to get into doing more of this promotional poster work at some point further down the line.