After studio brief 2 I had a lot of research but still not much of a clue what format I wanted it in. I had tested out a lot of mediums, using gouache for the first time to help form stronger shapes in my work and had been practicing with a new set of watercolouring brushes which helped the accuracy of some of my illustration work. After looking at other people in my group I also brought a thick marker that didnt go through my paper, and practiced drawing loosely with that. Later on this became essential to capturing quick emotional responses on my next cinema visit.
Our first week back I got to talk to Kristyna back in our crit, we talked about how cinema might affect my artwork, I was advised to look at Martin Scorsese's work and how he framed his work and his stylistic features. This helped later on as after looking at his films it helped me place my illustrations within a frame using a composition similar to that of a movie. As well as this I also looked at Wes Anderson for a nice comparison as his work is often very colourful and definable his work also helped influence my framing for my illustration. We talked about relationships within the cinema, whether people choose a favourite seat everytime they go or buy certain things. We talked about abstract designs, one of which was my dorito abstract design which was my favourite piece of pattern. I also discussed different mediums and decided to keep going until I felt the medium suited my piece of work.
I had a week to work on my illustrations before the next crit, during this time I invested in some different mediums and borrowed some from the illustration studio. I brought a thick charcoal marker and started drawing within frames, after discussing movies with Kristyna and looking into some that she suggested it became very apparent that frames would be a strong way to put across my work. The charcoal worked nicely with catching immediacy of places and simple frame. As mentioned before I brought a new marker pen and practiced with thicker and thinner lines ( i had been brought some 0.05 micron fineliners too and these made a massive impact on my work) and although I didnt like how cartoony it looked I liked the idea of contrasting lines and small patterns within big block pieces. I did some very small stamps with my red ink before experimenting with Quink Ink also, something which I hadn't used before (I had used indian ink). This was a key moment in the development as I've always really liked working with ink I found that the ink washes created by Quink really suited the type of work I wanted to create. I also brought some black paper and a white marker and had been playing with the idea of a book in black as most of the time spent in a cinema is dark.
At this point we then had another crit to see how everyone had been getting on. In this crit I had Matt and we talked more about my format. At this point I was still considering hot dog books as a small handout piece, I knew straight away I wouldn't want to do a concertina book as it wouldn't fit in very well with the idea of frames. After talking within my group, they helped me by telling me which of my ideas felt more prominent. They all agreed that cinema rules (an concept i had been playing with) was stronger than some of my others, during the crit everyone had something to contribute about the cinema and some of their personal experiences such as hating people taking selfies and loving the feeling of being in a dark room isolated from the outside, really helped form more ideas of what is magical about the cinema. The work I had done on black paper was also really well received and it was suggested I use a few pages in the middle, this too was a key point in the production as up until that point I hadn't even considered using black and white background pages. Later on it really helped with the pacing and sequence of the book. My small explanatory words underneath the framed illustrations were also really well received and as a result they remained in the artwork.
I went away and started developing stamps for each page, many of which I took from early stamps in different media, I then started to form different frames for each page. It started off with the intention of being only 12 pages long but when I finished the initial pages, it felt that there was more story to be told and that the sequence needed to be extended. For this I created more black pages in the middle and white pages either side, bulking out the book to a 20 page saddle stitch. For most of the white pages it was fairly straight forward, I occasionally spoke to classmates asking them which patterns they preferred more and letting them look at some pages I felt were finished I got some positive feedback on things that should be changed such as the "after toilet rush" page where I had drawn hearts on the inside of a pair of knickers, some of the girls suggested redoing or changing so they looked more accurate which is something I eventually did. As some of my pages were done straight away without much foreplanning some ended up being redone, the first page illustration about "wearing your new jeans" got changed as after I had finished more of my book it became clear that they should be better patterned.
Apart from that most of the white pages were no problem but the black pages were somewhat of a challenge. The centre page, showing characters in the theatre posed a number of problems. The first is that white ink was not available and would have been too weak on the black paper, also that the white marker I brought was not strong enough and white pencil conflicted with the rest of the artwork. I scanned it in regardless (as I had scanned in every other page to digitally neaten up) and after numerous attempts I couldn't fix it to fit in with the book. I tried many things such as turning characters into silhouttes, using different brush tools within photoshop etc. but nothing seemed to work. I was then shown how to invert photos and decided to completely redo the centre piece on white paper before inverting it. After testing some of my other ink work inverted I decided not to use ink wash and to stick to the simple lines and patterns that were consistent through the rest of my work. I also decided to reuse some of the characters that were already in the book to also add to the consistency. As this was the last piece of illustrative work I had to do, this made it alot easier to pick out favourite characters and patterns to place them into the final piece.
Photoshop was a huge help in this as I had never really used it before I learnt a lot of new tools, such as the stamp corrector tool which helped me get rid of the creases and splotch marks in my illustrations whilst keeping them looking consistent with the rest of the page. I also learnt how to select and copy things over which helped when I was neatening pages up and helped when I was transferring images I wanted a black background on into a special template. It also helped me move the words closer in as some of them were very close to the edge of the page and I wanted to ensure everything was on the page and visable. Levels in photo shop were a key element in this as well as they cleaned and neatened my work up so all the pages were the same level of white but still retained their lovely ink wash values. There was also a decision I made to grey scale my illustrations, although the Quink was great some of the pieces had a yellow tinge to them (we guessed the paper I used was most probably not acid free but I wasn't sure). This tied my work together nicely and allowed me to create purer blacks than before.
Indesign was also a useful tool in this, I had been familiar with Indesign before but hadn't created a saddlestitch before so learning about how to align pages was interesting. When it came to printing too, I picked up some handy tips such as printing a size bigger if possible, I printed my booklet on A3 (as the double pages were to be printed on A4) because it gave me the chance to trim it down neater and also to avoid any bleed off the page.
Creating the actual book took me a few attempts. My first attempt I trimmed down my book too much and cut off the words in one of the black sections. Although it did give me the chance to readjust actually stitching it on the second one. I decided to print on the inkjet as I felt that the paper there was light and silky and created really nice pure blacks, I could have printed in the digital room but after looking at the paper stock I felt that my book would be best presented on the paper stock in the inkjet printer. It also cost less which if I was planning on making more of this book would be a bonus. My second attempt at making the book was far better and everything was in better proportion.
I kept the front and back cover really simple opting for a nice simple outline on the front (which is actually a drawing of hyde park picture house informed by my visit) and on the back is a little ticket stub with my name and some details that were on ticket stubbs I collected. The inlay I kept the same in the front and back of the book, this was my famous dorito pattern which remained my favourite throughout, although using levels affected some of its delicacy it still came out to a nice quality and was a great way to finish the book.
We then had our final crit on friday, most of the feedback was really good and pleasing to read although some one did look at the wrong book (even though it was marked draft) and picked up on the cut off words which just made me realise that it really was essential to make another one. The best part of the feedback was people saying that after reading it they wanted to visit the cinema because that was exactly what I was aiming for with my book, I wanted people to connect with the magic and maybe even make them feel a bit nostalgic for it. Overall I'm very pleased with the final piece, if I had longer on it I think I would make a few changes and have more whole page frames and more closeups. I also would like to have bound it differently, maybe using a more sophisticated binding technique such as Japanese book binding or French Knotting however for this brief I felt the binding was appropriate.
Photoshop was a huge help in this as I had never really used it before I learnt a lot of new tools, such as the stamp corrector tool which helped me get rid of the creases and splotch marks in my illustrations whilst keeping them looking consistent with the rest of the page. I also learnt how to select and copy things over which helped when I was neatening pages up and helped when I was transferring images I wanted a black background on into a special template. It also helped me move the words closer in as some of them were very close to the edge of the page and I wanted to ensure everything was on the page and visable. Levels in photo shop were a key element in this as well as they cleaned and neatened my work up so all the pages were the same level of white but still retained their lovely ink wash values. There was also a decision I made to grey scale my illustrations, although the Quink was great some of the pieces had a yellow tinge to them (we guessed the paper I used was most probably not acid free but I wasn't sure). This tied my work together nicely and allowed me to create purer blacks than before.
Indesign was also a useful tool in this, I had been familiar with Indesign before but hadn't created a saddlestitch before so learning about how to align pages was interesting. When it came to printing too, I picked up some handy tips such as printing a size bigger if possible, I printed my booklet on A3 (as the double pages were to be printed on A4) because it gave me the chance to trim it down neater and also to avoid any bleed off the page.
Creating the actual book took me a few attempts. My first attempt I trimmed down my book too much and cut off the words in one of the black sections. Although it did give me the chance to readjust actually stitching it on the second one. I decided to print on the inkjet as I felt that the paper there was light and silky and created really nice pure blacks, I could have printed in the digital room but after looking at the paper stock I felt that my book would be best presented on the paper stock in the inkjet printer. It also cost less which if I was planning on making more of this book would be a bonus. My second attempt at making the book was far better and everything was in better proportion.
I kept the front and back cover really simple opting for a nice simple outline on the front (which is actually a drawing of hyde park picture house informed by my visit) and on the back is a little ticket stub with my name and some details that were on ticket stubbs I collected. The inlay I kept the same in the front and back of the book, this was my famous dorito pattern which remained my favourite throughout, although using levels affected some of its delicacy it still came out to a nice quality and was a great way to finish the book.
We then had our final crit on friday, most of the feedback was really good and pleasing to read although some one did look at the wrong book (even though it was marked draft) and picked up on the cut off words which just made me realise that it really was essential to make another one. The best part of the feedback was people saying that after reading it they wanted to visit the cinema because that was exactly what I was aiming for with my book, I wanted people to connect with the magic and maybe even make them feel a bit nostalgic for it. Overall I'm very pleased with the final piece, if I had longer on it I think I would make a few changes and have more whole page frames and more closeups. I also would like to have bound it differently, maybe using a more sophisticated binding technique such as Japanese book binding or French Knotting however for this brief I felt the binding was appropriate.
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