SELF EVALUATION

1.  What skills have you developed through this brief and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
Photoshop – I think that this module has again tested my skills on photoshop and that challenging myself to keep using the skills has helped improve them. I know feel far more confident in scanning and bringing things into photoshop. As well as I now know how to create gifs within photoshop and this is something I hadn’t ever done before, although my Gif’s were not exactly as I had imagined, this is now something I know how to do and can improve on through practice. Practical – pencil – I set myself the challenge for this module to try and use other materials and I feel that this has been really successful, I’m pleased that pencil work made it partially into my final work and I plan to keep developing my pencil skills. Research – Researching has really been key to me for this project, looking at other illustrators such as Madeline Flores and Phillip Light really helped me creating characters and helped me problem solve when I hit a creative wall. I learnt that sometimes it’s okay if you don’t want to redraw the whole piece and that using a piece of paper to cover over the mistake if a quick creative solution. Print – Lino and Digital – I hadn’t really experienced either before this module. Using lino was a really informative experience and the work that came from it, I was really proud of. It also made some really great textures that I scanned in and can now use in other pieces of work. As well as this I used the digital print room for the first time, having previously printed off in other places I know now the difference in printing in different places and the benefits and drawbacks of such.
2. What approaches to/methods of image making have you developed and how have they informed your concept development process?
Ink – Again I think that my ink work is developing, especially compared to the beginning of the year. I invested in some new nibs and inks and my work has improved. I think that it really helped improve my mark making at that helped improve my overall worked. It also helped develop my personal typography which also made it into my work at different points. Wacom Tablet - I have since invested in a Wacom tablet and although my digital drawings are not the best at the moment, knowing how to use one really helped in this module. It helped me especially in the GIF making project where clicking on photoshop would have taken far longer than using my Wacom. Pencil – Using pencil, especially in the persons of note module, really informed my creative process and the development of my finals. I think that they definetly developed and because of this my ideas were able to stretch out further than just thinking in watercolour and ink.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
Etching in Ink – I think my mark making in ink really made a difference to parts of my work, they really helped develop backgrounds and also thumbnailing in certain parts. It’s something that I feel ive really improved on throughout my year and it is something people always pick up on in crits as a positive. Photoshop – Knowing how to use photoshop and practicing really helped develop my work through this project, especially in the GIF module where I successfully brought in textures and created a GIF from my lino print.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?
Illustrator – This is the first project we’ve ever had to use illustrator and I did struggle with it. I think that although the postcards were mostly a success, there were bits I could point at and describe how wrestling with illustrator hindered me (especially on hands and eyes). I don’t think this is a bad thing however as in the future I have learnt what not to do, and that using layers in illustrator is just as important as using them in photoshop. Although it was a definite weakness in my work, I liked the vectors and how it made my work neater appearing and I would like to keep on practicing with it in the future. Photoshop  - Photoshop was also a weakness in my work as in certain areas I think it let my work down and I didn’t see the bigger picture because I was thinking only from a digital point of view. Organisation – I think that throughout this module I consistently spent too much time in one area and having to rush the other, or not spending enough time at the start and coming out with lesser results at the end. This shows especially in the GIF project I think, and out of the three projects that is probably the weakest of them all purely based on the fact, not enough time was invested into looking at medias and investing time trying them out.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
Thumbnailing / frames – Thumbnailing, considering negative space and frame is something that I will do differently next time. I really need to consider it more in the future because I think my outcomes are being hindered slightly by my neglecting it (although the postcards on the persons of note show how Im starting to consider frame more). I expect to gain better outcomes that I can feel more proud of in the future. Material investment / Experimenting – I think that just recently Ive played it a little too safe in terms of what media I’ve been using and that this really affected how my work developed. The use of pencil towards the end of the module really changed how I designed things and I think in the future I will try to assign more time to my experimentation in the first few weeks of a brief. I think buying more materials to work with might help so over the next few weeks I might try to buy some new sketchbooks and materials to try (especially over summer) as I feel like I’m limiting myself at the moment in terms of what I use and that I might be good in ink but even better in chalk (I don’t know because I haven’t tried). Photoshop – Next time I will definitely make sure I bring things into photoshop rather than designing them straight in there, Although sometimes I think it is nice to just design things in photoshop, it gives it a certain look and the things I produced soley in photoshop really didn’t look that great. Organising – as I described above, next time I think that I really need to access how many days and allocate time to really developing ideas and concepts rather than rushing into something or rushing over a section. I expect to gain better results and work that is more considered. Looking at other practicioners – Although I did find some really nice illustrators in this project, I didn’t really look into them as much as I could have done and I think that my work might have been improved if I look into what others are doing and learn from their mistakes rather than just doing something and making the same mistake.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance				x
Punctuality				x
Motivation			x
Commitment			x
Quantity of work produced		x
Quality of work produced		x
Contribution to the group			x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self-evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

A copy of your end of module self evaluation should be posted to your studio practice blog. This should be the last post before the submission of work and will provide the starting point for the assessment process. Post a copy of your evaluation to your PPP blog as evidence of your own on going evaluation.

Notes

I See Faces: thinking up characters

We were set the task of creating characters based on our interests. I used mostly pencil throughout my work as I just wanted them to be sketches. 

I like parkour so that was one of my first interests which later informed the diving man gif (as I had watched quite a few videos of people running by this point). I used a fineliner to exaggerate certain bits of these. 

Another interest of mine is zombies, or rather the idea of an apocalypse (I enjoy shows and movies on them), Pencil was a useful tool here because I sketched a lot of them out faster. The idea for Meghan (who later became a GIF ) stemmed from this interest. I had a lot of fun thinking of the different expressions and how she would react to situations. 

I do wish that I had spent some more time with this idea and used more media's to develop it. The Gif was unsuccessful and I think it was partially down to the lack of media development at this stage.  

I also thought about sci-fi and Artificial Intelligence as it is something that I  find interesting. Although none of the ideas made it to the final gif stage Spindler and Scramble (Robot and boy above) have developed into a short series of comics that I am working on. 

I drew some pugs as well as they are my favourite dog, these didn't develop just because I struggled with getting the proportions right. It would have been nice to do a pug gif but their faces are pretty challenging to draw. 

The next few drawings I did came from the idea of Atlantis (an idea that came from Vis Com). I thought about how the tales would move and what mermaids could look like potenitally. 

I did try for quite some time to get the actions of the tail right but I really struggled with it. If i could do this again I think I would definitely try a little harder and perhaps watch videos of people swimming to get better based actions. 

I used water colours on the mermaids just because it felt more fitting than just pencil and I wanted to experiment with the idea of what colours they could be. 

At this point we had a crit to look at what we had done so far, as my ideas weren't quite fledged yet I think that the crit wasn't as helpful for me as it could have been because the comments mostly reflected things that I was already aware of. I think having Jon Boam into the studio to look at our work was helpful though, it was good to hear about he developed his characters and I really enjoyed look at his work. 

After the crit I started thinking about how to start turning what I had into gifs. I took the mermaid idea and thought about turning it into a short about mermaids having their haircut and it growing back. 

Elizabeth is born from these early ideas of mermaids, as I was thinking about the sort of person who would have believed in them and created a character of a young victorian girl (as many rumours of mermaids came from sailors at this time). I did this mostly because it was getting quite late on in the project and I still hadn't made a gif.

Creating Elizabeth was a fun process and it was nice to make a smaller less complicated gif. If I had had more time I think i would have expanded it to show that she was imagining being a mermaid whilst sat with her cup of tea.

I also decided to pick up the character of Meghan the zombie slayer out of my book, I thought quite hard about the amount of frames I would need. The thing I struggled with most on this was how to make it loop seamlessly. 

Greetings from: Initial Ideas

When we were first given the brief I started off with very basic very generic idea's of postcards to represent the cities. I quickly noticed how everyone had done the same and tried to change my idea. 

I thought about the people that inherited the cities and what they wore and how they travelled. This lead me to the idea of transport and headwear. 

I did quite like this idea and nearly chose to carry on with it but it felt too simple. On reflection I think these might have made neater postcards than the ones I ended up with.

During the crit we talked about how to progress with the idea of transport and headdresses. We also talked about my other idea (mystical creatures known to individual places; dracula at the beach, loch ness monster scotland etc). 

 I carried that idea forward and it manifested itself into the idea of statues coming to life in the different locations. I tried to think of identifiable but not overdone places, although I did still design one for new york. I looked at the gargoyles on notre damn and the various angels found throughout rome.

 As I was drawing more of Egypt I really liked the idea of bringing the spyhnx (?) to life, it was from here that I developed the other 4 postcard ideas that progressed on. I didn't continue with the sphynx for a number or reasons, mostly because i found it quite hard to animate her arms although I enjoyed drawing her face.

Greetings from: Feedback

Overall the feedback for the Greetings From postcards was positive, a lot of people liked the colours and the faces. What did come through from the crit was that the frame wasn't considered enough and some of the compositions seemed a little squished in at times. There were also some questions raised about the accuracy of the statues (does the statue of liberty have legs? should there be buildings in the christ the redeemer) but they were mostly intentional (apart from the backwards hand on the statue of liberty) so I didn't mind those comments too much. 

I reprinted out my postcards at the end of the module and I can now see the difference between the two types of printing, the colours are different and the ones I printed in the digital print room are far nicer. 

Persons of Note: Creating the poster

When it came to creating the poster I was quite stuck for actual ideas although the concepts came quite easy to me. I knew I wanted to potray the sheer strength of Ali as an individual and came up with a few ideas that just didnt see poster worthy to me. My first idea I actually liked was based on the idea of a optometrist's reading board, and I was going to create something that got harder to read as you went down it. However when I drew it out it looked more like a postcard than anything else.  

I went with the best idea I had, which was a diagram of Ali's fighting style and trying to show how he was always faster than the other person. I drew this out in ink to keep up with the rest of the series. 

When I brought it into photoshop I knew that it wasn't going to be the main final piece. 

Instead I found a picture of Ali and using the wacom tablet and the colour palette I went about colouring over the top of the image in blocks to show the light and dark to reflect his attitude (as I have talked about Ali's attitude was very black and white).

Then I placed the scan in of pencil I had done earlier and placed it as a background so it kept a sense of hand draw too it rather than completely digitialised.

 As I worked more on the drawing it felt too boring to just have a pencil background. This is when I brought in the fighting style of Ali into the background as one of the layers and inverted it so it was white. 

Knowing how to use layers came in handy here, I feel like i've gotten much more comfortable with using them just lately and using a wacom tablet really helped the drawing process. 

I scanned in a quote and thought that I had my final piece, however it still didn't feel finished to me. It felt too bottom heavy. 

I messed around with layers and the idea of bringing the fighting style to the foreground and Ali being a shape in the background. I felt like it was too dark though. 

 This lead me to creating a lighter version of it, in this version I copied the pencilling layer over Ali's body and made the background back to it's original state.

When I lined them all up together I still liked the middle one more than the pencil copies. 

 However I knew that the text was weighing it down too much. I started writing out some more phrases in ink and scanning them in.

I then brought them into the photoshop file and used the "screen" layer so that they showed up as white on the background. 

This was the one I thought was going to be the final but I didn't feel like the quote was noticeable enough and it needed to really say something powerful. 

This was the final version that I came out with. I do feel that it has a slight book cover feel to it but it definitely gets across that feeling of strength and I think that the quote really makes the poster as well as the inking of his name. 

Theres very little I would change to this if I were to do it again, maybe trying to be abit tidier with the colouring in but overall I was really pleased.  

Persons of Note: Postcard development

I looked at some of Ali's quotes and he was quite well known for his trash talking mouth. One of the more funnier phrases I found was about Sonny Liston and Ali threatening to donate him to the zoo and mocking him for being a bear and smelling like a bear. 

With this idea in mind I started looking at the video of the fight again and trying to capture Sonny Liston as a bear. My first few attempts I used pencil as I'm trying to get better at my pencil work. After a few failed attempts I reverted to ink and watercolour. I was actually pretty with my drawings of bears as I've never drawn them before. 

I drew a few different scenarios but decided to move away from it before I got too attatched to the idea. 

I thumbnailed different elements of the fight. 

 I started thinking about Ali as sections, I drew his lips to show how he was as much about the talk as he was the fighting. I drew his feet to show speed,  eyes to show focus.

I preffered some of these ideas over the sonny liston is a bear ideas. I started to think about they would come together as postcards. I knew I wanted them black and white. The feeling I wanted to potray was a sense of tension and a darker attitude as watching Muhammad Ali fight put me on edge and his attitude was very fight or die, it was noted in various interviews that when other boxers would have gone down, He carried on fighting depsite how much it would have hurt. 

I introduced the idea of a bee, to fit in with the quote he is most associated with "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" as it also sums up his fighting style quite well. 

The bee represents the enormous amount of tension in his fights and his attitude. I tried out a few various ideas. My original idea for this was to do it all in ink. 

I

However I decided to draw a section in pencil and I knew immediately it suited the tone so much more than the ink. I tried out finerliners and red ink also but nothing else suited it as much.

As I developed the postcards I introduced a thick black pencil frame, it made it more cinematic and suited the atmosphere.

I copied the files and took them into photoshop to brighten them up. It was at this point i wasnt sure whether to keep them as colour and had to ask some other peoples opinions. The general reaction was yes to convert them to black and white. Once I had i immediately saw that they fit in with my stamps much better in black and white. 

One of the problems I faced when I was making the postcards was that I drew the bee too small on one of them and I didnt want to re-draw the whole thing out again. Instead what I did was cut a small piece of paper out and stick it on top to redraw that certain bit. This is a tip I got from Madeline Flores (an illustrator who creates numerous amounts of comic strips) and this is one of the first times I've used it. It worked really well and using the stamp tool in photoshop helped me eliminate the slight shadow left by the piece of paper. 

                                 I was really pleased with my final postcards, mostly because I had used pencil (and a small amount of ink on the bee and butterfly) and I have never created a piece of work with pencil that I liked before. It gave it a nice atmosphere to the postcards.