- Lino Cutting, I have never used or been near Lino before and although they didn't play a massive part in my final I do think that learning the process was good for me and I can apply them to future work.
- Mono Printing, I developed a lot of mono prints over this brief and I think they were really effective. They added a lot to my final pieces without me actually mono printing the finals but I also really liked the process, I found it easy and produced work I liked so I'll be using it again in the future.
- Screenprint , I developed my screen printing skills more in this brief and they were very effective as I actually produced a good screen print (rather than previous ones that had come out misaligned or smudged) and learned more about doing the process well and dealing with problems.
- Collaging, I initially hated collage but through practicing and developing my skills, I ended up applying them to my finals and they were very effective as they worked so well for the concept.
- Adobe CC, My skills in photoshop and After Effects have really developed over this brief and all contributed to final pieces in some way. I can now apply photoshop to my works without the fear of it becoming too digitalised looking and I can now make stings in After Effects (although these skills were not so effective as I think my sting could be better I was still pleased I managed to make it)
- Scale was a big skill developed in this brief, I had been working small previously but with the introduction of a bigger sketchbook it allowed my drawing skills to improve and my concepts to have more room to grow so they were very effective.
WHAT approaches to/methods of image making have you developed and how have they informed your concept development process?
I tried many different methods to image making as I found this project a hard one in terms of figuring out what medium would suit the authors style. A positive that came out of this for me was that I pushed myself to try out a large variety of things.
- A bigger sketchbook was one of the most important turning points in my project, I had been making all my images previously to a A5 format. Around a month and a half into the project I was getting really stuck with all of my work being centred around small fine liner drawings and water colours. I tried to get out of it by drawing in quick painted figures but something was just not working. Changing to a big A3 sketchbook really put me out my comfort zone but by doing so allowed me more space to work.
- Painting wasn't a massive stage in the process but I did figure out after doing a few pages of paintings that it wasn't the right medium for me this time.
- Lino cutting was a first for me, although I did not use it in my finals I now understand how it works and with that knowledge can use it more in my work in the future. It also means I understand what can be done with it. It didn't fit in the kind of feelings I felt for my author so I didn't take it further in the project.
- Screenprint was an important process in the image making, it was my first successful print I've made and I really enjoyed the images I took from the workshop. At one point I was considering developing more for my finals but at this point I hadn't tried enough mediums to settle on it straight away. However i did use the image I made and placed it digitally into the background of another (into the woods, in the right hand corner) and it worked well.
- Monoprint was another thing I had had little experience with in the past and it was a major part of my finals. When I was trying out mono print I was still struggling to visualise my interpretation of the author. I wanted that sense of vibrancy you get when reading the novels but combined with a sense of disconnection from the real world. From the mono print I got the vibrancy, the inks were fresh colours that I hadn't achieved previously and their textures added to images.
- This lead me to collage. Previously I have hated collage, it is not something I am ever eager to do but as I was sticking in some scraps from the mono print session I realised something magic had happened on the page and I was finally seeing what I had struggled to make for so long. The collage allowed me to experiment with that sense of distortion and disconnection that is so often in Murakami's books but the mono print grounded it at the same time. Collaging was the massive key turning point in my project it.
- I created the finals on photoshop but all of them were derived from scanned in textures and larger scale collages I had previously made. The use of photoshop allowed me to make the mono print textures different colours without loosing any of the vibrancy and allowing them to meet the brief's 2 colour limit.
- After I had created 5 potential finals, I took one and turned it into a After Effects 15 second sting instead. The whole process of having a collage in photoshop made it much easier to implement objects to move around in After Effects rather than having to create the whole thing in photoshop.
WHAT strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
- My photoshop skills have really improved within this project, I feel much more at ease with it now especially since I brought in work made manually and edited a fair amount in photoshop (although i don't feel it became digital looking). How will I capitalise on these in the future? perhaps instead of creating a background entirely in photoshop I now understand how to adjust colours and size better so that I can bring in more manually made paintings/collages etc to create something more realistic and less stylised.
- Collaging as a process I view as being highly successful in this project. It is the one thing people have continuously commented on as working well for me. I have seen it in a new light and from this I will be more likely to include it in my future work and take it forward with me and develop it into part of my style as an illustrator.
- Organisation is something I feel was a strength in this project. In contrast to previous projects, I have invested my time better this year. I brought a white board to make a schedule for every week and from that I have had many more good days where I created focused better quality work, by planning my breaks/ how I am spending each day/what the focus for each day is. As well as this I made sure I had a diary on me at all times to translate from home to uni so that my schedule was always with me and additional things I needed to do could be put in. I plan to capitalise on this by continuing the method the rest of the year.
- Using a variety of mediums was a strength for me in this process. I often get stuck in doing things a certain way once I am comfortable with them (working in fine liner often happens) but this time I made a conscious effort to step out of my comfort zone and try out a wide range of mediums and not settle on something for my final too early on. It really helped expand my horizons and rather than knowing how to do one thing well, I now know how to do more things at a higher standard.
- Working to a bigger scale was a strength in my work. It added more to my work and made me work harder to figure out how to fill the space (or how to use the negative space that I gained). It also gave me room to expand out ideas and to try out new mediums. I'm going to capitalise on this strength by not returning to my former A5 sketchbooks (apart from personal sketchings) and keep it big for the rest of the year.
WHAT weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?
- I think quality of work was perhaps a weakness in my work this time, I was making a lot of prints to test out the mediums but they were only testers. Perhaps I could have gone back with a more focused idea (knowing what the mediums were like) and planned pieces to make so that there was more intent behind them.
- There wasn't a lot of typography used, I'm not sure whether that is a weakness or not but I definitely think I should have invested more time in trying out placing words into the finals. There was some work on typography (when I looked at calligraphy) but I really didn't take it that much further and I wonder whether I should have done.
- Another weakness in my work was that I wasn't around for many of the feedback sessions and I missed out a lot of the mega crits too because, in all honesty, for most of the project a lot of my work was just testers and nothing final so I really didn't like what I was making and when I don't see anything I like in my work I struggle to hear people criticise it even more than I already am. Next time around, I can only try and be positive towards my work and try to find something I like in there and not let myself hating it hold me back from showing it to everyone. Most of what I have made has come from personal decisions alone. I think this was both a weakness and a strength, as the author Murakami's characters are very isolated, it allowed me to get into that mindset without too much of an outside influence. However I think that the feedback sessions I did attend were beneficial and that by not getting to them all, I may have missed out on some constructive feedback that might've got me to the answer I was looking for sooner or might have produced a more rounded outcome.
- I think another weakness was my After Effects sting, although it is good I still think it is one of the weakest things I've made in this project and if I had spent some more time on it, it might have come out better/smoother than it has. In the future I now know how to use the programme so I can have more time to play with it and I understand the basics.
IDENTIFY five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
- I will make sure to attend all the feedback sessions and mega crits, these are important and I hope to gain more confidence about my own work and try not to feel bad about the process.
- I will contribute to the group more, this module I have been by myself a lot which was fine for my project but I should have been around to add my contribution to class feedback sessions and mega crits.
- I will try to produce a higher quality of work, even in my testers. I expect to gain better end results from this (although I wasn't disappointed this time, I do think that by testing out the mediums to a higher quality could have improved some of the end).
- I won't hold back, I think that this project has really opened me up to seeing that I have been holding back and staying comfortable in the past. In this project I have tried more things than ever (even things that I never thought id enjoy doing- collage) and I can only try to apply this to the next projects I do and to keep experimenting with new things.
- I will blog more efficiently, although I was organised this project I think that my blogging could have been far better. It is improving but when I'm producing a lot of work I tend to forget to scan in most of it. So I plan to make a "scan in" day once every week/two weeks to make sure that my blog is constantly up to date.
Overall I don't think there is that much I would do differently, this project is one of the most productive modules I've had so far so I'm going to try and continue this on with the rest of the modules I am doing and will do in the future.
.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
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1
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2
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3
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4
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5
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Attendance
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x
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Punctuality
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x
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Motivation
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x
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Commitment
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x
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Quantity of work produced
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x
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Quality of work produced
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x
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Contribution to the group
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x
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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.
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