Applied Illustration: Drafting up the Project Proposal

Today we did some more group work before setting to writing our project proposal drafts,
I am pretty sure at this point that I want to do character and narrative after looking at some other illustrators who are involved in it. It's something that I look at a lot in my personal time so it makes sense to research more into it.
I want to start at the basics, by looking at storyboarding for film essentially. I took out a few books from the library. I got two books on basic film storyboarding, this mostly came from us talking to Glyn Dillon last week, he said it was important to know how to storyboard scenes and what will work and what won't.
As well as those I took out two concept art books, the first being a star wars concept art book because it focuses on landscapes as telling the narrative as well as character development.
The second book is Howls Moving Castle concept art book, I took that out just to look at the process they go through to create the scenes as I feel like studio ghibli are especially good at storytelling.

Applied Illustration: 5 Contemporary Illustrators and my own take

Character & Narrative Contemporary Illustrators 

NOELLE STEVENSON 

• comics are readable online 
• Strong storytelling 
• Available across many mediums 
• I like her artwork, i think it's well thought out composition wise but also funny
• Produces comic book novels but promotes her work throughout a big range of social media hence why most of her stuff is online 

I look at Noelle's work fairly often, I'm interested in her work because she is very character driven and her characters are personable. She takes time in creating her comics and developing how the characters move and react in each situation. When drawing some of my own things, I often try to keep in mind how the characters would move and facially react in the situations. 


JILLIAN TAMAKI 

• Runs her own sketch blog which is separate from her professional work, which is good to see that she's constantly working and thinking 
• Her comics are small and short with unique thoughts behind each 
• Colour isn't something she always uses, focuses a lot on the storytelling. 
• Created books with cousin and made sure her online work was ongoing throughout, after the release of "this one summer" she was recognised and then started to produce a wide variety of editorial work as well as writing narratives for various shows. 

I love Jillian Tamaki's work for a completely different reason to Noelle's work. Jillian creates quick quirky characters in interesting situations, which make for a quick and easy read in the mornings when I'm looking for something to cheer me up. This is something I have tried to apply to my own work in 505, getting across a mood or situation really quickly without having to have too many frames. 

Jillian does also have longer publications with recurring characters in, what I like most about these is her restricted colour palettes. I am often put off reading a comic book if it has too many colours in it, I find it hard to concentrate on the words and hard to read (especially if that persons style is very ink driven). 

DICK VINCENT 

• Runs and keeps a blog and social media accounts, posts something new most days 
• Goes to and participates in Print Fairs and events 
• His work is both original ideas and his own take on media culture works (such as stars wars and romeo + juilet pictured) 
• Works in one or two mediums, keeps his work consistent 
• Sells his work on Etsy 
• Has strong concepts in his work and often well thoughtout compositions. 

I enjoy looking at Dick Vincent's work most mornings, he keeps an up to date instagram which is where his main audience is at. His work is very media driven, he often recreates characters from popular culture  - such as game of thrones to attract a younger audience whilst also having his own spin on it. What I like most about his work is how adaptable he can be with his media presence, if anything happens in the world, he can release a small drawing the same day and receive traction from it. 








MATT FORSYTHE 

• Inventive and explorative with his creations 
• Uses a variety of mediums and colours 
• Still very identifiable as his own work (it is his style). 
• Runs an up to date blog with his own personal work as well as working on other cartoon creations such as Adventure Time etc. 
• Has a wide variety of things he works on, small individual works, prints, small comics. 

I look at Matt Forsythe's work mostly in the evenings 

TOM HAUGOMAT 

• Very decisive in his colour palettes 
• Has a range of work, produces stuff for magazine, for himself, for clients etc. 
• Thinks about his composition more than any other illustrator I look at
• Very recognisable work 
• Keeps an up to date blog and social media. 

I like to look at Tom Haugomat's work because there is just such a range in what he produces. He produces work for lots of different clients, each with it's own careful picked out colour palette and unique composition. His work is very neat and considered, my own work is nothing like this but I admire what he does and always aim to have the same kind of composition thinking as him.

Applied Illustration: Initial research

Today we were introduced to OUIL505. 

We talked about the six different categories 

• Publishing & Book Design
• Editorial & Reportage
• Character & Narrative
• Product & Packaging
• Children's Book & Education 
• Object & Environment

and our initial responses to them. We sorted into groups and discussed what each category involved when we were asked the question what its relevance was to Society, Ethics, Technical, Cultural and it's main themes and sub-themes. 

For the session we had all  been asked to collect a range images for 3 of the categories and during the task we pooled all of our photos so we could see a bigger range of everything. 

I think it really helped actually, at the start I was looking at Object& Environment,  Publishing & Book Design and Character & Narrative. After the session it helped me cut down to decide between just two (publishing and Character & Narrative) and gave me ideas of what more to look into. 

Applied Illustration: Project Proposal

Applied Illustration - Big Heads Glyn Dillon

BIG HEADS GLYN DILLON 

This week we got to meet Glyn Dillon as part of our big heads series that happens at the college on regular tuesdays. I don't often go to Big Heads but I had actually heard of Glyn Dillon from his work on the Nao Brown book he finished a few years ago. 
I didn't realise that he was actually a concept art/ costume designer for star wars and so that made it extra exciting that we got to talk to him and listen to his life. 

During the talk he told us how he started off as a comic book artist, wiring with his brother (who ran DEADLINE magazine and who first run Tank Girl). He got to meet the Gorrilas and work with them for awhile. 

NOTES 

• Never set off to be a costume designer but fell into it being a concept designer 
• Just keep drawing no matter what
• Comics is a very solitary thing 
• Concept art felt like he was contributing to something , communicating with the crew, part of something bigger
• POSTURE is important 
• Worked with people who went on to become Harry Potter concept artists 
• Get yourself out there, let people know who you are
• It is not down to talent, there will always be someone more talented than you but you can always be the most persistent. Determination will get you further than talent. 
• Essential to storyboarding: be fast, clear and know how to tell a story. 
• Storyboarding, know the rules of filming (180 degree rule?) film makers don't always know when they're asking you if it will work
• What to show in your portfolio? > keep it specific if you're interviewing with movie types, money is time and they are only interested in seeing the important stuff. 
• Never presume they have a computer, keep it backed up. 

I really loved hearing about Glyn Dillon's practice because I think he has had a big range of work, from comic's (which I'm not so interested in.. only web comics) to storyboarding/concept art down to costume design. I like that his work isn't hyper realistic but he still manages to get his point across.