Guardian Brief : Short Brief

The Guardian Brief was given to us within the first few weeks of september. We were given a week to create three different spot animations for The Guardian Online. They were to correspond to an article which tackled the following issues: 

• Career's In The Arts and Creative Industry 
• Revivals Of Hand Crafts In A World Of Digital Advancements 
• Creating A Career Portfolio. 

INITIAL IDEAS & FEEDBACK  

I thought about having a small box inside the mind, to symbolise how to get out of your mind and how to start doing things. Almost straight away I knew I wanted Green, Red and Blue as the main colours. I wanted to keep it primary but "fresh" colours. 

I started off with 'creating a career portfolio', I used blue ink in my roughs but moved onto blue gouache as it was more consistent and vibrant. I outlined someones head and created a small box inside the mind, thinking that I wanted to show someone getting out of the box in their mind 'being organised' being a key to having a career portfolio. The small town was there to illustrate the world you are getting into. I'll admit I was pretty stuck when I was creating it, I took it to a feedback session and the response was to get rid of the head/hand outline etc because it was too generic. We didn't know exactly what The Guardian was looking for, other than it being students work and being something exciting on the page. 

I tried creating a hand for 'revivals of hand crafts in a world of digital advancements' at the same time as the head and it felt the same as the head.. too static and too generic no matter what I tried with it. 

CREATING A CAREER PORTFOLIO (Blue box, chicken) 

The response to my tiny boxes were good so I decided to develop on these. The 'Creating A Career Portfolio' was the first one I finished. After some messing around I created a tiny chicken to put inside the box, I didn't want the character to feel like it had a gender too much I just wanted it to be quirky and eye catching. 

When I finished the box it was entirely blue, but after bringing it into photoshop and tweaking the colours I realised that it was.. dare I say it.. too blue? 

I decided to introduce another primary colour just to show motion through the box, hence where the yellow dot lines came in. I think it added some needed fluidity to the piece. 

For a while I toyed with keeping all three pieces 3D boxes but I thought that it was a tad boring and wouldn't look great on the website. Instead I looked into other shapes, I came across hanging terrariums and liked how they could contain a whole little environment inside them. Being inspired by that thought I came across the two shapes I would go on to use: the pyramid and the icosahedron. 

REVIVALS OF HAND CRAFTS IN A WORLD OF DIGITAL ADVANCEMENTS (red icosahedron, fox) 

I started with the icosahedron because it was the hardest shape to draw and I knew that it would take the most time to get right. I chose red as the colour and decided to make it for 'revivals of hand crafts in a world of digital advancements'. Once I had got the shape down, I started putting things inside it. I made a list of hand craft items that are still used today as well as some popular digital items. 

I then chose to make another little character to put inside to show that it was a little world. I decided on a fox because it went best with the colour red. Most of the objects were drawn in block colour as my paintbrush wasn't small enough to get the detail I needed. To solve this problem, I went onto photoshop and drew (on a wacom) onto the gouache solid blocks. This worked well for me, again I added in the yellow dotted line afterwards using the wacom. It kept it looking hand drawn but without me having to redraw the whole thing if I made a mistake. 

CAREERS IN THE ARTS AND CREATIVE INDUSTRY (green Pyramid, moose man) 

After finishing 'Revivals of hand crafts in a world of digital advancements' I set upon the final spot illustration - ' Careers in the arts and creative industry'. I saved the colour green and the pyramid especially for this one (just because I thought triangles looked way better in green). It didn't take as long as the other two just because I knew the process. I decided on a moose for the little character just because I thought his antlers would be good juxtaposition to the triangle. The problem I did have with this creating this was that there was smudging issues and a few pencil lines that were hard to get out without snagging the paper. To counter these issues, I changed the levels in photoshop so most the pencil marks were removed. On the ones that didn't budge I had to use the clone stamp tool on. I also drew in the yellow line on this one, in gouache before it came into photoshop because I wanted to be able to see that it had been painted on rather than a solid yellow line. 

FINAL THOUGHTS 

My spot illustrations weren't selected for The Guardian but I still had a lot of fun making them and it was the first time I felt really confident in my photoshopping skills. It was good practice bringing in something analogue and tweaking it without losing that hand drawn feel to it.