Extended Practice: Print Progression

 P R I N T     P R O G R E S S I O N 


After finishing getting close to finishing yesterday I printed off a tester print, just to see what else needed tweaking. I also wanted to get peoples opinions on the text placing and whether it looked better with text or without and whether the font itself was right.

A few people commented that the script was too cursive for the tone of voice (some commenting that it suited the character Negan correctly but others who arent familar with that character might find it out of place). As a result of so many comments made about the font itself I decided to have a change around with it. Pictured below are a series of test runs with the final poster using futura type at the top and poplar at the bottom, although I'm normally fond of matching fonts, futura was too thin at the bottom and poplar was too thick for the tagline. I'm going to have a final crit tomorrow just incase any last minute changes need to be made.

It was also suggested to be to have a different colour background, I still feel like black is best but for peace of mind I also tried it with a dark blue.

(same font top and bottom) 

(Navy blue background) 

 

                    (I still liked the cursive at the bottom but it didn't feel right with a non cursive script at the top) 

(same text top and bottom, I liked it on the bottom but it felt too invasive and thick at the top. This was scrapped along with the others). 

After today's session the above poster design is the one I am most likely to stick with. The changes made to this were a result of some conversations and opinions I asked for around the studio. I am still unsure about whether or not it will sell, so hopefully having a fresh pair of eyes on it in the morning will help. 

EXP: Travelling Man Progress

M A K I N G  P R O G R E S S 

This is the current progress made on my travelling man poster, yesterday I decided to have the characters filled in with a secondary fill (with the opacity at 50%). I still think its a good choice to have made because they now stand out better. The second decision made yesterday was to have the background black, this was after I accidentally coloured the background and realised it gave the poster the edge it needed. 

C R I T 

I've also printed off the poster smaller, just to ask people opinions on the text tomorrow. 

I picked the curved font because it matches the attitude of the character (Negan, in red) when he address the others. However I'm not sure whether it works as a poster as a whole. Im fairly confident in the red stripe and text at the bottom but its the font and tag line that I want some critiquing from the others competing. 

 P L A N S   F O R  T O M O R R O W 

my plans for tomorrow are to redraw some of the part i'm unhappy with (ricks gun, Abraham's gun, maggie's shirt and potentially throw Michonne's sword in there too). 

EXP: Travelling Man, Making a start

T A K I N G   I T     T O   P H O T O S H O P 

There was very little time for sketching out what I wanted with this poster so I decided to do it entirely digitally which is risky for me especially since I don't have any way to work at home once I choose to make something digital. Investing in a macbook is something I need to do so I can continue work at home, having to work at the studio when a deadline is short is tedious because there are only so many hours I can work in the studio before I am hungry, tired or freezing cold and it's dark to walk home. Despite all of these reasons, working in digital seemed the best bet for something that needed to be a quick turn around. 

I started off by sourcing photos of the current actors in the season, as the premier was about to have a character killed off, it made the most sense to put the bad guy (negan) in the red of the colour palette and everyone else in the others, blue purple and green. It had been decided that white and black were also to be included in that 4 colour palette. 
I brought characters in and traced around their bodies so that I could still put my own twist on it, but so I didn't loose time on trying to get the hand positions and guns right (I still suck at hand drawing, im getting better though). 

After I had drawn most of them I started to arrange them, this was honestly THE hardest part. I ended up learning how to lock the image and colour the image without colouring over the top (thanks to Jack helping me) otherwise I'd have been stuck with characters being the colour I drew them in. It was hard getting the colours easily distrubuted, I didn't want too many pinks close together or too many purples far apart. It was very hard to space them out. I have also been messing with the opacity to change the colours slightly, I really liked the effect even though I discovered it on accident. 

EXP: Travelling Man/ Thoughtbubble Print

We got briefed today about contributing to the Thoughtbubble festival with Travelling man, this year however we only got a week before getting to exhibit which really annoyed me. Last year's third years got a whole month to prep themes and colour scheme so it was really last minute for us.
Amber and a few others decided to take charge (as I've been working on the Lifting tower brief I really havent had that much spare time) and decide colour palettes and theme.

I really appreciated having a colour palette because it makes my job immediately faster once I know I'm limited to a range of colours. The theme was fan art, it left it open for most of us so we could draw something we enjoy rather than doing something tedious. Especially with a turn around as fast as this. My first thought was to go for a studio ghibli film poster, it's very popular and would appeal to a wider audience.
I soon discovered that I suck at drawing anime style and to learn how to do it was going to take more than a week. I love the movies too much to attempt them in my style and mess them up. I started to think about other tv shows and things that I like, Buffy the Vampire is one that I thought about doing but with the season premiere of The Walking Dead coming up, that just felt like the natural progression so I started drawing them.

EXP: : Lifting Tower Project

L I F T I N G   T O W E R   B R I E F 

These were my project proposal boards for The Lifting Tower. I was mostly pleased with these apart from the third proposal "make a wish". I felt that it was too rushed as the other two had been completed earlier on in the week and this concept took a while to formulate. On reflection I should have probably scrapped it and gone with another concept. 
I started off by making small storyboards for the 1min long animation, they didn't have any times underneath them because I was going for a simple idea that could have extra things added into it. I stuck to bright colours for the colour palette, mostly because of how the projection would look (the stones are dark,  so anything too light would show them up and anything too dark would look dull). We were also told to stick with christmassy colour themes, out of all three concepts I think "seasonal spirit" was the strongest because red green and white are the strongest xmas colours (in my opinion). 

Extended Practice: Differences in Briefs

This week we talked about the differences between 1 a week briefs and competition/live briefs in groups and talked about what briefs we'd made a start on. So far I've done The Lifting Tower Project (set myself a week for that brief) and started work on the 11 Second Club Brief for this month. We talked about our briefs in our group and how they fit into our initial statement of intent. Although it all seems like really straightforward stuff, writing it down is helping me to clarify myself, like why I am doing certain briefs and whats the pros/cons for doing it. 

O N E  A  W E E K  B R I E F S 

• No Pressure from clients 
• Can't get it wrong 
• Experimental/playful quick turn around 
• Practical skills development 
• Efficiency & Effective 
• Personal/theme/concepts 
• Development of Practice 
• Reflection and Evaluation 
• Structure and routine 
• Gaining a following 

L I V E  A N D  C O M P E T I T I O N  B R I E F S 

• Collaborations 
• Professional competencies 
• Experience of client based work 
• Get paid/win prices 
• Specifications (given) 
• Problems to solve 
• Gain contacts, work further on
• Research process 
• Working to a deadline 

EXP: Lifting Tower Project Initial Concepts

We were briefed in class about a potential collaboration with Lumen. Lumen are a audiovisual collective that work in the north mostly creating projections for clients. I immediately wanted to get involved just because projection work is actually quite hard to get into, its a relatively new thing so if you can establish yourself as creating work that projects well onto walls etc it's a big plus for your portfolio.

The brief is to create 3 concepts for an animation to be put up in wellington place, nothing too christmassy or cheesy but something that has seasonal feelings to it. (obviously this is a google image of a sunny wellington place, but its going to be projected onto the lifting tower in december, so it will need to be bright and colourful).


In my issuu are my initial concepts, I thought about a reindeer wanting to make a wish to get a red nose, maybe a girl getting something out of a present too. The idea being "make a wish" at christmas time. 
The next idea was a person looking for the perfect gift, it felt a little cliched but still interesting to explore.  Then another idea was an astronaut  not being able to make it home for christmas so getting "i love you" in fairy lights on the moon, I did originally think Merry Xmas but they said to keep it pretty non religious so I just went with I love you instead. I started to develop this because it was the story I thought about most, it didn't have to just show the dad, we could link in other charcacters too and have them across the animation. 
The rest are just roughs of a potential story with a space jumping reindeer, but it makes like no sense so I don't think i'll be developing that any further. 

Extended Practice: Wants & Needs

M y  R a t i o n a l e 

[What you want to get out of it, why your are doing it, what you are going to do.]

Towards the end of last year i realised that I am really interested in character design and landscapes (for film and video games). This has made me want to explore briefs angled towards these areas more than others.
Im still interested in publication and the processes involved in that, so some briefs are aimed to develop my knowledge and understanding on these.

I want this module to make me a more active illustrator and to push myself to try things that I'm curious about but have less experience in.


5  T H I N G S   I   W A N T   T O  D O 

1. I want to start publishing online/ in person because I need to create a stronger presence in the illustration community. This means I will be able network easier and people will be able to access my work easier. I need to set up a website and start publishing work on the site for this to happen.

2. I want to visit HQ's of places I want to potentially work. I need to do this so I can experience what it's like to work in these environments and to make contacts with those people in charge. To do this I need to make a list of places to visit and start contacting people now.

3. I want to develop my skill set. I need to do this so I can develop as an illustrator. At the moment I am wanting to developing my collage and screenprint skills, in order to do this I'm going to have a conversation with the print studio technicians and talk about how collage and screen print work together and so they can help me with the technicalities of how to do it.

4. I want to develop a tone of voice. I need to do this to develop as an illustrator and so I can be recognised by other professionals and have my work out there. In order to do this I need to keep making things and keep drawing.

5. I want to get better at character design and possibly animating. I want to do this so I can round myself as a character designer, the briefs I am attempting will help me achieve this.

Extended Practice: Teaching myself how to make Gif's again

Today I was really pleased with my progress, I've long wanted to go back to making GIFS but just haven't had the time to revisit them since first year. Part of my extended practice is thinking about where I want to go in the future and I definitely want to improve my animating skills. I've always been interested in animation but have never really seen it as a part of my illustrative practice until now. Today I illustrated a scene out of the studio window (there was a fire in LS12 we could see from the window) and I was really pleased with it. It took me around 2 hours to make, purely based on the fact I couldn't remember anything to do with how to make it.  

I got so excited with the result that I went home and made another GIF. This one ran slightly longer and was based on a poledancer I follow on instagram. After making these two today, inspired me to go looking for animation briefs to enter. The two main ones I found were loopdeloop and 11 Second Club, loopdeloop just asks for small looping gifs whereas 11 Second Club asks for an 11 second animation to a randomly picked voice clip. 

Im going to focus mainly on 11 second club for now, just to see how it works out, with loopdeloop being a possible for one of my short one a week briefs.