I started by looking at previous winners, there were a really varied mix. Some were done in ink, others collage and some were even done in paint (wow). There wasn't really anything that linked any of them. After scrolling through the current entries, I drafting out some ideas. Ohh Deer said that they were looking for Valentines Day cards or Mothers Day cards ideally but all cards in general would be accepted. They accepted square, landscape and portait sized cards.
I thought about doing some 'Im sorry for your loss' cards just because I've only ever seen awful ones in the shops. However, It was harder than first expected so I abandoned that idea pretty quickly.
I drafted out some idea's but if I'm honest, none really felt like they were communicating anything meaningful. Having downloaded some new photoshop brushes a few weeks earlier, I decided instead to just create the pieces in photoshop. It gave me the chance to warm up my skills on a brief without being too worried about the outcome.
After playing around on photoshop for a while, I started to think about creating a 'you can do this' kind of card. I chose the format of a square out of the card option sizes just because I like square cards and I like the format. It also makes it easy to share to social media (especially instagram) because it fits in with the grid look very easily. I had a lot of fun with this one, I kept the colour palette muted blues for the back ground to give off a sense of loneliness, but by introducing bright colours in the sky, it really popped and gave an atmosphere to the card.
With the second card, I opted to make another Valentines Day card. I did consider re-purposing my "love hearts" card from the earlier brief but thought that maybe that was a little bit lazy? Also I'm really having fun with these new brushes (kyles) on photoshop so I thought I would just make another fresh one. The 'Bee Mine' pun is over used and theres always some cheesy bee's on the valentines day selection so I thought that by adding it to the chest of an androgynous character might give a slightly different vibe to the phrase. The bee took forever to draw, I must have googled bee's and bees from above a tonne of times to create something that remotely resembled a bee (I didn't want it cartoony, I wanted it more lifelike).
This brief was a quick turn around for me, I have had a lot of briefs that were a month long and to pick this one up last minute felt nice. I like working under pressure, perhaps more than I do with a long brief where there's ages of time to mull around in ideas. Having a quick brief like this forces me to make snap decisions, pick a colour palette quickly and try and really nail those compositions down within the first couple of hours.
After I entered the competition, I made a mock up of both of the cards on a peg line (because that's what I do with all of my cards) and waited anxiously to see if I had been picked! Unfortunately this time I wasn't been picked, I went to look at the competition winners and the obvious theme they'd gone with was minimalist illustration rather than full card pictures. This is okay though because I'm slowly becoming happier with my work and there is always next year and adding these to my portfolio can't hurt.
This brief was mostly a practice for me, practice to work with new brushes and really define my colour palette useage. Compared to previous cards I've made (even just last years Valentines Day cards) I can really see a difference in my considerations of colour and composition.
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