Tutorial 05/03/2012

Tutorial

05/03/2012

The tutorial I had yesterday with both Ian and Gary produced some fresh ideas to incorporate into my work. I managed to express my joy at securing a portfolio visit with the Guardian on the 21^st of March so I only have another one to secure to have a solid two to my name.

They looked at the Howkapow brief that I am currently working on with the Three Billy Goats Gruff narrative in mind but they felt that the illustrations of the goats were pretty weak. To rectify this they have suggested changing the viewpoint for the reader, the goat doesn’t just have a viewpoint from its side. Reflecting on the stronger elements I have created previously, the ones crafted from an aerial viewpoint seem to be the ones hitting the spot. Also, there needs to be more reduction taking place focusing on the main features, the one’s I showed today (although I had 5 different versions) all clung on to too much detail. As well it would be interesting to see a change in the scale of the elements, for example a tree doesn’t have to be bigger than a goat. Changing scale will keep things fresh and more free, conforming to the constraints of reality will make work boring very quickly, illustrators need to use imagination.

It was highlighted too that I need to get into the habit of creating more roughs. Although I have created a rough for this particular brief, there is only one and it doesn’t show options or opportunities. The roughs don’t have to be big, they can just be small thumbnails – but I need a space to be able to play with ideas, and lots of versions of them not just one. This is particularly prevalent with the Grimm’s brief where I create lots of separate elements but when it came to fitting them all together they didn’t work. If I had produced these various thumbnails as I was going along I could have seen how they were going to fit together and made sure that they were of the right size, colour and medium. To look into this further I will conduct some research on Abram Games, not for technique but to look at the reams and reams of thumbnails he produced before he set to work on the real thing. If an idea doesn’t work at a small scale it will never work to scale. Additionally, work with shape, everything I create doesn’t have to be in a square or rectangle, look at circular canvases or triangular for example.

My aims for this week then are to have the Howkapow illustration wrapped up and to make a start on the Secret London brief set by the Association of Illustrators (AOI).