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).

Portfolio Visit 7 - Paul Rose & Chris Platt

Portfolio visit 7

Paul Rose & Chris Platt

Rapport Events

Hilton Street, Manchester

Today I met Paul and Chris at Rapport Events in Manchester, an ideas led agency for whom Chris is the creative director and Paul is the senior designer. The introduced themselves as looking to ‘give something back’ and also to recruit new emerging talent on potential projects (and silly me didn’t order business cards in time!)

Both were extremely pleasant guys who were down to earth and relatable, coming straight from the print room wasn’t such a bad idea after all as even they were in jeans.

As I started to show them my portfolio it immediately became apparent that they were drawn in by my work. The Uganda images were striking and clearly held their attention whilst the collaged elements were ‘workable’ and offered lots of ‘potential’. I have started to create a set of these elements now including the spider, grasshopper and ladybird from last year in addition to the frog, apple and bird from the Grimm’s brief. They reckon that these are what the Guardian will be particularly interested in. However, owing to their craftsmanship and tactility that they could see on the very 2D paper, they asked if I by chance had the originals. Luckily, (and it was lucky as I was scanning them in this morning) I did. The one piece of advice they did offer was to take my sketchbook with me to any future portfolio visits as they in particular find the originals and the ideas behind them etc much more interesting than the final piece, although the final piece obviously shows its refinement etc.

They liked the reverse stitched type which I used for the James and the Giant Peach redesign for Puffin in 2011, but they didn’t see the need to include the stitched type I created for Grimm’s fairy-tales. One, it didn’t stand up to the former and two it had already been done earlier on in the portfolio and added nothing new to the table. I think that these are very valid points and will no doubt take it out after today. That was the only criticism that they offered though, the rest was very positive feedback.

Both guys cottoned on to the style that I am starting to develop with the collaged characters and they feel that it will work very well in a design environment. They feel that it works better than the painterly work seen in the Uganda project and is something to pursue.

When they asked about promotional materials, I told them of my plans to create coasters with my design on one side and contact details on the reverse so that the mailing I send has a purpose and not a ‘throw away’ design – it is something that can be used and kept. They were definitely interested in these! Maybe sending one when they’re finished would be a good idea seeing as I didn’t have a business card with me this time around. I definitely need to have these sorted for the trip to London later on in the month.

All in all a very good portfolio visit, thanks to both guys for giving me some of their precious time. With a bit of luck I may be on their contact list for future work, fingers crossed.

You can find more information about Rapport Events Manchester at http://rapportevents.com/

Polish posters

27/02/2012

Gary reviewed my work with me today and gave his honest opinions, which I admire, I’d rather somebody be brutally honest than let me proceed with work they secretly think its twaddle. To my delight he likes my apple, to quote ‘that is a good apple’. I’m glad about this because I think that my sickle apple is very witty and I’m extremely proud of it. As for the other elements it is beside on my cover thus far he wasn’t so drawn in by them. Admittedly, I can see where he’s coming from. With the apple being so strong and witty the others are just not in the same leaguer. The apple is inanimate whereas the mouse and frog are characters, and where the characters’ concepts are merely transformations the apple by contrast has a dominant vs. subordinate quality. He suggested that the weaker elements needed to be more 70/30 in ratio than 50/50 which they are at the moment; the apple succeeds in this 70/30 category. The dominant vs. subordinate theme proves the apple to be stronger also, where the apple is the dominant element the sickle is the subordinate however this subordinate element plays a huge part in communicating the message.

To help push this further Gary suggested looking towards Polish poster designs again to compare how they deliver this 70/30 ratio of wit, by no means for their use of technique.

I like how this poster looks like a wolf as well as a gun, this could be a great starting point for my wolf that I struggling with so badly. The idea that an inanimate object could be the character instead like the bread or wine that Little Red Riding Hood is carrying to her granny. By taking away the character feel of the elements I will no doubt end up with more elements to the same standard and quality as that of the apple. Though I do not want to get back into the catch-twenty-two situation where I am thinking about something else so much that I cannot replicate it for over thinking.

I think that some of the polish posters that I have looked at are quite witty but I don't understand some of them. Probably because their wit got lost in translation and the foreign language that accompanies the designs doesn't particularly help an english reader.

However, when I asked how to move on from where I am at currently, we decided that the best way would be to start a new project. Maybe I will revisit this Grimm's book cover design and maybe I won't. I have so far spent seven weeks on it and am no further forward in resolving the problem, sometimes it's good to show that you can leave things behind because they didn't have the mileage and sometimes they just take a bit longer to resolve themselves than other projects. As yet I'm not decided. All I do know is that I have had fun designing my elements and they will definitely be used in some way for my final major project show. Currently I am thinking of putting the strong images onto screens to print with and make some minimalist film posters. The screen print will tie in well with the polish poster research too due to the gritty quality screen printing offers.

Research: Rand, O'Neill

Research

Over the last few weeks I’ve begun to notice that I’ve blogged quite a bit about what I’ve been doing, reflecting on my personal work and its progress and events and activities I’ve taken part in but there’s not a lot of reference to my research. So today I shall start, from the beginning.

I’ve always had a love for Eric Carle and a few of the professionals I’ve been to see already have commented on a likeness between mine and his work (which is a lovely compliment I must say) although my technique differs slightly and comparing my work to his was never an aim. Though I’ve done research on him before so I shall not post endless images of his again, instead I’ve been proactive and found somebody else I’ve also taken a shine to and is more formally associated with graphic design rather than illustration- Paul Rand.

As my tutors and professionals are starting to make connections for me stating that my work has a more graphical quality with a good sense of space and use of it, I thought looking to more graphical artists would make for good and effective research. Rand uses simplistic shapes similar to how I work and Carle but he uses more flat colours unlike the textures which Carle adopts. I flit between the two, sometimes textured, sometimes flat depending on the context of the work.

I’ve noticed that the colours of Rand are very prominent but he utilises black a lot which I tend to shy away from, instead opting for grey blue or brown. I like how he renders his own typeface which I do still struggle with, however with him being a renowned graphic designer I suppose it comes more with his territory.

Another inspirational source at the moment is Martin O’Neill. I’m not looking at him from a technique angle but from an archiving angle. Ian suggested O’Neill in my tutorial recently and I did blog about my OCD kicking into overdrive at the thought of such a system. However looking at his work and working space has planted the seed of needing some kind of a system. I need to find a system which works for me whereby I can store all my magazines and ephemera and can then go back and locate it with ease. Currently I flick through reams and reams of magazines searching for a particular colour, texture or sizeable piece to use in my work which is time consuming and not an effective way of using my time. If I had an archive and a system I would be able to locate these much easier. For example a drawer labelled ‘pink’ where all pinks would be stored. If these drawers were to be lever arch files instead I could then even sub title them into different contexts or textures or shades of pink etc.

Just the images alone are enough to give me the eebie jeebies.

I’ve been looking at Little Red Riding Hood resources as it was going to be the starting point of my next part of FMP. I was, if you remember, going to make puppets to make a short film out of. However after giving this much consideration have decided that sticking with one technique rather than skimming the surface of several will be much more beneficial to me and my practice in the long run and hopefully my final mark too. The research that I have conducted so far though will aid my revised proposal, which at the moment I’m thinking of some minimalist film posters. From the research I’ve conducted today to aid me with getting my current elements up to scratch with their magical twists I found them very inspiring and quite funny. Additionally, this will hopefully make up for the time I’ve lost designing the book cover as I can utilise some of the elements from the first project to create these. By recycling my work I will be bringing my FMP as a whole back on schedule. Some of the images I’ve located for Little Red Riding Hood research are cute, some scary and some just beautiful, take a look below.

Finally, here are some of the minimalist film posters I’ve been looking at (additional to the ones on my modern met. Some of them in particular are very witty and some of just humourous. Please do not be offended by the inclusion of the Hitler referenced posters, I just thought that these too were quite witty. Thanks to Dom for mentioning the minimalist film posters, if I'm honest they're not something I've ever looked at before or even really knew that they existed and to such extent! There were so many to choose from that I selected the one's which I thought were witty and clever. Ian talked about my individual elements for the cover of Grimm's fairy-tales having a 'twist' which I have interpreted in my own way as wit and I hope that I can achieve that to a similar standard as the images I have selected below.

I think that work that makes people laugh or think 'that's witty' is more engaging than work that tries to be something it's not - art is labelled too often as pompous and an institution which is exclusive and not accessible to all. If I an engage my audience in a mutual sense of wit it would be extremely pleasing. I like the use of strong colours associated with these minimalist posters and as seen in my James and the Giant Peach cover design last year I do tend to use a restrictive palette, usually a bright one too as seen in the Helping Uganda Project. Because of this I particularly like the wax on wax off poster - lets face it, it's genius and the Simpson's poster, even though I myself am not a Simpson's fan. I like the Rocky poster generally because I'm a huge Rocky fan and it's instantly recognisable. My two main ingredients that I need to take from this minimalist research is to make elements that are instantly recognisable (stripping them back to their core details) and add copious amounts of wit to tell the story (ie an apple with a sickle from the grim reaper to signify that this particular apple means death).

'Magical' elements

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/minimalist-fairy-tale-posters

This blog has many minimalist posters which I have been advised to look at recently. What is really interesting is that all the posters on this particular blog relate to fairy-tales, many of which are contained in the Grimm’s collection. I have been using these as inspiration for my magical ‘twists’ which my work still requires to bring it up to standard.

This weekend my aim is to have at least these visual magical twists illustrated and polished on Photoshop ready to put into format on Monday (27/02), if not before. So far I have managed to think of and conceptualise magical twists for all of my four elements though two are better than the others. The wolf will have little red riding hood’s hood for his nose and the apple will have the Grim reaper’s sickle for its stalk. Both of these ideas were formulated through the minimalist poster research so this advice was well worth taking!

Already I can feel my ideas and work being pushed on. I am starting to think of other ways to have my work presented for example how would these elements look in flocking on fabric? Grimm’s fairy-tales are set in the woods, how would be characters look carved out of wood?

After yesterdays tutorial I have made it my priority to continue with my element making keeping the more magical concept in mind. The one's that I have crafted so far do have a slight visual twist too, with the frog and mouse showing their transformations and the apple bearing its death connotation, I hope that you can understand them :)

Tutorial 23/02/2012

Tutorial

23/02/2012

10:30-11:00

Another tutorial brings another wave of self-confidence issues, reflection on my actual abilities and a host of additional work to produce. When presenting my work this far on the Grimm’s project, my tutor didn’t look overly impressed, I’ll be honest I don’t think I would have been overly either, my ‘attempt’ at work since the last tutorial has been a lame one. So I’ve discovered that magazines are where the collage lies, that is the material which, for me, produces the best results. Apologies for the lack of support on the origami paper front, it’s nothing personal, I just don’t think that the finish it is as high with the matt quality to the paper. If this is what I am going to pursue, and it looks pretty certain that I will be doing then Ian has suggested looking at Martin O’Neill. I was sure I’d seen or heard him mentioned before and after a quick Google search my thoughts were confirmed. He’s the guy who archives his magazines and ephemera in drawers and shoe boxes, all neatly labelled in a studio on the south east coast. I must admit I do much prefer this manual approach to a digital archive where I’m sure I would lose everything in a spiralling and impending doom. However, looking at his studio just urges me to want to go and tidy everything away and clean everything, it just looks so messy! Sure I like the idea of being able to live like this, but in the bijous room I have it’s just not feasible anyway. Though the idea of buying magazines in bulk from the online marketplace, such as eBay for example, and not knowing what to expect when it arrives, sounds very exciting and promising. Doing this will no doubt add different textures, paper quality and era to my work and archive.

Other suggestions were to exploit the elements I have already crafted to make them more magical and to give them a sense of purpose being on the cover for Grimm’s fairy-tales. At the moment my audience looks at the cover and sees a wolf, an apple, a fog and a mouse, but they are left waiting for something else, that something doesn’t appear. For example the wolf, could it be described by teeth alone? Does the frog need a crown if he is a frog prince? Could the apple have both a nice and bad side? These little twists will make my work more witty and gritty at the same time. There were suggestions to maybe invert some of the elements and distort them now they have been crafted. The most joyous part of the tutorial was knowing that I had now made enough elements, I just need to start utilising them better.

It was also suggested that I could look at minimalist film posters which show this visual twist. After another quick Google search I found them very interested clever witty and at times humorous, if I could replicate this in my cover I would be very proud.

One question I did ask was whether the FMP mark was focused on depth of exploration. For example last semester I skimmed the surface of several processes rather than digging deep with just the one, which Ian agreed with. My next project was to make some puppets for a short film of one of the fairy-tales only this would again mean changing process when I’m just starting to get to grips with another. Therefore it has been decided that I might yet change my proposal to incorporate the current technique I am adopting throughout the FMP. I think that this will give my work more consistency and credibility at the end.

Over the course of the next week I aim to dedicate more time to my work, but not only that but to dedicate it effectively. I’ve seen over the last week me sit procrastinating rather than doing productive work, this needs to stop and I must learn to be more disciplined. If what I am doing is not going to affect the final outcome I need to desist. I also need to work quicker and harder if I am going to achieve what I hope to achieve and be more consistent, which I think is finally coming, though slowly. I think that my lack on confidence in my own ability sometimes prevents me from progressing, though I have been reassured slightly with today’s tutorial. My next actions in completing this part of my project are to scan in all my current elements into Photoshop, polish these up and make any adjustments they may require and put them into my template which I have designed for the cover. I aim to have this part of the project completed now by the end of Sunday 26/02/2012 so that I can promptly move on to my next project. I think that I am spending too much time dilly dallying and not enough time producing actual work.

Book Binding with Lucy Wilson

Book Binding

Lucy Wilson

21/02/2012 @ 1:30

Third Year Critical Studies Room

http://www.elizabethsheart.com/

This afternoon I was given the opportunity to participate in a book binding workshop, which I must admit was thoroughly enjoyable, although I had my reservations at first.

It was held my Lucy Wilson who can be found at http://www.elizabethsheart.com/ an illustrator and designer working in the heart of Liverpool. Her portfolio boasts an array of illustrations, made things and exhibitions. And I must say when she showed us her portfolio, which she brought along with her, it was the cutest I’ve ever seen. It is professionally bounded by herself and used different papers depending on the image she is presenting, it was truly beautiful. I daren’t touch it in case I got my greasy fingerprints on it, it was that delicate.

Lucy was really approachable but wasn’t scared of the silence at the same time. We were clearly quite a quiet group but she seemed happy for the peaceful environment whilst we were concentrating on our budding skills.

Bind the pages wasn’t half as difficult as I had imagined though I’m not sure if I will remember all the steps, I have written them down just in case, for my own referral more than anything else.

Instructions:

Always start stitching from the outside inwards with the spine facing towards you, preferably with it lined up neatly against the edge of a table. Remember to tape the first few inches to the right side of you. Sew in and out of your pre-prepared holes until you reach the other side. For A5 paper folded in half (to make an A6 sized book) find the middle of the fold then measure 2cm either side of this mark, then 3cm either side of those and finally 1cm either side of those. Pull the needle downwards through the first loop you made to connect the pages together. To finish first two pages knot together with bit masked to the table. Coming back use the loop furthest away in the direction in which you are travelling from the previous page. Always remember to fold any paper with the grain where possible.

I’ve never heard of paper having a grain before (I know as a child my Dad always told me to cut my meat with the grain because it’s easier, I guess it’s a similar principle?). Basically, if you try to fold the paper one way it will bounce slightly but will be difficult to crease and will crinkle but if you try to fold it the correct way it should fold easily and smoothly. So there you go.

I did feel slightly guilty for having to leave five minutes early to catch Nicola Slater for my portfolio session but these things can’t be helped. What I would say though is that this workshop was worthwhile and will no doubt be extremely useful, if I see any more in future I won’t be the one to turn my nose up anymore. Thanks to Lucy and to the college for arranging such a worthwhile afternoon, good job guys.

Please take the time to check out some of Lucy's fantastic work, the link is posted twice above.

Also, for similar work check out

www.hilaryj.co.uk

www.lucymayschofield.co.uk

www.ratchfords.co.uk