Evaluation

I feel as my time management has improved from working in my collaborative group. I believe this was because I had other people depending on me and also because I enjoy working with textures and illustrations. However, I do feel as though I could have tried a lot harder for Studio Brief 1. I feel as though I find it quite difficult to present my work to other people as I feel like it’s not good enough against what other people can produce. It took me a while to actually find my collaborative group. Again, I feel as though my shyness can hold me back from trying to be creative. Even though I felt quite shy in my collaborative group, I feel as though I had quite an important role in helping with compositions and the designs of the final responses even though my backgrounds and illustrations were not used. I found that it came easy for me to discuss our decisions the more I got to know my collaborative group, but I found it hard to gauge what it was that my group wanted to aim for towards the end because I feel as though my team mates where quite flustered and worried about the deadline so they took it upon themselves to create the final design without anyone else’s input, which was quite hard to deal with. The way that I dealt with this was having an input into the composition of the posters and card designs. I am aware that I could have done something to have resolved this, but because the job of putting the final submission together was another team mates role in the group, it was too late by the time it came to submitting. I had done I could in the sense that I provided the elements that we had all agreed to used. However, I have learnt to try and communicate better when it comes to deadlines and working in groups. I do feel as though I need to push myself to not be afraid of failure or what other people think of my work. I will usually do quite a bit of work or sketches but will be too shy to follow through and finish if the end result is to submit the work to a public platform. I also feel a lot of pressure to work digitally which can discourage me to execute my ideas and concepts. However, I feel as though I have come to terms with the fact that it is okay for me to be comfortable having a more practical approach to my work. I have always preferred hand drawn animation, but I feel like I am not able to execute a hand drawn animation well digitally. From this, I think I will continue to have a more hands on approach to my work, and continue pushing myself to create. I found a few briefs that I wanted to enter that were taking place in Japan and France, however the submission fees ranged from £50-£100 which is something that I’m not able to afford. I liked quite a few of the D&AD briefs, but again money held me back from submitting to them.                                                                                                                                        I enjoyed evaluating my work on a regular basis. I tend to keep my blog posts as drafts for a while so I can break down the work load and keep going back to them when I think of more things to write about, however this can make my blog look a little confusing and out of order. I do feel like I need to work on how I discuss my processes and my work. I do feel as though I should have invested more time into my own individual practice for the module as I seemed to have focused my best efforts on other projects such as Applied, COP and Collaborative. Even though I prefere the pre-production side of animation, I still enjoy actually animating so it’s just a pity that I hadn’t realized this sooner. Overall, I feel as though I need to push myself to create things that I want to create. I also feel as though I need to find out what it is I want to be good at and pursue it, because at the moment I enjoy character designing and creating backgrounds for my other projects but I didn’t applied these skills to my response to my module as much as I should have.

Project Report

Responsive - final week

As a group, we had decided that we would each take an illustration and create a quick mock up of a card design, we would later meet up and discuss what we all wanted to be included on the card. I decided to chose the angler fish.

In my design, I decided to use a blue watercolour background with yellow, hand- drawn typography. 

I decided to add a yellow, textured boarder around the edge of the back of the card where the facts would be. I did this because on the already existing bear card designs, their texts have boarders around them. Because the Bear cards are extremely hard to read because of the amount of text and how small the writing is, I decided just to keep a decent sized paragraph on the card that would be easier to read.

Here was my brief design for the front of the card. I added some little stars in the corner to fill in some of the negative space. I uploaded this brief template to the drive after meeting with my group to discuss everyone's designs.

Bronte came up with this quick mock up of the poster. 

I decided to leave the compositions and the layout process to my group as I started to colour the Illustrations made by Bronte.

For the colours, I referenced real images of the sea creatures in order to keep them realistic. I was told to use block colours as we would add a grainy texture to the images later.

In order to fill the gaps on the mock-up poster, I decided to create different coloured variations of the star fishes. I decided to use these colours as they are exaggerated hues of what star fish actually are, so they would fit in with the other, brightly coloured illustrations.

Here is what Bronte had come up with. Unfortunately, she had decided to not use a watercolour background, yellow text or my Illustration of the octopus. I put forward how there shouldn't really be a main focus on the poster, as from the start we had agreed that we wanted the poster to be full of illustrations. I decided to move the Diver further down the page and fill in the gaps with the fishes.

Sophie took over and added rectangles around the illustrations so we would know if they would overlap, as they are supposed to be stickers that come off the cards, and we don't want them to overlap.

At this point, I took over in order to have an input in the final design as I felt like my inputs so far have become obsolete. Because we needed to include the Bear logo somewhere on the poster, Sophie decided to give him a little snorkel. However, I felt that this kind of bear logo stood out too much against the poster, so I suggested that we use a wider logo.

We decided to go with the written Bear logo instead, and I placed it at the bottom of the page.

These are the final card designs.

These are the final designs for the backs of the cards. I feel as though these designs aren't the best that they could be as my group seemed to lose communication towards the end.

I decided to take it upon myself to put together the final art board for the submission.

I experimented and played around with how the composition should be in the art board. To make it interesting, I decided to add a couple of illustrations in the bottom right hand corner.

This was the first draft of the art board design. I could clearly see that the poster needed to be bigger, so in turn the illustrations at the bottom needed to be made smaller.

Here is our final art board. 

The submission.

As a group we sat down to put together our submission. We coherently explained our concepts as well as how we would successfully execute our concepts if we were to win.

Overall I feel as though this project has been a learning curve in the sense that it was my first time working with people that I didn't know. For the majority of the process, we communicated successfully, and felt as though we were on the same page a lot of the time. However, even though our individual roles were changed throughout as we saw fit, it was difficult at times to understand what each individual wanted as we were all quite shy and reserved people. It was difficult at times for us to know what direction to go in as we didn't really give anyone the role of directing us as we felt that it needed to be a collaborative process. At the beginning I had done a decent amount of illustrations in the style that we wanted, however we didn't pursue these. At one point, I was in charge of creating colour schemes and composition, however none of this was referenced in the final response due to differences. I enjoyed collaborating with my group  as we all got a long and had similar ideas and tastes.

Studio Brief 2 - Artboard

Studio Brief 1 Artboard

Go Card or Go Home - OHH DEER Responsive Brief

OHH DEER is a stationary company that gives Artists an opportunity to get their work out there in the form of cards, wrapping paper and other quirky objects. When researching into the company, I found this on the "About Us" section:

Because I enjoy the more design and post-production side of the Animation process, I decided to choose briefs that best suit me, that evolve around designing and illustrating.

I thoroughly read through the brief in order to understand what was being asked of me, and then did some research into what the company usually sells in order for me to grasp the tone and style that they like. 

       UNEXPECTED WILLY PUNCH GREETING CARD

BY THEO RIVOLTA

This is an example that OHH DEER use to explain the tone of the illustrations that they like. Even though it's rude, it has a quirky sort of charm.

GLAD YOU'RE MY DAD GREETING...

BY ALLISON BLACK

RELAX DAD GREETING CARD

BY KONG-YEW WONG

I furthered my research by looking at a couple more examples of the more well-rounded and clean illustrations that are on the cards. I feel as though I should aim for this sort of aesthetic as I am usually quite sketchy and messy with my sketches and designs which is something that I want to work on. I feel as though this brief is a great way for me to combine my understanding of character designing as well as giving me the opportunity to create something that I wouldn't neceserally do.

I wrote down my first ideas. I like puns, so I decided to focus on some puns that came to mind that centred around Valentines. 

"Hopilly ever after"

I decided to create a couple of sketches of two Kangeroo's that have clearly just got married, hence the veil and top hat etc. This was my first idea, however, after researching "Hopilly ever after Illustrations" I found ones that were about frogs and rabbits and one of some kangeroo's, so to avoid me running into any complications, I decided to veto this idea.

"You Giraffe me Crazy"

Giraffes are probably one of my favourite animals so I quite liked the idea of creating a card with one on the front. The first sketch I did was of a baby giraffe being kissed by a Mum giraffe in order to fit in with Mother's day. I think the design is quite a quirky design which is what OHH DEER usually go for, however I feel as though because I have drawn giraffes for a previous project, I wouldn't really be challenging myself.

"You and I are in Parrot-Dise"

In the end, I decided to focus on this pun as I felt I could create a cute and clean illustration which is something I'm not really accustom to. Because it is an engagement/Marriage card, I want the colours to be quite neutral, and the design itself to have a sweet and wholesome vibe to it.

I created a couple of quick sketches, experimenting with different shapes, sizes and styles. I wanted to create something unique and cute so I went for more fluid lines and tried to design two parrots that would be sat next to each other, touching beaks, with a little top hat on the man parrot and a little flower crown on the female.

I want the female to look like a cockatoo because they look a little more feminine with their long feathers on their heads.

I experimented with the amount of detail I wanted in my design. I quite liked the rounded parrots that I drew at the top of the page as they're cute and would be perfect for the aesthetic of the card. however, I wanted the design to be a bit more detailed so I focused on the face details.

Here, I went for a more expressive character design. I wanted this brief to challenge me to create an illustration that has Character design elements to it, but also fit in with the brief guidelines and also what the company is looking for.

I created this design and instantly knew that I was going in the right direction. It has the right amount of expression, and is also different to what I would usually create. 

I decided to create a quick mock-up design for my final card design. I decided to use coloured pencil and fine liner to create this as I was still unsure about how I would execute my response. I didn't know whether to hand draw my design and scan it in, or draw it digitally with a slight bit of texture.

I also began to consider typography. I want the type to be quite wobbly and long to fit in with this style of illustration. I would create the type digitally.

I didn't want to have a main inspiration for my design as I felt like I should force myself to create something without a lot of inspiration. I wanted to challenge myself to create something that wasn't something I would usually design. I took inspiration from the images of Parrots I was looking at for the colour scheme, however I think these colours are ridiculously bright for a card that is meant to be for marriage.

I scanned in my pencil drawing and drew over it in Photoshop to create my final design. I didn't think that because I didn't want any harsh outlines on the Parrots that the female Parrot would be difficult to see because she is white also. Because of this I decided to go for a neutral green/blue colour for the background because it didn't take away from the design itself, but also made it stand out against the other cards in the competitions as they didn't really have any background.

Overall, I feel as though my response to this brief was successful in the sense that I challenged myself to create something in a short amount of time, in a style that I wouldn't usually go for. I am happy with my final design, however, I feel like I could have definitely created more than one design to submit to the brief. I personally find it hard to submit work online as I don't really feel comfortable showing my work as I feel I am not as good as other people who are submitting work.

Character design Briefs

I chose this monthly character design competition because I enjoy creating character designs. I like the themes that they choose, however I have found it difficult to commit to creating the designs for the competition because I have been prioritising other projects which isn't good. I also feel a lot of pressure because it is a public submission platform that uses facebook.

One month was the Maori Warrior brief. I decided to create a mind map of what ideas came to mind. I then created a moodboard that consisted of a lot of images of classic Maori images. I also did some history research of what the men and women would wear.

Because the women had tattoos on their chins to show dominence and strength, I decided to sketch a quick image of a woman. I ended up not developing this character further because I found the theme too limited and from looking at other submissions, I felt quite discouraged because of how professional and good they were.

Game of Thrones.

Even though I'm not a big fan of Game of Thrones, I thought that I would push myself and create a character design. After looking at other peoples submissions, I decided to recreate a character called Tyrion Lannister. He was the only character I was sort of familiar with.

I used this image as reference because the shadows in his face are interesting and I wanted to create a grey scale image as I have never done this before.

I did an initial quick sketch of him. Even though his mouth is a little off, I decided to still go ahead with the design. I made his eyes a little bigger and exaggerated the shadows. I really liked the sketchiness to the image so I decided to draw it digitally using a pencil brush in Photoshop.

This is my final image. I didn't really develop it as much as I wanted to, I would have liked to add a little bit more detail, and maybe make him a bit more cartoon-like. I enjoyed using grey scale for the character as I have never done that before. I still feel quite discouraged because I find it difficult to create professional looking images because I'm quite a shaky person, so hard lines are difficult for me to achieve. 

I definitely will submit to this competition in the future as I feel it is good practice, but I will try my best to put more effort into my drawings so I can finally feel comfortable with my drawings and not worry about other people.