2nd Double Page Spread

I played around with character designs a lot for this project. In my sketchbook I tried to stick to simple shapes to describe expressions and form the figures. This is the first time I have looked at characters in this way, I am not used to creating non-figurative characters but so far I am having a lot of fun!

Final Design

Final Design

I have had so much fun making this print! It has been nice to work on something purely on the basis of what a customer wants to put on their wall. Adventure and travel are subjects I love to work with, and I have been trying to incorporate more hand made paintings/imagery back into my work. Now that I have developed my photoshop skills and am happy with my process it has been great to think about marrying the two together.

After printing, I want to look at foiling and how I can add this to the design. I have not tried this before but I plan on asking James in the print room and maybe Mike to find out what the best way of doing this would be.

Mock up - Print

Development & Roughs

Painting

Within my practice in general, I want to put analog media such as painting back into my work. I love the process of just spending time with my sketchbook and thinking through drawing but when I'm close to a deadline or on a time pressured brief I tend to skip a lot of steps that I think are important.

Process

Most of the decisions I made for the composition of the image happened as I worked in Photoshop. I scanned in all the sketchbook pages and then moved them around and added extra trees and animals digitally.

Character

Commission

Someone contacted me with a brief to create an A3 print of an adventure scene for them to put up in their house.

Figure

It was important for me to explore a character that was quite generic as well as being aesthetically pleasing. I want the overall print to focus on the actual scenery (trees, mountains, details, etc.) and a feeling of adventure. To enhance this tone, I developed a character from behind, looking out over the landscape I will create. I may get rid of the map as I'm not sure it's necessary once the rest of the imagery has been added.

Children's Book - 1st Double Page Spread

This is the first draft of the first double page spread for the book proposal I am making. I enjoy working with scenes and starting with the town in which my characters could live helps me to understand their surroundings and how they relate to each other. I chose to use muted colours for this project, I find it a lot easier than using bright colours to build up shade and tone.

Editorial 1 GIF

This is a GIF I made of my original editorial illustration. In past projects I have really struggled with animation and usually avoid it at all costs! However, by attempting a simple GIF I have realised that a simple movement can be just as (if not more) effective than a more complex one. I am very happy with the outcome and will be experimenting with more simple animations in the future.

Editorial 1 - Why Can't We Fall Asleep?

Final Image

I wanted to start working on some small projects alongside the longer publishing ones. Editorials are something I really enjoy, but rarely do! This year I want to include more editorial work in my portfolio.

This idea was a fairly simple one, but I enjoy images that have a lot of detail and make you look closer. A facial expression is recognisable to all, which I like. I think the outcome really demonstrates the tone of tiredness.

Attempt a GIF?

Mock up of website

I took the article from The New Yorker website, entitled 'Why can't we fall asleep?'. I chose to focus on the every day things such as coffee and pills mentioned in the text to compose my design.

Book Ideas - Sketches

Roughs for my book proposal

I deciding to rough out the entire 32 page book before starting any finalised imagery. This is the first time I have ever thought about the designs for an entire picture book but I am enjoying the process of thinking about different compositions and how the pages could work as a whole. Character is also something I want to explore more in this module.

Final Images

World War II

I really don't like this image at all. This is the point when I got bored with the project and wanted to move on to something else. I don't think the narrative was strong enough and as this is a crucial part of my practice, the work suffered as a result.

There are elements I could have developed and improved, but as this was a self directed project which I ended up adapting to my own preferences, it seemed a bit pointless to carry on with it.

Overall I enjoyed the project but in the future I will make sure I have a clearer idea of what I want to achieve before making the final image.

The Roman Conquest

This image was a lot more difficult for me to execute well. I think maybe the first one interested me a bit more. However, I enjoyed thinking about how I could carry over the yellow colour and keep the colour scheme the same throughout. I'm not sure the intention was to create a gloomy setting but that is what I ended up with. Having said that, I think the white cloud works well and adds a lot to the overall atmosphere of the image.

Editorial 1 Roughs

During this module I want to look at more editorial briefs. I usually quite enjoy tackling them because of how short they are and the opportunity to look at different topics with each one.

'Why Can't We Fall Asleep?' is an article I found on the New Yorker website, discussing things that stop us from sleeping soundly. I liked the idea of experimenting with motifs of all the different things mentioned, as well as a way of making it relatable to a viewer. To do this I added an expression within the design.

https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/why-cant-we-fall-asleep

Stone Age

I had a lot of fun working on this image. I wanted to use a muted colour palette in order for me to describe lighting and tone throughout the scene. Experimenting with composition helped me to include all the details I had been researching in order to make the outcome suitable for an educational setting, including the cave paintings and hunting weapons.