OUIL603 - Summative statement

Throughout this module I have tried to work on briefs that I feel will help me in the future, and also explored lots of different types of live briefs in order to gain a better understanding of where my strengths lay. My main Big Kahuna brief was the most important to me, as I will be going into children's book publishing in the future, so that was vital for developing my skills, as I had never illustrated a book cover before. I am very interested in mental health and how I can use illustration to combat stigma around that and other feminist issues.
I feel as though I should have worked on less briefs, but expanded more on the briefs that I already had. I don't think I gained a lot from the small live briefs that I worked on, and should have spent my time working on one large body of work instead of lots of small ones.
Aside from this I think I have gained a lot of good quality portfolio work, which is in part down to the small briefs that I undertook, because they were just quick fast paced briefs that I could create something I liked for, without it having too much research behind it.
If I were to do this module again I would focus my intentions more at the start and work on fewer briefs but to a larger capacity with more finished professional quality outcomes.

OUIL603 - Project Report

OUIL603 - Studio Brief 8 Project boards

Finally, here are the boards for Studio Brief 8, my Big Kahuna brief. Overall I'm pleased with the foundations of the brief that I have, I'm dissapointed that I wasn't able to finalise as much of the work as I wanted to, but I know that I can easily do this after the deadline and make some really great work. I have found one of my new favourite ways of working, using a mixture of gouache and papercut to create detailed images, I've now found a good balance between working by hand and using digital means to enhance the images rather than relaying solely on digital. I've found a lot of good research for me to follow up on afterwards, people I can send my work to and ask for advice, and different charities that I think would be good to contact. Overall the brief was successful in that I learnt a lot from it, but I could have finalised more work.

OUIL603 - Studio Brief 7 Project boards

These are the project boards for Studio Brief 7, which was the most difficult of all the briefs, as it involved a lot of communication with clients, changing ideas and waiting for people to get back to me. Even though it was difficult it gave me a lot of positive experience of working with clients, which I'm going to have to do for most of my life. I learnt about not under selling my work and charging for what it is worth, and that communication is key when doing work for clients, so that everyone is up to date with what is going on. I also learnt from the bad experiences of working with clients, whether they end up ignoring you, or take too long to pay you or don't even pay you at all, I'm now aware that all these things and will take them into consideration when I undertake commission briefs in the future.

OUIL603 - Studio Brief 1 project boards

These are the boards for my Studio Brief 1, I think I did something wrong with my boards because there's so many of them and it took me so long ahh!
This brief was quite successful in that I think my work reached a wide enough audience and I got a lot of good feedback from clients and people who saw it, I recieved a couple more pieces of work from this, which was a good ego boost and gained lots of experience from working with different clients, which is always a good thing.

OUIl603 - Studio Brief 2 Project Boards

Here are my project boards for Studio Brief 2 including Thought Bubble and some other relevant small briefs. I think that Thought Bubble was a lot more relevant to me in terms of feedback and what I learnt about the general public and their buying habits, even though looking back I don't really like the work that much, I definitely learnt a lot about organisation, pricing my work and how to interact with paying customers.

OUIL603 - Studio Brief 6 Project boards

These are the boards for my studio brief 6, which was the Penguin books entry. It was definitely useful for me to take on this brief, seeing as I want to go into publishing after graduation, and I had never actually designed a proper book cover before. It was quite difficult working with text and getting that to look write alongside an illustration, mainly because I'm not a graphic designer, but I also always feel conflicted between using actual fonts and my own hand drawn type. If I were to do this brief again I would probably spend more time mocking things up and putting them into different contexts, although I think the work itself is good and has given me a solid portfolio piece.

OUIL603 - Studio Brief 3 project boards

Above are my project boards for Studio Brief 3, which is another of the compilation briefs, however this one is slightly larger. I think this brief was successful because it has a lot of potential to be worked upon and improved even further in the future. I intend to carry on designing my greetings cards past the deadline, and re-working the old designs too.

OUIL603 - Studio Brief 4 Project Boards

Above are my project boards for studio brief 4, which is another collection of smaller live briefs that I responded to. Studio Brief 4 was successful, apart from the Illustration Friday brief which I abandoned after a few weeks in/ The rest of the projects worked well and gave me a chance to play around with patterns and things that I really enjoy making. I don't know if this brief was 100% useful to me because all the briefs were pretty small, I think it would have been better if I'd have concentrated on making another brief larger, one of the ones that I already have, rather than doing more short ones, I would do this if I had more time, or if I could re-do this brief.

OUIL603 - Studio Brief 5 Project Boards

These are the boards for my Studio Brief 5 work. I really enjoyed this brief, mainly because of the film posters, as I really enjoy translating the feel of a film or TV program into an illustration, and trying to get the tone of voice similar, so the audience will instantly recognise it as that film. The main thing I learnt from this brief is the importance of gathering contextual references before you start designing, especially when you are making something that has a specific look already (like the way a film poster looks)

OUIL603 - Statement of Intent

OUIL603 - Secret 7 in the flesh

Mocked up onto vinyl covers these actually look great! I don't know why none of them got picked :(  My favourite one is still the collage lady in the middle, I think the circular shape works good against the square format, and works with the composition of the image, and the circles going into the centre of the design, her face in the middle kind of makes a vanishing point which really stands out.

The bold colours of all the designs make them work nicely as a trio, I think the first two look good on there own, but that's because they were made using the same technique both times. 

If I were to do this brief again I would probably make a larger range of images, using all the same process, like papercut, I think this would make a nice portfolio set and could be applied onto shirts and prints too. 

OUIL603 - Pre anti-valentines

Before I actually made my anti-valentines cards, I had designed these ones, which I haven't yet finished fully rendering. I actually prefer these designs in terms of the way they look, however I think these would work way better as prints rather than small scale cards, because there is a lot more detail in these ones than the simplified card versions that I finished.

I wish I had finished this design, because it's probably my favourite out of the lot of them, but this one would definitely work best as a print, so that you can properly see all the detail up close. 

This is one of the less detailed ones that I think could work well on a card, I haven't had chance to mock it up but once I'm 100% happy with the design, which I'm not yet, it needs a lot more colouring doing to it, I will mock it up once it's finished enough. 

When I have the time I will definitely work more into these, and get them done up as prints, maybe see how they look on cards too, but they would have so much more impact if they were printed on a large scale, I think the intricacy of it against the 'fuck you' 'dog shit' tag lines will be really funny.

OUIL603 - Final penguin thoughts

I think my design looks really snazzy on a hardback book cover. The purple and pink really stand out against a white background, I was a bit skeptical of leaving the white at first, but when it's on a book it has really strong impact. Good choice of colours there I will congratulate myself there.

OUIL603 - Penguin book sketches

As this brief was quite a quick turnaround I thought through a really good idea and just went with it, Caitlyn Moran's book How to be a Woman is kind of a cheeky (bit feministy) book, so I wanted to turn the stereotype of women being ashamed of their bodies and hiding them into a cheeky young lass who finds it empowering to take her top off and get her boobs out.

After I'd done a quick composition sketch I drew her out a little bit neater and bolder, leaving space for where the type would be in the middle and painted over the top with gouache and water colours. 

The colours look really horrible and bright on screen but they were a bit more subtle in real life. I scanned this in and manipulated the colours a bit and finally added the text over the top to complete the image.

After playing around with colours and using textured brushes from my favourite ever brush pack (we all know the one) I ended up making a piece of work that I'm actually really proud of. yess.

I used the colours from the front to make a texture running along the spine of the book and the back to tie the whole design together. I didn't want to make the back too fussy because it would detract from the text and make it much harder to read.

OUIL603 - 83 Weddings logo (WIP)

OUIL603 - Papercuts to be made

I haven't yet been able to complete all of the papercuts, but I've finalised the compositions, so I just need to do that between now and the deadline for the end of year show. 

I intend on making a papercut front cover with all of the monsters on, to explain the project and to just be an attention grabbing cover.

I want to make 10 of these overall so I need to design a few more before I have them all finished, I think these will look super when they're all done, I'm a bit dissapointed that I couldn't get mroe done for the deadline but I think what I have finished, looks very professional and I'm super pleased with it all. Now I just need to research more into educational packs so that I can mock mine up properly and then send it to the self esteem team and other publishers. 

OUIL603 - Papercut 4

I messed around with composition first, and thought about doing this design, I don't think it has as much impact as the final one, but I do think the story of it is a little more clear, I was struggling what to do in the background, which is why I think I chose the other compsoition rather than the first one, because it was easier to fill the background with the monsters and different textures.

This is my final papercut piece for Scared Monster, I was pleased with this one, even though it's not the most visually pleasing or complicated one, I think it works best because the character is so different to the others! He is my favourite by far and I like the composition of this one. Again some of the final image is done digitally and not papercraft, but I think in this way it works because it uses the best of both worlds, my images always look a lot nicer when I concentrate on working on them by hand first, then making them final in Photoshop.

OUIL603 - Papercut 3

This one, for the Lonely Monster, is my favourite of the 4 finished designs, I think they colour and scene itself looks quite flat, but it works. I think the image itself is good colour wise because they stand out from each other and are highly contrasting, the image itself is simple but I added texture and shape to add detail and depth. 

I wanted to illustrate the type myself, but I found it looked much more professional when I used a proper font rather than doing it myself, as art it looked better with the hand drawn font, but I have to keep in mind the context that this would be viewed in and which is most suitable.

OUIL603 - Papercut 2

This was an idea for a composition which was different to the final one. I didn't decide to use this design because I wanted to focus more on the scale of the monster, I don't think you would have been able to see it as well and it wouldn;'t have been as effective with this composition.

This is the final for the second papercut scenario, again with Sad Monster, although I don't think this one as much, because even though it looks really pretty, the image isn't fully papercut like I would have liked, obviously I needed t add things in digitally to finish it off fully, but I would have liked to have stuck to using papercut more, but I couldn't due to time constraints and needing to get it finished. I am pleased with the outcome though, I think the lines in the sky and the smoke really well to create movement and a sense of direction.

OUIL603 - Paper cut 1

I played with a few compositions before hand but I was pretty certain of this Sad Monster scenario, I didn't want the scenarios to be patronising at all but they had to be simple enough so that a child could understand it and relate it to their life.

This is the final of the first papercut scenarios, in this scene Violet the main character has fallen over and some other children are laughing at her. I decided that I wanted to have the scenarios all happen in a school environment because that's most likely where they would be viewed, so the child would be able to relate to the scenarios and feel empathy for Violet.

OUIL603 - Scenario making

These are 3 of the final 10 scenarios that I intend on illustrating for the deadline and end of year show. Reflecting on how much work I have left to do I've decided that 4 scenarios  is enough to submit on the deadline, then I will work on the rest afterwards for the show.

I tried to keep al the colours pretty similar and used a limited colour palette, I want to try and adopt these colours (pink, purple and blue) and make them my signature palette, because pretty much everything I draw uses these colours at some point. I dont know what it is about the combination that works so well for me, but I love it. 

I used a mixture of gouache and POSCA pens to draw on top of the paper to make added texture and to add detail that couldn't be achieved by using papercut. 

One of my favourite parts of this design is 

OUIL603 - Stress monster final character

If the Scared Monster wasn't so cute I'd probably like this guy the best, because he definitely works well as a character and personifies his emotion really well, I think its mainly the outstretched arms and his gritted teeth that really help to convey physical signs of stress. I was pleased with the texture on his body too, I used a mixture of gouache and pencil to create a texture that I think really communicates stress, with how busy and intense it is. 

OUIL603 - Scared monster final character

My favourite of all the characters, the Scared Monster, I love his buggy appearance and I think he's super cute, I want to develop him later and make a wider range of illustrated products of him, maybe stuffed toys and other books, I just think he works well as a character and is realy recognisable and unqiue. I think he is the character design that works the best, because he really communicates his emotion through the way he looks and his facial expression. 

OUIL603 - Angry Monster final character

This is the final design for the Angry monster and his flashcard. I think this one works the least well, mainly because of the contrast between the red monster and the blue background, he was quite a different colour to the rest of the monsters but I felt like he needed to be red to reflect his personality. I needed to have the background of the flashcard a similar colour to the rest, but unfortunately I don't think this works too well with the red.

OUIL603 - Illustrated lyrics

As part of the merchandise, Hildur wanted me to illustrate some lyrics to her songs, for notebook designs and mirror designs. The top image are the lyrics to her album, fully illustrated for a postcard design. Hildur said she knew that the font size would be ridiculously small (which it is) but she wanted it regardless. 

To keep the design simple and easy to read, which it needs to be with the font so small, I used a simple watercolour texture, which I made with the Kyle T Webster brush pack, to get a firm and crisp edge, which would have not been so achievable with actual watercolours 

The below two images were a lot simpler to make, I think the compact little images little cute and suit their context well. everything had to be designed round so that it could be applied to lots of different merchandise.

OUIL603 - YOKO

For the song Imagine, I wanted to be a bit cheeky and draw Yoko Ono with a black eye, seeing as John Lennon was a woman beater, I thought it would be interesting to have flowers framing her face, and the juxtaposition between them and the bruise on her eye.

I didn't end up submitting this design because I didn't think it went well with the rest of my entries, I wasn't happy with the colouring, especially the bruise, and I found it hard to make the colours of the bruise look nice, with it still having the recognisable bruise colours. 

(insert YOKO sketches)