Project Report (750 Words)

Project Report (750 words)

At the beginning of the module I was keen to get as many paid briefs as possible, however I think this may have been one of the biggest downfalls of the module. The NBC brief really put a stranglehold on the work I could produce for the rest of the module, because of the size of the brief, and regularly having to visit the showroom for meetings and to construct beds etc, it meant I wasn’t really able to set time aside to work on other briefs, especially with the fact that I had to re-do the brief in March, which is still ongoing. This also left me really disappointed with the general amount of work I was able to produce for the module, Although I have completed 5 solid briefs, I think I could have had a lot more to show, had I not been so preoccupied with the NBC brief.

In terms of my practice as an illustrator, I think the quality of my roughs has improved a lot over the module, I feel I am able to lay ideas down much more effectively now than before, and although the quantity of my roughs hasn’t necessarily grown in comparison to previous modules, I think that through better understanding the way I work, I am able to rough more effectively and efficiently, and am able to get ideas out much more cohesively with the way I want to produce the final images. Although the roughs I have made during this module are not the prettiest, I think the fast and responsive way of producing them allowed me to explore way more ideas than I thought previously possible through previous modules.

One big success of the module was the Mam Tor personal brief, this is the brief I found most influential towards directing the way I would like to work in future. The fluid way of working may have been a chance of relief from working on the fairly rigid and boring NBC brief, so it was great to be able to properly respond to a brief in the way I wanted to, this started with the freedom I was allowed during the CCS Co. brief.

A large success of this module is the realisation of the importance of research and understanding in a brief. The NBC, CocoLoco and Penguin briefs all allowed em to thoroughly investigate the subject, all obviously in very different ways- this lead me to appreciate the importance of research and investigating a subject properly before diving  straight in drawing up ideas that I wasn’t 100% sure were relevant or conceptually sound. I think this also influenced the quality of my roughs.

Professionally, I feel much more prepared coming out of this module. I have really enjoyed working within a professional brief, and dictating my own timetable, although quite long, kept me proactive with working towards deadlines and meetings- this is something I will definitely look to keep with me moving into life as an illustrator in the coming months. Timetabling my own time was something I always looked at as pointless- my time management has never really been an issue, however scheduling my time more effectively allowed me to work more directly and efficiently, working towards specific targets and goals to produce work within a reasonable time.

In summary, I am happy with the way this module has gone. I think the quality of the work I have produced is good, however, because of hurdles and time restraints from live briefs, I think the lower quantity of work has left a lot to be explored within my practice, this is something I will continue to work with in the future. The work I have produced this module, excluding the NBC brief, is the work I feel is most pertinent to my personality as an illustrator, and the genuine enjoyment I have experienced whilst working on these briefs has left me motivated and inspired to be able to continue my practice post-university. 

BrushUp Design Boards

Penguin Design Boards

NBC Design Boards

Mam Tor Design Boards

CocoLoco Design Boards

CCS CO. Design Boards

Response to Initial Proposal

Project Proposal

Professional Briefs

Through the module I want to be able to get stuck in with some real world briefs. I aim to start the module with some live competition briefs, but eventually be able to find enough work as an illustrator to see me through the rest of the module. I will aim to work towards briefs that will further develop my understanding of my practice as an illustrator and professional.

The bulk of my time throughout the module has been spent on paid briefs (NBC + CCS Co.) so I consider this a success, I feel much more confident about how to approach getting paid briefs and communicating with clients more effectively.

Practical Skills

The main thing I want to look to within the module is developing my roughing skills. I know from previous briefs that I need to experiment a lot more during the roughing stage of briefs, which should help me integrate better concepts into my work in general. The way I will do this is to try and focus on working in sketchbooks with simple pencil drawings and try to work at making roughs on location.

I think I let myself down with my roughing during the module, I think many of the briefs lack substantial roughing, which in some cases really deprives the brief of decent concepts. However, during my Mam Tor brief, I wanted to make a point of roughing on location, creating quick line drawings responding directly to the experience, which was definitely a success. 

Products

I want to look toward making products during this brief, be it tees, finishing brush packs, or pushing my work to be able to be used for other practical applications. I think the best way to achieve this is to approach companies to work with, and try and get work with them.

Most of my briefs were aimed towards products (NBC- Instructions, CCS Co.- Tees, BrushUp- Brush Packs, CocoLoco- Chocolate Bar Packaging) so I guess I achieved what I set out to on this point.
General Aim

I want this module to be the beginnings of setting me up as a full time illustrator. Hopefully by seeking professional briefs I can gain enough experience and confidence to be able to work consistently post-uni. I don’t want to get bogged down with working on too many competition briefs if I don’t have to- hopefully I can find enough work to be able to work consistently on a paid brief throughout the whole module.

This part of my proposal is probably the most successful, through the NBC brief, which is still ongoing, I have been able to acquire a secondary brief from another company to re-do their instructions as well ,which should keep me in work well into October, which is more than enough time. The success of my brushes has also granted me a full-time income, meaning I was able to quit my part-time job and rely on that for regular income, giving me more time to work on illustration based pursuits.  

Themes/ Context

During the module, I want to explore the type of images that I am genuinely interested in, I don’t think Ill ever be a children’s book illustrator, for instance- so I want to explore ideas and themes that I am interested in. I have really enjoyed product packaging in previous briefs, so this is definitely something I’ll be looking at working with during the module. I would also like to play with experiential illustration, and create work based off of my own personal experiences and events. I think this will open up the module to a lot of playing with images and allow me to investigate what I want.

During the module I got to explore a lot of things I am interested in. I got to work in tattoo style images to produce tees from them, as well as creating more experiential images through the Mam Tor brief, so this was a success.

Professional Skills

I want to challenge my skills in terms of professionalism. Time keeping is a big one for me, so I want to be able to draw up an in depth timetable and try to stick to it the best I can, be it a general timetable for the whole module or for individual modules themselves.

I think my professional skills have come on leaps and bounds during the module. I am much more comfortable approaching clients about potential and communicating with clients during a brief. 

I expect this proposal will change quite heavily as the module continues, especially if I am wanting to find paid briefs to work on.

Initial Intended Briefs:

- CocoLoco Chocolate Bars
- Penguin Book Covers (  A Brief History of Time- Stephen Hawking)

Working Roughs Into Prints

Having looked through a few of the roughs I created for some of the briefs, I decided to work a couple of them into simple prints. As most of my roughs lack particular quality, and do have a sort of laughably bad tone to them, I thought creating prints commenting on this would make a fun addition to the brief. I think the images worked out quite well, and are a funny commentary on how I make work, as a lot of my final images are quite polished and clean.

NBC Brief Summary

What a nightmare.

This brief was a real struggle, mainly because of having to complete the brief twice, through no fault of my own. However, I have learned so much through this brief, both in terms of working within my own practice and in terms of professionalism as well.

I wanted this brief to be very strict on deadlines and meetings, so sharing my schedule with the team and having a lot of transparency about what I could do and when around uni was critical to this brief. I think the brief itself can be considered a success, the team like the work I am producing, so much so that they have asked me to do more for them, as well as having another company contact me regarding doing some instructions for them as well (not sure that's a good thing)...

Although the work I have produced through this brief isn't the most exciting, in fact it's incredibly dry, I struggled with the idea of this being 'illustration' but on reflection I think this is illustration in it's rawest form- taking an idea and conceptualising it into imagery that portrays the idea, and making it work as effectively as possible- which was actually really challenging given the only source material I had was some pixellated images and words.

Professionally I have learned a lot as well, the regular meetings helped me build real rapport with the team, which I think helped a lot during the renegotiation in March, and definitely improved the quality of the work I have produced. I'm glad I spent so much time getting hands on with the beds and fully understanding the beds- this was definitely a driving factor towards being able to suggest the instructions be produced in a completely different way to which the team originally intended, which went down incredibly well.

This brief however definitely hindered the rest of this module- I think the amount of work I needed to produce for this brief made it so I couldn't really pursue other briefs as much as I'd have liked, and now I don't really have much to show for it which is a real shame...

Guess I'll carry on with it...

BrushUp Brief Summary

This brief is one that has given me the chance to explore my practice maybe more than any of the others. Being totally unrestricted on what I can create has meant that I was able to experiment with a lot of different styles and a lot of different ways of working. The thing I find most interesting about this brief is the link between making images that are designed for promotional use but aren't obviously promotional- just demonstrating a product. This made it extra challenging as I had to make the brushes the prime focus of the images, but make the subject matter as attention grabbing as possible to entice people into viewing the image and reading the caption. This brief has spanned the longest amount of time across the module, and has been a nice 'drip-feed' to give me the chance to play and experiment a bit more.

Professionally this brief has taught me a lot about internet marketing, and what people respond best to with regards to social media, in particular Instagram. It allowed me to evaluate what I was creating and gave me the chance to quantify the quality of the work I was producing, directly correlating it to the monetary gain I got from it.

Mam Tor Final Images

Mam Tor- Choosing Colour Schemes

 

I wanted to experiment with whether I could get better results with colour schemes picking colours directly from the image using the eye dropper tool or whether choosing colour based on my experience of the day and the images would work better.

Although the eyedropped colour schemes look a little more harmonious, I prefer the bold look of the chosen colourscheme for my images, I think it will suit the bold aesthetic of the shape based images a lot more.

NBC Developed Images (So Far)

NBC Booklet Mock

Here is the proposed layout for the NBC instruction booklet. I wanted to keep the booklet fairly clean and simple, so have focussed on the main images, with the tools/ parts the customer will need in the bottom right. THis will be pitched at the next meeting with the team.

MamTor Developed Ideas

Mam Tor Roughs

I really enjoyed the roughing process for this personal brief, I was great to be able to draw on location and take from the experience and I think this affected the quality of the lines in a good way. I will definitely look to bring this into my practice in the future.

Revised NBC Roughs

After our last meeting, it was discussed that we should change the angle of the illustrations in the instructions. Obviously this is slightly frustrating, as it means I have basically wasted the past 3 months of work and 36 images which will now go to waste, and now have to restart the brief from scratch. However, the team have discussed that I will be paid in full for the time I have spent on the brief so far, and will be paid again for repeating the brief.

Here are the revised roughs for the brief, this time with more depth in the images and a harsher perspective.

NBC Brief NEW Timetable

Extended Practice NEW Schedule

NBC have totally ballsed up the previous schedule, so heres a new one.

Penguin Brief Summary

This brief was unexpectedly easy for me. I struggled through the research phase of the brief, but I'm very grateful that I persevered through and finished the book as I think I got a much better understanding of what the book was about and the concepts it talks about, allowing me to create much better covers because of this.

I think the covers I produced are some of the best covers I've made over the past 3 years of the course- and on thing I think has helped me out most is the understanding of the use of type within my images. My use of type in my images has never really been terrible, but I think this years' COP (that's right!) module improved this 100x!

This module was a great one for me in terms of reflecting on my own practice and way of working. Trying to work as best I can to a strict schedule has definitely helped, and reflecting on my own capabilities as an illustrator/ designer has also made a big difference- understanding type much better and appreciating the process of research and understanding a brief before diving straight in.

Penguin Brief Final 3 Designs

BrushUp Brief- Playing with Images

Here are some examples of images I have created on order to demonstrate the brushes. I wanted to keep them simple and have the main focus of them be the material used to create them.

Although I am happy with the general look of the images, I still think they are lacking conceptually, which is something I could look at through the rest of the module, and possibly create some editorial illustrations to sit alongside these images and give the brief a bit more substance.

CCS Co. Final Image+ Tee Mock-Ups

Penguin Developed Roughs

I moved forward with three of my favourite ideas for the penguin brief. I wanted to be quite restrictive with my ideas for this brief, but fairly open with my choices for the final designs, so I will continue moving forward with these and working all three into final designs, to choose one to submit.

CCS Co. Brief Summary

This brief has been a really positive one for me, mainly because I really liked working with Ben and it allowed me to explore something that I am genuinely interested. Throughout the course I have been encouraged to move away from tattoo imagery, as it lacks originality and is often weak conceptually- however, having been given the opportunity to draw some ideas out properly has made me look at it in a completely different way. Being able to put my own spin on a well known and loved idea is something I think is really exciting, and the reception my images have received has re-enforced this for me further (someone is actually getting one tattood!).

In a professional capacity, I couldn't have asked for a better brief. I was given total freedom over the images I wanted to create, and because I was approached for the work, it made it much easier for me to suggest what I thought would look good and work well.

I'm really happy with the work I have produced for this brief. I think the images fit my style perfectly and have been really influention in directing my practice moving forward. I've really enjoyed working with more fluid shapes, rather than rigid 'pen-tool' shapes that I've used previously. This is something I will 100% be working into my practice in the future.

CCS Co. Development Images

Penguin Roughs + Idea Generation

Here are the roughs for the Penguin Design Brief for the book 'A brief History of Time', I wanted to focus on the idea of time+ space, so focussed on clock symbols and imagery of space... Pretty simple I guess

Penguin Brief Timetable

Cheating Perspective

I used sketchUp as a quick cheat to make sure all the parts I'm illustrating for the NBC brief all stayed within the same perspective. I'll definitely be using this trick in the future should I need some consistency.

Penguin Brief Research Images