Final Major Project A Reflection
My major project has now come to a close and similarly so has my time as an illustration student at AUB. Instead of summarising this project with an evaluation on my blog, I feel it would be more appropriate to document my journey into a small booklet to show my progress as a practitioner.
For this project, I chose to pursue a short story which I developed at the end of the Pre Major Project. This story is about a pug called Louie who feels different because he is smaller than other dogs. As a novice author for children, I usually find myself writing stories which contain an issue that a child could potentially face in reality e.g. bullying, a fear of something, being or looking different. Therefore, I felt that this story in particular could be informative of an issue but also positive and entertaining, without being condescending to a child reader. The plot twist in the story is that even though Louie is restricted because of his size, he is able to do great and enjoyable things which other dogs cannot.
I began this unit with a significant amount of planning, looking at various children’s books and beginning to plan out my story. For a few weeks, I was unsure whether to create a wordless narrative or to include text, as most of my work from the pre-major project worked well in a wordless format. After examining picture books with and without text, I noticed how I enjoyed looking at wordless narratives and how they were presented in frames and vignettes to show a sequence. I knew from that moment that this was something I wanted to create in my own book but with small amounts of text to support the illustrations. I felt that the use of vignettes placed more prominently within a picture book, would be innovative and exciting.
After a month into the project, I had a case of artists block with my story. I was struggling to create a storyboard for the book and my illustrations were lacking pace, drama, scale and perspective. Therefore, I decided to have a short break from the project and work on a brief by children’s author Nicola Davies. This particular project was a competition set to all the illustration students, to create a storyboard and two finalised outcomes for Nicola’s upcoming book ‘Perfect’. I worked on this brief for approximately a month, creating a body of work leading up to the final submission date.
This project was a nice change, to work on an author’s story as opposed to my own and it pushed me to think about how my illustrations will coincide successfully with the text. It was challenging at times, mainly because I needed to draw human characters which is not a particular strength of mine, as I often create animal characters. It was also difficult to create the right tone and emotion for the story, as it was a powerful narrative with themes of disability and loneliness. I decided to approach this by using a selective colour palette throughout my illustrations. Although I wasn’t successful with this particular brief, it definitely pushed me to work within a tight deadline and produce work to a professional standard, which I could include in my portfolio.
After my fifth written draft of Little Louie, I began to pick lines from my story to illustrate and experiment with composition and focus more on the settings and backgrounds as opposed to the character, which at this point was well developed. I found this challenging at first but looking back at my drawings from the last project and inspiration on Pinterest, helped me to loosen up and create stronger work.
During the middle of this project, I was asked to go along and help at an after school art club at Bethany Junior School, Boscombe for a 6 week period as part of my artist in residence job. As well as being a bit of a breather from project stress, it was invaluable to be able to present and discuss ‘Little Louie’ with the children and the progress I was making every week with the story and illustrations. This first hand feedback from my target audience helped motivate me to keep experimenting with ideas.
Mid way through the project, it was acknowledged that my strengths were being able to tell short narrative sequences within a shape or frame. This became a turning point for me in the project. Originally, I had thought of creating my narrative partially through framed images and partially through single and double page spreads. At this point in the project, I changed my direction and began working on sequences and scenarios to feature on nearly every page of my book. It was also pointed out that drawing smaller has a more engaging and appealing aesthetic, rather than working on a larger scale. After this feedback, I returned to my sketchbook to plan out small sequences using each line of my story. Marc Boutavont, Raymond Briggs, Maria Mitdun and Simona Ciraolo were my influences whilst creating these sketches. This process took over a week but it helped me to feel a lot more confident to begin making watercolour roughs and begin assembling a dummy version of my book.
Choosing the shape for the book was relatively easy for me, I feel that my work looks a lot more pleasing within a square format, choosing the size however was a little more difficult. Initially, my aims were to create a book the size of the infamous Mr Men books however at around 6x6 inches, however, I felt this might have been too small for a parent and child to be able to read together. Using my roughs, I began to construct different size books in InDesign so I could see which would be more fitting to my target audience. I also began experimenting with the layout of my vignettes and whether they should sit on one page or both. After making a total of five dummy books, I decided to develop a 7x7 inch square book with the vignettes on the left hand page and the text on the right, with the exception of the few single and double page spreads in the remainder of the book.
Creating the final images started a bit rocky for me, as I lost the expressive qualities that come natural when sketching. After a few bad attempts, I decided to redo my images but work small and try my best not to overthink them. Easier said than done but after a few goes and following the method I used for my storyboard, I eventually achieved the expressive and simple aesthetic I was looking for. Next was the tedious task of scanning and editing each frame for my book in Photoshop. Luckily, the editing process only took a few days as I felt the illustrations only needed to be cleaned up a bit and small adjustments to the colours. I then began assembling all of the final images and chosen font into InDesign, ready for a test run before printing.
After researching printing companies in the local area, I decided to print my book with Uni Print on campus, mainly for the reason most companies refused to perfect bind, as my book had too little pages but also as I was nervous to send it online due to any possible errors that might be made. After discussing binding options with an illustration technician, I was advised to have a go myself at perfect binding in the studio as the methodology to it would make the book live longer. Therefore, I had two copies of my book printed, one printed and perfect bound through Uni Print and the other just printed so that I could complete the binding. The binding process itself was a lot easier than I initially thought, however, it was a very fiddly job and accuracy was certainly needed at times.
Overall, I am very pleased with my outcomes for this project. I feel that my picture book adds something a bit different and unique to the books I usually find on children’s shelves in bookshops. Working in vignettes and drawing within a confined space was a completely new approach to how I usually work, which is often illustrating single and double page spreads coincide throughout a book. I really enjoyed the developing stages leading towards the final book, particularly the feedback from the children at Bethany Junior School, which in some ways helped to drive the project forward.
If I had to redo this project, I would think about mixing up the size of the vignettes on each page so that some are blown up to a larger scale, which I think would add more drama in the narrative. This is something that Heart Agency pointed out in a short appointment where I was able to discuss my portfolio. I would also create some more unusual perspectives within the frames, perhaps a birds-eye view or looking up which would emphasise scale and how small Louie is compared to the other dogs.
I have learnt a great deal in this project, not only tackling the job of writing and illustrating my own book but also working on an author’s piece which has tested my skill set significantly, as well as my approaches to drawing. I have thoroughly enjoyed this final year of study, even though it has been challenging at times but being able to explore children’s books in such depth, has given me a greater understanding and knowledge of what would be expected in industry. This year has increased my confidence in my drawing ability, particularly the looser drawings which I can now appreciate as final images as opposed to development sketches.