PROJECT
REPORT OUIL 603 Extended Practice
CONTENTS Layla’s Liver Transplant………………………………… 4 Adventure T-Shirt Designs.…………………………..... 6 BAIL’16…………......……………………....………...…. 8 YCN Royal Opera House……………………............. 10 Love Birds: Papercut Greetings Cards……...…….... 12 ayasoBoutique Shell Scheme Design..…….……….. 14
Final Major Project The Savanna……………….………………………..…. 16
4
L AY L A’ S L I V E R T R A N S P L A N T Leeds Children’s Hospital
Working for the same client on a follow up project I feel is much easier as all the mistakes made in the first project are learnt and avoided which makes for a smoother project.
Layla’s Liver Transplant is a children’s book project by Leeds Children’s Hospital. Number two in the series, it follows Layla’s hospital journey of having a liver transplant. Similar to the first book (Charlie’s Kidney Transplant), which I started last year for the Responsive module, I realised that it would not be possible for me to complete the whole book in time for the module deadline, so for the purpose of this module, I have completed the book cover and 4 fully illustrated double pages.
Although I was proud of myself for completing the first book, it really makes me cringe when I look back at it because the illustrations were just awful! Some of the compositions weren’t as thought about as they could have been and the font I used was just too big! Illustrating children’s books has become a big part of my practice and it is also the area that I am getting most of new opportunities from. Because of this I feel it is important that I take my time with the second book and really use it to my
advantage to improve my ability to paint/draw designs that strongly emphasize storytelling and personality in environments and characters, as discussed in my statement of intent. Improving these skills are also essential for the career I want have in the long run, which is to become a visual development artist in the animation industry – so it’s like killing two birds with one stone, as they say. Overall, this is one of the projects that I feel is very beneficial to the development o f m y c a re e r w i t h i n t h e publishing as well as the animation industry.
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ADVENTURE T-shirt Designs
As I’m so used to having a format and using all the area to create my illustrations out of, taking on this brief has allowed me to explore my composition a bit more. In the end I used shape to contain my designs in and to help tie them all together as a set. As well as the composition, my ability in using a limited colour palette was also challenged, which is good because I’m usually really bad at that.
I was asked to create 3 t-shirt designs based on the theme of ‘Adventure’. The brief is pretty open and there was no particular requirements that I needed to be aware of when designing. As long as they appeal to both the male and female markets and work as a set, the brief is fulfilled. This is a project that isn’t really me per se, but the adventurous side of me felt quite excited by the prospects of it and thought it would be quite a nice snappy brief to do.
Initially I wanted to use this brief as an opportunity to explore more traditional print processes such as screen printing whilst I still have the facilities available to me and create a set of screen prints out of it. I did give it a go but I soon realized screen printing
isn’t really what I want to be doing and that the time I spent on this could have been dedicated on projects that reflect more of my practice. This is the main reason why I didn’t continue screen printing the other two designs. I could also have explored more into the product range (like I initially wanted to do) however I thought it was best that I wrap up the project after completing the 3 designs. This brief was still a fun brief to do though – and I feel it is important that I continue to try doing things that might not necessarily seem like my usual thing because I may just surprise myself with what I can do.
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B A I L’ 1 6
Yearbook and Memory Game Although my peers showed high interest in the project, it wasn't all smooth sailing. To make the portraits a bit more interesting I asked everyone what their hobbies and interests were so that I could incorporate them in the portraits. However, I received a slow response which caused a delay in the actual production of the papercuts.
As my time at Leeds College of Art is coming to an end, I decided to come up with a brief that would allow me to create something to celebrate the first graduates of the LCA BA Illustration course. To improve my character design and papercutting skills (which I have come to love over the past year), I have created papercut portraits of my course mates, which are to be compiled into a book – a memorabilia of the friends I have made during my three years here.
With all the other briefs also going on alongside this project, I wasn’t able to create all 31 paper portraits, and therefore the book, in time for the module submission like I originally planned. Rather than rushing to get them finished, which will no doubt affect the quality, I decided to propose my intentions instead and continue with the project after submission.
Whilst I was being encouraged to think about other products that I could apply my portraits to as this will allow for a broader target audience (and not just the little bubble of L C A ) , a n i d e a t o c re a t e something similar to the classic game of Guess Who? and Cluedo popped up in my head. However, this would require me to make new images, even if I’m only mocking up the product. I ended up resolving the problem with a simpler card game concept, which I think works well as an additional product of the yearbook. I’m really pleased with the portraits I’ve completed so far and even got great response online about my papercuts! I’m excited to continue with this after and actually produce the products.
The aim of the posters is to encourage 20-30 year olds to find their ‘Inner Opera’ – something that they have yet to discover and appreciate. We used the shadow to help convey the idea that opera is relevant to everyone, not just the old, the posh, etc., as it deals with all kinds of different aspects of the human condition.
Y C N R O YA L O P E R A H O U S E Collaborative
that the aesthetic of her more recent work and mine have become quite similar (in some parts) and thought that our work would compliment each other quite well.
As well as a children’s book illustrator, I am also aiming for a career within the animation industry. Here I’ll most likely be part of a bigger team so I feel that being able to work with other people, organizing myself and producing work when expected is a very important skill to have. During my time on this course, I have not had a bad experience with working in a team and I was determined to keep it this way! I decided to join forces with Becca for this year’s YCN brief as I feel
The brief that we have chosen leans more towards creative advertising, which neither of us have done much of to a great extent before, so we thought it would be a good challenge to tackle, and hopefully will add something different to our portfolios. In the earlier stages of our collaboration, I did feel quite worried about how to split our roles into different but equal parts. We didn’t want to do the same things throughout the whole project but rather do individual parts that are
relevant to each other, which we can then combine to make a bigger, more significant project. In the end, we created a campaign that came in two parts, which gave us something that we can practically work on s e p a r a t e l y. H o w e v e r, t h e decision making for both of these parts were done together, which I believe made for a successful collaboration. With all types of briefs I’ve learnt that it is best to remain persistent and punctual, especially when working collaboratively. Communication is also key to ensure the best of the end product. I believe that Becca and I have achieved a campaign that fulfills the brief.
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LOVE BIRDS Greetings Cards
Although probably not the best idea to take on another brief when I already had enough on my plate, I still enjoyed this little project – there weren’t any pressure whilst creating my designs as the project itself started off casually. I would have liked to have created more designs depicting more bird species but because I was already struggling to juggle all my briefs, I had to settle with 3 designs.
This brief was something that started off as a cool down project after the dissertation submission back in January. I decided to create a brief around it, as there is a big market for greetings cards and a potential to expand on it’s range.
This doesn’t mean that the project is at a standstill forever though! This is a project that I will go back to and work on in between work. There was a reason why it started off a cool down project after all!
Papercutting is something that I want to keep developing and maybe make a bigger part of my practice because the amount of feedback and interest in my papercut work from people I don’t even know is more than I can comprehend, plus it allows me some time off from staring at the computer screen. It’s always good to be balanced!
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AYA S O B O U T I Q U E Shell Scheme Graphics
this sort of job however, this wasn’t a choice for me as I don’t have Adobe Illustrator installed on my laptop. So in order to avoid my designs getting pixelated, I created each strip separately at an already large scale so when/if they needed to be enlarged they would stay pretty much intact. I also created the wall design to the scale that the actual walls were going to be. Similar to the work that I completed last year, the founder of ayaso Boutique requested for some graphics for their shell scheme at the Middle East Film and Comic Con. They wanted me to create 3 comic strips which would be repeated to create a larger wall design. All the projects that I’ve completed for them have all been to create something that would be produced at a large scale, which is completely different from the other briefs that I’ve worked on. I’ve learnt from past experiences that working in vectors is ideal for
As a result of this I did come across some saving issues, all due to the fact that the file size was just too big for the format (PDF) that the client wanted the designs to be submitted over. To solve this problem I decided to use the macs in uni and tried importing the design to
Illustrator to live trace it and turn the elements to vectors however, it wouldn’t even let me import as, yet again, the file size was too big. Desperate times call for desperate measures – I decided to ask the IT guys if they have any suggestions on how I could solve this saving issue. It turns out that the only way was to lower the resolution. I was worried at first that this might affect the quality but when I viewed the file at the actual size, it looked completely fine. To avoid this sort of hassle in the future, I really need Adobe Illustrator installed on my machine and become a master at using vectors.
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T H E S AVA N N A Final Major Project
African Savanna and the Maasai people because it is something that I've not done before and would therefore challenge my image making/ production skills and allow me to venture outside of my knowledge.
For my final major project, I wanted to bring together everything that I have enjoyed doing over the past 3 years of being on this course. What I’ve learnt during my time as a student is that character and narrative are at the heart of my practice. A lot of the work I enjoy doing also have children as the target audience, so it only seemed right that I focus my final project on the creation of children’s publications and related products. I decided then to create a children’s pop-up book based around the
I feel that I had quite a late start with my final project because as evidenced on my blog, my initial FMP idea was something completely different and I went through a lot of stages before I pinpointed exactly what I wanted to do. Once I’ve got a grasp of my project’s theme etc. it was easier to begin my research and developing on a narrative. Though I’m still not the best at this, I decided to give it a try anyway – push my ability to see what I can come up with by
myself. I plan to submit my work to some publishers when I have the time as I would to to have some honest opinions of it and to see if my work is good enough to be considered commercial. I’m really proud of my pop up book considering the amount of time I had to complete it. I feel the project has really challenged me in quite a few w a y s . F i r s t l y, i n s t e a d o f illustrating a flat scene as I would normally do, I had to take into consideration of the angles and point of views in which I design them. I also had to be aware of the space and the placement of popup and non-popup elements – what needs to be created separately and what’s going on the page.
The main challenge for me was to actually figure out the mechanisms of popups. I think I spent a good few weeks trying to turn my concept drawings to actual pop-ups – which I now realize is not such an easy task! I think I was also being too ambitious with what I wanted to achieve initially that I had to think about other alternatives to try and simplify my ideas. I feel that the project could be further strengthen if I took more time to consider the
product range. With all of my selfinitiated briefs, I think I get too absorb in the one product that I forget about contextualizing my work in different ways. The products that I have mocked up I feel are quite safe and predictable. If I were to take more risk like I was encouraged to do, I think the project could have that extra wow factor – if only I had more time! That being said, I’m still proud of what I’ve achieved. I feel that the product sums up my interests and that the project has leveled up my practical skills.
BA (Hons) Illustration Aghnia Mardiyah Š 2016