Collaborative practice

BEAR - YCN - Collaborative Practice.

The creative challenge for the BEAR YCN brief was to create the next line of BEAR collectable yoyo cards. Yoyo cards come in the packaging of the bear brand yoyo bars (a healthy fruit based snack bar aimed at ages 4-9) and all relate to a singular theme - of which a new one is bought out every year. The mandatory was that they must be educational and fun, ‘secret learning’ was the key. Three designs (back and front) needed to be submitted, along with a cohesive concept.

The reason I was drawn to this brief was because it was ultimately children’s illustration and that’s something I’m interested in pursuing more in the future. I was also conscious that it was an undertaking that would benefit from a more graphics orientated point of view as the back side of the card was mainly text and layout based - this is why I chose this brief as the one I wanted to work on collaboratively. I wanted the expertise of a graphics student to help take on that role and also experience working collaboratively with perhaps another illustrator.

Overall the experience was very positive for me, I got exactly what I wanted to get out of it and I was pleased with the collective outcome and my own. I found that working with other people was a good way of balancing a work load and also very helpful for exchanging skills and bouncing off ideas.

BEAR - YCN - Collaborative Practice.

Research and initial work My group consisted of another illustrator and one graphic design student. Two of us had already decided we wanted to work on the BEAR brief because of a shared interest in children’s illustration, however we both agreed having the expertise of a graphics student would benefit the project as graphic design was not a strong point for either of us. I attended a meeting session and found someone willing to join after explaining our situation and sharing examples of work - we then exchanged details and set dates to meet every week.

When I decided I wanted to do this brief I already had pre-conceived ideas of some things I’d have like to do, so part of the process of the collaborative project was pitching my ideas to the rest of my group - The first meeting we had together we all brought some initial ideas to the table and discussed what we thought we could move forward with My main concept idea was a deep-sea discovery theme, inspired by popular documentaries like Blue Planet and the bizarre creatures found a deep depths. At this point I had preliminary research and suggestions of having things like ‘rare’ cards with special features such as shiny or neon etc. This seemed to catch everyone’s imagination and generally be a shared interest so it was the theme that we eventually agreed to work on.

I started by researching fish and testing out different styles and media - just drawing them out. I became interested in the unusual textures and colours that were common amongst them, so decided to test out lino as I’d used it before on a previous project and gotten similar textual results.

BEAR - YCN - Collaborative Practice.

Development - roughs & colour schemes.

At the second meeting we decided what our roles would be within the project - i would illustrate the front of two cards & focus on developing the sea creature aesthetic, whilst the other illustrator would work on two more fronts and focus on developing the character of ‘bear’. The graphic designer was in charge of designing the fact side of all four cards, which included researching, font/type and layouts. We narrowed down what creatures we’d work on and concluded that my two cards would be a giant squid and a comb jelly (Ctenophora). These would be considered ‘rare’ and give me the opportunity to explore using new techniques to create the various effects discussed (neon, metallic, glow in the dark surfaces etc.)

My group liked the lino cut technique and the texture it gave the images, but we also agreed that the same look could also be achieved digitally using different tools. Given that we had different skills as illustrators we decided that we would work in our own preferred processes. Working with another illustrator was challenging in that we had to combine two styles, this sometimes involved replicating eachothers characters or techniques and continuously checking our designs were cohesive across all the cards. We combated this issue by creating a shared colour palette and providing eachother with reference images. Another thing that proved helpful was staying in touch through instant messaging, so even if we were working in separate places i could always check up on something (e.g send photos over of work in progress for feedback or advice).

The images show examples of colour experiments and a palette we designed for the character of bear. Shown also are the roughs (next page) i brought to a group meeting for layout ideas which were filtered down to the best options. A positive of working with other people is that there’s more imput - i was having trouble with the comb jelly card because the jellyfish are quite small in scale, it got suggested that it would be a better idea to include more than one so it would balance the space (a really simple tweak but at the time it didn’t come to mind).

BEAR - YCN - Collaborative Practice.

BEAR - YCN - Collaborative Practice.

Development After making a decision on the cards layout it came down to the making. These are the lino cut’s I used for the finals.

I scanned them in and refined them before digitally colouring them for a sharper look. I think the yellow under the red really brings out the grainy texture.

We were unsure about how to achieve the special qualities (my cards would feature neon, metallic and glow in the dark qualities) but as one of my team members had used vinyl successfully in the past we thought that would be our best option. We knew that as these features could just be ‘proposed’ features so there was no real pressure - but for the sake of selling the idea we wanted to have a go.

We faced issues of pricing and cutting at such a small scale, because some of the material we wanted (glow in the dark vinyl) was very expensive and could not be cut with the laser cutter. Here we had to compromise - I bought some glow in the dark paint instead and hoped that painting that over the final product would work for the photos.

On a larger production scale there’s probably a way around this but given we we’re only making four cards the costs of the options available to us weren’t economical.

As mentioned before I also had to work on re-creating a character developed by the other illustrator in our group. It was tricky replicating a character exactly like that but I believe he’s cohesive along all the cards. I think on reflection it would have been a better idea to define rolls of illustration just bear or illustration just the sea creatures.

BEAR - YCN - Collaborative Practice.

Finished products Here are the final printed cards we produced.

The vinyl worked well for what we wanted to achieve, I had a sticker sheet laser cut so it was just a matter of adding them after printing. As for the glow in the dark paint, the overall effect wasn’t as successful as we had hoped - it didn’t show up very well on photography so decided the best option would be to mock it up in Photoshop just to give an impression of what could be possible. The text element was handled by our graphic designer, I just provided the wording.

Overall the process of working collaborative has improved my confidence with people skills and also introduced me to new ways of working and techniques. I think the open communication we had in our group definitely helped us ease any tensions or perhaps prevent issues escalating. As a result it was an enjoyable task and the final product came out well and was submitted on time.

Summative Evaluation.

At the start of this module I was quite daunted by the idea of entering live briefs, but I was also looking forward to having the chance to work more independently in a way that I could manage my own time and workload. The thing I was most pessimistic about was the collaborative practice element because I’d never really worked as part of a group to create a physical product before – I was unsure about how I’d feel about that and how the process would work. However, by the end of all the projects, when everything was completed I found that on reflection the one I enjoyed working on the most was actually the collaborative practice brief. Because of how we split the work load, and the constant conversations we were having about the work, I feel like on the whole the process was a lot less stressful. It was nice to have that reassurance and second or third voice.

As a result, I feel like I have improved my social skills and also my management skills – there were times when I had to be the assertive one and lead the way a little bit but I’m glad to have had that opportunity to do that. I proved to myself that I can do it and that that it’s a role that I actually feel comfortable with. During the collaborative brief, I also learnt some new processes and techniques too. For example, working digitally in photoshop with specific color pallets and using laser cut vinyl for the first time (which I can see me using again in the future and in my personal practice). Since starting the live briefs I’ve developed my photoshop and presentation skills a lot, I’m more of a traditional media person really, so I always shied away from working digitally in the past. Working on briefs where the majority of outcomes required a certain level of digital involvement (even if that was just the requirement that the submission would be digital & judged that way) pushed me to explore more. Starting with the independent ‘Roald Dahl Literary estate’ brief and developing a way of working on that e.g. hand drawing, scanning sketches then digitally coloring, gave me the confidence to then use the same process in the collaborative ‘BEAR’ project. I talked a lot about developing this process on my blog – one of the problems I had was translating the vibe of my rough sketches into a professional and finalized format.

Listening to peer feedback and having those conversation with myself as I was developing the work all helped me to resolve those issues and realise my final outcomes.

The outcomes I was most pleased with where my two major projects (the independent Roald Dahl brief and the BEAR brief).

I enjoyed them both for different reasons, The BEAR brief was just something really different for me – I liked working with

other people and the concept was really appealing. Children’s illustration is something that I’m interested in, which is the same reason I picked to work on the Roald Dahl Brief too.

The outcomes for the Roald Dahl creative challenge in particular are among some of what I would consider my favorite illustrative work I’ve done throughout this course. I think the reason being is that the style was really ‘me’ and I was very comfortable with the new process I’d discovered for myself. I believe that because the brief was quite suited to me and it was something I was excited about that inevitably benefited how well the project ran. The same reasons could apply to my illustration Friday project too. As to the BEAR brief I think the successes lied in how we all as a group worked together and honing and merging our individual skill sets.

In the future I can definitely see the benefits of working collaboratively to work on bigger projects – and also just to to embrace new ideas and different way or thinking or creative problem solving. I’ll also be taking forward the new process and ways of working I’ve discovered for myself and developing on that learning more. I’m currently using a similar process of combining hand drawn & digital colour in my applied illustration module. There’s not much I’d really do differently in regards to the projects themselves because I was happy with how everything developed and the outcomes – one thing I would plan better would be my time scale management. I ended up working on my major independent project and my collaborative at the same time, so they were running along side each other for a while. Juggling both things along with my applied illustration module meant that I had trouble making time for the latter. Having said that – I do feel like in order to complete the projects to their full potential I did need to spend that time on them.