Project Report Dana Davis - OUIL503
Roald Dahl Literary Estate - YCN The aim of this brief was to illustrate and re-imagine classic scenes and characters form a selection of Roald Dahl’s work. Three or more illustrations were requested, with the broad specifications that the illustrations needed to be derived directly from chosen Roald Dahl texts, and include a child character, one villain and one ‘fantastical’ creature. I was drawn to this brief because of my interest in children’s illustration and my own experiences with reading Roald Dahl’s books as a kid. I also liked the fact that they were willing to consider any style or format, so it seemed quite open to interpretation. Having said that, The openness of the brief did in turn provide me with some difficulties. The first decision I had to make was deciding on what books and more specifically texts I wanted to illustrate. The Brief provided a wide selection of titles and possible sections of text to work from - although they didn’t necessarily have to be taken form their suggestions. After reading through a few of them I realised that the pieces they’d picked out in fact didn’t feature the three mandatory character’s required in the illustrations. I made the decision to pick my own pieces of text to illustrate, which included Matilda (pg.130-137), George’s Marvellous Medicine (pg.43-48)and The Witches (pg.64-70).
Roald Dahl Literary Estate - YCN Research and Initial work I started my research by reading through the suggested texts provided by the brief, however as previously mentioned I discovered that they wouldn’t work form me due to the missing specifications of characters. So off the back of that I decided to just re-read some of my personal favourite books and the key scenes I remembered that did feature these things (the child, the villain and the fantastical creature) That was a lot easier and I could connect more with the text having already had that pre-concieved image of the scene in my head that was familiar. The next thing I felt was important to consider was the previous adaptations of these books and the ‘popularity’ factor. The most well known books where placed at the top of the suggested list by the client, which implied to me that they believed these ones would be most successful. However, in the brief they also stated that they wanted to appeal to a younger audience that may not yet identify as a Roald Dahl fan. To me this seemed like an opportunity to introduce book that possibly a new generation of children hadn’t heard of or already seen in the form of a recent movie adaptation (such as Charlie and the chocolate factory or BFG). I also thought to consider books like Matilda which actually was adapted in 1996 - but given that was 20 years ago it’s fair to assume a new generation may not be aware of it’s existence. Another important factor to take into account was the previous artwork done for Roald Dahl, which quite predominately comes from the well known Quentin Blake. It’s hard to ignore the iconicness of his illustrations and clear links to the Roald Dahl brand. The brief it’s self was very open to a range of illustrative styles, the only request was it needed to be in-keeping with the current logo. Personally I’ve always loved the artwork for Roald Dahls books, so moving away from that style was quite daunting. I thought about what it was that made me like the illustrations in the first place and what i concluded was that it was the fluidity and the hand drawn nature, so that’s what i’d like to retain.
Roald Dahl Literary Estate - YCN Development Starting with my sketches I started to play around with colour, although I did experiment with paint I wanted to move away from the painterly effects of Quentin Blake. I scanned in some drawings and roughs and looked at colouring digitally. These are some of the drawings I took to group crits where I got a few comments that the colours were perhaps too ‘garish’ and that illustrations like my Matilda portrait had a much nicer aesthetic. I also got comments that some of my developed drawings where more rigid looking than the previous sketches - which I had to agree. I understand that people have different preferences about colour but I didn’t particularly feel the ones I had chosen where that bold, also when taking into account the bright colours of some of the more recent Roald Dahl covers that are already out there. Having said that I was still looking for a feedback on that because I was unsure. The style of Matilda was quite neutral and maybe more relaxed that I wanted to approach the brief with, I didn’t think it met with the specifications of being an exiting new vibe for them. I needed to find a mid-ground that retained my sketchy qualities and a colour palette that didn’t overpower my illustrations.
Roald Dahl Literary Estate - YCN These are some of the sketches that formed my final outcomes along with more colour experimentation. I stuck with using pencil crayons because they gave me a nice textual look and retained their hand drawn qualities when scanned and coloured under. I also kept the sketchy feel by not going full colour, and taking on board my feedback - I decided to go primarily with using accents of pastel primarys which have a fresh feeling to them without being overly ‘acidic’ looking.
Roald Dahl Literary Estate - YCN These are my final three illustrations that I submitted to YNC. The last concern I had with these was how I was going to place the Roald Dahl Logo - which was required. I was provided with a few different options of layout and colour etc. in the project pack, the mandatory was that the logo needed to be visible and complimentary. Dealing with digital type or design layout isn’t my forte so I was stuck for a while on that, eventually I decided to just keep in simple. I colour picked an accent colour in each and used the same chalky textures I’d used throughout. I think it’s effective but not overpowering. Overall I’m very happy with how they sit together cohesively after having so many colour concerns along the way - I really enjoyed working on this brief and this new way of working I developed for myself. In the future I will definitely continue to experiment with combining my traditional sketches with digital media/colour.
Illustration Friday Illustration Friday is a quick fire weekly competition where the brief is simply to illustrate a different word each week. You make your image then upload it to the website every Friday and a winner is picked. I enjoyed the fast nature of this process and the none serious tone as in enabled me to produce a lot of varied outcomes, and later combine the competition with my own personal project of sketch-booking. I used Illustration Friday to experiment and motivate me to just draw spontaneously, with quicker creative thinking. The first word I illustrated was ‘spider’ and I decided to explore character design because it’s something I like doing in my practice. I created these three spiders and played around with different scenarios I could use them in. The candy-floss spider image is the illustration I submitted, but looking back I’m more fond of them as spot illustrations.
Illustration Friday The word here was ‘soup’ - I decided to make a bit of concept art for this one, and also test out my pixel art. I’ve been doing pixel art for around four years and it’s quite a niche art form, it’s something I’ve always done as a personal hobby and I’ve never really used it in my academic work (because it is such a ‘style’ that’s not suited to everything). But as there were no restrictions with this I got to create something new.
Illustration Friday After playing around a little with the first two words I had the idea to use illustration Friday as more of a project - to create a cohesive series of images. Over the last summer I found keeping a visual journal or ‘sketch-booking’ really helped me develop in my style and keep motivated, so I thought I could use these quick briefs as a prompt to fill a sketchbook page every week. I used the same media and format for each one and drew around the theme. Personally this collection of images is one of my favourite I’ve done because it’s just very ‘me’, but I feel that’s the nature of illustration Friday anyway, it’s all about personal interpretation on a topic. Words included -
Rock Talk Sound Internet Swirl Mischief Up Tea
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.