Website I have been working on my website for a few months and I am at a point now where I am happy with how it looks and functions. I have recently deleted a lot of my older work from the gallery as I felt it was not a very good representation of my practice. Having too many illustrations in the gallery was over whelming and reducing the impact of the stronger pieces of work. I have kept the background of the site white and the design very simple to make sure that nothing distracts from the illustrations. In the last couple of weeks I have been working on animating my character illustrations and have made some GIFs to use on the site. The GIFs create an interesting and appealing focal point of the page and bring my characters to life, making the site more engaging. I looked at a lot of illustrator’s websites when designing mine and nearly all were variations on the same layout, with a gallery page, an ‘about me’ page and a contact page. The ‘about me’ pages contained a small amount of information about the artist, a list of awards received and a list of previous clients. There seemed to be two distinct approaches to how the ‘about me’ sections were written. The first was a quite formal description of the artist including their biographical details. The second focussed on their practice and tended to use less formal language. Initially I adopted the first approach, but after advice from my tutors I decided to use the ‘about me’ page to tell people that “I love to tell stories…” and then explain why. I feel that this method acts as a much better introduction to my work. I have included a contact page with a form that allows people to email me directly through the site, but I would like to add more options to this page such as my phone number and postal address. I would also like to include links to social media platforms to try and link the different elements of my online presence together.
Social Media As well as working on my website I have been making use of several social media platforms to network with other illustrators, publishers and agents. I have tried to keep my presence consistent across all platforms, including my website, to create a recognisable visual identity. Instagram is the platform I have used the most and update the most often. I feel that Instagram is less formal that the other platforms and is somewhere to showcase smaller personal projects and works in progress as well as finished illustrations. Some of the other platforms seem more suited to professional projects, acting more as a CV than an online portfolio. Making use of multiple platforms is a good way to engage with a wider audience ranging from large companies to professional illustrators and fans of illustration. I need to spend more time updating my LinkedIn and The Dots pages. I have been holding back on these platforms as I didn’t have any finished projects from this year and I didn’t think last year’s work was representative of my current practice. These platforms are more intimidating to use than less professionally-orientated platforms like Instagram and I wanted to feel confident in the work I was using to promote myself. I now have 3 or 4 finished projects that I think would represent my practice well and that I plan to add to my LinkedIn and The Dots profiles. I have also got my website to a point where I am happy with it and could use these platforms to direct people towards it. The professional illustrators I have spoken to this year have talked about the importance of using social media; even the ones that don’t have much of an online presence spoke about how not keeping up to date can mean missing out on jobs. Social media can be a way to get your work seen by creative directors at publishers that you would otherwise need an agent to approach. Another thing to consider is that illustrators with a large following on social media are more appealing to agents and publishers as they are capable of promoting themselves and have a pre-existing fanbase.
Portfolio Board I printed off the first draft of my portfolio, which allowed me to see what does work and what doesn’t. It also gave me the opportunity to get feedback from tutors and I was given some pointers to use to make sure my portfolio is consistently strong. The first and last pages need to be striking. The first piece of work should serve as an impressive introduction to the portfolio, and a well-chosen final image should leave the person viewing the portfolio with a very positive impression. If you are talking with them as they view the portfolio, this illustration could well be the one that is viewed for the longest time. My portfolio should be constantly changing with the development of my practice and should be altered to suit the person it is being presented to. During the talk she gave, Chloe Morgan summarised what children’s book publishers and agents want to see in a portfolio. This was extremely useful to me and helped to direct my focus in the extended practice module. A portfolio should contain: animal and children characters as they are commonly used in children’s books; it is important to demonstrate your character design ability and to remember that characters can be picked out from your portfolio and used as the basis for a book; a combination of vignettes and full bleed illustrations; these are two popular formats in children’s publishing and using both will allow you to demonstrate a range of skills; development work, including rough designs and sketches that demonstrate your practice and the thought process behind your work; the danger with finished designs is that they can become too rigid and lose the movement of rough sketches; finally, and I think most importantly to me at this time, character studies exploring a character’s postures, movements and expressions through a range of common activities, such as running, eating and jumping; this will help to demonstrate the ability to communicate movement and emotion, and the ability to maintain a consistent character over the course of a narrative. As well as my portfolio I have been preparing manuscripts of the books I have written and illustrated to send to publishers. I have submitted some manuscripts and portfolios in the form of PDF files, both as part of competition briefs and to promote my work with agents and publishers I would like to work with. I feel, however, that compressed PDFs are not the best way to present my work and so I decided to have some physical copies made. I think the physical copies better demonstrate how my work functions as a finished product and are a more interactive format. I have kept the design of the manuscripts simple to keep costs down but have made sure the paper choice and print quality create an appealing and professional product. I made business card for the Hanbury symposium but I would like now to work on some new ones. I like the simplicity of my cards and I want to stick to the same format, with a character on the front of the card and a smaller character on the back along with my contact info. I was working mostly in black and white at the time I created these business cards and they are representative of my work at that point. My work now, however, is much bolder and more colourful and I would like my business cards to reflect this.