Competition by Kraggy Krag

“THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER IS THAT UNDERSTANDING DEVELOPMENT COMES FROM FAILURE. PEOPLE BEGIN TO GET BETTER WHEN THEY FAIL. THEY MOVE TOWARDS FAILURE. THEY DISCOVER SOMETHING AS A RESULT OF FAILING” - MILTON GLASER

TALENT HOUSE From observing some of the working freelance illustrators that I am in contact with, I noticed that in-between commissions many of them enter design / illustration competitions. Many often win and either receive a cash prize, or it at least extends their publicity. I decided to enter a few myself to have first hand experience. Talent House is an online based company that partner up with musicians and other establishments to give artists the chance to collaborate with companies they may not normally be able to approach. The external company will set a brief and then it is open for anybody to enter for free. The competitions cover many artistic areas including design and illustration. Most of the competitions will reward a highest voted submission (as chosen by the public) and a professional chosen winner and runner-up, what stood out to me was that the prizes were actually very reasonable and beneficial to the artists rather than many of the competitions I have seen, that I believe damage the creative industry. I had once started a design for a Talent House run competition but never submitted it, then later regretted that discission after I saw the winning entries. I felt I could do better so when the next brief came around I started work on it. The brief was to design a new Mastodon EP cover for their song â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Dry Bone Valleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

Having never really listened to Mastodon before I of course did some research on their previous album artwork, music and fan base. They also had already made a video for the single which was art directed by Tim Biskup, who would help judge the entries with the band. Luckily for me the band were also playing a gig at the Brixton Academy, where I sometimes work, so I managed to see them live for free and experience their show and interact with the crowd to get a better understanding of their fans. After just finishing the Narrow Plains EP cover I felt confident in my ability to create a CD cover and thought I would be fine producing the album artwork in the very short space of time I had. I started out with some initial sketches and eventually landed on an idea to re-use the hexagon grid I had used for the Hidden Flyer to create a skull since they featured quite heavily throughout the song. I had always avoided creating images around skulls as I thought it was a bit clichĂŠ and over done, however applied in the right context and if cleverly executed I think they are appropriate. So I did many hand drawn quick drafts before taking the template to Adobe Illustrator and rendering it with vectors.

After creating a vectored skull I was happy with I added a back-drop element to try and give it a sense of rising out of the page. I then rasterised these vectors and took them to Photoshop to start experimenting with screening elements on top. At this point I was still creating physical photo-collages so decided to see how this design might translate to photo collage digitally before spending a huge amount of time assembling it by hand. The results were interesting but I still didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel like I was creating a well rounded composition, instead of a stand alone element.

I continued to experiment with this element in different blending methods and photocollages. However what I probably should have done was go back and see if there was a composition I could create that suited this, or perhaps other elements that could complement it in a pattern. Instead I applied the colour palette I had been using in previous projects and made some trials of what it could look like screen printed. This was poor time management, as the deadline was not far off.

Placing the skull element into a album cover layout proved difficult and didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t help my already existing doubts in the image. So in a panic, with only a few hours to go I completely ditched the skull idea and started afresh. I rushed out patterns from Illustrator and layered them over into the design. At this point I think I had been looking at the same images for too long and needed a fresh perspective on my work. Unfortunately I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have time to try out too many new designs. So in the last hour before the deadline I altered a font to create the title, which looking back was very scrappy, and decided to use a technique I had done in the Aurora Borealis project of mixing my pencil drawn landscapes into the image. The result was not very thought out and I felt it didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t reflect my previous efforts. With minutes left I had to panic submit the design but instantly regretted it. I was not proud and thus did not publicise it for voting. Looking across the other entries I knew there were more deserving winners by artists who were obviously real fans of the band. This particular competition had a huge turn out, that varied greatly in quality. In the end the winning entry was, in my opinion, an amateur, rough design compared to some outstanding fan entries.

OHH DEER Ohh Deer is an online shop, set up by illustrators Jamie Mitchell and Mark Callaby, that specialises in selling illustrated products ideal for gifts that everyone can adorn their houses with. They select illustrators to work with and then give them a percentage of the profit. They occasionally run competitions to find new product designs. I have products selling through Ohh Deer under my Cut Me Up Zine collective, and am in contact with Jamie and many of the regular illustrators, however I have not ever entered any of their competitions or done any solo work for them. So when I saw that they were running a new T-shirt design competition I thought it would be an interesting opportunity to try. The brief was called Tee Party, and it was essentially to create a design for a summer themed T-shirt for Ohh Deer to sell and then you would get 25% of the profit. Which is not the worst T-shirt deal I have seen but compared to a site like Threadless or some of the other T-shirt competitions I won last year, not an outstanding deal, and risky as it depends on the amount of sales. However I liked the brief and wanted to explore what my work might look like as a shirt after my language had developed as a result of the Guardian project. I was also very impressed by the work at Pick Me Up and it had inspired me to just get image making to a brief, and be a bit more playful with my work after the failure from the previous Talent House Mastodon cover competition.

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Work submitted earlier than the deadline will be uploaded onto the competition section so people can see it, like it, retweet it etc. We will take the popularity into consideration, but ultimately we will select work that we think best fits the brand. The winners will be selected shortly after the deadline. Please submit your work on one of our templates, any work sent in an incorrect format won’t be uploaded. Max 2 Entries

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Tee#Party#Competition Posted on March 29

It’s time for our next competition! Have you always wanted your work produced as T-shirts? Well here’s your chance. 3 winning entries will be printed and the artists will receive 25% of the profit. We welcome work from a range of disciplines: Illustrators, Graphic Designers and Photographers alike. It feels like summer is knocking on our doors and we’d like you to produce something you’d want to wear this summer. The 3 Winners will have their work produced as male and female tees. They will be sold in Ohh Deer’s stockists and online store. The artwork remains the property of the artist, but can only be used in their portfolio until that point when Ohh Deer no longer produces the item. Deadline: 1st of May (the end of the day) Artwork Size: Max 32cm x 43cm 300dpi Colours: Because they're screen printed, there is a max of 3 colours preferably less, ensure that you files have a layer per colour, multiple colour tees cannot be produced from a flat image. File Types: You won’t be asked for the final artwork initially, just the templated image which should be a JPEG or a PNG and 795px x 530px winners will be asked to provide a layered PDF.

Initially I decided to play around with a few digital photo-collages and use a gradient screen over the top. This was more in the style of a flyer or digital printed piece rather than a screen printed shirt. It was meant to be a bit of a joke, and look very â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;hipsterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; with some standard logo template that read BBQ rather than a brand name. It was more to see if I actually could make such a thing, never a piece to submit. The same goes for the bellow images that use screened block shapes. All of these are just technique tests I wanted to try but not develop into finished pieces.

Other test pieces include mixing hand drawn images with block colours from vector elements. I found that I was becoming far quicker at using Illustrator and still enjoyed taking the images to Photoshop to colour and tidy up just as I would normally do in Photoshop. The process of creating these experiments felt like a healthy return to image making after a long period of web coding and tight deadlines. I had learnt from the Talent House competition not to stick with one image for too long if it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t working beyond a point.

Throughout my designing process I was constantly referring to shirt designers and companies I rate highly. Such as; Super Superficial and Rose Blakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shirt designs. My work process went back to using the sketchbook as a starting point, then taking the designs to a computer to develop them.

Working from the Posca pen drawings in my sketchbooks seemed to develop well into a mixture of vector and texture pieces. I found my self thinking more about the composition of an image rather than just a stand alone element. Which in most cases is the opposite of what you need to do for T-shirts designs as the image needs to fit within the screen dimensions and is normally printed in the center of the shirt. Well this isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t how I would print them, and its not how I tend to print my tote bags. I try to be clever with the image positioning, such as a full bleed or appearing from one edge.

Inspired by the amazing range of work that is always at Pick Me Up, and after visiting a few times again this year, I decided to make a conscious effort to make more draft images in my sketchbooks when travelling or during free time. I used to write a lot of ideas and do detailed sketches in my sketchbooks but recently because of being reliant on some software for jobs such as web design, they became more like regular note books. Once I started thinking about pieces I could make, my ideas kept on developing, and so sometimes they merged. For instance I had an idea to do a stamp themed design since the Jubilee is coming up, and it could be playing off of the royal family theme. But then I had another idea of people disappearing to sheds in the summer to get their gardening equipment again. I also tried a Shed-Head idea though this was quickly dropped. Anyway the two ideas started to merge, and I made vector versions of the hand drawn shed I had made on the bus, and then placed it in the stamp to create a new scene, like the old Scandinavian stamps of mountains and open fields. At this point I played around with colour as there was a 3 colour maximum rule for the shirt designs. This development then lost sight of the original brief and I decided to develop the landscape into a new image, so went back to the sketch book and drew out some possible compositions. Once the mountain scene roughs were created the stamp idea was dropped, and is stored for later use. I then set about making the mountain shed scene in illustrator and then cropped it down for a full bleed shirt or a two colour screen print. Knowing that the full bleed design was outside of the dimensions and far too alpine / wintery; I went ahead and screen printed some A2 versions to hang or be made into sketchbooks.

After a few long journeys across the country I thought about revisiting some of my smaller sketches and ideas, since my understanding of vector illustrations had improved and I actually knew how to translate them. So I revisited a few pieces that I had never had the ability to go further with before, as I had no understanding of Illustrator. The results were often very different to how I imagined them, but in a positive way, they were slicker and more controlled than the pages I had scanned in. For much of this work I was inspired by other artists using, what I assume to be, a similar working method.

(L-R) Part and Parcel Riley Cran Janine Rewell

Eventually I decided to move onto a new T-shirt design and for this I concentrated on some earlier sketches of making palm trees only using wavy or zigzagged lines. To me they looked like they were part of a summer scene by the pool, so work on constructing this scene began. Using an isometric grid to perfect the angle that was suggested in my rough sketches, I started to construct a few pool side elements to be placed in the composition. Using reference images constantly to make sure that the objects were recognisable instantly by other viewers.

Crist贸bal Schmal

As black and white outlines the worked up images were still quite plain and I left them for a while. It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t until I started using paper cut outs in my sketchbook that the images made sense to me how they could develop. After drawing out a few rough pages with coloured paper and Posca pens, I scanned in the images and tried to recreate them on the computer. Quite often I would render the image as it was still a work in progress and add texture or place it on the T-shirt template so that I could get an idea as to what the eventual outcome could look like.

I created a few different versions of the final design including one that had the full pool in view, and worked with the screen dimensions set. However the placement I thought was most interesting was the full bleed image across the front of the T-shirt. It is quite hard to print a three colour image like this, I have only ever done a one colour print on a tote bag in the similar style. I noticed that the design could be a pattern, and my house mate who is studying fashion said that the easiest way to create a pattern like this would be to print the design onto the fabric before sowing it together to make the shirt. This is something I would like to try in the future with my house mate, as I have always had an interest in combining my design and print methods with his amazing skill in fashion design and construction. In the end I submitted 2 designs, one of the shed but with less of the alpine scene apparent and the shirt design to the right. I knew that this was outside of the screen limits, but I decided that I would still submit as a test to see if people would be interested in having it as a shirt. If so I could find a way to create them myself to sell.

OUTCOME & EVALUATION

MY EXPERIENCE OF COMPETITIONS HAs BEEN A VERY VARIED ONE FROM THESE RECENT PROJECTS. PREVIOUS TO THIS YEAR I OFTEN ENTERED COMPETITIONS WITHOUT REALLY CARING HOW MY WORK WAS PORTRAYED OR what THE PRIZE was. Because of this I did win a few, however looking back at my winning entries I am not proud of the work I made for them. I have recently become far more judgemental of my own work, which has both downsides and good points to it. The downside is that sometimes I will not publicise work that I not proud of such as the ‘mastodon’ entry. It also means that I jump around with my ideas fairly quickly, trying to find one to pursue. The good aspect of being judgemental is that I have a quality control on my work and am aware of how the viewers might perceive my portfolio. From talking to fellow illustrators who are already freelancing I have learnt that this is a very normal trait to have when creating new projects.

Working in a very independent way will normally mean that you are your only judge, recently this has dawned upon me; after university there is no more tutor support and the only constructive feedback you may have is from the fellow practitioners you keep in contact with. These thoughts have reinforced the ideas I have been having about working as a collective or at least sharing a studio with fellow artists. These competitions also brought up another area of freelance life that I have been having to think about; whether a job to earn money may get in the way of freelancing. During the ‘mastodon’ competitions I was also working my part time job, which normally doesn’t get in the way. However because I had such a short deadline to submit the entry I really needed an extra hour or so to perfect it. However I needed to leave for work and so didn’t finish the piece to a standard that I was happy with. For most freelancers I have spoken to they started with a part time job and when they felt confident enough that work was coming in, decided to quit and make the leap to relying on their freelance earnings. The ‘ohh deer’ competition felt a lot freer for me, and after being inspired by a few weeks of visiting shows such as ‘pick me up’, keaton henson’s ‘gloaming’ and the ‘it’s nice that’ book launch, I felt ready to start exploring my visual language again. I ended up using the brief as more of a way to experiment with my work than actually sticking to the required restraints. Which I believe was

useful to me, as the work I ended up producing was among some of the work I’m most proud of. In the end the ‘ohh deer’ competition did say that they really liked the design I had made, however they would not be able to print it, which is the feedback I expected. What was good for me was that many people had also said they enjoyed the design and would like to purchase it. So I decided to have it printed anyway. I would normally print these myself, but my equipment is slightly too small for the scale I wanted the design to be, and with university also not having larger fabric screens, I decided to send it off. The people printing the design for Me are ‘get a grip studio’ who are a Birmingham based printers. I have purchased many of their

products before and they often print for friends of mine, such as the illustrator ‘Mr. Millerchip’. with constantly good feedback and the rare ability to do a full bleed print job like this, I decided they were perfect for the job. My opinions have changed slightly on competitions, I used to think that they were just taking advantage of young talent (and many still are) but there are also legitimate briefs with prizes worth investing your time in, and if between jobs, a failed entry can still be used in your portfolio and may turn into a new project.