Summative evaluation

Summative Evaluation During this module I think research has really been a key element for me, looking at other practitioners in the specific field of character and narrative was interesting and helped me to expand my work further than usual. I also attended all of the crits for this module and I think that was a key aspect for me, during this course year I haven’t always attended them all but for 505 I made sure that I could attend everyone and I think they had a significant impact on my work. With 505 I really wanted people’s opinions on my work to push it further because my work was aimed at a target audience of students and 19 – 28 year old creatives and I wanted that input to make sure that my work had the edge it needed.

My Photoshop skills have also improved during this module as I learnt how to create a hotdog book in photoshop quicker (my old method was really slow). I also learnt some more techniques to make the editing process quicker and neater.

This module was really great to expand on myself as an illustrator, by looking at other practitioners it showed me a bigger insight into what I liked and what I didn’t. Until now I had always had a distain for regular comics, such as Marvel or DC. Not because the storyline wasn’t there but because often the comics are overly bright and colorful and distract from the story (this isn’t always the case but it applies to the majority for me). I wasn’t sure whether character and narrative was for me if it meant just doing comics, but after the research I found that it didn’t have to mean that kind of comic book. Noelle Stevenson and Jillian Tamaki really influenced this module for me, as well as discovering Jen Lee (as her web comic is animated and not something I’d seen very often before). I like the accessibility of a web comic and although I didn’t have the change to explore it for myself, it’s a concept I will be taking with me into the future as a practitioner. I enjoyed

the freedom that this module supplied, and enjoyed creating characters for a very specific purpose.

In this module I have experimented more with ink and gouache than previous modules. Gouache carries across really well into Photoshop and doesn’t lose its hand made feel if you edit it properly. My final comic ended up having a really nice feel to it because you could see the effort and time that went into drawing and painting each character.

This is something I feel is often lost with today’s character industry (as I am not a fan of purely digital charcaters). I also invested in a colour wheel for this module (after looking at Tom Haugomat’s work) and although I didn’t use it (as my comic ended up being two colours) It was really interesting to look into and colour palettes is something I will develop further in future modules.

I feel like the main strength my work this module is my concept work and research. This is the first module I can hand on heart say I thoroughly researched, I watched a lot of movie adaptations and read a fair few books from the library including the seven basic story plots which was really helpful when identifying which story plot Persephone could slot into. My concept work was strong in this because once I had an idea in mind that had sat well with my target audience (19-27) I could really get my teeth into it and enjoyed doing so.

I think weaknesses in my work this module is that I could have just done some more physical drawing just to develop ideas further. I think because I had researched so much it gave me a very specific idea of what I wanted to create, I could have been a little more exploratory with what media I used. It might have been nice to try oil painting although Im not sure how that would have panned out time wise. I would have liked time to actually get round to creating a web comic, but this is something I’m planning on doing in

my spare time just as a continuation for myself.

Overall I really enjoyed this module, It challenged me to figure out what kind of illustrator I want to be and what kind of work I want to make but it also gave me the freedom to look around at the possibilities working in the industry has for me. It was nice to focus on something I enjoy creating for once, I did worry that this module might make me realize that character and narrative is not where I’m headed but if anything it just convinced me more that this is the direction I should be working in for the time being.  Â