Summative Report

From the start of my final year at illustration I came in with a head full of ideas but at the same time confusion as i didn't feel like my illustrations could develop much further from the original line drawing. This meant at the start i needed to find my ground with developing my drawings, one element that i believe helped me take this step was my banner for the GROSS exhibition. This helped me work harder on the detail and texture of my characters as i knew it was going to be on a large scale. With this piece came development of colouring my pieces digitally while keeping an analogue texture to them through dry brush for tone and to add keep an analogue naive feel to the drawings.

This banner helped my confidence in my drawing grow and with this i attempted to take part in some live briefs. I found the image making for certain live briefs difficult, as within my practice the initial idea is very important to me however, i find it much more difficult to come up with an idea for a brief that's been set than a self initiated one. In terms of live briefs I didn't push myself with unfamiliar things instead i chose ones such as character design and t shirt designs both things i feel more comfortable with. This allowed me to develop a portfolio of specialised work and i'd leave the experimentation and risk for my self initiated briefs as i'd have a clearer idea of whether the experimentation is necessary.
My developed drawing style also really helped with the development of my print making , before this year i never made money from my illustrations as in the past i felt my prints where either to specific to a project or visually not strong enough. This really made me focus on looking at my work commercially and looking at jokes within my work that more people can get on board with. Since doing this with my prints i have made so much more money and felt more confident to sell my work to people.
One element of this year I feel really opened my creative mind and eyes was collaboration. I tried to collaborate as much as i could as i really wanted to see my illustrations have more context then just creating for my own amusement. Working on projects such as the Hostel world animation helped me see how an animator can bring your style to life while putting their own animation style within it. Whether it's just collaborating with ideas or on a whole project having someone to constantly be able to bounce ideas off really helps the creative process and is something that i am looking forward to doing in the real world.
One of my biggest struggles of this year was thinking of an effective self initiated project that would let me experiment and be as playful as i could possibly be. My tutor suggested football which triggered a lot of ideas. I have always been influenced by UK culture and humour in my work, Therefore this work fitted perfectly in my interests and ideas. This project really helped develop my character design again and my digital colouring also saw development through the use of paper texture to colour this helps compliment my scrappy analogue style line drawings. This project also helped me understand that i am better working on a project from scratch. Initially when i was working on it I was focusing on my home team Boro. However this end up feeling to personal and serious so i decided to start from scratch and make up everything allowing me to be as playful as possible.
Throughout this year I have been desperate to create 3D elements within my work I am disappointed i didn't explore this as further as i may of wanted however, making the football table for this project has been my funnest project on the course so far. It's sparked my interest in customising toys for art which is something i plan to develop further for the show and potentially my future practice.

Overall, I see this year as a very important step in my creativity I feel much more confident then ever on my image making and although ideas is my strongest element i must continue to see ways of developing an idea and being open to the idea of collaboration within the idea to help boost the design and project. My love of drawing may have dipped up and down throughout the year but my love for creating things and ideas will remain and hopefully help me through my creative career.






Side note:
One thing I believe has helped drive and develop my work but worried me from the start is that i am starting to realise more then ever the lack of originality in some illustrators and the heavy influences that trends can have. Since realising this I have aimed to keep most my inspiration in elements outside of illustration such as fine artists like Rod Grooms who constantly plays around with different image making elements to create 2D and 3D narratives. I also look heavily to humour for inspiration especially when it's done creatively. I could list many examples of these things but one this year that really helped me out was a Japanese film called big man Japan where the humour is at a perfect level of silliness, which is something that i am always working to balance. With this inspiration has made me want to constantly develop my practice more than ever and to remain totally open in where it may head in the future.

Design Boards

Exhibition Proposal

I want to develop my project a lot more for my exhibition. This includes:
- Making a whole panini sticker album with over 100 players and 10 teams All in a customised ring binder  sticker album.
- developing the football table with stickers and going any bits that need touching up
- making more toys for the football merchandise
-make a football kit based off one of the teams i have created
- making a large image of a football team (like the orgy banner but of a football team photo)
- looking if i can create a small inflatable for the show

I want my space to feel fun with both illustrative elements and 3D. I want the colours to be bold and bright with humour elements throughout.
I want the stickers to have a portfolio feel but at the same time look like a panini sticker album.
I need to make sure the table football is fully playable for the exhibition

I think if i put in the hard work all of this is achievable and i am excited to see how it goes as i have been really excited about this project especially to show it off.


some toy concept images:

Fourth 7x7

This is a 7x7 for my self initiated it's Andy Pandy Playing football.

Reflection 4

Self initiated breif:

Initial ideas

For one of my final projects i wanted to have a theme that would let me explore as many possibilities as possible. It took me a while to find something that would allow me to bring together my favourite elements of image making this year such as fun character design, playful narratives and a 3D element. I got recommended by my tutor that football would be a good option and i agreed as some of my biggest influences in my work is the UK and British humour. This gave me the opportunity to play with a theme that i find interesting but in need of some creative fun. At the beginning i was originally focusing on my hometown middlesborough. This has influenced me many times so i thought it would be a good start however I felt like i was thinking to deep into my hometown and making it too serious by doing so.

Therefore, i realised to make this the most fun for me I had to start from scratch and make up my own team completely. This way i had no restrictions and i could make it as silly as possible. Working this out really helped me get started as i was straight into the character designs for the players and concepts for emblems and mascots. 

design process

When it came to my designs i tried to think outside of the box on the norm of football in order to make this appear as a joke. This involved in making emblems  involving naive sounding teams such as " the nice boys club" and "good boys FC" and images of friendly dogs to contemplate it.

To help bring this project together i needed to think of an effective way to display all my exploration and fun character designs. Through the theme of football i came to the conclusion that a joke style panini sticker album would be an effective way to show this off. 

My characters where all quick line drawings and from i learnt previously i can use collaged coloured paper digitally to give it a more analogue look to my drawings.  I created my first team of stickers and printed them out to see how effective they would look in a sticker album. 

development

The drawings and characters worked well however, the graphic design and layout kind of spoiled the aesthetic. I decided from previously working with a graphic designer that it would be beneficial on this project to get them to help me out with the layout. I worked with my friend Patrick Mcgeady who does graphic design at Beckett. I told him my ideas for the stickers and how i wanted them to be influenced to the old vintage style stickers such as the ones from the 70s and 80s. After showing him that idea he created a pitch style layout that would help box the name of the player clearly and leave lots of room to show of the player. This help lift the design of the stickers to make it look incredibly professional while still keeping it's naive element. 

Further development and future plans

For the show i would hope to finish a full album with over 100 players to support the rest of the project. 

I wanted this football project to cover many  aspects of football and one element i really wanted to cover was a table football. 

I bought myself a cheap kids one from a charity shop and took it apart in order for me to completely re paint it. I coloured it in a bright orange to give it a fun feel, then i painted adverts and a crowd within the inside. This gives it a naive aesthetic which makes it look very crafty. I decided that instead of making my own players, because i had based a team of bootleg characters in my stickers i would head to a car boot sale and find as many interesting toys as possible. Once i found toys meaningful to me and my interests i screwed them all in to make a fully functioning custom football table. 

So far this project has been so much fun and i plan on carrying it on to make a fun space within the final exhibition this will include a finished football kit, a team drawing and fully completed football sticker album. 

I had plans to make an inflatable but unfortunately the cost of this was too much but i had lots of fun playing on a software called sculptris trying to come up with designs for it. 

Overall, from reflecting of this project so far i am happy with how playful i have approached this and brining in collaborative help is something i learnt in the year and has really helped boost my original designs.

Project proposal

Third 7x7

This one shows my humour used with different media such as paint