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.
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