etchleyillustration

Assignment 5 – Seven Days

For this assignment the brief is to produce seven illustrations based around the title Seven Days. This is a very open brief and can be interpreted in any form. For this I will need to spider diagram a few ideas.

With everything that is going on in the world at the moment and the UK about to go into lock down; my ideas are always drawn to the Covid -19 and creating a survival guide for children during the isolation period. With this selected I now need to write a brief.

The Brief

You have been commissioned to produce a simple guide for children and young adults entitled How to survive 7 Days of isolation. This will need to be done with a combination of illustrations and typography demonstrating a number of ways to keep children entertained and safe over a 7 day isolation period. The guide needs to be A4 in size but able to fold up into 7 panels plus a front cover. The guide also needs to be informative, instructional with clear rules set out by the government but still appeal to a younger target audience.

This assignment I felt was a little more serious than most as it is something that is happening right now and is affecting billions of people word wide. The information given has to be factual without scaremongering, giving children clear and precise rules to keep safe but also entertained. I read a number of online articles, collected posters and watched videos for help:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/mar/22/family-isolation-guide-for-parents-teenagers-coronavirus-lockdown

https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2020-03-20/social-distancing-vs-self-isolation-the-official-guidance-on-staying-safe-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/self-isolation-social-distancing-meaning/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/mind/stay-mentally-healthy-self-isolating/

I listed key things to do, what not to do and home activities to try out during this time.

For the ‘rules’ i need to keep them non terrifying/suitable to not cause panic in children but important enough for them to follow everyday. For the activities I need to keep the open and non gender specific so anyone can do them without the extra instructions of how to do them. Does each day need a timeline/structured time for each activity? Or would it be better to give just a guide of what you could do? I started to draw up illustrative simple logos that could represent some of these activities as I’d like to keep text to a minimum.

Note – could have a key system on the back of the A4 sheet for each logo.

Layout example. I need to figure the best way for the A4 paper to fold.

There are many mock survival guides out there and I wanted to reference these is my design to play on the comic approach.

The one poster that jumped out at me was the yellow Survival Kit with everyday items and optional items. It reminds me of an ikea style instruction. I could section my illustrations off into a everyday essential tasks and then optional extras for entertainment. I also like the simple illustrations, 3/4 viewpoint, limited text and colour scheme. However for my illustration I would also like to introduce a raw, sketchy, textured approach to the illustration.

I have been following the work of Alexvede96 on instagram and really like the illustrative style that I could possibly bring into this assignment. https://www.instagram.com/alexvede96/?hl=en

To create a grungy texture I wanted to use different textured paper however the country has just gone into full lockdown and I am unable to go to the shops or even collect some from work so I will need to old scans from previous exercise.

Next I needed to draw up a number of different illustrations taken from my list, produce digital versions and plan the layout. I also would like to add a board child illustration to the front cover so viewers immediately understand what the pamphlet is about.

I also looked into a number of fonts that could be used throughout the mini pamphlet. I will experiment with these further once the illustrations are completed.

My first testings of a digital drawing in the style of Alexvede96. I really like the sketchy, unfinished and rough style and I believe this style would fit perfectly for what I am planning to create. I still need to experiment further with this style and colour scheme. Next I went onto the internet to find urban, city, street images to use as colour swatches and selected a range of colours from each image.

From this point I needed to start the background layout, colour and texture. I began to make this on Procreate using an image of crumpled paper, texture brushes and the colour swatches above.

I don’t want to make light of the situation The world is going through and I was struggling with the concept of making something for children without terrifying them. I want to keep the look of the pamphlet light and cartoony with and element of comic zombie survival posters researched above. I also wanted to include the image of the virus so the target audience remember what the pamphlet is for and when looking back at some other posters put out by the government they take a similar approach with images of the virus, logo like illustrations and bright vibrant colours.

For the information I want to include on my pamphlet; it will focus on the fun things we ‘can’ do and the essentials we ‘must’ do but leave out the information of symptoms.

Final front design A4 sized foldable pamphlet

I spent well over the amount of hours I had allocated to completing this assignment, many of those hours were lost in creating the individual logo/illustrations. However I am pleased with how the final piece turned out. The client visuals show a 3D interpretation of how the final printed version would be. Unfortunately due to the lock down I am unable to get into work or buy inks for my printer to print off and try out the design myself. If I spent even more time on this I could play around further with the typography and text, using better language to communicate the images and tasks.

Educational strip

The brief of this exercise was to create an illustrated strip To successfully explain puberty to young teenagers, being educational, delivering facts without embarrassing the reader. To do this I needed to convey humour without losing an important message but also stick to the restrictions of only using 5 frames and a front cover. I started by creating a spider diagram of keywords linked to puberty.

For this I decided to stick to what I know from puberty in males as only 5 frames/panels to illustrate this for both sex’s may look over cramped. Also I have an 11 year old son that is just starting puberty that I can test my ideas on.

I then collected images from the internet to see how others had approached the subject and how they used humour and illustrations to convey a serious message.

I wanted to create a simple male character that showed the main points of puberty but also experiment with facial emotions and expressions that we have all kind of done at some point during are own pathway through puberty. I started with face expressions of shock, wonder, worry, panic, confusion to show that it is completely normal for all of these negative emotions when confronted with puberty and everyone goes through it.

From these I then generated a 5 panel foldable leaflet. Each frame describes a different aspect of puberty with written information on what to expect and a comically drawn illustration demonstrating each area. I also came up with the idea of calling the leaflet “What the hell is that!” As a young teenagers response to something new and unknown happening to their body.

I was happy with my entail design and began to develop each character separately as a pencil sketch before working into digitally.

For each illustration I wanted to keep to a simple outline with limited colour. I also wanted to incorporate an education viewpoint into each design to show the reader that this is a serious message and not just a comic strip you would find at the back of a newspaper. To do this my idea is to use objects, backgrounds and textures found within an educational setting such as lined paper, hole punched paper, ink splotches, underlined titles etc.

Using procreate I produced a simple outline of my sketches and kept the colour to a maximum of grey and brown across all images.

Finally I combined all these design into a squared layout, adding texture and annotations around each image to produce a 5 panel informational leaflet for boys about puberty.

I was pleased with the outcome of this exercise. The information could be tweaked to be more informative/scientific. I think it works giving enough information, in a comedic style and still relevant to a target audience that would understand it.

Working for children

For this exercise the brief was to research into illustrations for children’s books, the target audience of these illustrations and to create illustrations of animals whilst brainstorming a number of key words. Using a combination of my own images and the help of google; I collected a number of different illustrations and collated them into different age groups.

Pre-reader

Preschool 3-5 years old

Early reader 5-7 years old

Established reader 7-9 years old

Older age groups

My initial understanding of illustrations for children from a very young age or pre-reader were of very simple basic images that the child could make sense of however as seen from the images and my research the illustrations have a similar complexity as what you would expect for an older target audience. My understanding of this would be due to the parents of the child would be reading the story and so the illustration would need to contain enough detail to retain the attention of the young child. The next stage up I found the images took a step back in detail and became very cartoon like, simple block shapes and colours stereotypical to the animal, person or object. This could be down to the child needing to concentrate more on the actual words and not just the image. Illustrations from established reader and up follow a path where the illustrations become more complex, detailed and realistic but with an increase of the amount of text on a page. The older the illustration is intended for the darker the tones and less vibrant the colours are with more of an emphasis on shadows, highlights and depth to the image.

Overall I found that the images used for the different age brackets isn’t as clear as I originally thought and there is a clear overlap between age groups and the style of image and colour used. For example looking at Axel Scheffler’s website, who most notably illustrated The Julia Donaldson books, he has a very unique style that works for young children and older readers. With only slight adjustments in colour and details across the range of target audiences.

I spider diagramed the word and thought about how to link an animal to the chosen age group. For me I thought the most diverse images would come from the word scary whilst looking at both ends of the age categories. Whilst my researched shows an overlap and similarities on the way illustrations are drawn and coloured I believe I could really push my style into two very different areas and still connect with the correct target audience.

I settled on using a rabbit for the pre-reader animal and a mythical creature called a Grootslang for an older age group reader. I collected a few images of rabbits and drew a few mock up characters, simplifying and focusing on what characteristics a rabbit has and how I can make it appear scared.

I then took this into Procreate on my iPad and drew this digitally, adding simple flat colours with a paper/grain texture.

Finally I painted a background scene to show the baby rabbit is lost/alone in the forest with ominous shadows from the trees casting over the floor. This generates a scary atmosphere combined with the expression of the rabbit which I believe conveys the correct message to a very young reader.

For my second animal/illustration I wanted to change the style and look of the image to fit an older audience. To do this I will consider using more colour and shading, removing the cartoon, black outline of the character and giving a more realistic, grungy and darker illustration.

I wanted to show the layer of the Grootslang. I stumbled upon the creature when researching different mythical creatures. A Grootslang is a South African legendary creature that dwells within a deep cave in the Richtersveld. Most stories describe it as an elephant and snake combination. I collected images of caves, snakes and elephants to develop some quick studies before making the move to digital.

Final sketch of older reader illustration

I enjoyed the development of the characters during this exercise. I feel the first exercise was a more successful image and I feel I need more practice in developing a digital image from scratch. It felt easier and more natural to draw out in pencil before working on digitally than it did with the second image of purely drawing digitally.

Packaging

This exercise asked to produce a graphics for packaging to be used on a range of organic biscuits for children. (Choc Chip, Raisin and Ginger) The packaging needs to include Illustrations extinct animals and the colour scheme should reflect the flavour of the biscuit. Before I could get out to the shops to do some market research into children’s packaging and to see what is currently on the market I wanted to list a number of extinct animals that could be used on the packaging.

Dinosaurs – Obvious choice, who doesn’t love dinosaurs! These would need to be recognised by young children so I would need to illustrate ones that are most popular within our current society. Films, books, cartoons and series’ generally reference The following:

Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Spinosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Dilophosaurus, Diplodocus, Pterodactyl, Allosaurus, Iguanodon.

There are other extinct animals also referenced in books and films that children will also recognise:

Sabre Tooth Tiger, Dodo, Wooly Mammoth, Megalodon, Dire-wolf.

Whilst I am interested in producing graphics that would be slightly different than the obvious I feel using dinosaurs would be best fit for the brief and to attract the correct target audience.

I couldn’t find any Children’s organic biscuits packaging and so took photos from non organic biscuits and regular organic foods but that were targeted at children or the parents of children.

I also did do some online research from a number of organic foods for children.

Identica rebranded the PIP organic range in 2011. They retained their window logo from their parent brand but added a number of cute characters and bright vibrant colours. Identica creative director Sam Stone says, ‘Our aim was to create a playful, slightly mischievous design that would appeal to kids, while simultaneously reassuring parents about the quality of the product.’ The colour scheme also links to the flavour/fruit.

Holle was founded in 1933 rejecting chemical processing and preservatives. The product range includes baby milks and infant formula, baby porridges, baby weaning oil, teas and snacks. The illustrations again use simple, cute animal designs surrounded by photos of the main ingredients and the product itself. The typography is broken into two types. A thick hand written style that describe the product with a thin upper case font that explains what the product is. The colour scheme uses muted tones compared to the PIP product appealing more to a younger market of children around teething age.

Founded in 2006 by Paul Lindley and named after his daughter Ella. Ella’s Kitchen I would suggest is almost an older target audience range of the previous above products. The designs show more complexity that generate a story/narrative between a character and the flavour of the product. The fruits/flavours consist of actual fruit photographs whilst the characters are comically designed animals. Typography uses a similar hand written font over a pop art style, jagged text box with a halftone pattern drop shadow behind. I will use key points from all this research to help with the development of my packaging for the products.

I began to draw some basic dinosaur characters. I had fun changing the proportions of the head, making it oversized compared to the body to give it a younger child like look. I also experimented with the eye shape, pupil size and position.

From my research I found that the majority of packaging use a photo of the actual food/food flavour. I took some photographs of some cookies ready to add to my designs.

I also selected an overall colour scheme to reflect each flavour but not too diverse that it would look like a completely different company selling the product. To appeal to both children and adults I decided to keep the characters very cute, simple and comical but against a clean white background. I also wanted the text to be digital but have a hand written style. Taking notes from my research I also wanted to play around with upper and lower case fonts and maybe using a comical play on words similar to Ella’s kitchen packaging.

simple thumbnails for the packaging front

I originally wanted to produce a watercolour character but decided to go all digital with watercolour and textured brushes. Once drawn in pencil I scanned in and used procreate and the studio pen to outline before adding selected colours and textures.

With each character I tried to get them interacting with a real image of a biscuit onto a paper bag ‘cookie’ packaging.

I think the designs turned out really well and target the correct audience of both children and parents of children. Other thing I could try is using more buzz words from the industry such as preservative free, no additives, sugar free etc. I could also try using a block colour into the background.

Text and Image

This exercise asked to illustrate a selection of words and their opposite to explore how typography can be used to enhance the meaning of that word.

The selected words are:

Big/Small

Fat/Thin

Fun/Boring

Calm/Mad

To begin this exercise I went to my sketchbook and began drawing fonts to reflect the meaning of each word.

Next I searched for different typefaces that would also suit the word.

Fat Ass by Francisco Sepulveda Altamirano

Thin King by Junkohanhero

Bigger by Vladimir Nikolic

Smalle by Memesbruh03

Keep Calm by K-Type

Mad joe by 160 Studio

Go Faster by Chequered

KG Falling Slowely by Kimberly Geswein

Boring by Niels Bonnevie

Funky Deco by Buddha Graphix

I actually enjoyed creating my own fonts and wanted to see if I could combine some of my freehand ideas with the selected typefaces above.

I combined the font and the interlocking design I created and used oil pastel to mimic the colour of fat cells within the human body.

For the word ‘Thin’ I recalled back when I was young and saw an effect of very thin text on a page and the only way you could read the word was by tilting away from you and placing your eye line at the base.

My idea for ‘small’ was to think about how digital images pixelate when they are enlarged and wanted to show this with a very pixelated text.

Using the font I collected and the tapering effect you see when you stand at the foot of a tall building or tree. I added texture to the base which disappeared towards the top to generate the look of height.

Simple bold text on white paper

For the word ‘fun’ I used the font collected and the part style I originally created with felt tip pens for vibrant, bold colours.

I skewed the font for ‘fast’ and pushed it over to the right and left in the lines that break up the text to give the effect of movement.

For the word ‘slow’ I imagined my hand was a snail gradually moving around and spiralling to form the text.

Travel guides

For this exercise I was asked to produce 3 book jacket illustrations for a travel guide for the following locations: Istanbul, Helsinki, Milan. Each design needs to use hand drawn illustrations in a diagrammatic way. I will need to produce 3 client visuals and a mock up of one design. To begin this exercise I needed to research into different travel guides and the area the travel guide is for, collecting visuals, images, landscapes, tourist attractions, buildings, culture etc.

Istanbul

Located in Turkey between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea it has a total of 12 million visitors per year Making it one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. Many come to see famous landmarks and cultural sites such as Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Galatea Bridge and Tower and the Grand Bazaar.

Helsinki

Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the most populous city of Finland. It has one of the highest urban standards of living in the world and in 2016 liability survey it was ranked 9th out of 140 cities.Some of the best tourist attractions include the Suomenlinna islands that holds the fortress of Seaborg, the Kauppatori (market square), Sibelius Monument and Park, Uspensky Cathedral, Ateneum, Helsinki Oplimpic Stadium, Kiasma Museum and Temppeliaukio Kirkko.

Milan

Located in northern Italy it serves as the second most populous city in Italy after Rome. It is an ancient city dating back to prehistory, before the Romans around 600BC. Milan is classed as a leading alpha city with with it’s focus areas being entertainment, the arts, finance and tourism and has been recognised as one of the worlds 4 fashion capitals. Hosting events such as Milan Fashion Week. Some of the best tourist attractions include Piazza del Duomo, Galleria, Vittorio Emanuele, Piazza Della Scala, Brera,

I also took time to research into modern day illustrations of city images and buildings.

Futuristic city illustration in black and white

The exercise states to write your own brief; I decided to keep the client visuals as simple and informative as possible with hand drawn images collated together, hand draw typography with a colour scheme common to the area. For the target audience I will aim towards An more mature audience, couples and tourists going on short weekend visits.

My next step was to produce hand drawn studies of key buildings and tourist attractions from each location.

At this point I was still unsure of how I could start to combine these images so instead remembered an earlier exercise that asked to print off, cut out and present the images together. I arranged them into a composition I was happy with.

I then produced a drawing from these and outlined with a black fine liner, used loose watercolour techniques before scanning into the computer/photoshop. Whilst in photoshop I drew an outline of Istanbul from a map and distorted it to fit around my illustration.

I felt it was missing something from the background but didn’t want to distract the viewers attention away from the focus image so it needed to be something subtle but still fit with the current style of the illustration. I blended out a blue watercolour wash and scanned into the computer before adding a gradient overlay of yellow and pink to match a sunrise/set and then lowered the opacity.

I wanted to stay away from digital fonts but my hand writing skills are atrocious and so opted for stencils. The closest one I had was an almost italic serif font that I thought would fit perfect for my brief.

For the next client visual I wanted to speed up the process so instead of collecting, printing, cutting and presenting these images. I will do that part digitally.

Milan

I repeated the process as above by using fine line, scanning in, printing onto paper with a higher GSM and adding colour with watercolour before re scanning and developing further in Photoshop.

Helsinki

For my mock up design I decided to choose the Milan poster. I also added some extra text and Photographs to generate a more authentic look to the mock up.

Overall I enjoyed this exercise. I found it challenging not to include too much detail and to use rough, unrefined outlines for final images but I feel this worked to fit the brief. My only concern for this exercise was time. It seemed to take a very long time to complete and with so much research and development it almost felt like an assignment rather than an exercise.

Your own work

This exercise asked to look at different areas of authorial practice such as decorative illustrations, artist prints and artworks, fanzines, children’s publishing etc. Then to select from previous exercises, notes, designs, doodles that could be marketed to sell regardless of what its intentional purpose was to be. From previous exercises I selected a number of different images:

From these images I thought many would work as part of being printed onto fabric bags for cosmetic product shops, T-shirt’s, comic book covers and children’s illustration. I selected to work a number of these designs into a T shirt print. Selecting my target audience within the 16-25 student area, I went with simple designs can could easily be used as a campaign of T-shirt’s or collected as part of a theme. I already had a number of decent quality printing transfer paper, a high quality printer and T-shirt’s specific for transferring images onto. I flipped the designs into it’s mirror image and rescaled to a size that would work in the position selected.

Whilst working through unit 4 and 5 I produced several personal designs, one off pieces of work and ink drawings as part of Inktober 2019. Many of these would also work as a T-shirt design but I also did work to commission to produce fan art, sticker designs and tattoo designs Shown below.

Sticker design produced for Josh Daley super bike racer

Joker fan art commission – Charcoal on A3 paper

A selection of inktober 2019 illustrations

Editorial Illustration

This exercise is to produce an editorial illustration from a list of headlines. For this exercise I collected a range of different newspapers both high and low brow. Many of the illustrations I had found were based on the current Brexit and election campaign aimed towards their respected allegiance. However, I did manage to find others not based around these areas. The first 3 illustrations below were found in the Daily Mail, Telegraph and The Times newspapers. Two of the illustrations didn’t have any accompanying text and served only as a satirical poke against Jeremy Corbyn.

The first image shows a donkey with Corbyn’s head looking very sinister with the Star of David on the blinders and a red line over it. This depicting the anti-semitic views others have of the Labour party. Combined with the text of LED BY DONKEYS….. it paints a picture of poor leadership, evil and lack of respect to a faith.

The second image from the Daily Mail paints the same picture but this time using a poison container with a cross bones but the skull has been replaced with that of a silhouette of Corbyn’s face. The liquid in the container is red, representing the Labour colours but also that of blood. On the floor the blood/poison has also developed into the shape of the Labour logo. Although not by the same artist both of these illustrations look very similar in materials used. They appear to be painted with watercolour and then outlined with black ink. Texture and detail has also been added with hatching or cross hatching.

The third image taken from The Telegraph depicts another cartoon style image of Jeremy Corbin again looking angry/evil ordering items from a Black Friday sale. The computer screen shows the purchase of ear plugs “designed for blocking out anti-Semitism complaints” but combines this in an Amazon shopping style page of items frequently bought together. Below this heading you can then see 3 other items – White wash paint , and two books, one on Hamas and the other on Britons “Evil Empire”. Again all this aims to show the idea that Corbyn’s Labour party is a racist, anti semitic, terrorist sympathiser. The text attached to the illustration explains how dangerous it would be for him to get into power and it would be more important to vote for Brexit than a vote for Corbyn. Whilst this illustration looks similar in materials to the previous two I believe this one was produced digitally as the way that colour and texture has been added could only be done with textured brushes. Possibly it was painted first with flat colour and a black ink outline before being scanned in and then worked over with textured digital brushes but from a time and speed point of view I think it has entirely been produced using digital means.

The next illustration I found was also from the Daily Mail and how Tesco bank is refusing to do more to help deaf people. The article comes from a letter of a reader who explains that as a deaf lip reader they find it impossible to contact the bank by phone over a serious issue with their account. The remainder of text is written as a reply from the journalist “Tony” and his opinion of the matter. The illustration shows an elderly man holding up his blocked credit card, symbolised with an over sized Tesco bank card and a chain and lock imprisoning it. In the elderly mans other hand he holds a red pen and has crossed off the E and S of Tesco’s tag line “Every little helps” to create a new one stating “very little help”. This visually describes the elderly mans ordeal and how Tesco are unwilling to help with the matter. To strengthen this illustration and theme on the far right of the images shows what we believe to be a Tesco bank employee, with matching colour tie, arms crossed, eye lids almost closed, turning away from the elderly man in a arrogant, insolent pose. For the materials used in this image I would guess at it being a purely digital sketch. The colours look flat and could be done with gouache paints and black ink to outline but again with the idea of time and ease; digital colouring would be more efficient.

The illustration above is a very simple drawing of a mature, middle class people in a living room setting. The simple ink drawing depicts a male character stood at what’s looks like a drinks cabinet with a couple sat on the couch. The text on the image runs through a set of drinks on offer and finishes with the character listing Ketamine as an option. This pokes fun at the idea of Ketamine being what you could class as a young persons drug filtering out into the middle class family’s and being part of their everyday life to prevent them from drinking too much.

The above illustration looks different in style and tone to the previous ones, showing a blowing ball with a a 50% tag knocking down a number of the same house that aren’t too dissimilar from monopoly houses. This takes place on what looks like a bowling lane/computer generated lane. The colour scheme of the floor/lane uses red and green; traditionally linked to Christmas colours more than likely used because of Black Fridays proximity to the holiday. The article explains the pros and cons of Black Friday but also how retailers are using it to spread the cost of discounts and sales over the year to meet set targets for profits. The article also explains how some company’s relish in the Black Friday deals whilst others close their doors almost in protest. The illustration metaphorically explains this with the representation of a bowling ball being Black Friday and wrecking havoc on the high street shops all in the aim of generating more cash flow for the company.

From my research into a number of newspaper illustrations I decided on the headline of throwing your money away. Researching further on the internet I listed a number of ways in which myself and family “throw money away”. For example; buying food that is never used, clothes that children quickly grow out of, buying more expensive items even when cheaper options are available due to convenience etc.

I began drawing thumbnail designs that would link to throwing money away and it quickly developed into the amount of money i have wasted buying coffee from Starbucks when there are a number of cheaper alternatives available close by.

I wanted to step away from the idea of burning money or throwing it into the bin as it was very cliche and one of the first things that pops up in a google search of throwing money away. Instead I focused on how I could use the Starbucks theme further. This developed into a money grabbing coffee machine hoovering up peoples hard earned cash.

In the final thumbnail I decided to give the coffee machine a set of tank legs not to dissimilar from another much loved child hood film called Short Circuit. As mentioned above, to have a faster, more efficient workflow I decided to work digitally once I had sketched out the main design.

Next I created simplified 5 and 10 pound notes digitally using Photoshop, pen tool and textured layers.

Finally I outlined my pencil sketch on Procreate, used the colour theme and logo of Starbucks before building and adding a number of different money layers.

I enjoyed working on this exercise, I think the final outcome looks polished and would fit into a newspaper article of how we all waste are money at the major coffee shops on the high street. The illustration gives the impression of a money grabbing corporation that soaks up the wealth from a growing, gullible market of people willing to separate from their hard earned cash for an overpriced cup of coffee.

Assignment 4 – Magazine illustration

Assignment 4 – For this assignment I was asked to produce an illustration for one of the following topics:

Lost Disaster Discovery Guilty Secret

However this illustration must be based on a still life.

I started by creating a spider diagram of each word and then to focus on one. What I discovered was that how each topic could link into the next. I selected Disaster for my topic and expanded on it further.

I then narrowed my idea down to Brexit and Fracking.

Brexit – is the withdrawal of the UK from the EU. Following a June referendum 2016, in which 51.9% voted to leave, the UK government formally announced the country’s withdrawal in March 2017. Concerns over Brexit are possible serious consequences financially, lack of trade deals, immigration, stock market crash, lack of food, clothing and medical supplies, loss of jobs. As of this date the UK is still set to leave with no idea when, what would/could happen. In short a major man made disaster.

Fracking – The process of injecting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rocks to force open existing fissures and extract oil or gas. Concerns about fracking are air pollution and water contamination due to the toxic chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, while the need for wastewater disposal and shrinking water supplies are also pressing issues. Some environmentalists claim that fracking also has a direct link with earth tremors and potential earthquakes.

I wanted to collect images to represent each of there’s again to help me chose a line I wanted to head down.

I settled on the idea of Brexit, maybe the financial crisis it could create, how it could effect society etc but wanted to do something of a unique illustration that doesn’t reference politicians or use obvious imagery. I listed items that you may think of when you think of Great Britain.

I did some quick thumbnail sketches of some British ideas and how it could reflect Brexit.

One word/image that stood out to me was the ’umbrella’. It’s something that you wouldn’t class as British but it’s something that links to Britain like a bowler hat and a suit. Similar to the old Avengers 1961 TV series and the recent Kingsman films.

I was happy with my first thumbnail sketch but wanted to see if it could be developed further around the same theme and image.

I wanted to create the idea that the umbrella is a safety net, a protector to weather the storm but then symbolise that the it has failed to do so or is failing to do so. After taking some photos of an umbrella I drew an objective study from it.

Taking this image into Procreate I began to experiment further with colour, blending options, layers and newspaper tabloids.

I felt that this idea still wasn’t quite working and so decided to to produce a digital version of the umbrella And build the design from scratch.

Using the original image of the sketch, I traced using an outline before filling with colour and then erasing areas to show the fibres or what I started to consider the strands of society, how some still hold on, others fall and a few detach.

To bring in the idea of ‘British’ I didn’t want to use the newspaper articles anymore and instead used the themes of the British flag on the underside of the umbrella.

Using the 12 stars of the EU flag to represent the storm perforating the British umbrella. I also wanted to keep the umbrella around 51% destroyed and 49% intact to represent the British vote within the campaign. Whilst erasing some of the umbrella I did try to erase parts in the shape of the UK and parts of Europe but it simply didn’t work as I had planned and the image was unbalanced.

Finally I added a black tar to represent the mess of the entire situation over the past 3 years. This helped balance the image as it was looking empty at the bottom.

I did also try a black and white version of the illustration which seemed to give it a 1940’s cartoon feel. However the colours of the background, stars and the British flag were needed to create depth and context.

I believe this assignment went well, using a number of different visual metaphors to represent Britain, Europe, Brexit and the destruction it leaves in its wake. My original struggle was to find something to produce an observational drawing from. Something that would link with my idea; I felt I was almost working backwards just to produce an objective drawing so I could continue with the assignment.

Character development

For this exercise I was asked to produce a number of different studies of a character from different viewpoints to create a 360 degree drawing. I started by collecting images of different characters, old, young, male, female, different poses, expressions, emotions etc.

My first idea is to produce an illustration of an old man and see how the characteristics would develop from this.

Certain features already developed from these studies such as the way to make a character look old by the size of the ears and noses wrinkles under the eyes and along the forehead, bald head, beard, glasses, shallow brow with a higher crown on the head. These features also generated different emotions the character could express. A simple shift of the eyebrows could make them much more humbled, sweet or serious and angry.

I then experimented with face shape and styles of facial hair, eventually settling on an elongated shape.

Drawing different angles and emotions I settled on the narrative of an old exercise that I thought I could do better; that of an old disgruntled and tired private investigator. I developed a 1950’s/60’s style clothing and a pose of confidence with a slightly arrogant yet weary face.

Taking this further I fine lined before taking into illustrator and producing a vector line art of the character.

Finally I added colour using muted, dull tones to reflect the feeling of the character.

For my next character design I wanted to do the complete opposite and produce studies of a younger female character. Again starting with basic drawings of face shapes until I settled on a design I liked.

Whilst developing this character I simply couldn’t get the right look or outcome. I found it much tricker to create emotion and expressions with a female face.

Although not 100% happy with the results I did settle on one design which I took further into a full body sketch, fine line outline, Illustrator outline and colour on Photoshop.

Overall I enjoyed this exercise, I felt the male character worked out much better than the female character and I wish I could have had a longer time to develop them further. Another possibility could be if I was asked to make a character to a certain design specification were I could pour my efforts into already set characteristics trying to find different ways of realising that particular character trait or emotion.