The final piece

Proud of it yes...

Finished it, No...

Theres always going to be room for improvement, but the Key here really is the the message, and i hope through this blog, and the final outcome there will be a strong one.

EVALUATION

My project has always been based scale. The idea came from the fact that a my accomplished work is always limited to sketchbooks, which in turn has limited the effectiveness of my illustrations. I had the idea of creating something larger scale to force me out of my old habits.

My research was triggered by a popular underground illustration event named “Secret Wars” I visited. It tested the illustrators understanding of size, use of lines, improvisation skills and expressing their creativity within a time limit. The images created really influenced me to work with “scale”.

Around this time I had been invited to Essex University in Colchester for a viewing of a Chinese fine artist named Xin Sun where, he used the space provided for him to create something more interesting than his sheet drawings and actually said something through its scale. I wanted to create something using this method of communication.

At this stage the concept of a child’s imagination became something I wanted to explore. It seemed limitless as children show pure notion of their creativity. I wanted to illustrate this point. Trips to the Museum of Childhood where among the list of things I did to get some insight on what I was actually looking into. From the visit I found the concept of “reminiscing”. I started looking at my own old toys that made me think about working with my own childhood imaginations.

Originally I kept two books, one big one small for comparison and ideas. I started with small sketchbook to record ideas and create observational drawings. However, this book was 70 percent random and 30 percent relevant. This reminded me that I had a strong understanding of method, but lacked understanding of theme/concept, and how to tell a story.

Through the process of my project it’s became apparent that I wished to transcend certain ideas from 2D to 3D all to aid the strong idea of play that children have with toys.

So I the idea of comparison books changed to working from work sheets by using things that I had made and developing them that way.

The feedback conversations I had with people about their childhood were really helpful as they gave me confidence throughout the project helped me to delve into the subject better. Working with worksheets was a lot more effective than sketchbooks because of the visual communication aspect.

My time management was fairly flexible, right from the research. I would give myself targets for the week, rather than days to leave room for changes.

CONCLUSION

I have learn that I have time management problems that needs to be dealt with, many problems arose when trying to build the final project due to not giving myself enough time to build everything. If given more time I would have finished mini tasks that would have made the outcome of my project stronger.

I felt that my work has become a lot more skilfull as I am now more interested in the “experience” of doing things, rather than just drawing in the style of someone, or taking things from the internet which is what I previously did. This surprisingly helped me create stronger ideas with substance.

Legoman Saga!

I actually started Getting lego men again since i couldnt find any in my house surprisingly. Im still in practice of making stories just liek i did when i was younger. Theres this notion that people cant do the same activities they did when they were a child which really gets me down. the thing that made your childhood so creative was that you were active in expressing your creativity. This story was the Aspect that helped me with planning my image composition.






YAY lego powerrangers win!

Back to the three

Back to Marc Brown, Andrew Jones and Tite Kubo.

whats quite nice about the things that i looked at was the fact that alot of these artists drawings were done on a larger scale than what I expected. because we see there stuff in books and magazines as reprinted 2d work, we immediantly marvel at how they can produce such complex or well done piece of work on that scale. When infact alot of these work is Drawn on twice if not 3 times the size of what its printed as. That interests me because the rescaling of a picture can actually change the meaning off it, so you should as an illustrator bare this in mind. Try to create an image that can be as effective small aswell as big, so that it is not limited to a particular way of viewing.

ALSO Reading Rocket's interview with Marc Brown

heres a nice little video that interests me... probably because there was a transition with the character moving from books to TV/animation. it would be nice to see Zeek do the same thing one day :)

Desicion making

finally decision making with the piece. i get the feeling that this would be very suited in the Room of a child around 7-12 years old, which is pretty much what im aiming for. the colours help that alot.

~However I feel that for it to be more of an effective mural it needs maybe a better contrast. I think thats down the the lines used... or maybe the fact that its not finished...? but still, i had an idea of where the illustration was going.


The left side of the illustration is working quite well, interms Line work, however the Right side has a strong use of colour, but not together! we need more of a balance.


That word balance has been floating around the latter half of my project for a while now. I wanted to put more of a composition balance in the line work and with the colour. Should i think about using Gradients? blured or smudged colours or try and be more specific to bold and solid colours. from what ive done so far shows alot of indecision, as the Lego robot has adopted on method while the otherside has adopted somethign different. in a way the right side has a Commitment to the reseach and development that i have been doing on the work sheets, but the colours are somethign i feel i shoudl think about more, try and get some omre mockups done. but so far i think its worthy of getting the point across.

Anime Expo! ONE REASON!

Anime Expo. i went there for one reason and one reason only.....






Zeek Had ALOT OF FUN!!!!!

something about dressing up as samurais and powerrangers and BATMAN! that just brings out the inner child.... its great that i get to Experiance my project aswell as illustrate it. it has made me totally approach my project in a different type of creative way...

Never too l8 for some research.

Not really research... just a colection of images ive been looking at on my way to shorditch that actually helped me think bout composition...










Some work better than others but it would be really good to see how mine would stand out of the crowd. interestingly enough they all work together sort of like a collage of things that compliment eachother, rather than indevisual pieces.

Original idea

The colouring for the actual mural has been turning out completewly different to how planned it. i experimented with asetate planning to use it for the actually mural but because i didnt get an over head projector things had to change.


anyway! all day! since we got the wall up ive actually been Painting :D what made me paint was the whole action of practically doing something BIG rather than drawing which seemed almost harder to do big.

I ended up spending all of my money this week on paint and prima. all for a good cause. looked good on thoses walls. Only thing that was actually a shame was that the first layer of prima had a really nice aray of textures.

Spent the last of my cash on :( PAINT!!!!! WHY!!!!!!!

Straight after the PRima

At this point i was worring that i had too much Gray and maybe it would need some tones. i only had the projector for another couple of hours so the stress was to put the lines on first even tho i wanted to go colour.

NOOOOOOO!THE PROECTOR MOVED! and i spent AGES trying to PUT IT BACK! but eventually noticed it was hopeless!and i had already started drawing on it when it changed. so the idea was to get the lines done aswell as i could.... thats where the problem of putting colour on first had its problems.


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It got to the point because of this i had to make the decision of how i wanted to fill in colour. From Advice given by An FDA student in illustration it seemed thati should try to be consistant with the actual style and use bold Strong flat colours rather than Shifting tones. this made sence because of the idea of keepign the childrens theme.


At this point i felt like i was in a secret wars event, being one of the artists invloved.

Secret wars

Finally a Relief

Ive got good news and bad news. the good news is after all that bloody planning ive finally got a wall up! The problem i had was the fact that i was doing a two man job with one person... they were big blocks that i had to put up all by myself. Time management was a big issue as well and since didnt realise all the things that i would need earlier, the last two days felt like they were completely wasted. but thankfully enough i have friends in foundation who actually do different Pathways.

Stephen Tyrell! My Technician! luckily enough in the time that i felt was wasted I made a little machete of how the wall would look. So when it came to me and steven making the wall, This HELPED ME LOADS!!!!! I had all the piece together but i needed to bolt them on, and spent the whole morning figuring out how to do it! not to mention the compasition planning. But since we had the Projector! things felt like they were alot better, we could place to wood in places and nail them securly in with nails[i was so worried about the weight but it was perfect]


And dont get me started on prima!!!! Sheesh if steven didnt let me know earilyer that i had to buy primer before i did any painting on the wall we would be in sokme seriouse trouble.



Found a place better than B&Q called Brewers! in queens way! was actually quite cheap. and from slapping on the white primer undelay, i realised that i could get interesting textures... of course i needed it to dry, but that ment that there would be no more.

behold the RELIEF!!

Good old steven if i didnt find him then i would have probably had to completely rethink everythign i was going to do. Next time when it comes to big constructions liek this, i think aswell as draw a plan of how it will look, i would also need to creat a HOW TO MAKE guide. because not knowing how to drill certain things into other would have been really difficult. Ive now got two solidm studeio days to finish it and ive only got the projector ofor one of those days.....

Zeek wants to get involved, since hes the narrator


The projected image was then Shown on the Primed blocks. i wanted to try and keep the interesting textures i created when priming to give it a really nice *built* look. we will see if i have planned enough.

colour is a whole new way of communicating

Trouble is with the colours that i have slapped on, at my level with colour[since i don't use it alot] im finding it hard to balance it... and in turn, knowing where not to put colour.

Maybe its because there is a greater depth of lines that make the actual imagery. my designs don't exactly have those type of marks... probably only the ninja...


i also tested out aat it would look like if i painted it onto board... just to i could see if it would work on the kinda board that is planned on. using the projection. its makes me feel like i need more work to the design. we shall see... the colours that i used were inks aswell, so it would be advised that i get Primer and some wall painting stuff, ather than the stuff you use for paper.

slap on some colour and we get

this.... i still aint confident with it, i guess that's because i did it on photoshop. it feels like theres hold that need to be fixed!

had a tough week

Ive noticed that things don't ever happen the way you want them to happen to. and on the last day of studio time i felt the full heart if that! 5 days to go and i still dont have my wall up!

Things i needed to sort out:

-The Illustration- JUST FINISH IT FOR FLIP SAKE!
-Blot the wall onto the OTher wall so that i can project an image onto the WALL then PAINT ON THE WALL!
-BUY PAINT *man this time management thing is really killin me*
-Experiment with different colours to see what works where and how

I write up a time plan of things that i have to do for this week, seen as i ususalyl plan things baised on weeks.

The Actual Building of the wall hasn't started but i have written the measurements of how big it will be and all the components needed. mainly to help me out, but i will also go with the flow, things never turn out how you plan anyway even when you spend 4 days trying to collect the right type of wood and putting them together, the design might have to change due to the way things are set out.
Like the example here! IT all is pending on the hole in the middle where My mini Me is going to sit so the design might have to be tweeked as shown here. hopefull this mock up will be a good representation of things. i do have to bare in mind thatthe cardboard is substancially Thicker in scale to the thickness of the wood.


interms of the illustration, i feel like its come a nice way forward. I was stressed before because it felt unfinished. there was an aim there, but it looked like it was just half decorated and there was a certain idea that i was trying to get across. it didnt have a comeplteted feel to it because it needed to be more busy, and maybe have a better sence of focus, interm this would alow me to think about how to use colour and line alot more interestingly, like with the complicated Thai epics i looked at before. just adding the themes to the sides also made a big difference in the design.

Infact it solved the problem that i thought i had. i wanted to encorperate the idea of how imagenation sees somethings as somethign else. i had already made a sheet showing how i made this metamorphisis, but putting it onto the design proved challenging. But thankfully, when i spent time taking pictures of the subjects an idea naturally came.

i was going to try and draw this!!! even tho the Communication aspect is perfect, it seemed unpractical for the style already created. after collecting mroe images of the lace i deceded to just change things based on there cshape. rather than see a mountain as something to climb! see it as something to slide down... this helped with the composition ALOT! there are still more tweeks, but they will be done... the biggest issue is getting the improved design to work with the WALL!!!!