Climate Change

Editorial Illustration Research

| Rolo

If there is one thing that the editorial illustration project taught me, it is that I could see myself going down that route as a career path, at least to help me fund my own personal projects. There has been a growing demand for illustration for publications over the recent years and it’s easy to see why, in an age where anyone can create content from the comfort of their homes, it has become increasingly difficult for publications to stand out from the crowd, which is why some publications, such as Little White Lies, New Scientist and Weapons of Reason and newspapers such as the Guardian are hiring independent illustrators to create stunning visuals that remove them from the sea of overused press shots, oversimplified vectors and overtly technical fodder.

I have done some further research into this area ahead of my final project as I see my future progression in the field. Art directors rely on illustrators to create beautiful and eye-catching illustrations that help to express complex ideas, articles and theories in a more accessible and understandable way for us normal folk to digest. Working together with illustrators, art directors try to create the best possible way to visually tell a particular story or illuminate an idea. As well as making complex ideas more accessible, editorial illustrations also bring stories to life and engage readers in a way that text alone can’t achieve. Illustrations help to break up a block of text and capture the essence of what is being said in an article.

(Heath, 2017)

There are many different magazines and newspapers out there, almost all of which require a different illustrative style so there is a place for just about every style within the industry and publications are often playing with different aesthetics to keep their publication fresh. I find this reassuring because I haven’t yet figured out a specific style for myself, I can work in quite a few so it’s nice to know that I’ll be able to find some editorial work regardless of whether I have a ‘house style’ or not. Some complex stories will require a more expressive illustration, such as an illustration created by Calum Heath for Vice that depicts an isolated girl surrounded by Likes which encircle her like sharks which was shown alongside an article about cyber-bullying. This illustration perfectly captures the dangers of social media, especially to someone who is alone and vulnerable, there are a lot of horrible people online that say awful things to people while hidden behind a screen. There’s also the constant need to get likes online which can have a negative impact on one’s mental health.

Cyber-bullying is just one of the many complex issues we are facing in 2020, things such as politics, the environment and climate change, women’s and LGBTQ issues and immigration are all problems we’re facing today. There is a huge need for illustrators to come up with engaging ideas on how to express these concepts in such a way that really gets to the heart of the problem and urges the viewer to be a part of the solution. This is part of why I think that editorial illustration would be a good path for me to go down because I do often tackle such issues in my art, and had hopes of creating a graphic novel that tackled climate change but it would be exceptionally hard to get funding for such a thing. The graphic novel idea is perhaps more personal than commercial. Going into editorial illustration would allow me to tackle the issues that I am passionate about, try and make the world a better place and also make a living in a more commercially viable area of illustration, there is a huge need for editorial illustrators right now and I could use the money I make to fund my own personal projects in the future. I have already proven that I have potential with editorial illustration based on my previous project where I created a front cover design for Little White Lies based on the 1977 movie house, the design recently got liked on Instagram by LWL themselves and they commented that they love it. This really made me happy and gave me hope. I am going to research into how to become an editorial illustrator and also research further into publications and companies that work in the field to continue the research for my final project.

Little White Lies House Design

References-

Ewens, H., 2017. The Brand New Face Of Cyberbullying. [online] Vice. Available at: <https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/gyy8kq/the-harsh-new-world-of-teen-cyberbullying&gt;

Carson, N., 2018. 8 Inspiring Uses Of Editorial Illustration. [online] Creative Bloq. Available at: <https://www.creativebloq.com/inspiration/8-inspiring-uses-of-editorial-illustration&gt;

Wang, G., 2018. 12 Independent Magazines With Clever, Imaginative Illustration – STACK Magazines. [online] STACK magazines. Available at: <https://www.stackmagazines.com/illustration/12-independent-magazines-with-clever-imaginative-illustration/&gt;

Carless, J., 2020. What Art Directors Want: Tips For Editorial Illustrators | Create. [online] Create.adobe.com. Available at: <https://create.adobe.com/2016/4/20/what_art_directors_want_a_guide_for_editorial_illustrators.html&gt; [Accessed 22 March 2020].

Save The Koalas

| Rolo

It’s been just over a week since I returned from my holidays in Poland and Edinburgh, and after spending 3 weeks away from the course, I have been finding it quite difficult to readjust to university life. I didn’t draw enough when I was away, instead I focused on going to galleries and exhibitions in Poland so that I could try and get some more inspiration for where my project and coursework is going to go next, as well as enjoying myself because hey, it was Christmas and new year’s. While the time away was really nice, it has meant that it’s taking me a while to get back into the flow of things, when I returned, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do for my final print, despite seeing so much amazing art abroad. It wasn’t until I was scrolling through Facebook and watching the news at home that an idea hit me horribly, the Australian bushfire crisis.

Please donate to help save the animals in Australia!- https://support.wwf.org.uk/australia-bushfires

Image source- https://pixabay.com/photos/koala-bear-tree-sitting-perched-1100469/

So far during the print project, I have been creating art that tackles topics such as climate change and pollution, two things that are having a horrific impact on our world and wildlife, yet to me, aren’t being tackled enough. I wanted to try and change that, not necessarily on a large scale, I have to be realistic, but if I could reach just one person with my art it would be something. Having tackled these issues so far on the project, it was obvious to me that I needed to stick to similar themes when it came to be designing my final print, I just wasn’t sure what issue to tackle, there are unfortunately so many. For a while I considered tackling the meat industry, but this seemed too hypocritical as I was still eating meat, albeit little, at the time. I have stopped eating meat fully now and have for the past week, but still, I didn’t feel as if it is enough to start hitting the meat industry now. When I saw the horrors of the bushfires and just how much of the environment is being destroyed and how many animals are being killed, it made me feel sick to my core, it’s so upsetting that (at the time of writing) one billion animals have been affected. Having loved animals and nature since I was a child, sometimes more than humans, this topic hit close to heart and I just knew that I had to try and do something to help.

Now that I had an idea of what I was going to illustrate with my final print, I started sketching ideas of just how I could show the Australian bushfires and the impact that they are having. I made a few rough thumbnail sketches in pencil to get out some of my ideas which included:

  • The world being consumed by fire with a koala’s face emerging out in fear because the bushfires are the latest of the wildfires that have devastated the planet in the past year.
  • A Donald Trump earth laughing at the fires while a koala fell off the face of the earth, symbolising the risk of the koalas going extinct and just how little Trump cares about the environment (I thought this might be a bit too political so I didn’t take this idea forward)
  • A koala’s face on the Earth as it melted away in the flames, which would show the impact of climate change and how it is causing the ice caps to melt, as well as the impact the fires are having on the koalas.
Initial idea sketches for my final print.
The sketch I decided to take forward.

All of these ideas seemed a bit too wide, they focused on the entire world, rather than just the area and the animals that are being affected by the fires, on previous projects I did focus on showing the environmental impact of climate change, but I haven’t really focused on the impact it is having on its inhabitants, with one billion animals being affected by the horrific blaze, this time needed to be different, the animals needed the centre stage. I kept the idea of having the flames framing the illustration, but instead of showing the whole Earth, I drew a lonely koala clinging to a tree for dear life amongst the oncoming flames I showed my sketches to a few people to get their opinion and to find out which one they thought would get the most attention, and they agreed that the lone koala in the tree was the saddest of the sketches and would get more of a reaction from the wider public.

Digital Koala Development

With the design picked, I developed the thumbnail sketch further by drawing it out in a larger scale in an a4 sketchbook before scanning it onto my laptop and going over the line work and colouring it in Illustrator/ Photoshop so that it looked more professional ahead of college on fast approaching Thursday. My tutors liked the design but pointed out that I had two styles going on at once, with the fire and text being done in one style and the koala being done in another. I had struggled with how to depict the koala, I went with a rather realistic approach because I didn’t want to do a cutesy cartoon koala that would take away from the seriousness of the situation, but the realism clashed with the rest of the piece so I agreed that I needed to redesign the koala. The problem I was having is that the koala isn’t a monster, it’s a victim and up until that point on the project I had been depicting climate change in the form of Lovecraftian creatures attacking the planet and reclaiming their home. This time however I was trying to show how vulnerable the animals in Australia are right now, they needed to be cute and upsetting, to evoke feelings of sadness and vulnerability so that people would do their best to help them.  I redraw the koala 3 or 4 times before I finally came up with a design that felt right.

I looked at Australian aboriginal paintings of koalas as a source of inspiration which really helped me to figure out how to show the koala without making it too realistic. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the design right until the end of the day on Thursday, meaning that it was too late to send my design off to be prepared for print, which means that I am going to have to wait until next week to do this and come into college on a day that I am not scheduled to be in so that I can finish the project before the deadline next Thursday. This is fine for me though because I want to raise more money for charities to help save the animals in Australia, no matter what, and in order to do that, I need the prints. I just really hope that I am able to get everything done in time and that people do buy the prints when I try and sell them, this is the only way I know to raise money for the charities without having much reach in the field of illustration.

Final print design

Disclaimer; I am aware that Koalas are only one of the thousands of species that are being affected by the bushfires and I am not ignoring their struggle, but koalas are more well known and loved by many so I feel that they will help to get the attention of more people, which means that I have more chance of selling the prints and donating the proceeds to charities that are fighting to save all of the animals that are being affected by the wildfires.

Pollution Apocalypse- An Illustrated Response to the ongoing Climate Crisis

| Rolo
Pollution Apocalypse Initial Sketch

It’s Riso print week next week, which will be interesting considering how iffy my one-page zine went. We aren’t doing it this week like I thought as one of my tutors wasn’t in so they’re giving us more time to get our sketchbooks up to date and do more of the prints we have already.  I’m hoping that my risograph print goes better this time, at least the one-page zine experience taught me what not to do when it comes to risograph printing. I am still sceptical though of whether or not I’ll be able to achieve a good result though because the last riso print was only a 2 colour one and I’ve decided to be a bit more ambitious this time and try a 4-colour print, which might be my downfall, but  I’m really happy with what I have designed so far so I really, really hope that I am able to create a good print out of it.

For the design I have once again decided to stick to the Lovecraftian/climate change theme that I’ve got going on right now, only this time I have made it blatantly clear that this is the issue I am trying to tackle, compared to my previous designs which were more subtle in tone. I have written ‘Pollution Apocalypse’ around the outside of the main design so that there is no confusion to the issues I am trying to convey. While apocalypse may sound a bit drastic and exaggerated, scientists would disagree given the fact 11,000 scientists have declared a global climate emergency, which sounds like the beginning of an apocalypse to me. The main focus of the design is a heavily polluted city that is pumping noxious gases into the atmosphere, causing the city to flood and attracting all manners of monsters to its’ centre. The creatures represent the end of life as we know it, as well as mother nature fighting back against the destruction that we as a species have caused.

Pollution Apocalypse Photoshop Design.

11,000 scientists declare global climate emergency and warn of ‘untold human suffering’.

Weston, P. (2019). 11,000 scientists declare global climate emergency and warn of ‘untold human suffering’. [online] The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-emergency-scientists-emissions-letter-climate-change-a9185786.html [Accessed 5 Nov. 2019].

I’m going to Poland for Christmas next Thursday and I’ll hopefully be visiting a lot of galleries, exhibitions and also doing art with my girlfriend’s dd who is a full on, free spirited artist and actually makes a living out of it. So I’m hoping that I’ll be able to write a lot of interesting blog posts while I’m away because I feel like my blog is a little bland right now, I haven’t really had time to go to exhibitions and things like that because I’m so invested in each project that I don’t get out much. But yeah, anyway, hopefully a lot of interesting posts and photos of Polish art and inspiration happening in the coming weeks. I’m really looking forward to immersing myself in all sorts of different art that I haven’t seen before, and hopefully seeing some of Van Gogh’s work because he is one of my favourite artists of all time and I’m pretty sure some of his work is on display at a gallery in Krakow. The only thing I am slightly concerned about is the fact I am going to miss 2 days in college before Christmas which could potentially set me behind in the project before the hand in day in January, however, I have already done a lot of printing and my sketchbook is almost up to date so I should be fine, as long as I do some work while I am away.

Skaadi Reborn

| Rolo

Well, I did it, I managed to redraw Skaadi’s legs and I can happily say that she looks like she belongs in the environment. It was not an easy task, at all. I asked my girlfriend to pose for me again so that I had some god first hand reference to draw from and even then I struggled; the position that the legs needed to be in meant that I had to use some foreshortening which is something I always try to avoid. I think it took me about 5 attempts to draw the legs in a way that they would make some sort of proportional sense, but it’s done now anyway and I guess it was a good learning exercise, I can’t avoid using foreshortening forever, especially since I hope to go into comic design someday. I think I need to practice doing foreshortening more, my attitude towards it isn’t the best and I managed to do it this time, so I should practice more so that I can get better and not struggle with it so much when I need to do it for a project again.

  • Stage 1 of Skaadi’s new legs.
  • Stage 2, the leg line work.
  • The colouring of the legs.
  • The finished product.

I’ve managed to finish my development board now too, I took what my tutor (Sarah) said to me in mind and decided to layout Skaadi’s character poses and weaponry in a straight line across the centre of the page, they look really uniform now and I’m quite pleased with it. My second board primarily has Skaadi’s expressions on it to show the different sides of her, from her brave elven side to her horrific demon persona. I wrote a few paragraphs explaining each part of Skaadi in detail so that the audience could really understand her and hopefully feel for her because she is in such an awful predicament.

  • Final Character Board 1
  • Final Character Board 2
Character Boards

I feel like I’ve come a long way as a person and illustrator since I was last on this course over a year ago, I’m more willing to adapt to using digital art methods and try new things, things that I was rather stubborn about not using in the past. I’m realising that I don’t always need to make things difficult for myself, and that I’m not as bad at art as I used to think. I still have a long way to come with my confidence but at least I feel like I’m getting somewhere. This project is coming to a close soon and I’m not so worried about getting everything done on time, my sketchbook is up to date, though it could look a lot neater and my work could be presented in a better way. I really need to work on my sketchbook presentation skills, I feel like a lot of the pages look grimy where my pencil sketches have smudged on to the other page, or where glue has stuck to the wrong parts of the page. I do try to make things look nice but I quite often get so caught up in actually producing the work and writing the annotations that I don’t focus enough on how I put it all together on the page. I hope I don’t miss out on too many marks because of this. Maybe I should start wearing gloves when I stick things in my sketchbook, it would stop me making marks on the page where my fingers have touched, or put pieces of scrap paper over pencil sketches to protect my sketchbook pages. I guess a fixative spray could work too, but it’d have to be one that wouldn’t change the colours or anything about the sketches. I should really look into getting some fixative spray and maybe write a review of it on the blog… is that something I could put on this blog?? I don’t know, why not.

Hopefully by the end of next week I will have handed in the project and everything will be all well and good, after which I’ll be straight on to the next project, there aren’t many breaks in 2nd year I’ve noticed, even when we aren’t in uni we’re doing some sort of project.. well, I am anyway, I’m not sure how other people on the course work but for me it’s pretty much non stop. I guess I like it that way, it gives me something to do and I feel like I’ll be able to become a professional illustrator someday if I keep putting the work in.

Things are finally happening!

| Rolo

This week we finally began to develop our summer comic projects even further, we were told that the final outcome of this project would be a fully finished singular comic panel that showcases the main character in a scene from our story. This is going to be a lot easier than completing the whole comic by November so I am rather happy with this, the comic will be finished during another project at a later date.

The main focus of this week was facial expressions, continuing on from the expression work given to us during the first Illustrator session, we were handed an expression sheet that contained 25 boxes and the names of 25 different expressions that we needed to draw. The purpose of this exercise was to make us think about how to draw different expressions that we may not have done before but may need when it comes to drawing our characters and comics. I wasn’t initially very pleased with this task because I really wanted to focus on improving the design of my characters and also develop the environment that my comic would be set in, I’ve had the idea to show Skaadi either in the middle of the forest fighting a demon, or to show her standing guard in the middle of a blasted heath, protecting what little forest remains; the fire demons and light elves having already destroyed  swathes of her homeland. However, after a while I began to realise the importance of this task because as a comic illustrator, I will have to express the emotions of characters that I draw through recognisable facial expressions that readers will be able to understand. I can’t just create emotionless characters that never show how they feel; I have to be real about this. I definitely found this task quite daunting and difficult when I started it as I am not used to drawing faces and I am certainly not used to expressing emotions through faces. To make it a bit easier we were asked to take selfies of ourselves making the facial expressions that we were asked to draw so that we had accurate reference to draw from; to be perfectly honest I found the prospect of this even more daunting than the drawing itself, I never take selfies! And I won’t be posting them!

 I tried to do as much of the sheet as I could using reference from the internet and memories of when I have seen people use these expressions. Ultimately I gave up on the sheet and talked to one of my tutors, Sarah, instead, she suggested that I focus on 3 main scenarios that Skaadi would likely face and draw out how she would react to them, this idea seemed a lot more favourable than drawing 25 expressions so this is what I did. I managed to get around taking selfies of myself by getting my girlfriend to model 3 expressions that Skaadi would make during the three main scenarios that I came up with. Once I had the reference imagery, I draw out Skaadi with the expressions, changing the design of her face as I went along.

  • Skaadi;s Demon Face
  • Skaadi Inquisitive Expression
  • Solemn Skaadi
Skaadi Expressions

I found it rather difficult to add light and shadow effectively to show depth in my characters faces so I decided to look at how other comic illustrators use light and shadow in their work. My main inspiration for the redesign of Skaadi’s face came from the comic series Saga; I gave her a much sharper face, more expressive eyes and changed her hair so that it looked a bit more realistic than before. The outcome of this redesign was a much more comic-like character in a style that I was finally happy with, I have been trying to find a comic style for a long time and finally managed to achieve one that I was happy with.

Saga Art by Fiona Staples

I am extremely happy with how I am progressing on this course so far and I hope that I am able to keep this up in the future. I am so pleased with myself for drawing Skaadi in a style that I am happy with and one that I would use in comics any day. There are still some tweaks needed to the style, it’s not exactly refined yet, or coloured, but oh my god I have something that I can work with. From here on I will developing the newfound comic style even further and refining it so that it will eventually be something that I am proud of and could possibly use in other comics in the future.