project

What Did I Just Watch? And Other Thoughts I Had This Week

| Rolo
King of The Cats sneak peak

Well, I didn’t manage to watch all of the movies over the weekend because I was busy finishing off the King of The Cats illustration for my aunts’ book, which I’m trying to do alongside my university work; I’m not going to lie, it’s going to be difficult but I just need to get better at managing my time.  I watched Blade Runner and House though, I’ll post my reviews of the movies separately because there is just so much to say about them, especially House which is basically a drug fuelled nightmare in all of the right ways. After watching these two I have decided that House is the movie that I am going to focus on creating art for this project, it’s been a while since I did any horror based art and I think House will really challenge me it is far from a normal horror movie, the style, tone and atmosphere of the film are unlike anything I have ever came across before. I think choosing House for this project will really push me as an illustrator and take me far out of my comfort zone which will be a good thing to show in my portfolio.

Double paged spread House moodboard

On Monday we were asked to create a mood board for one of the films that we will be able to refer back to for ideas during the course of the project, I actually ended up creating two because I just couldn’t fit all of my ideas for House on one page. On the mood board I have included images of the main protagonists, antagonists and supporting characters, as well as images of some of the many bizarre scene changes and special effects that are plastered throughout the film. I watched the movie on my laptop, so I was able to get reasonably high quality screenshots of key scenes in the film which I cut and stuck into my sketchbook.  I also used the eyedropper tool in Photoshop to take samples of the main colours that House uses so that I have an idea of what colours to use in my development and my final illustrations. The whole point of the Little White Lies front covers is to capture the themes, atmosphere and visual tone of the specially selected movie, this can be done with the use of linework, colour and composition of the illustration, the colours used should reflect the movie in order for it to be successful which is why I sampled the colours directly from the movie.

LWL House thumbnail sketches

As well as creating a mood board, one of my tutors kindly created a worksheet that contains four blank Little White Lies front covers, we were asked to sketch 8 different front cover variants as part of our initial ideas and development. So far, I have sketched out four out of 8 designs, taking inspiration from the House movie, as well as some illustrators that have previously created covers for LWL to do so. I have found it really difficult so far because no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get any of my people portraits to look right, I also can’t decide who the main character in House is, and I’m supposed to be creating a portrait of them. The plot of House is so confusing that I think 3 characters present in the film are all the same person by the end and one of them isn’t even human. I have tried to combine fragments of all 3 of their faces to create one unified portrait which hasn’t went very well either, trying to show all three characters was too much, it compromises the appearance of all of them. I also tried doing something similar using two of the main characters faces instead, which worked a lot better because half of the portrait is a cat which is something that I am much better at drawing. I used the iconic mirror scene from House to frame the design which really works to me compositionally, so far, my second design is the strongest and the one I want to develop further. Speaking of cats, I’m going to create a wholly separate post at some t point talking about my King of The Cats illustration because I am unbelievably happy that my art is going to be published and I want to talk about it.

Don’t Panic, It’s Only Hand-In Day

| Rolo
I need to take my own advice.

Well… Today was a bit of a mess, the good news is that I finally handed in the Character Design project, the bad news is it took me the entire day to get there. Today was an anxiety day and a bad one at that, I ran out of anxiety meds and barely slept last night trying to make sure everything was perfect and ready to hand in, which in hindsight wasn’t the best idea; no pills and no sleep makes me a stressed boy. All throughout the day I watched as people rushed to finish their project, spend a few minutes handing it in digitally and go home, whereas despite having my project done before going to uni, I was still the last person to go home because I just couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to format my artwork correctly to send off to the submissions dropbox, nor could I figure out how to print out my character boards and final illustration, despite having done this many times before. My brain just was clearly on vacation today. I guess it is over now and I can rest easy knowing that I have handed in the best I could do at the time. In the future, I am so going to have to manage my time more effectively and prepare for the fact that things are most likely going to go wrong on hand in day. I need to have everything sorted and ready to hand in a whole 24 hours before hand in day so that I don’t end up having to stay up until a ridiculous hour before going to uni. Hopefully this way I can be properly rested and in a better mental state to deal with anything that goes wrong on hand in day, because to be perfectly honest, the more things went wrong, the worse my mental state got, and I basically had a complete breakdown which could have been avoided.

As I expected, we’re off next week and have been given a research task for the upcoming project to be handed in by Monday. There are a lot of artists and companies to research on the list, more than we have been given before, which I’m pretty sure is due to the fact that not everyone on the course necessarily does a lot of research, something that has been mentioned in class previously. Hopefully this doesn’t apply to me because I spent a lot of time doing my research for the Skaadi project, nevertheless I will do my best to complete the whopping 11 people/companies to research that the tutors have given us plus another 3 of our choice in just over a week, it’s a good thing I enjoy writing!! The upcoming project looks like one I will really enjoy though, it seems to be a print based project and we’ll be doing risograph printing (something I’ve seen done but haven’t tried before) relief printing (I’ve done lino cut before with varying results) and screen printing which is the one I am looking forward to the most because during the final project on my level 3 course I did screen printing for the first time in my life and managed to get my first distinction ever, so I’ve got high hopes for it this time.

I’m going to spend the next week delving into the world of printing and research artists that I feel could influence my style this project, I’m thinking about going down a more macabre route this time, while still linking it to current world events. I enjoy making sci-fi/fantasy and horror tropes and gothic comment on the modern world. Besides, my main interests generally fall between sci-fi/ fantasy and horror, I did fantasy last time with Skaadi the demon elf, so now it’s time for something a bit on the dark side. I haven’t been doing a lot of my own art lately and I don’t think I’m going to have much time to in the foreseeable future with uni, so I guess I’m going to have my make my own artwork my university work.

Fat Lass Preserves

| Rolo

This week came as a bit of a shock to me, after focusing on developing my personal comic project for so long now and with November quickly approaching, we have been thrown completely off the tracks with a new project that is due by Monday. The tutors did mention that we would be given a live brief at some point, but I didn’t think it would happen this quickly or that we would have so little time to do it. The brief we have been given is to redesign a confident, plus size superhero that will become the logo for a local company called ‘Fat Lass Preserves’ that sells jams, chutneys and other preserves. We have been asked to do this because the image that the owner of the company is currently using is technically protected by copyright as it depicts a large version of Wonder Woman which she isn’t really allowed to use. One person from the class will have their logo chosen, receive money for designing the logo and it will be featured on local TV, so while this project temporarily throws a spanner into the works of my other project, it is a great opportunity.

Fat Lass Preserves Current Logo: Deane, B. (2019). Artisan preserves with a modern twist. [online] Fat Lass Preserves. Available at: https://fatlasspreserves.co.uk/ [Accessed 27 Sep. 2019].

Nevertheless, I am finding it extremely difficult to complete this project because I am so invested in the ongoing personal project and find it slightly challenging to just jump from one project to another and back, however, I know that this will provide me with valuable experience for when I become a professional Illustrator.  As well as this, I am still developing my ability to draw humanoid characters and designing a plus size character creates a new set of challenges for me, such as, the muscle definition is not as visible on plus size characters which makes it more difficult to know where each muscular element should be. So far, I have primarily been using anatomy books as reference for human proportions which don’t necessarily focus on the proportions of plus size people, who often have different proportions to the average human being.   It is because of these things that I have never really tried to draw a plus size humanoid character thus far, I am however looking forward to the challenge in the hope that it will help me to develop my illustration practice further. While I have struggled with the transition from one project to another, I know that this project is good training for real world scenarios, because when I am a professional Illustrator, I will rarely get to choose what kind of character I design and I’ll also probably have a short timeframe to complete any project that is given to me, as well as multiple ongoing project at once.  This project is providing me with a dose of reality and should help me get a better idea of what it will be like to be a professional illustrator in the future.

  • Fat Lass Preserves Pose 1
  • Costume Concept
  • Fat Lass Preserves Pose 2

So far, I have attempted to draw a confident fat female superhero in 3 different poses, including the pose that the commissioner really likes, and so far, all of which I feel need improvement.  I researched the company to get an idea of what their ethics were and what kind of imagery and colours I should use for the costume and I have come up with a pretty solid idea of what I want the finished design to look like, I am just finding it unbelievably difficult to turn that idea into reality. It is currently Thursday, and I have until Monday to finish this. Help.

Fat Lass Preserves Pose 3