Illustration Changes alot, What is Trending Now?

March 28, 2020March 29, 2020 | Rolo

Flat colour, clean vectors and a limited colour palette have been dominating the illustration scene throughout the 2010s, largely because of the rise in digital painting programs such as Photoshop. These designs take a ‘less is more’ approach that can add an air of sophistication to an illustration. A reduced colour palette also makes the illustrator think about the colours they are using.

A counter trend to the simplistic and colourful flat vector art is the resurgence of printmaking and traditional looking illustrations that has been occurring lately, much to my joy. Traditional looking illustrations add a uniqueness that seems to be missing from the flat, simplistic digital illustrations that dominated in the 2010s, many companies are turning to a more traditional looking approach that adds a certain warmth to the illustration and helps them to stand out from the crowd.

Another thing that has seen a rise in popularity recently is pieces that blur the lines between illustration and animation. As our attention spans get shorter and shorter, illustrators are having to find new ways to keep audiences engaged with their work. Things such as gifs, images that move are making the lines between animation and illustration even greyer.

Illustrated letters and typography are a trend that has been around for a while and is here to stay. While typefaces still have their uses, they just can’t blend an illustrative style into an image the same way that typography can. Illustrated letters make a blog of text stand out and add character to a page, illuminating the worlds that follow them.

While political statements might not be a trend for everyone, they still do play a huge part in illustration today. With all of the crazy things going on in the world right now, from Brexit to the re-elections in the US and everything else, many people are turning to illustration to express their views and deal with the current world crisis in their own way, be it through satirical art or otherwise, I expect that this trend is just going to grow even more throughout the course of 2020.

In the 2010s we finally started moving away from deplorable ‘body shaming’ and instead headed towards celebrating our personal and physical appearance. Many illustrators have been captured all of the different ways our bodies are perceived in imperfect and wacky ways. They have done this through wobbly lines, uneven brush strokes and odd proportions. An add on to this is the surge in inclusive art that has been becoming more prominent in the past year, people from all ages, backgrounds and lifestyles are coming forward in a multitude of visual styles. Illustration itself is becoming as in demand, if not more as photography within editorial illustration, so the demand for inclusive illustration is just going to get larger and hopefully it will be a trend that is here to stay.

With the rise of figures such as Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough who are fighting for our planet and making it mainstream, and also the increasing availability of eco-friendly products and meat alternatives, sustainable living is itself becoming a huge trend. This is translating into the illustration world too; more and more illustrators are tackling issues such as climate change and over consumption and urging us to live a more sustainable life and to do our part to save our home and the animals that live on it. This is a trend that I hope never goes away, and one that I too am a part of.

Maywst, R., 2016. Illustrative Lettering Process — Ray Mawst Lettering & Design. [online] Ray Mawst Lettering & Design. Available at: <http://www.raymawst.com/blog/2016/3/11/fosz1e117f33nrg3fvuqldwzzk1jmt> [Accessed 28 March 2020].

Barker, G., n.d. Trump Cartoon Boris. [online] UK Political Cartoonist Cartoons. Available at: <https://www.garybarker.co.uk/donald-trump-boris-cartoon.html> [Accessed 27 March 2020].

Byrd, T., 2019. Illustrating A More Inclusive Brand. [online] Medium. Available at: <https://medium.com/facebook-design-business-tools/illustrating-a-more-inclusive-brand-bbb4fa6c4bb3> [Accessed 28 March 2020].

Moran, L., 2019. Huffpost Is Now A Part Of Verizon Media. [online] Huffingtonpost.co.uk. Available at: <https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/greta-thunberg-street-art-jody-thomas-bristol-upfest_n_5cdeb690e4b00735a915598e?ri18n=true> [Accessed 28 March 2020].

May, T., 2019. 10 Top Illustration Trends For 2020. [online] Creative Bloq. Available at: <https://www.creativebloq.com/features/illustration-trends-2020> [Accessed 28 March 2020].

Lee, E., 2018. Trends From The London Illustration Fair 2019 | Printed.Com Blog. [online] Printed.com Blog. Available at: <https://www.printed.com/blog/trends-london-illustration-fair-2019/> [Accessed 28 March 2020].

Digital Arts. 2020. 2020’S Best Up-And-Coming Illustrators. [online] Available at: <https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/illustration/illustrators-wholl-kick-off-2020s-in-style/> [Accessed 28 March 2020].

Editorial Illustration Research

March 22, 2020March 23, 2020 | 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.

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.

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>

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>

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/>

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> [Accessed 22 March 2020].

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

February 7, 2020February 15, 2020 | Rolo

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.

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.

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.

Save The Koalas

January 14, 2020January 14, 2020 | 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.

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.

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.

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.

Print, Prints and Printed- A Gallery of My Riso, Relief and Screen Prints

November 29, 2019December 11, 2019 | Rolo

This week has been a fun one, we’ve done so much printmaking, including printing an unexpected one-page zine on Monday. I kept with my Lovecraftian theme and created a bestiary of his monsters, I was really happy with the designs I drew, but the finished zine did not go to plan at all. I think I rushed the background a bit and I hadn’t done risograph printing before, so despite having researched the process, I wasn’t entirely sure how it would work in practice. I drew my monster sketches in pencil and scribbled the background in pen, which in hindsight wasn’t the best idea because when it came to printing the zine, the background overpowered my illustrations and the risograph printed wasn’t able to pick up much of the detail of my pencil sketches so the final zine looks like a bit of a mess. It was a good learning exercise though, at least I know that next time I riso print, I need to make my line work bolder and the background needs to be done in a lighter tone to the foreground.

The zines were only the first part of printing we did on Monday, in the afternoon we went to the print workshop to make our screens for screen printing the 2^nd of our designs. It cost £14 for the screens which is a bit on the high side for me because I’m having some money issues in the run up to Christmas, but after actually using the screen, I know it was a worthwhile investment because I can print that design as much as I want now and also change the screen and use the same frame for any other designs I make in the future. I managed to do a design that I am really happy with, it depicted one of Lovecraft’s monsters, a Mi-Go, perched over a power-plant and feeding off of its fumes. I chose to depict this because in Lovecraft lore, the Mi-Go awakens from its slumber when it gets warm and power plants heavily contribute to global warming. I wanted to show how horrible and horrific the world could be if it keeps heating up at the rate it is, using the Mi-go to depict the horrors of what life would be like in a scorching, desolate Earth. I’m once again not 100% certain if my illustration conveys the message that I want it to though, I know what it means, but I’m not convinced that other people will, they’d probably just a cool giant bug creature so when I do more designs this project I need to make the climate change and global warming message clearer, while still using Lovecraftian creatures so that I stick to the theme that I’ve chosen for this project.

Sketched in pencil, refined in Illustrator and finished in Photoshop.
I screen-printed this design on to 200gsm paper.

Relief printed with an acrylic block and ink and put through a roller press.

I had to send my first design back off to the wood workshop place to be re- laser cut because I made a mistake with the formatting when I send it off the first time (no surprises there) so some of my design was missing from the acrylic plate, this all got sorted by Thursday though so I managed to create a lot of prints of both of the designs. I’ll post photos of the prints next week once the ink has all dried. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed printing so far, I’m just not sure about risograph printing yet, probably because it is the one that went the worst for me. I totally get the appeal of risograph printing, it’s so easy to create a huge run of prints, I just haven’t quite figured out how to make the process work for me yet, hopefully over the weekend I’ll be able to create a design that works because we are creating an A3 riso-print on Monday. It’d be great if I had another design to add to my permanent print collection. I already have some ideas of what I’m going to depict, I plan on showing a modern polluted and poisoned world with buildings that everyone should be able to recognise, inspired by Lovecraft’s short story ‘The Colour Out of Space’, I’ll leave a link to the story on this post. I’m hoping that I can make my message clear this time, hopefully 3^rd time’s the charm.

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cs.aspx

Achievement unlocked!

November 22, 2019December 3, 2019 | Rolo

Mural painted by Iga Pencak for L&S Gifts in Wallsend.

I’m so happy with myself right now, I got a high merit (or a 2:1) on my first university project in almost a year!! I was so worried that I’d only get a pass, but all of the work I put into the Character Design project finally paid off. The mural that my girlfriend was commissioned to do got finished on time too and the woman commissioned her loved it, I was so happy that it worked out and the mural is now displayed in Wallsend, hopefully forever. I did struggle to get all of the research done on time and to be honest, I still have one form of printing to research so I am a little bit behind right now. I’ll catch up though, now that the mural is out of the way. I would love to get a distinction at the end of the course, the only reason I didn’t get one this time is because I had an idea of what Skaadi would look like from the start and I stuck with that design throughout the entire project. In the future I need to explore different designs and develop my characters and ideas more. I do struggle with this to be honest; I think too much about what I want to achieve and once I have a solid idea, I just stick to it. I really should sketch out multiple designs first and be a bit more adventurous with my development instead of just keeping my ideas exactly the same from start to finish.

First print design , 2b pencil on paper.

Since last week I’ve managed to finish researching all of the artists that were set to us by the tutors, including Hokusai, Liv Rainey-Smith and Jack Davis, and I’ve researched relief printing and risograph printing, all that’s left to do as far as the research goes is screen-print research, technically we we’re supposed to have finished this by now so I have made things a bit harder for myself but I’m not too worried; I like the writing and research side of things so it shouldn’t take me too long. As well as the research I’ve also completed my first design for printing, I opted to draw Cthulhu riding a plastic polluted Hokusai inspired wave, with a trident piercing a skull and water bottle at the moment the wave crashes over Big Ben. It sounds like a lot I know but I don’t know how else to put it, I chose to do this design because alike the Skaadi project where I made my design depict the Amazon Rainforest crisis, I wanted to make my designs this project convey some of the horrific issues that are facing our world today. I chose to depict the ongoing plastic pollution problem that is threatening our oceans because it is something that could and probably will wipe out much of our known world if we don’t do something about it. My design serves as a warning, with Cthulhu symbolising the horrors of pollution and the great wave that could flood the world if the ice caps continue to melt and the sea levels rise.

Initial print design idea. 2b pencil on paper. Inspired by Hokusai.

I struggled with designing this because I knew what I wanted to convey, I just didn’t know how, I’m not even sure if my final design is effective at getting the message across, my original sketch was far too derivative of Hokusai, it took me a couple of attempts to get something that I was happy with. Time was against me though and I had to settle with what I had, it’s not that I don’t like the design, it’s just missing something where the white space is. I guess can always paint over the design once it’s been printed or redo it in my own time, but the main thing is that the design has been sent off to the right place for it to be laser cut onto acrylic ready for printing. Speaking about sending the file off, I once again struggled with formatting my design correctly to be laser cut, my tutor told us how to do it but a lot of the information got lost to me in my head, I don’t know if it’s because he was throwing a lot of information at the class really fast, or because I wasn’t paying attention enough due to the fact I get anxious in clss. Either way, I need to work on my ability to format things, I keep meaning to take a notebook to class with me so that I can take notes on how to do these things, but ironically, I keep forgetting to do so. I will try to take a notebook next time because I am sick of feeling kind of stupid when I have to keep asking the tutors to help me send files to certain places to be marked or printed. I don’t see many other people needing help with this and to be perfectly honest, I don’t want to have to either. I think we are printing the design on Monday which I am looking forward to, it’d be good to finally have a design that I can print over and over again, it could be something that I end up selling on Etsy which would be nice. We’ve already been asked to create another design for a different form of printmaking that we’ll be doing soon, which is great because I’ll have a lot of reproduceable designs in the near future. I’m probably going to stick with the Lovecraftian take on modern day issues theme that I’ve started with the Cthulhu design, so I guess I’m going to need to look for a more obscure one of his creatures, I don’t want to only use Cthulhu in my designs. I love H.P. Lovecraft though, so the next weekend is going to be quite fun.

Don’t Panic, It’s Only Hand-In Day

November 7, 2019March 24, 2020 | Rolo

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.

Tutorial Week

October 24, 2019December 2, 2019 | Rolo

Over the weekend, ahead of tutorial that I felt was looming over me, worrying that I had not done enough, I finally decided to make a proper start on my character development board. Had it not taken me so long to refine my Skaadi poses, I probably would have started them sooner. Nevertheless, I made a start on the first board, I displayed both the refined Skaadi dynamic pose and the side pose, alongside her small arsenal of weapons and her treasured necklace; for the text I decided to show Skaadi’s character profile, rather than the whole story because I wanted the board to be just about her. After much deliberation and minor alterations, I just couldn’t get the layout to look professional, my illustrations looked a bit haphazardly placed and the board didn’t look neat. In hindsight I probably should have spent more time looking at how other Illustrators laid out their character boards; but I was running out of time and panicking, I really wanted to have something to show my tutors for when my tutorial came on the fast approaching Monday.

**My first attempt at creating a character board**.

CareHere. (2019). *Featured App-Stop, Breathe & Think*. [online] Available at: https://carehere.com/stop-breath-think/ [Accessed 24 Oct. 2019].

Monday came and my time was up, I had to go in and face the tutorial. When I got there, Sarah (one of my tutors) was surprisingly happy with the amount of work I had done over the week off and offered me some guidance on how I could improve the layout of my development board, things such as making the character profile categories stand out from the rest of the text and laying out all of my illustrations so that they formed a straight line across the centre of the board; this is something that was mentioned to the class earlier in the project but I guess it slipped my mind, I do have trouble focusing on what is being said to me, primarily when the tutors are speaking to the whole class, my mind tends to wander off. It is paramount that I work on being present in the moment when I am in class because I won’t always get the chance to speak to my tutors one to one, I can’t avoid group talks and class conversations, and while I can’t help getting a bit anxious and close in on myself in those environments, there are ways I can improve it. Perhaps I could try mindfulness again, I used to sometimes use the Stop, Breath & Think app which did help, i’ve heard the Headspace app is a really good one to use too, maybe I could try it and share my thoughts on whether it works for me.

**Skaadi’s legs just don’t look right.**

Anyway, getting a bit off topic, as well as talking about my character board, we also talked about my final illustration, more specifically, how the dynamic Skaadi illustration would fit into the environment that I created over the weekend. After placing Skaadi into the environment it became rather clear that she didn’t quite make sense in the piece, it was pointed out to me that her legs were facing the wrong direction as they should be leading the viewer up the path; I had kept her legs side on in the hope that I wouldn’t need to change a pose that I had spent so much time on refining. It has been a few days since my tutorial and I am still struggling to change the position of her legs and I’m growing increasingly worried that I might have to change her whole body in order for my final illustration to make sense, a task that I’m not sure I have time left to do as the deadline for this project is only a week away. I’m going to try and get my girlfriend to act out the same dynamic pose as before, but with her legs in a different position so that I have some good first hand reference images to get a better idea of how I should draw Skaadi’s legs in a such a way that she is leading the audience up the path. I really hope that I am able to achieve this over the coming weekend so that I can focus on finalising the overall illustration and finishing the character boards from Monday. If not, I will have to redraw her whole body which could trip me up on the last hurdle of the project, watch this space.

The Dreaded Week Off

October 17, 2019December 2, 2019 | Rolo

Surprisingly, this week has went a lot better than I thought it would. At the start of the week I felt slightly lost and had no idea how to bring some life to Skaadi, she looked good but was missing heart and fire, her eyes looked soulless and plain. However, after a lot of experimentation and watching a plethora YouTube tutorials on Photoshop processes I have finally created Skaadi as I saw her in my head, sure there are still a few small kinks and details to sort out, but overall, I am much happier with how she looks now.

I primarily focused on fully developing the Skaadi dynamic pose as this is the one that I plan to use when I create my final comic book panel which will depict Skaadi defending her forest home. Throughout this project I had the idea of showing Skaadi inside the beautiful forest in which she resides for my final outcome, however, over the past week or two I came to the conclusion that this would be too bright and happy and it wouldn’t show the depth and darkness within the story that I wrote, it also wouldn’t portray my protagonist as the complex and conflicted character that she is.

I spoke to one of my tutors last week and she pointed out that Skaadi was currently looking quite normal, when she isn’t, she has a much darker demon side and there is endless conflict within her world which just wasn’t showing in the illustrations I had done so far. To tackle this problem, I have decided to depict Skaadi standing in the blasted heath that I describe in the story, protecting the forest she calls home. I hope that choosing this landscape will reveal a glimpse of how dark and distressing her life can be. I’m not certain that this change of setting will be enough though, Skaadi herself will still look the same, just in a different place, I think I need to show her demon face somewhere on my final hand ins. Physically showing her other side in all of its maniacal glory would most likely solve this issue. I guess I could show the expressions I drew of her (including her demon face) on one of my development boards. Speaking of which I’m not too sure how I am going to tackle the development boards as such because I have primarily been focusing on what the final standalone illustration will look like, I need to improve my ability to spread my focus and attention across all aspects of the project.

Dvorsky, J. (2019). *The Blasted Heath | The Pnakotic Atlas*. [online] The Pnakotic Atlas. Available at: https://pnakoticatlas.com/places/97/the-blasted-heath [Accessed 17 Oct. 2019].

But even all this was not so bad as the blasted heath. I knew it the moment I came upon it at the bottom of a spacious valley; for no other name could fit such a thing, or any other thing fit such a name.
H.P. Lovecraft- The Colour Out of Space

I feel as if my time management and focus has been a bit off this project, I want to blame it on the fact that I haven’t done a course for a long time, however I don’t feel like this is good enough an excuse. Other than a few notes, both mental and paper, I didn’t really set myself an official timetable for this project which is starting to bite me in the behind a bit now; when I do future projects, I should try to write up a timetable, even if it is a loose one of how and when I am going to tackle each aspect of the project. I think this would be greatly beneficial to me as it would help me to organise my time better and would make me feel less scatter-brained.

Castle Chickenstein

Life, The Universe and Art Things

University