Work Based Learning EVALUATION 9th May 2018

Work Based Learning

Evaluation

What did I do?

During this project, I have completed a few live briefs, and in class we have had people coming in discussing their place in this industry, explaining what they do and how they got to that point.

Live Tales – This was the first live brief that we had been given as a class. Live Tales is a company who teach teens and younger classes about story-telling, bringing out everyone’s more imaginative sides and letting them develop their own stories. Our task was to create installations within the Live Tales building so that the white walls could be less boring, however, we were not allowed to produce anything that could be too suggestive, as they did not want any of the children’s stories being swayed by the imagery. As they had older and younger classes, we also had the task of creating designs that would appeal to both audiences, not being too young and not being too old.

As I felt my strength was with 2D illustrations, I early on decided that all of my concepts would eventually be stuck onto the walls/windows with vinyl, as I felt this would best fit my style. My favourite concepts from this brief was my hidden cats, which would appear squished within the shelves, my paper planes, which had followed a flowing line across the room and I liked my concept of having a repetitive pattern of waves across the skirting boards, that could have a boat or lighthouse coming out of them, depicting an ocean scene, but I did feel that could have been too suggestive.

After the presentation, each group had corrections to make, mine had said that they like the wave pattern but felt it was too young, so I have redesigned this to what I feel may be more teen-friendly, but still appeal to the younger classes. Then instead of the cluster of planes following the line, they wanted them to be more sparse, spread across the room so that they would be a little less obvious. I have corrected all of the issues that they had mentioned with my designs, but now we are currently waiting for a response from them as to what they want to do with the space.

Hadrian Border Brewery – This was a live brief the class was given the option to participate in. The brewery had a couple of new drinks which they needed designs for, but each drink had a northern folklore to go with it so we would have to illustrate the stories.

As my tutor was telling us about this brief, he mentioned that the first drink would need to be designed almost instantly, as the company was running low on time (as an artist had dropped out at the last minute) so because he was worried that no one would take it because of our own deadlines, I felt I took one for the team and decided to give myself a quick two day project, in which I would sketch, refine and send off this design.

However, when I did send my design off, the company had already found a piece that they were going to use. This piece was not specifically designed for the brewery; however, it was an illustration of the ‘Brown Man of the Muir’ (the folklore of the drink) which the company had messaged the artist and asked if they could use. I do not blame the brewery for doing this as I can imagine the pressure they were under to find a new piece of work, I do however wish that I had the chance to work with them on my design more, as I feel it would have been a good experience to work with an actual client one on one.

Tangles Tales – This is the theme of a competition called the Cheltenham Illustration Awards, which I had taken part in last year when the theme was ‘Tales Through Other’s Eyes’. This year, I wanted to create something slightly personal with the tangled theme, as I wanted to create a visual representation of what it can feel like to overthink, as it can often feel as if you’re tangled up within your own thoughts and can’t escape. I took this theme quite literally, as my final design is embroidered, well one image of a person’s brain is neatly embroidered, whereas the other, the one that is overthinking, is messier and ‘tangled’.

I want my piece to bring awareness to this issue because I don’t think it is talked enough about as a problem, but more as a passing comment. Personally, I feel if I didn’t have someone to talk to or calm me down when I am overthinking, I would be in a worse place at this moment in time. So, if someone does have this problem, I want them to see that they are not alone, and it is ok to talk about, because although you can be telling yourself ‘oh I’m just overthinking’ there’s always going to be the nagging doubt in your mind, until you have someone to reassure you otherwise, so I do feel it is an issue that should be talked about more often.

Rabbit Reloaded – This was an open call for entries by Pictoplasma, the wanted submissions of rabbit characters on a white background, and that was pretty much the only requirements. I myself created two hybrid bunnies, which were a rabbit-fish and a swan-rabbit, my third design was an alien bunny, which I inevitably named space-bun, after the common Tumblr girl hair trend from a while back.

I had set a short project for this task, and I did find it fun to just create playful or weird bunny characters. As was visible on the previous entries before my own, there was no limit as too how weird or imaginative your bunnies could be, so it was fun just to play around for a while, seeing what your imagination could conjure.

After Midnight Gifts – A guy named Paul Kell came in to discuss his business named After Midnight Gifts, which is a company who produce novelty gifts which have been influenced by pop culture and current trends. These items tend to have a ‘viral nature’ meaning they are often shared all over social media, which does work well for the company as it allows their brand to be known by a wider audience.

His target audience is the age range of my class, so he had come in to use our own opinions of what would appeal to us as customers, or what potential trends we felt would become popular in the future, as research that he would take back and use to produce new products. He also mentioned how decades do tend to come back around and currently it is the 90’s coming back, so he asked us to look back on our childhood and give him suggestions of what had been nostalgic to us. After being split into groups, we all created mind maps and mood boards of everything we remembered from our younger days, my groups had included Tamagotchi’s, SpongeBob, Ed, Edd and Eddy, Spice Girls and the list goes on, we really enjoyed being nostalgic for the afternoon.

Paul started to explain how we could potentially work for his company, as a previous student from this course already does work with him, and other than creating illustrations for the packaging, she also creates the turnarounds for the products which are then sent to China to be produced. When I heard about this, I could not believe it, as it sounds like such a good job. I personally do not work well with 3D mediums, however, if I was able to just draw the turnarounds for the product and send them off, it would be so fun to have a finalised product which you know you had drawn, actually in your hands, professionally produced.

As of this moment, Paul has not been back for our second lesson with him, in which we were supposed to be given a room of the house and a theme, one of which we had already discussed, then we were to create an item which would fit both the theme and the specific room. I do hope he comes back for this lesson, as it does sound so fun, and it’s not like anything we have done before or even ever thought about doing so I would be excited to try something new.

BadWitches & Mermaid_Morgue – These were two illustrators, Nil and Amy, who had previously been on the same course, who had come in to teach us about zines, the history/evolution of them and how to make our own.

In class, I had recently been collecting images of Flora on a Pinterest board, so was really in the mood to draw weird and interesting fungi for the day. I later named my zine ‘Fun Guys’ just to mislead the reader before looking inside. I did enjoy this process and would like to try creating more in the future, especially if I were to have more narrative in mind, as opposed to just making a seemingly pointless zine of mushrooms. (I like my creation, it was not pointless to me)

In this lesson, I also learnt more about how the risograph works, for instance, I did not realise it could scan in textures before this lesson. So, in the future, I would like to experiment more with traditional designs on the riso as I have only created pieces that have been printed from photoshop so far so I would like to have a play around with this and see what I can create.

Laura Sheldon – She is a commercial illustrator and designer, who had come in to discuss what she does and how she started out, she also gave us one of her previous briefs to work on, so that we could experience the type of work she creates on a day to day basis. Whilst working with clients, she also has an Etsy store in which she sells her own personal work, and she uses this as an outlet to get away from commercial work, as she says it can be quite draining if you don’t have a break once in a while and create some work for yourself.

So with the brief she had come in with, she had a list of words, all with different meanings and pick two, then start by creating a mind map of what the word suggested to, whether it be a general word association, a feeling or a memory that you think of when you hear the word. The ones I chose were Tradition and Benevolence. I chose ‘tradition’ because my personal tradition is to have a movie marathon on Christmas Eve Eve every year, which I believe I have been doing since 2012 or 2013. I also chose the word ‘benevolence’ because from the description, it had mentioned preservation and my mind just sprouted ideas from there. When our time was up for the mind map, we were then told to pick three of the concepts, but make sure one would be an obvious choice for a client, one that could be a little too out of the box, and one in between the two, then we had to sketch out the illustrations for each concept.

My obvious concept was based on both of my words, as it was a snow globe, which preserves a specific moment in time, and this moment could be Christmas, which is a yearly tradition is some families. My middle concept was based on my personal tradition of staying up all night watching a movie marathon on Christmas Eve Eve. And my final concept, the more out of the box concept, was based on the work benevolence, or preservation, as I wanted to show a child with a figure covering its ears or eyes, block the horrors of the world away from the child. This piece was supposed to symbolise a parent trying to preserve their child’s innocence by closing them off from violence and wars and drugs and so on. I did not define the figure covering the child’s eyes, as I wanted it to be more suggestive so that the audience could form their own interpretations of who this character is.

I did go with the last idea, to develop further as it was the strongest concept in my opinion, however I know this will not be what will happen in the real world of work and if a client decides upon another idea, then I will have to develop it with as much enthusiasm as I would if I were working on the one I was more confident about.

I really enjoyed this lesson because, from all of the artists who had come in, Laura seemed the one who I felt I related to most, in the sense of which direction I would want my career to go in. Although Nil and Amy are in the same line of work, they did not really discuss it in our lesson, so I just felt Laura’s was more informative in that sense. And I did enjoy being able to work with a real brief that she had been given.

Strengths

• Being able to churn out work within a shorter timeframe than I am used to. Specifically relating to Hadrian Border Brewery and the Rabbit Reloaded brief.
• In the Live Tales brief, I felt I was able to create a lot of strong and adaptable concepts. I believe my group's presentation was still strong, even though we were two teammates down.
• With my tangled tales piece, I am happy with the choice of giving my mother the task of embroidering the designs, as she has so much more experience than myself and I feel if I had done it, you would not be able to tell the difference between the normal brain and the messy one.

Weaknesses

• Time management, I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to produce more designs for the Hadrian Border Brewery, but I couldn’t seem to coordinate my time to complete both my project work and the designs for their pump clips.
• In the Rabbit Reloaded piece, I did struggle with trying to be imaginative with this theme, as I wanted to create quirky characters, but as there were so many entries, I felt when I drew a character, there would already be another artist whose bunny had a similar look, so I did not want to clash, or potentially be named a copycat.
• In Live Tales, I had troubles communicating with other groups. I think there was confusion as to which concept the other group had to collaborate with, but there was no discussion on either part’s, so there was our downfall. Strengths – I had given my mother the embroidery task as I knew the outcome would be so much better if she had done it as opposed to myself
• With my Tangled Tales piece, as it was out of my hands for the majority of the time, I don’t really feel it is my work. Although it is my concept, I took the images myself, created the linework for my mother to follow myself, print the images onto the fabric myself, I still don’t feel I did anything because I did not do the embroidery myself. So, I feel like I cheated in a way.

Targets for Future Projects

• Create more zines.
• Get involved and communicate more in group projects.
• Join more competitions.
• Find more commission-based briefs.
•  Keep on track with pop culture and current trends.
• Market myself more, do work for friends, friends of friends, just let people know you are an illustrator.

Action Plan

•  During the summer, I will try to create more narrative based zines, and as they don’t take long, I could try set myself a challenge of creating one per day, but as I may struggle, I might be able to achieve 2 per week instead.
•  Next year, if we have any group projects, I will try to be more a part of the process and communicate better with my teammates. I believe this issue was slightly due to me not knowing the majority of my classmates, so I was nervous to talk to anyone, but since the group has gotten a lot closer since our trip to Berlin, this may be different in any future group projects.
•  I have already planned to apply to more competitions next year, now that I know some that I should be keeping my eye out for, for instance, the McMillan Children’s Book Competition, Penguin Books, Adobe Awards (which I may apply to this year) etc.
• As of commission-based briefs, I have found a couple of websites which people who are looking for artists help, can go and hire them, and as an artist, you can find the open briefs and choose whether you feel the job is right for you. I do need to do more research into these sights, but I may try using one in the summer holidays when I have more free time.
• Keeping on track with pop culture and current trend is quite easy with the use of social media so I will stay updated, especially if I try to start selling my own work, as I feel people are more interested in buying trends and pop culture, but with more of a following, they could potentially start buying your personal work as well.
• From now and onwards, I will take the advice of Laura Sheldon, as she had said that you’ve got to let people know you are an illustrator or else you won’t find work. You can start with a work colleague, who may then suggest you to one of their friends, who may then suggest you to another and so on. The point is to get your name out there so that you can potentially gain more clients and work opportunities.