Visual Skills Brief TWO - 'A day in the life'

Another day, another deadline!

Editorial illustrations signed off with a class crit. For a change we focused on giving 'negative' feedback first, which is an awkward concept. No-one likes having holes picked on their work (including myself) - but it's part and part and parcel of working for clients, who definitely WON'T have a problem tearing your work to shreds! Some of the minus comments i received referred to the use of of "unnecessary use of textures/patterns", which i had a slight problem with.What makes it 'unnecessary'? There was a very limited colour scheme allowed so to get around this problem i used halftones & bitmaps to give the impression of shades and tones without exceed the colour limit. Actually there were a few opinions that i really wasn't agreeing with,i'll leave it there - i guess thats the point of a peer crit. Learning not to take it personally is another lesson to be learnt, STILL!

Looking back at the final outcomes, I'm fairly pleased with the majority of it. Hadn't intended to go fully digital but having experimented with using the pencil 'sketch' style versions of the characters above it just felt a bit too much like a W.I.P(fig 1 & 2) and having done one of them all crisp and clean in Illustrator it made sense to get them all matching, quality wise. This method proved to be pretty time consuming, and is one of the main reasons i want to use as much analogue work as possible. But I'm a sucker for super polished work - i don't think its something i'll ever be able to compromise on? It's a disease!! Also, rendering it how i did was also a refresher course in t-shirt/screen printing techniques which I'm excitedly waiting to get to grips with at some point during the degree. 

(fig.1)

(fig.2)

Visual Skills Brief TWO - ' A day in in the Life '

INITIAL ROUGHS & FEEDBACK

After getting to grips with the article subject matter and producing a number of roughs  i received feedback, criticism & general pointers from three lovely gentlemen on what  i should develop for my final 3 editorial images. Hearing the views of other students is always interesting & useful as my idea of a good working concept isn't always the view of others, as was the case here, partly.

 

Main article highlights:

• Facial recognition a bit wonky

• …its own disturbing results

• skin flaps, giant evil-clown nose

• Golf clubs for eyes

• Creating a freak show version of yourself

• Giant bubbles, swallow up pollution

• Wearable technology that automatically adjusts to home temperature

• Hair helmets

• Robot servants 

Below are a selection of the more successful ideas to come out of the evaluation session. Recently I've been so caught up in only being able to work in black and white that it totally slipped my mind that the roughs could be in colour swell as the final piece, so i rendered a few afterwards in orange to get a visual connection to the phone company who has created this Future Self app.

 After the first week on this brief i'd say the only real problem I've had with it is the fact I'm not making my 'roughs' rough enough,which in turn limited the amount of possible design ideas i managed to present. I guess i like to give a client a reasonably clear idea of what I'm planning for the final piece, rather handing them a scribble that could change dramatically & look totally different in the by the end? The article was a bit tricky to turn into visuals to start with but after a few reads through, and the more sketches i did the more the ideas appeared.

I wouldn't say I'm enjoying having to draw the same object over and over again yet, but I'm getting my head around the fact that roughs, indeed, only have to be rough, and not something that needs a lot of time & effort put into. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE IDEAS!!

Working within the dimensions isn't something I've had any problems with so far, i tend to start with a rough box when i start my roughs anyway, and always have the final composition in my mind from the 'off'.

After my group feedback session, i half agreed with them about what the final concepts should be - but may need to overrule them on some of it, otherwise these will be the images i will be working on in the 2nd week.

200X 200 FINAL

(What my peer group thought, but may replace it with idea below)

PORTRAIT FINAL

LANDSCAPE FINAL

Visual Skills Brief TWO - 'A Day in the Life'

The next Vis Skills brief is to produce three editorial illustrations that visually communicate my response to an online news article i've been given.Examples of this that caught my eye are below - i've only come across Noma Bar's work since I've been at LCA, but i instantly fell in love with his style, and use of negative space and basically how bloody clever his concepts are!

Marc Aspinall

Paul Blow

Noma Bar

The article is called 'The value of your Future Self' by Anna North for the NewYork Times.

In short, it's about a new face recognition phone app by Orange, which takes your picture, 'ages' you by 20 years (makes your hair grey and gives you some wrinkles) and then lets you cha and ask questions to yourself in, 2034.Real Buck Rogers shit!

I read through the arcticle a few times and pulled out sentences and notes that i thought i could work with and transform into some imagery. These were mostly based around the fact that its a phone app, made by Orange, that transports you into the future. She mentioned HAIR HELMETS (see vid below) aswell, so i'm trying my hardest to squeeze one in there somewhere if i can get it into context. Might be a bit confusing though?!

The illustrations need to be 2 colours plus stock, and fit into the following dimensions;

1 response at 200mm x 200mm

1 response at 105mm x 200mm (portrait) 

1 response at 290mm x 105mm (landscape)

The three illustrations should be distinct in their content but work as a set or series and be visually 

consistent.Also, we're allowed to use digital tools to complete this task, which usually i would've jumped at, but i may keep it as analogue as possible to continue my 'reunion' to hand-drawn work .we'll see.