The Young Illustrator's Award 2014/ Evaluation.

This year, I have chosen to take part in the Young Illustrator’s Award 2014. I feel as though this is an apt competition for me or anyone to take part in because of its limitless choices in what someone who is participating can do.
My entry for the competition is something I thought about a lot, and failed to come to any conclusion. So I went and dug down to the literal meaning of the word “Inspiration,” and decided to look at a number of artists who first sparked my interest in Art, and this is where I rekindled my love for Alphonse Mucha.This year, I have chosen to take part in the Young Illustrator’s Award 2014. I feel as though this is an apt competition for me or anyone to take part in because of its limitless choices in what someone who is participating can do. It is a self-directed competition, where the Artist chooses their own theme and subject, which they can then present in the hopes of winning. 

My entry for the competition is something I thought about a lot, and failed to come to any conclusion. So I went and dug down to the literal meaning of the word “Inspiration,” and decided to look at a number of artists who first sparked my interest in Art, and this is where I rekindled my love for Alphonse Mucha.

Evaluation.

Over all, I thoroughly enjoyed this project. I knew from the word “Go,” that it was something fresh and void of all other projects we had been asked to do so far, and was something completely of my own choice which was just an added bonus. I also knew that, because it was such a wide spread subject, and that I could do pretty much anything I wanted, I would almost definitely have trouble trying to think of what to do. This is why I went back to one of the first things that inspired me to start going into ILLUSTRATION and not just painting. On the other hand, choosing to do something based on the style of Alphonse Mucha was also a dangerous one, because he has been such an inspiration to so many people, I knew I would have to make my work stand out against the hundreds of other pieces of work based on his style. I began clearly unsure, for about a week, on what I wanted my piece to be on, but I ended up going with what I knew best, and stuck to my strengths when it came to illustrating. I was a lot more confident with what I actually wanted to produce, and because of my recent development in skills over the year, I could see much clearly, what I wanted my final outcome to be, rather than had I tried this out before christmas.

I used all of the knowledge I have gained over the past two years, not only with regards to illustrating, where I have been shown in detail some top tricks, shortcuts, workflows and skills in programs such as photoshop, where those tricks can be applied to other programs I use as well, but with basic skills. An example of this woul be on colour schemes and learning to literally paint in a digital format. I feel as though these aspects are clearly shown in my competition entry, and are able to give off a defining mood and theme to my image, without me having to explain anything about it.

One problem I had during the production of this piece was a general flop in my motivation towards it. I sat for a good 3 hours re-doing the same pieces over and over again simply because I was unhappy with how they looked, and it almost got to the point where wanted to change the idea completely. However, with some inspiration (watching speed painting tutorials on Youtube…) I was able to gain back that motivation and change the colour scheme of the figure’s face slightly, where it was easier for me to begin colouring her skin. There was also an ongoing war for about 3 days with regards to shading on the figure’s face, as I had never really painted a face from that angle before. And I over came this by taking photos of my own face, with specific lighting set up to immitate the scene I wanted going on.

To conclude, I have thoroughly enjoyed this project, as it has tested me on more than a physical scale and left me knowing even more about digital painting and illustration, as well as me appreciating the work and effort behind Alphonse Mucha’s wonderful pieces of art. 

Illustration Friday submission.

I decided to do a piece for Illustration Friday, as part of my Live Project module. The theme for the week was "Survival," and that got me thinking quite deep about people struggling to survive as a result of other people, instead of that against something like climate or predators. 

I found that whilst painting this piece, I did a better job of it than I thought I would. I was able to use a much more thick style of paint and, especially on her face and eyes, I was able to fill in a lot more detail using just colours and not have to include lines to define her features. 
Once I finished this piece I then went and uploaded to the Illustration Friday page at Illustration Friday. And was really pleased with how it looked on an actual web page. 

I also decided to be a bit more daring and put it on Twitter, not really expecting anything to come from it, but just for people who follow me to see. And within about an hour I got a notification saying that the Illustration Friday's Twitter had retweeted it!I wasn't sure whether this was a big deal or not but I checked the their Twitter page and they only retweet maybe 3 - 4 submissions per week, so I was insanely pleased with that!

Commission Work - HOLLOWBEAK Album Artwork/ Evaluation.

Shortly before we broke up for Easter, through David, a fellow student was referred to me with an opportunity to design and produce an album cover for his band "Hollowbeak." I was rather nervous at first when being asked to do this, again my fear of letting someone down or not producing what they wanted was all to great. But once I spoke to him a good few times it was clear he was rather easy going and had lots of straight forward ideas, and the more of those he had, the better for me. 

Evaluation.

I think when doing this piece I was very nervous to produce something the best I could considering it was a more “graphic” project than what I would normally focus on. Despite this, I went on and created, step by step, different elements of the album cover until the final project was complete. I began with using a pencil and ink as initial sketches and then uploaded them to my computer in order to digitally line it and colour it up. Another aspect I was rather nervous about was the colours that the client had described, as we all know I’m stuck in my simple and pastel colours. However, using visual research from comics and cartoons which use the same style and colours as what I was going for, I felt much more confident in what I was doing. I also ended up creating a gradient like effect on the wings of the bird through blending and painting in a purple/grey and bright green together, much like you see on pigeons and parakeets. And although I was just creating the separate images to go on the album cover, I mocked up this idea to symbolise what I myself was going for in the final outcome.

I think there are a few obvious strengths and weaknesses in my work for this project: one of my weaknesses for this piece is that I don’t pretend to know a lot about graphic design, with all of its confusing measurements and such, which is rather apparent in this piece. However, I do feel as though I did make a good attempt as setting out the elements I had, given the tool I had. One of my strengths for this piece was definitely the creation of the image itself, the bird-like monster which I was given the task of creating looked really effective against the dark and creepy background, giving and eerie and grungy looking effect on the whole image, I used a water colour effect on this bird to give it a vibrant, but washed out (?) effect at the same time.

Something I can take away from this project is definitely working in a darker canvas, and being able to make colours stand out against those backgrounds in a tasteful way without making it look too distracting or off putting. 

Hollowbeak and it's Artwork can be found on Facebook.

Project 3: Week 7 - Filming my Animations.

 Filming my Animations. 

After having a bit of trouble with time when trying to film my animation with cinema 4D, I ended up giving After effects a go to see if it would fair any better. And truth be told I wish I had used this in the first place!

I found that using After Effects was just as complicated if you haven't used it before, but once I got the basic grasp of using the layers and merging folders together I absolutely loved using it. I found that my artwork could be seen more clearly and could be fully appreciated without me having to put in artificial lighting in the backgrounds.



I also found that using After Effects was a lot like Photoshop, as I should have sooner since their made by the same company. But using the camera tool was completely different and I think suited me much better, as all I needed to do was alter the image and record that movement as a keyframe on the timeline, instead of having to actually whop out a camera tool. 
I could also go back and edit mistakes easily, take out any random points I had made, or adjust any assets more easily in a 2 dimensional space and a 3 dimensional one. 
This is the set up of my second scene. I found that the colour scheme can be appreciated more in this set up and all of the colours, as well as the assets works really well this way.

Northumberland National Park Competition/ Evaluation.

Northumberland National Park. 

Whilst getting on with my animated short, I was also brought the opportunity to work on a character which would be used in signs and adverts for the Northumberland National Park. This competition was soon ending so I chose to take a few days off the animated short and concentrate on creating this piece ready for the deadline. 

The rules of this competition were that the character has to be a young child, possibly between the ages 5 - 10. I went for around the age of about 7 or 8, as the character would most likely be more independent at that age. 

The character also had to look confident and trust-worthy, as well as outdoors-y and rather adventurous. And I took these rules and put them into characteristics of the drawing. One example of this is her stance, she doesn't have too much of a stereotypically feminine posture, other than her feet turning inwards slightly.

Evaluation.

Creating this piece was a small challenge for me, as well as being something I really enjoyed doing! I took into account my last piece and how airbrushed I thought it was, and decided to go against that completely in this piece. I played around with brushes until I found a thick and contrasting brush setting which allowed me to blend and mould colours together rather than blurring them and taking away any texture. I also really enjoyed the fact I was drawing a little girl rather than a grown woman for a change, as this lead me onto research how a child’s bone structure is on their face, as a lot of children’s faces simply LOOK round and actually aren’t. I also feel as though I chose a rather contrasting colour scheme this time, as opposed to my last piece of personal work, and I think, especially on her face, those colours work really well. I'm rather pleased with how this character turned out, as I don't really focus on drawing children and had to take into account almost everything when I was drawing her. Everything from eye shape, to face shape, to teeth, hair ... everything! But I'm pleased she doesn't look too feminine, and hasn't really been assigned a strong gender role, as this makes her approachable by all ages and genders, and won't appeal to one side more than the other. 

When evaluating this piece, I found a few strengths and weaknesses in my work that I should bring to attention: One of my main strengths in this piece was most definitely my colour and shading, as I felt those aspects were a lot stronger this time around, and they worked well together as both an all-round image and in their individual pieces.  One weakness I found with this image is that although it was to be submitted with just a simple white background, I feel as though I could have done more to this version to make her fit in slightly better with the background, either by just adding a shadow around her feet or back just to make her feel a part of the piece. In the future I think I’ll take this point into consideration when thinking that my image is finished when it may well not be! Even if just adding a shadow, or a source of light could make a big difference to the whole outcome. 

Project 3: Creating my Characters and assets for Scene 2.

Drawing Out Characters.

I started out in this part of the project by sketching out ways in which I thought my character would look when he was sitting and walking, particularly from multiple views. 

I soon realised, as you can see from this image, that drawing something coming at you head on isn't as easy as one would think, and I took a good four or five attempts at it before I got anywhere near what I was looking for. 

I also had a crack at drawing my little raccoon character in a sitting position and see if I could draw him, stage by stage, getting up and into a walk cycle. 

I found this task rather daunting, as there was no denying it would take a long time, and instead made his legs a lot smaller and decided that sitting could well be just standing if drawn right. 

Once I had his sideways poses sorted, I then went on to try and tackle his front walk cycle. I looked through a few sources on the internet designed to help with walk cycles from al perspectives, and I eventually found one which helped!

 This tutorial stated that from a front walk cycle, if one wanted to, they could keep the characters body at a stand still and only move their legs, and when crouches and lunges were made, just lower the height of the body.

I tried this out and was over the moon when it worked! not only was it so much more simple to do, but it looked so much smoother as well! And as with all the walk cycles I'm doing, I have created them using multiple frames on Photoshop's animation timeline. 

I also realised that I could simply re-use assets that I had made in scene 1, such as the trees, rocks and skulls, so that it would appear to be the same forest! 

Game of Thrones - Gallery Piece.

Last week I got asked if I wanted to put a piece of my work in a local gallery, I was both happy and anxious about this, as I'd never really put on of my pieces up in front of a lot of other people before, that and I had about half a week to do this. 
I decided to go with something that I was really enjoying at the moment and went for something Game of Thrones related.
Daenerys is my favourite character from it so, naturally, I went on to do this piece of her. Although I've seen a lot of artwork simply depicting her naked, I wanted to do something actually relevant to her story so I drew her as her title, "The Mother of Dragons."
The Piece stayed up for about 3 weeks and I had someone contact me asking if they could have it, and although I had already promised this piece to someone else. I was able to print off another and give out that one instead!




 UPDATE: 10th April 2014                               







I went back to this piece last week and made some small changes to the text and her shading, as I felt that towards the end of this piece, I rushed it in order to meet a deadline . This final piece puts my mind to rest and I'm now fully happy with the outcome!

Gaining Recognition!

Through the summer and autumn I found a number of opportunities and chances to get my Artwork seen more around the area, as well as promote the more untraditional element found in my Art; 

June 20th 2013;
I was approached, online, by a local journalist Mel Miller, who was creating a piece of online written work, concerning the local Artist work in Berwick and the surrounding area, "Berwick and District Art Space," or BADAS as it has come to be known.
I felt rather shocked that someone was interested in my work, as I consider myself to be on the lower end of the scale when it comes to talent in my local area. However when I spoke to Mel she was very interested in how I create my work and the processes and tool that I use to complete them. As digital art isn't something that I consider to be widely known about or appreciated in a fairly isolated town in the Borders. She described the work that goes into digital art really well, and made it very clear for readers who may not have a single clue about  what digital art is. 
The link to the online article is Here, where she has featured two wonderful local artists who use a more traditional, but altogether unique means of practice, who I was honoured to have shared a space with on her article.
Two of my pieces that were featured in the article were ;

"Nebula Elf."                                                                               "Arwen Undomiel."

Although I consider these pieces to be old, and I have improved on my actual digital painting skills since then, at the time I was most proud of these two, and relieved very kind words from a collection of people.

My Character Board.

Here is my finalised and completed Character Board. I was asked to create a Character Board with a range of views of the Character, showing a variety of emotions and sizes of my character as well. There are a couple of things I would change about my Character Board, one of them being the size differences in the heads on the character scale, another would be the colour of the final figure on the character scale what appears to be lighter than the rest. Another change I would make is to the Character's eyes on the emotions piece of the Character Board, because they appear to be a lot darker than they need to be. Other than these minor setbacks, I am very pleased with the outcome of my Character Board, as the character contrasts highly from the background, but still manages to not clash and works greatly.