Portfolio Review - Little Brown Book Publishers

I travelled to Blackfriars in London to visit the studio of Little Brown Book Publishing. (see separate blog entry). While I was there, Hannah Wood took a look at my portfolio. It was quite nerve wracking to go into an industry head-first with about 10 marketing directors waiting to see the book designs I had made. Hannah and a lady that was with her sat and waited for me to tell them about each piece of work. I'd never professionally explained each piece of art I had done until this point, it was even more scary trying to talk through the silence of them.

Overall they seemed to like my work, there was a tight schedule, and my portfolio review overran so I had to make haste, keeping it short but sweet. They said that it was a good idea that I chose to put drawings into the portfolio, because far too often do people slam all their best final work into a portfolio and sometimes it can be difficult to see where a certain brief could have gone if they had done things differently. Showing some decent rough work allows them to see the foundations of where a project could potentially go.

They thought my Animals in Anguish characters were a little "extreme" but I explained that it was because I was trying to make an extreme point and 'shock' the audience. They saw this with reason but I do acknowledge that some people could seem offended or shocked by these characters, but this is what I wanted them to feel.

E-Portfolio Feedback - Philippa Lightburn

I sent my e-portfolio to Philippa Lightburn, Philippa is an illustrator who was an ex-student at my university, and has gone on to be a professional freelance illustrator.

"I've had a look through your portfolio and I'm really impressed with both your work and the layout. I remember meeting you at the guru evening and I don't think you had a lot of your work with you so seeing it all together like this is really nice! You've got a great style that is obviously working well for you and your portfolio flows well from page to page."

"My favourite illustration is the pollution piece for the RSPCA. I just think it's such a great idea that has been executed really well and it has an immediate message. The two block colours work nicely and it's very graphically striking. I also really love the Wind in the Willows book cover - especially the trees in the background. They're really beautiful colours and have a lovely texture to them."

Since a lot of my portfolio contains a lot of mixed media between hand crafted objects and work I've made on the computer, it's nice that she can appreciate this, and appreciate the use of colour between them. The Fairtrade piece had a strict colour palette, so it's even better that I managed to hold a good synergy regarding colour in the piece.

"The presentation of your portfolio is really strong and I can't fault anything. All the other gurus I've emailed have had little things that I would change with the layout, but yours is perfect!"

I feel I was happy with the way my work was presented, each page follows the exact sizing and measurements of the previous page, so it pleases my perfectionist side. It made me smile that she used the word 'perfect' though, that was a nice comment to receive.

"The only minor thing I can spot is perhaps some of the typography. I really like the typography on the two book covers, the hand drawn quality of it is really nice and compliments the work well. The fonts on the RSPCA and Fair Trade images could perhaps be a bit more interesting and match the styles of the illustrations more. But this is a really minor thing so please don't take it to heart. I'm only picking up on it because I went to a graphic design agency and the guy said I could do with changing the font on one of my pieces. Graphic designers are really in to type so carefully choosing one or designing your own can be worth your while!"

This has been interesting because Pat Carroll said the opposite, he has worked with graphic designers for years and doesn't think the typeface works with the skyline. I do think the type does fit with the series or books, it's a very hand rendered characterful typeface and I do like it. It's very interesting to receive opinions from people who have experience from the industry, because it's just an opinion, and you can only take from it what you asked for, a collection of opinions gives you a more broad range of feedback.

Overall Philippa was very pleased with my work and I am glad with this. I want to try and improve some of the pieces of work though, there are other potential pieces that didn't make it into the portfolio that maybe I will reconsider.

E-Portfolio Feedback - Gary Prendergast & Pat Carroll

I have been given feedback by two artists, Gary Prendergast and Pat Carroll, Pat has worked with many successful graphic designers and students, and has made LPs for band albums such as The Happy Mondays. They found my portfolio layout to appear very professional, all the pages are perfectly laid out and look as they should. They were both very fond of my illustrative and graphical combinations in my work, and said that they can tell straight away what kind of style I have with my work. 

Pat was very impressed with my RSPCA work and thought they were my strongest pieces, some pieces such as the Josie Dew piece, has a great potential, but is let down by the typeface and the statue in the centre, it would be good if this piece could be amended. I felt I liked the typeface, but agree with the statue comment, it is a bit of an anti-climax, it just looks a little out of place. If after removing the statue, there is too much of an open gap, I could work on making the skyline a bit higher.

They said my work reminded them of an artist called Paul Rand and recommended I look into him, as my work has a similar style. Overall, they said that my portfolio does have a really nice feel and gives off my aura, which I am glad about. I will go into my eportfolio and try to make some amendments to past work over the Christmas holiday.

Little Brown Book - Mockups

After a few weeks of designing, I have 'beta' versions of the book covers.

Looking at these from far away, I want to get rid of the bikes in the background, it was used to show that the book is about bikes, and was a way of synergising consistency between them all, but it looks too much like a watermark of some sort.

Little Brown Book Project - Working Progress

A few weeks into the project and here is whats what. There have been a lot of different designs going on, just playing around with different approaches and methods.

For this, I drew a picture of the USA and used a characterful type, it's probably a bit simple, but simple is simple for a reason, it works in it's own way. It's sometimes nice to start again on a white piece of paper and start from scratch.

It's fun to get carried away with bikes!

Tried to work with bigger imagery but it looks a bit too much like someone projectile vomited a premature version of a final design onto here.

Gears: The Movie (Radio 4 Final Stop-Motion)

This is my final design for my Radio 4 Project. Firstly, I felt I could have added alot more to the stop-motion but time was heavily afflicted due to all the presentations, essays, and everything else I've been doing over the last two weeks. The project has been slightly neglected, but this is the first animation I have done all year and it does have a nice charm to it.

Without careful planning, animations never go well, same with films, bad directed = bad film. But anyway, enjoy the animation. This was for a segment of a Radio 4 show titled 'Birth of Radio'. I think it goes with the theme, because cogs are old fashion mechanics, and they fit the atmosphere of what is being discussed. But to be honest, I wish I had more time to amend this. 

Thinking With Gears...

While researching old radios and old mechanical items, I found a common field was gears, gears are used in old mechanical devices and are quite useful forgotten objects. I think I want to use gears as a main part of the animation, so I have started drawing out some of them. I am thinking maybe they can intersect with one another and this could possible turn into some sort of stop motion.

Just been playing about with some text that could maybe somehow get into the animation. Sorry if some of the images look a little confusing, but inserting small images together on blogger is more difficult than trying to dissect a cow.

It would read "The great machines of the industrial revolution were in full swing, producing 'things' for the empire."

FairTrade A-Z Finale

I have just about finished my final designs for FairTrade A-Z. Just missing a few final letters, those being 'M', 'X', 'Y', and 'Z'. For X Y Z, there are no actual products, so I must try to think outside the box with this one. I haven't properly implemented colour yet, I just wanted to get the designs done and dusted, but I think in colour, they will look great.

Oh, and the 'M' is there because I fail at drawing mangoes.

A-Z Final Poster Design (Beta)

This is my final poster for FairTrade! Well, almost, it isn't quite finished yet, I still need a fair few letters, but they seem to be piecing nicely. The background needs tampering with as there are a few white marks that need to be erased. But as far as it goes, this is an initial final design... If that makes sense...

After doing this, I'm starting to get sick of the blue, but probably just because I've been working on it all day...

Wind in The Willows - Final Design

Here is my final design for the Wind in The Willows project. It has been a really fun and exploratory few weeks and I really had fun making characters and investigating their habitats and characteristics. Overall I feel fairly accomplished with my final piece, I had a fair few final design ideas, and this is the one I decided to implement  just because I thought it said more about how I've been working in the past and made the most sense to put into play. 

If I could do the project again, I would probably spend longer on character design as I think that is the weakest (although most crazy!) part of the piece. I do really admire the creation of the scenery, this is the strongest part of the project, because this is how I started it, the scene is the most important thing in my opinion because it is the first thing you see and feel. I am going to submit this design to the Puffin competition later today. 

A-Z, Sketch Mania!

Just to show what's going on with my FairTrade project at the moment...

Speaks for itself!

I have a lot of designs I could use in the actual poster. But I still have a number of letters (haha) I need to think about. I also noticed I'm pretty good at drawing toilet rolls.

FairTrade - A- Z - Just thinking..

A new project has begun, I am going to create a poster of an A-Z of FairTrade Products. The specifics are to use only three colours (blue, red and orange), this is because FairTrade use a cheap method of printing known as lithograph (separate layer colour printing). Overall, it does seem a bit of a challenge, but there are ways around this, you can use the colour to an advantage. I could use just a single colour with different transparency, as this would create an interesting piece because I just think the three colours given seem very opposing (blue and red especially). It makes it difficult to put into perspective how I could use the colours, but there are many solutions to this matter and I will look into it further.

The Wind in The Willows - A Few Design Ideas

Design Ideas for The Wind in The Willows. The first design I have is this preliminary very simple design, created in the style of the Halvetica Penguin books. Simple imagery, simple typeface. I was trying to express the world in a simplistic manner and I think I captured it rather well here. I really really like the effect with the trees turning transparent over one-another, it appears as if they are disappearing into the distance.

This is another simplified cover I made, each of the sections are supposed to contan a character, looking back at this, I don't like the use of line, I think it would probably be more striking without the black lines. Oh well, here it is in all it's glory...

Age UK - Air Raid Shelter Memeory

This is my final piece of work for Age UK. I have been using Photoshop alot recently, and so it makes a change to go back to mostly hand rendering work. I am actually fairly proud of my final design, because it has everything I have looked at over this project merged and I can see all the bits of research built together. The Air Raid Shelters that I looked at, the doll on the floor and the chips on the bench, provided by Betty's tales, various objects were found in the room when I visited the Shelters.

I eventually edited the final piece on Photoshop, just to give it that watercolour paint effect (because I am terrible at painting, very terrible). I think the paint effect worked quite nicely, the floor looks really dusty and the area looks very eerie and dark. It gives off the Air Raid Shelter vibe I was striving for.

What a lovely project this has been. I was really glad to work for Age UK, I will finish the project by leaving with the message I sent with the final piece...

A few weeks ago, I went to a daycare to talk to a few elderly people who are suffering from Dimentia. One person that stood out in my mind was Betty who told me a few stories from war time which she went through. She told me a story about going to a chip shop and buying fish and chips, but because she knew the person behind the counter, she received three fish instead of one! Another story she told me was when the sirens alarmed and everyone was rushing to the Air Raid Shelters, and she wasn't to be found anywhere. Her parents eventually found her in the Air Raid Shelters playing with her dolls safe and sound.

I have taken a visit into the Stockport Air Raid Shelters and had a good look round to get a feel of what it must have been like during war time. I have been sketching several areas and objects from the shelters, both on-site and at home from photographs I took. My final piece is an area in the shelters that included a bike, a gas mask, a fire extinguisher and several other objects. In reference to Betty's stories, I also included a doll along with fish and Chips in the scene. I feel that my image has captured the atmosphere of what it would have been like in the war time.

I really enjoyed talking to the people at the Day Care, they had some very interesting stories to tell, and my heart goes out to those suffering from Dimentia. I hope my piece of work brings back memories from the war time, and lights up the memories for those who lived through that time.

- Tom

Age UK - Chatting to the Elderly

I took a visit to a daycare centre for the elderly in Reddish to better inform some of the locations I have picked out. At first I was very nervous as I wasn't quite sure what to think or how to behave to being surrounded by many people. It was fine after awhile, but sadly, so many of the elderly seemed so confused due to the dimensia. Many of them were in tangles about their past, but I did manage to get a bit of information from a nice lady called Betty in relation to the Air Raid Shelters. 

"I remember the sirens going off, my parents got up and ran straight to the Shelters, but they couldn't find me anywehere. They eventually found me playing with my dolls, I was already in the Air Riad Shelters!"

"In those days I had a friend that worked in the chip shop, I went and got my fish and my chips one day, and she threw me an extra fish! Because I knew her 'course.. Actually no it was two extra she gave me! Hahaha"

It was funny listening to their old tales, and at the same time, quite sweet. Given the discussions, I need to look further into the Air Raid Shelters, to get a good look at what they look like now (as I have never visited them before!).

Age UK - Historical Buildings

A few days ago, I began a new project for Age UK, a voluntary organisation that help the elderly in so many different ways, how nice for them to accept a project. Age UK also helps those with dementia, a very frightening illness common in many elderly people today. This is especially relevent to me because my Nana died recently and she had dementia for many years, and lost all memory of most of the family, it really is saddening to do the project with these things at the back of my mind, but I am trying to think of it as a posative way to raise awareness of the disease and try to bring back their memories of the past. 

The project has started with a tour around Stockport, looking at the many old buildings still standing today. The tour was given by a man from the Stockport Heritage Centre, and we looked at around 18 different sites and buildings. A few locations that sparked an interest to me were; The Air Raid Shelters, The Brewery, The Old Rectory, and the Church. 

I am going to be talking to a few elderly people in the daycare centre in Reddish, to get a better perspective of what these buildings were like in the war time. I am a little nervous because I am not sure what will happen and even if the people will properly understand me, but fingers crossed that they will be nice to me!

Summer Project Sketches

Did these sketches over summer, they are of a film called 'War of the Worlds'. I chose a couple of scenes from the beginning of the film and drew them. I did these because I was planning to create an animation and I thought it would give me an idea of sequencing peripherals. (This has obviously changed since I am now making a scarf, my bad for forgetting to upload these earlier!)

Foundation Work

Found some pictures of old work I did back in my Foundation year. This was effectively the starting point of my particular style. I enjoyed the year so much and learned a lot. I was certainly proud of my work this year, especially the final project.

Here are a few sneak peeks from my book...

Every three or four pages, I added a new colour to work with, generating more complicated images as you read through. If I find more, I'll be sure to post them here!