Evaluation
Throughout the past six weeks I really feel like I have gained a whole new set of skills and most importantly a different attitude towards illustration. I am overall happy with the outcome of all three briefs - I have really enjoyed working in the format of given briefs as it it something I'm not particularly familiar with. I enjoyed having something to work towards with a concept already given to you e.g book cover, how to poster and the editorial images, and although a brief is something that is not necessarily created by you, you still have the opportunity to make it completely your own.
Within the first brief, which was based on a ‘How to’ poster, I feel like this really pushed me to work with new mediums and concepts. The style of this poster had to be in monochrome, so this was really difficult for me as I usually enjoy woking with a range of colours, however interestingly I have continued to work with this method throughout the module as I really like experimenting with different colours for different images in response to the emotion of the piece of work, e.g for my editorial piece my article was based on loneliness so I used blues to convey the sadness of the image.
Even though I found it quite difficult to constantly reflect and discuss my work on my blog, I really liked using it, because it was a good place to be honest and critical about my work and discuss problems that I encountered. I found that the more I started to manage my time better the more I found it easier to blog - this meant I would typically blog about the session that I had that day so that the information/critical feedback was still all fresh - blogging became a problem when I would forget to blog sessions and then would try and go back to it and would most likely forget what I had done.
I think the thing I struggled most within this module was juggling all my COP, PPP and Visual Skills work at the same time. I think the most important thing to take from this is to make sure I really manage my time carefully to gain the best results - sometimes I would find myself working till early hours to meet deadlines which is something I need to avoid doing. I think by the last brief this had improved so its just something I need to start working on.
The most valuable aspect of this module is definitely all of the group crits. At first I really didn't like them, however when I got home and analysed my feedback I was able to see the beneficial factors from it - realising how important and valuable crits are. I also liked how it was anonymous - I think that way people are able to be more critical which is really helpful because you can go back and reflect on it. It was also really nice having the opportunity to go round and see how other people would interpret the same brief that I had been given, I think it really urged me to be more creative and try new ideas and methods.
I think my favourite brief was either ‘Judge a book by its cover’ or the editorial brief, at first I really didn't like the editorial brief as I was really unhappy with the way my work looked. I produced my work in an analogue method (pro markers) and it just looked rushed and unprofessional, however after the crit the majority of the feedback suggested working digitally, so after scanning my images in I found myself hooked on working with these images via Photoshop, purely because they looked so much better, I even continued to work on this brief at the same time as my book cover brief just because I enjoyed doing it so much. I not only really liked creating work for the book cover brief, but I also enjoyed reading and researching my book, I found that doing this allows you to generate more ideas for the subject your studying, after researching the book I found that ideas were just flooding out. After the outcome of the editorial brief there was no surprise that I decided to work digitally again for the brief. I was really happy with my final outcome but again I don't think I managed my time well, I think I need to start planning ahead a little more to make sure that I get the best of my abilities. I really liked all my design development and roughs for my typology poster but I didn't like the final outcome, probably because I really like the look of my digital work and my poster is hand drawn.
Unfortunately there were times where I felt like illustration wasn't for me as I really enjoy working with detail and quite frequently it was suggested that I simplify my drawings, and I really didn't want to lose that aspect. however I have learnt that I need to be a bit more open with my work and more confident or else I wont be able to recognise what I am capable of. I feel like a lot of the time I was unhappy with my work - so I now know that I need to start appreciating what I do and to not be so negative about it or else it will just become a cycle. Overall I think this module has really allowed me to gain that feel of what it is actually like to be an illustrator - working towards briefs, meeting deadlines and really exploring concepts and ideas.
No comments:
Post a Comment