Self Assessment Form

Hotdog books

I made these hotdog books as ideas for my original location and research but didn't blog about them at the time. It is interesting to look back at them now having moved my research to a completely different theme. Meanwood Towers is building with an interesting history and survives today as flats, I tried to look at the location from different perspectives and compare them. For my first hotdog book I researched the original owner of the building that and compared him to a friend that now lives on the top floor and has lived there the longest out of all the current tenants. I wanted to discover the similarities between the two people and try to illustrate direct comparisons between them even though they are from different times. The original owner commissioned an organ to be constructed inside the building and was clearly very enthusiastic about music. My friend sam had a recording studio constructed in his flat and although not on anywhere near as grand a scale he has kept the musical nature of the building alive. The original owner was an engineer and inventor who apparently spent many days working on small prototypes in the house. Sam spends a lot of his time working on bonsai trees and although these two activities are not closely related the 2 mens relationship with them seems to be. Both seem to enjoy the act of working on and creating something, a process that can be very therapeutic.

The second story I tried to tell is one that Sam told me about trying to warm his flat up in winter. With the house being very old and having no central heating the building is very hard to heat up and Sam has fixed up an old log burner to heat his flat. This is a cheap way to heat the house but is hard work compared to simply hitting a switch. I tried to show communicate the feeling of getting home on a cold rainy night and having to go through the processes of chopping wood and carrying up to the top floor. I wanted to show the work involved and the sense of satisfaction when you are finally sat in a cosy warm flat. I tried to use colour to show the temperature and create feeling of hot and cold.

For the third book a looked more at the bonsai trees that make parts of Sam's flat look like a miniature forest. The trees are shaped and manipulated with wires throughout their liver to take on the shapes of their larger relatives. Lots of work goes into making these beautiful plants play with ideas of scale and appearance. This idea has less of a narrative than the other two but has a lot of opportunity to create a beautiful well crafted book. I think sometimes I should move away from a conventional narrative and experiment with subtle images that create a feel for a place or subject without a tangible story.

Final Piece

These are some of the pages from my book finished and printed out. I printed it using the laser printer but I think I could of got a better finish using the larger ink jet printers on a heavier stock of paper. There are small imperfections in the printing around the edges of shapes that you don't seem to get with an ink jet. I also think the book would have had a better and more professional feel to it if the cover was printed on a heavier stock than the rest of the pages. It is still unclear whether my choice of design process for this piece of work is suitable for the subject matter but as an experiment it has been very informative. The feedback form the show and tell seemed to suggest people had understood the narrative and had had an emotional response to it, so I have managed to achieve my goal to some level success. If presented with the same challenge again I would go about it differently but would be more confident and apply the lessons I have learned throughout this creative process. I have found it challenging to try and create images that generate an emotional response form the viewer, it is very difficult to judge subtlety in storytelling over a project like this one. Trying to judge your own success at clearly but intriguingly communicating a subject when you know the whole story and so have a different perspective that the viewer presents a difficult problem. feedback from other people is extremely helpful! I think I need to try and take a step back from my work more often to try and take an objective look at all the aspects to see which can be improved or removed.

Artist research

During the crit Jamie suggested I look at the illustrations of Chris Madden, this really helped and inspired me to add textures to my work. The textures add a feel of crafting to the work and help to give objects and characters individual aesthetics. Solid shapes created digitally can feel very flat but textures create depth and give the appearance of solid 'real' shapes. I want to continue to experiment with different textures and methodologies combining traditional and digital techniques. In this case the textures helped me to create artwork that matches the narrative by softening certain elements on the page, this also helps to highlight key elements making them bolder when layered on top of these 'softer' textures.

Chris Madden's work makes use of negative in the form of solid colour backgrounds that are complimented by textured colours. I like the way he uses texture applied to solid block shapes. The texture can be applied in a way that creates rough edges in certain areas, this contrast with crisp edges adds a very interesting aesthetic. I like they way that he builds his illustrations from some very simple shapes, overlaying varying textures and colours. His work plays with the idea of what makes up a form, his characters are made up of separate shapes that quite often aren't connected but still clearly and creatively communicate the character or form.

The way he leaves certain parts of his character completely separate from each other such as the tale of the dog or the arms in the top picture emphasises and helps communicate form. Something as simple as one of the thumbs in the top illustration being in negative to the rest creates a point of interest that keeps drawing my eye to it as does the none symmetrical form of the dogs bowl. The attention to detail and ability to keep interesting small details in an illustration without making the page appear cluttered is something I want to work on.

Show and tell

I got a few comments of feedback from the show and tell on Tuesday, 2 of which said the book is personal, sweet and moving which is exactly what I wanted it to be so I am very happy. One piece of constructive criticism asked if the approach to drawing I used " betrayed the tone of the story?" which I think is a good question! The reason I wanted to illustrate the book in the way I did was to see if it was possible to be true to the tone of the story using that kind of character. I think I could use this style more effectively with more research and time but I'm aware that even if I had managed to put the characters facial expressions and postures together perfectly in this style it would still most likely divide opinion. I think I may have missed the mark in terms of how I have tried to tell the story as some people thought it was an entirely sad story. I wanted the story t be very real not only to the specific story of my mum but to life, that's why I have included the sad parts of life as well as the happy memories but I want the book the be atleast happy and sad in equal measure.

I tried to use simple characters to suggest emotion without using too much specific information so that people could fill in their own life experiences. I think the book has been successful but could have been better, I should probably have focussed on one part of mum mums life and tolf it in greater detail rather than try and tell the whole story.

Textures

When I started looking into how to add textures I watched some tutorials on youtube to help me with certain processes in Adobe Illustrator and by chance found a link to a video showing easy ways to create textures. The process involved printing of solid black a4 sheets and and crumpling or rubbing them on a variety of surfaces to create different textures. I experimented with a few surfaces and got some good results.

 This texture was the first one I made and I put too much pressure on the paper, The texture may come in useful for a later project but I wasn't very happy with it.

I made this texture by standing on the paper on tarmac. I think this could be very useful for a wide variety of vector artwork to break up sold shapes and add some depth.

I think this texture came out really well, I made it using a wooden chopping board and you can see the knife marks in the wood. The texture looks like skin or an old photograph.

This was the simplest but one of the most effective of the techniques. simply crumpling the paper into a ball. If done well could be used for broken glass or a spiders web.

Covers

This was my first attempt at the front cover. I used a font in Adobe Illustrator then altered some of the letter forms and added some shapes of my own. I like the lettering and the thought bubbles to tie in with the theme of the book but it seems quite plain and doesn't fill the page like the bulky forms in the book. My dad said "it makes the background try and do too much work". I think he's right, the texture is nice but only works well with a foreground that takes up a large percentage of the page.

I used the same lettering but changed the layout to fill the page and spread the text over multiple lines to make it more of a interesting. I like this design as it makes the shapes more important than the lettering and allows the character to me more visible. I have staggered the width of the lettering so that it wouldn't be uniform and then would match the rest of the book.

I printed the book out to see how it would look put together and noticed that the white inside cover pages looked wrong side by side with the full bleed pages and cover of the book. I wanted to find a simple texture that would work and soften the contrast between pages without distracting from them.

Fading away

This is my final design for the 'fading away' page of the book, I tried a few different opacities to try and get a good balance to the characters. I needed it to be clear that the bolder of the two was still faded but maintain a clear difference between the two. I have also changed to colour of the background to match my mums clothing, I want this to show a link between the two in terms of nature and spirit. This is the first page where the character of my mum isn't physically present in the scene so I needed a way to show this and that she had gone. This represents a very sad time for me and I wanted it to communicate this as well as I could and in a way that would resonate with anyone looking at the book. This page leads on to the final page where my mum reappears in my thoughts and inspires me to make this book. I wanted to end the book positively as she is the inspiration of the book and it is happy memories that form that inspiration.

Text

These are the only images that I have added text to. I tried not to add them to any but felt that these two could easily be misunderstood and were very important to the story. These pages are next to each other and could easily have looked like my mum had had a baby if I illustrated them badly. I thried to find clear ways to use the text that fit in the scene and could communicate the message in one word.

The image of the doctor is a example of a problem I found making this book, if you give a character a flat mouth it often looks like a happy expression so it is hard to distinguiah between a look of seriousness or one of sadness. I have tried to make this expressions match the tone of the book as they will be key to the success of the story. 

death/funeral

I used the same characters in both of these images only changing the colour of the clothing. I wanted this to show how they are frozen in grief. In times like that nothing feels real and you have lots of thoughts rushing through your head so this is the starting point for the memories that will make up the majority of the book. I have used the though bubble on this page to hopefully clearly transition the story to the memories starting on the next page. I have added other people present at the funeral in black and white as there felt like there was a huge divide between family and friends and I wanted to show this disconnect.

Train Page

                                     

This page shows when my mum moved to London and hated being stuck in the busy city. In thee first image it didn't seem clear that they were on a tube train so I added the underground symbol which I think is a universally recognised symbol. The last image is the one I will be using for the book, I removed the colours from outside the train that were meant to show movement. I think these were not needed and confused the outlines of the characters. I added textures to the background and simplified the characters. after printing off a test run of the book I decided that the green of the hills was too bold so I toned the colour down to match the rest of the image.

Changes

These are 3 of the experiments I have done with texture and simplification, I like the simplified faces and think that they can show emotion just as well as the original more complex design. The shapes draw you in and I think they act as a prompt for peoples own imaginations. I think the textured background adds a feeling of crafting to the illustration and makes the character stand out. I have completely removed the facial features of the baby as they are not needed for the narrative and the two simple shapes are unmistakably a baby. I do like the effect of the hair but think it makes the design more complicated than it needs to be and detracts from the simplicity and clarity of the illustration.

The crit

I drew up ideas for every page of the book except one and brought them to the crit. Overall the feedback was good and I felt that the messages in the book were clear could resonate with a range of people not just those who have had similar experiences. I got some really good ideas from the crit that has led me to change certain aspects.

The main ideas I got from the crit are

• To move the second to last page to the beginning! This makes a lot of sense in explaining the concept of the book rather than throwing it in at the end. I think it also increases the impact of both images when they are not directly next to each other. This is something that has really stood out as a reason to try and step back and view work from a new perspective. this is an idea that I would have thought would be obvious but I didn't see it myself as I got too set on my original storyline.
• To change the image of my mum fading away to one image to match the rest of the book. It was suggested that I could just use the image of me by myself and that it would get the message across. I like the fading away character idea so will try to use this idea in a single image.
• To simplify the characters down to to even more basic shapes and see how much information is needed to tell the story. I have since this altered the characters and removed a lot of detail and think it changes the feel of the book.
• To add textures to the designs to combine with the block shapes and add to depth to the images. I tried to do this with the backgrounds of the images using textures of old photographs.

More Characters

I wasn't sure how much information to add from the research I did. I wanted to show the council house my mum lived in as a kid because it was the setting of lots of her happy memories and was an important feature of Sheffield at that time but it seemed like I was trying to force way too much information into each image. these images are examples of trying to make the right decisions regarding these choices. The addition of the house in first image adds nothing to the narrative and would need an entire book of its own to explain its relevance. In the second photo I tried to show how imposing the school was and use it as well as the nun to communicate the meeting of two very different worlds with my granddad in his work clothing.

I also wanted to communicate the hard work my Grandad had to do to be able to send my mum to the school. I originally wanted to make this page using a series of images but decided that it would take away from the impact of each individual illustration.

This is the starting idea for one of the pages that means a lot to me and I also designed as a series of images. This was the only page I was going to keep as a series until we had the group crit and the rest of the group thought the message could be conveyed with a single image

Character Design

I decided that the characters I had designed so far didn't work with the subject matter of the book so worked on some more simplified characters. i wanted to use block shapes but maintain some feeling of hand made quality about them so I used the pen tool in illustrator and the eraser to make sure all the shapes weren't 'perfect'. As with the other characters i worked on I wanted to see how well I could portray emotion using simple shapes to make up facial expressions.

 

I had some ideas of how I wanted to layout certain pages. These key pages are the ones I thought would set the tone for the book and would need to work well or the entire story would struggle. I decided that I needed to use visual aspects that continue through the whole book to make it clear which characters were present on each page. The book covers a long period of time so I had to decide which elements would change and which would need to stay the same. The character of the mum that has died in the book but is present on nearly every page is wearing the same clothes except when there is a specific reason, for example in the page where she is being dropped off at school she is wearing the school uniform.

I kept the mums hair the same throughout but changed the colour to show the aging process and passing of time. In the same way I showed the dad in the book as being bald even though he had long hair when they got married. I want the book to engage people and be thought provoking so don't want to blur the messages by making the character progression complicated.

because of the number of pages we are allowed and the complexity of the narrative I want to show I have set up links between the pages that will hopefully be understandable without being blatant. This is a difficult balance to get right and if I haven't managed to do it well it could mean the story loses meaning and continuity. On the other hand if the story is overly obvious there is less of an interaction with the person viewing it and could create a feeling of detachment. In the book one of the pages will be set at the mums funeral with the son, daughter and husband thinking about her, I will use a cartoon like thought bubble to show this. On the next page I want to show the mum as a child with her parents as a memory of the past. The link between the two pages is not necessarily obvious instantly but I think it should be fairly easy to decipher.

research 9

Another huge part of my mums life was me and my sister so i think that should be part of the book. Looking back through old photos has made me want to use the changes in fashion to show the passing of time throughout my mums life. I need to make sure the characters are still easily recognizable which will be difficult given them aging through the book. i could draw them wearing the same clothing with small alterations to illustrate the fashion in different decades.

In this photo I am wearing a very nice all red outfit, my dad looks like a beatnik, but the star of the show is my mums amazing jumper! 

the next part of her life is very sad and i will need to be careful to create images that handle the emotion of the events and have the right tone, years ago my mum was diagnosed with a stage 4 brain tumor and given a year to live, it was a struggle to watch her fade away and suffer through the effects of chemo therapy. We made the most of good times and tried to make her feel as happy as possible in this time. One thing I am very happy about is that during this time she got to meet my niece, her granddaughter. I have to include this in the book as it was a blessing to have this ray of light in difficult times.

She had to move into St Gemma's Hospice near then end of her life and was there the last time I saw her. I think I will have to include these times in the book as well as her funeral to make the book tell the story I want it to. I would like to show the the happiness and sadness of life, I think this will be a huge challenge to make my illustrations communicate the emotion of the story accurately but I would like to try and push myself to do it.

Research 8

My mum attended Notre Dame High School in Sheffield. It cost my grandparents a lot to send her there and the clash between her background and grammar school was hard for her to adjust to. The school was founded in 1855 but only became Notre Dame high school for girls in 1948 when it joined with another school built on the same grounds. I would like to use the school as a basis for one of the pages of the book, possibly combined with an image of my grandad working in the steel mills as a comparison.

 My mum lived in London between 1971 and 1974. She hated being busy city and tried whenever possibly to get back out into the countryside. I remember her telling me she would regularly catch a bus out into the countryside that took 3 hours to get some piece and quiet. she was claustrophobic so catching the tube must have been her idea of hell. I want to find a way to show how much the hated the hustle and bustle of London and the piece and serenity that being in the countryside brought her.

Although she hated living in London it is where she met my dad and also where they were married. they got married at the Catholic Chaplaincy on Gower street in 1972.

This is a more modern photo of the building they were married in but I have some photos of the wedding itself that I need to find. I would like to use this event as a part of the book as it was a huge source of happiness for my mum and obviously a big part of her life. I also think that this will be an event that people will relate to.

research 7

I wanted to visit the places important in my mums life over Christmas but due to family illness i wasn't able to so I did some research on the internet to get some images and information to work from. My plan is to have pages showing times throughout her life so I needed to learn more about the plaes them selves and what they were like at the specific times.

I found some images of the steel mills in Sheffield where my grandad worked, he worked for a few companys but the one he worked for for a long time was Balfour Darwin. The work was extremely hard, he used to work as a brick layer rebuilding furnaces during the night when it was cool enough to get the work done. At that time it being cool enough meant around 35 degrees. i want to show how hard my grandad worked to provide for his family. oming form a very poor background my grandad made the most of everything he had, he grew his own vegetables, brewed his own beer and would buy a whole pig instead of buying cuts of meat and use every part of the animal. Sunday lunch was always a big deal at my grandparents house, I used to love going there and picking vegetables to have for dinner.

After the first world was Sheffield's industries entered a recession and many people were unemployed. At this time Sheffield began a large scale slum clearance as the council housing started to be built in the city. My grandad lived in the slums and was the youngest of at least 10 brothers. My mum tried to trce her family history in the years before she died but struggled to find information. My grandads parents were Irish immigrants who came over to England to work. They lived in the slums and shared a house with another Irish family so were living in incredibly cramped conditions. This explains why when my grandma and grandad were moved in to council house in 1953 they thought it was amazing. They had an indoor toilet and a garden, council housing was viewed very positively at the time.

research 5

 I took a step back from drawing and started to look at films from Studio Ghibli. Studio Ghibli use cartoons to convey emotion brilliantly and are an amazing inspiration for this project. I need to work on facial expressions again! 

I want to try to get away from thinck black outlines on my characters and tone down the colours I use. I want to put more though into the enviroment the characters will be in. Studio Ghibli films are well known for their attention to detail and incredibly beautiful scenery. I think Drawing inspiration form these films could be a good way to try and get back to being happy with my work again. I need to draw and draw over and over to get myself back into the right mind frame. 

Research 4

I have been struggling with drawing facial expressions and this skill will be key for the subject of the book. I normally draw cartoon like images and think although it is possible to tackle difficult, serious or emotional subjects using this way of drawing I think you have to be very careful. I have been sketching facial expressions and looking at artists that I have been inspired by to see how they put together their images.

I looked at some artwork by Brett parson who works on Tank Girl as well as lots of other projects. The way he draws and uses digital media really appeals to me and is close to the way I try to draw so i was interested to see if he managed to show a range of emotion throughout his work. Most of his work is based around monsters and pin up style women so it was hard to find anything to get inspiration from for this project.

I really like his style of drawing and the classic page layout he uses in a lot of his work made to look like old comic covers and film posters. Looking through his work gave me some ideas for page layouts and how to make my books composition more interesting but in terms of illustrating emotion his work isn't much help for this project. 

  

The next illustrator i looked at was Tracy Tubera who makes vector based illustrations. He makes a lot of work based on well known comic and film characters and they are generally used as t shirts and posters. This was the artist I was lest optimistic about as hes work isn't used for narrative based artwork. it might then seem like a strange choice but i wanted to see if even with the least likely illustration I could find some inspiration for my work or any tips on how to draw facial expressions.

I have drawn some characters based on my grandad and pictures of my um as a child to try out the drawing styles of these artists while still adding my own individual style and methods.

I like the face on this drawing, I think it is quite subtle but conveys the emotion i want it to. I think it doesn't work with the body, the shape of the body doesn't seem to match and i think could seem unsuitable for certtain serious and emotional subject matter in the book. I might be looking too much into each element of my drawing and what I think it conveys. I have had a tough time drawing anything i like recently and it is making it hard to judge what works and what doesn't. 

 The only thing I like about this drawing are the eyes, the pupils to be more precise. I think they could work well if used for one of the characters crying.

I like this drawing as a one off image bit it is heavily stylized and would mean I would have to draw all other characters in the book in the same way. this could be a problem with some of the sad sections of the book. I need to look more at artists that deal with emotion using cartoon.