Hello!



Hello! My name is Emma Margaret Simpson and I am a third year illustration student studying at Southampton Solent University. Welcome to my blog documenting my Final Major Project. Here I'll be sharing my processes, thoughts and ideas with you as the project develops.

Thursday 29 May 2014

I've moved!

If you're looking for my FMP journal, then you've come to the right place and should skip shead to the rest of the posts.


However, if you want to keep up with what im doing now, you should head to my main blog:

Or visit my website to view a gallery of my work and find my contact details:

Friday 9 May 2014

Contents

Introduction:



Journal:













Week 13
A week off for Easter




Finishing Off:

Bibliography

Websites


https://www.behance.net/gallery/Creative-CV/13124889

https://www.behance.net/gallery/Resume-Self-Promotion/7918319

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Sheen/11169163

http://www.bigpicturepress.net/

http://www.bigpicturepress.net/our-books/welcome-to-mamoko/

http://www.bjornlie.com/

http://buhobooks.com/2012/11/02/fairytale-food/

http://www.catherinemcginniss.com/

http://www.damonsmithdesign.com/

http://designwoop.com/2011/09/resume-inspiration-30-of-the-best-resume-designs/

http://www.disney.co.uk/tangled/

http://elperroquebailaclaque.blogspot.co.uk/

http://emmablock.co.uk/Hansel-and-Gretel

http://emmamargaretillustration.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/moglea/4131849400/in/photostream

http://www.folioart.co.uk/illustration/folio/artists/illustrator/nicholas-stevenson

http://www.greatbeastcomics.com/

http://www.greatdreams.com/animals.htm

http://www.incredibleart.org/lessons/middle/animals2.htm

http://isabelnecessary.com/

http://www.jessicadas.com/

http://www.juliapott.com/

http://www.keenandesign.com/

http://naomiwilkinson.tumblr.com/post/21332214352/my-submission-for-the-puffin-design-competition

http://nielsen.artpassions.net/

http://oanabefort.4ormat.com/

http://www.phoenixarises.com/spirits/symbols.htm

http://www.pinterest.com/emmamargaret321/

http://www.sandradieckmann.com/

http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/index.html

http://www.tessredburn.co.uk/

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/10/illustrations-by-budi-satria-kwan/

http://www.twelveskip.com/guide/graphic-design/733/25-great-high-quality-and-modern-examples-of-creative-cv-resume-design

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/b/beatrix-potter-peter-rabbit/



Books

 Crick, J. (2009), Jacob and Wilheim Grimm Selected Tales, OUP Oxford

Mizielinska, A. and Mizielinski, I. (2013), Welcome to Mamoko, Big Picture Press

Nozedar, A. (2010), The Signs and Symbols Source Book, Harper

Sonheim, C. (2012), Drawing and Painting Imaginary Animals, Quarry

Tatar, M. and Byatt, S. A. (2012), The Annotated Brothers Grimm, W. W. Norton & Company

 Weidemann, J. (2012), Illustration Now! Volume 3, Taschen GmbH

 Perry, M. (2008), Over and Over: A Catalog of Hand Drawn Patterns, Princeton Architectural Press

Other

 Cinderella, Disney, 1950

Once Upon a Time, American Broadcasting Company (ABC), 2011-Present

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Disney, 1937

Sleeping Beauty, Disney, 1959

Tangled, Disney, 2010

Creative CV

Here is my finished Creative CV:


Since the first version, I have changed some of the elements to be a pinkish red rather than all brown. Both of the colours I've used are form the colour palette that I'm currently working with for my book, as I want everything to tie in well together.
I've also corrected a couple of grammar mistakes and added bullet points to the work experience and education sections.

(I have written the "about me" section as though I have already finished the course, as I won't be sending any out until that time.)

I've also designed the back of business cards in the same style:

I'll be using crops of my current work to go on the back of these so that they tie in with my work when I have then on my shelf at the exhibition. 

The future

Now that my time at uni is coming to an end, I need to start thinking about what my plans are for my future career.

I am planning on working as a sole trader doing freelance illustration and continuing with my small online shop selling cards, prints and other items of my work.
Due to already having a shop and selling at craft fairs and markets, I have already registered as self employed and sorted out that side of things, so I can get straight on with what I want to do without worrying about that.
My first step is try and get my work seen by as many people as possible. I plan on creating a new piece of self promotion and sending it out to lots of book publishers, magazines etc. I aim to make a start on this during the two weeks in the beginning of June where out work is being marked. I'm not sure yet exactly what I plan on sending, but it will consist of work from this current project, and will be in a similar format to what I produced for the Self Promotion unit.
I would also love to have a book published, and will be sending the finished artwork of my current book to any suitable publishers once uni is finished. I'll be starting with Nobrow as they recently re-opened their submissions and I want to get my work sent to them as son as possible before they close them again. 

I have already begun to establish a small online shop, and last year I was accepted to sell my work at Renegade Craft Fair in London, and I also have some of my cards stocked in a few small retailers. This is something I thoroughly enjoy and I would like to take this further in the near future. At the moment my shop sells a small selection of screen printed cards, prints and stationery. However during this project I have really enjoyed working digitally and using fairytales and narratives as inspiration, and I have a few ideas for products to add to my shop. These include small fanzines based on fairytales, colouring books, paper dolls of my character designs etc. I'll be making a start on this right away and hope to apply for Renegade again this year as well as any other events that might be suitable for my work.
In July my partner and I will be moving to Dartford to allow him to work in London as a film editor, and being close to London will be very useful for me to visit small shops that may be interested in stocking my work. It will also allow me to sell at various markets and fairs in London, as showing my portfolio to potential employers.

In order to achieve these things it is important that as many people as possible can see my work and are aware of what I do. I believe having a good online presence is very useful for this, and that is something I have worked quite hard n over the last 2 years. I have a profile on all the suitable social media sites (Behance, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Twitter etc.) and regularly update with images of my work and what I'm doing. I also have a newsletter with a number of subscribers, a blog and a few "online friends" in the industry. In November last year I attended a "Bloggers and Illustrators" meet up in London, and met a few people there that are already working in the industry. These contacts will be useful in the future for advice and guidance if needed.
Earlier in the year I set up my own website, linking to al my other sites and showing a gallery of my work. I think this has helped to tie everything together and create a more professional image of myself as an illustrator. I have plans to update my website after this project, and add more of my work to the galleries.

As for personal work, I aim to continue along a similar theme to what I have been doing. Earlier in the project I purchased a book of the Grimm's fairy tales, and I would love to read through it in depth and try illustrating some of the stories I am less familiar with. I would also like to produce more typographical work and repeat patterns, as these are both things that I am interested in but haven't had much opportunity during this project.

I'm looking forward to getting started on all of these things and am eager to begin working as soon as possible. By the end of the year I hope to have expanded my shop, sold at several events, and begun working freelance.


Reflecting

As the deadline for this presentation document is approaching, I'm looking back over the project so far and reflecting on how its gone.

Overall, I'm really pleased with how everything has gone, and the final images are looking how I hoped they would at the start of the project.
Certain aspects of the project have been more difficult than I expected, particularly the planning the layout of the fairytale land. However I feel I managed to find a good way of resolving this issue, by creating a rough 3-dimensional version of my plan, and photographing it from different angles. This also helped me to avoid the pages being too repetitive, something which I had not thought about at the start. I've also managed to get around this issue by using different colours to represent changing seasons throughout the book, which is something I would not normally have done as I tend to use limited colours.
I feel this project has helped me to develop my own style, combining techniques and styles from previous projects to achieve something I'm pleased with. I've also begun to draw using a brush and ink rather than a fine liner during this project, which is a technique I now much prefer to how I was doing it before. During the project, particularly the early stages, I have discovered an interest in character design, and in fact I believe that the characters have turned out to be the strongest part of the book.
Throughout the project I have been to numerous tutorials and work in progress meetings with various tutors, all of which have been really helpful in providing new ideas and inspiration for my project. Speaking to tutors at regular intervals throughout the project has helped everything go quite smoothly, as I could work on any suggestions they had straight away before getting too far into the project to be able to change anything. 
I am quite surprised at how well I managed to stick to my original time table, and I stayed on track throughout the majority of the 17 weeks. My initial timetable however did not consider time for things such as my Creative C.V, Portfolio etc. but I managed to get those done over easter. 
Keeping this reflective journal has also been very helpful to my project, and its something I will continue to do in some form or another (perhaps in a notebook rather than a blog).

Looking back at my earlier blog post reflecting on my feedback from Negotiated Study, I set myself these goals:

- More variation in lines (thickness etc.)
- Make the colour less precise or more offset.
- Experiment further with type
- Perhaps print onto other textures such as wood?

As for the variation in lines, I have been working on this throughout the project, using brush and ink instead of pen (as I mentioned earlier in this post) and that has been really successful for me.
Half way through the project I did experiment with off-setting the colours more, but as discussed in the blog post and at a tutorial with Jonny, I didn't feel it was right for the busy images I was creating for this project, so I've stuck to solid colour.
I haven't had much of a chance to experiment with typography in this project, although if I get my book printed and bound in time, I plan on looking at possibly illustrating some quotes form the stories to display on the wall, so this may change soon.
This goal was set with the assumption that I would be screen printing my final outcomes, which turned out not to be the case. However I have instead looked at using paint and ink textures within the digital illustrations so I have still managed to experiment within this area.

I still need to print my final images and bind by book together, as well as finalising my plans for the exhibition. But so far I am happy with the majority of what I have done, and have really enjoyed this project.

Adding colour

I've now added the colour to pages two and three, so they are both now nearly ready to print. And I've made a start on page 4:





I may make a few changes as I colour the rest of the images, and I haven't added the textures to these yet, but that will be done once all of the images are coloured and I make a final decision on what textures to use. I recently thought about using a handmade paper style texture as the background instead of the plain off-white, so I'll be trying that over the weekend.

This is going to be my last post sharing my work as this blog is due to be submitted this evening.
Once its all been marked I'll be back to share my final outcomes but from then on I'll be going back to blogging regularly on my other blog.

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