Finding Inspiration

A few of the things that have been inspiring me this week:

1. I bought this book, Maps by Aleksandra Mizielinska, a few months ago and I really love the style of it. Although I won't be specifically drawing maps, I think I may use a similar kind of layout for my work, as I think its quite a good way of fitting a lot into one scene.

2. This style of typography is quite often used in traditional style books for the first letter of a chapter and it always reminds me of fairytales. Whilst I probably own't be needing anything like this in my work, I do like the use of organic, swirling shapes.

  

3. I like the style of these trees; they still use the sort of pattern detailing that I like, but in a slightly looser style, which might be quite useful for my work.

4. I'm still really inspired by Isabel Greenberg's work, especially now that I've found out that she's illustrated a couple of fairytales herself. I really like the limited colour here and am hoping to make something similar work in my illustrations.

Self Promotion ideas

Yesterday afternoon the Self Promotion unit was launched. We are required to produce a piece of self promotion material, be that in the form of a book, a folded poster, badges, beer mats etc. We are only required to produce 10 copies but it needs to be something that can easily produced in runs of up to 100 in the future.

I've had an idea of what I would like to do, incorporating it into my FMP work.

I'm really enjoying working on character design at the moment so would like to do something involving that, and I also like the idea of it being in the form of a book.

This is my idea so far:

I'm thinking of creating a small book out of an A3 sheet of paper (the kind where you fold it into 8 sections, and cut down the middle of the paper to create the pages), which when unfolded reveals a poster on the back. On each page there will be an illustration of a character from my project, and the big illustration on the back will be something along the lines of a storybook containing my contact details and a few spot illustrations.

The working title I have for it is "Heroes, Villains and Fairy-Godmothers". This was inspired by a quote from the TV show 'Once Upon a Time' I've been watching where a main character refers to himself and several other characters collectively as "heroes, villains, pirates".

The book will probably be printed digitally as I want to include quite a lot of colour in it so screen-printing may not be as practical, but they may change in the next week or so.

To begin with I'm just going to continue to design my characters for the FMP, and then at the weekend I'll look at what I've got and start to put something together.

Work in Progress meeting

This morning we had a work in progress meeting with Jonny.

I normally struggle to talk about my work but this time it went quite well (partly because I was unexpectedly asked to go first so I didn't have time to get nervous!). Jonny seemed quite pleased with what I've done so far and had just a few suggestions to work on:

- Add settings.

(I'll be going to the New Forest next week to do some observational drawings of woodlands and cottages etc. so that will help with this one)

- Draw the characters in action/interacting as opposed to just in the middle of the page.

(I've started to do that yesterday with the costume designs and will be carrying on with it this week)

I also talked about some of the ideas I have for the narrative, and he suggested trying to get some of them drawn as soon as possible, just to get a visual of something finished early on in the project.

His suggestion was to draw Red Riding Hood dropping an apple (as I mentioned that I had the idea that she could drop the apple that the Evil Queen later poisons for Snow White to eat), which I drew this afternoon whilst I was in the studio:

The proportions aren't great in this illustration and it needs a bit of editing, but it was good to make a start on actually illustrating the narrative, and I'll probably be carrying on with these this week.

Designing Snow White

My main priority this week is to get on with the character and costume designs and to start to create some work with a bit more context.

I made a start yesterday on designing Snow White:

I traced the faces from my illustrations from earlier in the project, and started designing the rest of the character and the costume. I've been trying to draw the character in positions I might need for the story, to give the illustrations more context. I'm quite pleased with how this is going so far and I think once the costumes are added the characters are recognisable enough to work.

Yesterday evening I had a little play around with some of these drawings and tried adding some colour just to see how that would work, and these are some of the results:

At the moment I am more keen on the style of colouring in the image to the right, but when it comes to putting everything together later in the project, this style may involve too many colours. I think the image on the left is also quite successful as the limited colour allows me to focus on certain important symbols in the image such as the apple.

I am going to continue for the rest of the week designing the other characters and their costumes.

The Animals are finished!

On Saturday afternoon I finished my initial drawings of all the animals I'll be using in the project. These are some of the ones I haven't shared here yet:

There are quite a few drawings here that I'm not too keen on, but overall I'm quite pleased with how they look and I definitely prefer the ones drawn in ink as opposed to fine-liner.

These are the animals I have decided to take forward into the character/costume design part of the project, although this may change a bit later on:

Week 5 (In brief)

- Finished drawing the animals

- Begun designing the costumes

- Work in progress meeting
- Launch of Self Promotion
- Finding Inspiration

Guest Speaker: Isabel Greenberg

Yesterday morning I went into uni for a talk by guest speaker, Isabel Greenberg. I hadn't come across Isabel's work before so I wasn't sure what to expect at this talk, but it turned out to be one of the most best talks I have been to. Isabel is only a few years ahead of us, having graduated 3 and a half years ago, so its great to hear from someone who has been in our position so recently. She explained what has happened to her in her career since she left uni, and how she has gotten to where she is now, which was really inspiring.

Isabel is a comic artist and graphic novelist and recently won the Observer Jonathan Cape Graphic Short Story Prize 2011 with her short comic, Love in a very cold climate. Her style of drawing is really appealing to me as she uses a lot of pattern detail in her work, and works in a limited colour palette with a little bit of texture added in (all things that I enjoy using in my own work). Isabel also explained how a lot of her work is based on existing stories which she then adapts for her comics, and often she combines several stories together, which is the sort of thing I am aiming to do for this current project.

These are a few of my favourites of Isabel's work:

1. Page from Isabel's Graphic Novel, The Encyclopaedia of Early Earth

2. Page from The Encyclopaedia of Early Earth

3. Page from seven page comic, Masters of the Universe

4. Page from Isabel's winning entry to the Observer Jonathan Cape Graphic Short Story Prize 2011, Love in a very cold climate

Isabel also made a few suggestions to do with self publishing, and named a few good small press events such as Thought Bubble and The New Lakes. This is something I will definitely be looking into as I already enjoy printing and selling my own work, but haven't been to these kinds of events before.

...

In the afternoon, we went back into the studio for a 2 hour comic workshop.

To start off with we were given 5 minutes to create a simple 3 panel comic, after which we all had to try and guess what each other's stories were. The 5 minute time slot then made the next hour to create a longer comic seem much more reasonable! I chose Sleeping Beauty for my full comic and used animals as the characters as I have been doing in my project. This was the result:

I am quite pleased with what  I managed to produce in an hour, and it was really useful to try out quickly illustrating a narrative. It was also good to see some of ideas come to fruition, I've been spending quite a lot of time drawing the animals but until this piece of work I hadn't had a chance to see  how the characters work in situ. I may use this way of working to produce my storyboards later in the project as it worked quite well for me and is more exciting to do than a standard storyboard.

Isabel also suggested a refillable brush pen called the Pentel Pocket. I'll be looking into that as a way of keeping the varied line thickness without the mess and constant dipping of a brush and ink.

Finding Inspiration

Here are a few of the things that are inspiring me this week:

1. I really like the gothic typography used in some of the books of Grimms' fairytales. I probably won't be using much typography in this project but I'll at least be needing some for the book covers.

2. I wrote about Kay Nielsen's illustrations in my dissertation (all about the use of pattern and decoration within illustration) and so kept them in my mind when looking for inspiration for this project. Nielsen uses a lot of decorative elements in his work so I find them quite inspiring. This one is for Hansel and Gretel, I love the detail in the gingerbread house and the way the trees act as a frame around it.

3. I love the use of anthropomorphism in this illustration by Belen Segarra, as well as the patterned details and the limited colour palette. I didn't notice straight away but the character is holding a small deer which is also printed on the clothing, I'm not sure exactly why this was done but it may be a clever way of using allegory in an illustration and something I could consider doing.

On my desk

This morning I took a few photos of my desk to show how things are looking. I scanned in and printed off a bit of my work to put up on the walls to give me a little more inspiration when I am working. Over on the far left is the planner I made to help me on top of everything thats going on during these few months. On my desk is my big sketchbook where I'm illustrating some of the animals, and the little book I took to the zoo which is full of some quick sketches I'm using as reference images. I have my laptop out to look for more references, and my mac is playing Once Upon a Time whilst I work (keeping me in the "fairytale mindset").  I'm hoping to get some more work up on the walls over the next few days as its really quite helpful to keep up motivation.

More animal drawings

This week I've been continuing to illustrate some of the animals from my earlier sketches, focusing on the ones that I'll be using as the characters. I'm really enjoying using a brush and ink (I'm using Dr. Ph. Martin's Bombay inks and mixing in a bit of the opaque white to make the colour more solid) and the different marks I am getting from this technique. Some of these drawings have been done with fine-liners and marker pens, but I think the more successful ones are those done with ink (generally the larger images are the ones done in ink).

I still have quite a lot of animals to draw before I move on to designing the costumes, so I'll be continuing with this today and tomorrow.

Portfolio Tutorial

Yesterday afternoon I had my portfolio tutorial with Derek. It was really quite useful and helped me to figure out what will and won't work in my portfolio. We looked through the selection of files I had brought with me (I have a few more things to have a look at but they are currently in my Mum and Dad's loft!) and agreed on which pieces were stronger and which weren't quite right.

These are some of the pieces that are likely to make it to the final portfolio, including some book covers, typography, sketchbook work and final illustrations:

Looking at all of this work together we were also able to figure out what needs to be added, and therefore what I need to produce during my Final Major project. Derek made quite a few points that were similar to what Louise said in last week's tutorial, particularly when it came to the thickness of my lines. This is definitely something I need to experiment with (using a brush to vary the thickness etc.) throughout this project and use in my final outcome. In general Derek said that although he wouldn't recommend working in an entirely different style, it is always a good idea to use the Final Major project as a chance to push myself a little bit, in a way that the work is still true to the style I have developed, but with a few changes and 'added extras' to really show off everything I can do. Again this is similar to what I discussed with Louise last week, and we already came up with a few things I can try (using textures in the background etc.). For now I will be focusing on varying the thickness of the lines in my initial illustrations, so far I am quite liking the results in comparison to using a fine-liner (I shared some of those illustrations in my last post).

Week 4 (In brief)

- Portfolio tutorial with Derek

- More animal sketches
- A little look at my desk space
- Finding inspiration
- Isabel Greenberg talk

The Characters

My main aim for the week was to decide on what animals I am going to use for all of the characters and then to begin drawing them.

I spent a little bit of time researching the symbolising of various animals and trying to match them to the characters' personalities, and this is the final list that I have come up with:

Briar-Rose: Deer/Elk

Good Fairies: Colourful birds

Evil Fairy: Crow

Snow White: Reindeer

Evil Queen: Lion

Seven Dwarves: Rabbits

Red Cap: Deer

Big Bad Wolf: Keep as a wolf

Rapunzel: Giraffe

Enchantress: Peacock

Hansel & Gretel: Monkeys

Witch: Hyena

Cinderella: Antelope

Fairy Godmother: Blue Bunting (colourful bird)

Cinderella's Prince: Dog

Briar's Prince: Dog

Prince Charming: Dog (Huskie?)

Rapunzel's Prince: Dog

Briar's failed Princes: Dogs

Hansel & Gretel's Duck: Change to swan

Huntsman: Bear

I have tried to keep a bit of consistency in that all of the princesses are some form of deer (representing love, peace etc.), and all of the princes are a breed of dog (representing loyalty, faithfulness etc.). Each one will have different characteristics though, for example varying patterns on the face, different shaped ears or different coloured costumes.

Some of these choices may change as I begin to develop the illustrations but they have been a good starting point for me to begin drawing:

Initial characters drawings for Snow White & the 7 dwarves

Tutorial with Louise

This morning I had a tutorial with my personal tutor, Louise, to discuss how my project was going so far.

These are the main points that she made:

- Continue to work on characterisation

- Design costumes

- Think about making the final book pages also work as posters

- Use textures in the final images

- Continue to draw from life as much as possible

- Storyboard the pages before making the illustrations, plan out where each character will fit in the scene.

The main point that Louise made was that the use of animals for the characters will only work if I make sure the costumes truly represent the characters. I have already started to look at costumes for the characters, and how they have been portrayed in film and television (I have a Pinterest board where I have collected some inspiration). So far I am quite inspired by some of the costumes used on the show Once Upon a Time, as they have a "fairytale-esque" feel to them without being over the top or tacky.

Costume Inspiration

I will be continuing to research the costumes over the next week or so in between drawing the animals.

I also need to make sure that the characters have a bit of personality and facial expressions rather than being quite plain-faced as the ones I have done so far are, although this should change quite easily as I develop them. 

Drawing from life is something I will definitely be continuing to do where possible, and I am planning on visiting the New Forest in the next two weeks in order to draw scenery such as trees and cottages, as well as hopefully a few more sketches of the deer (for the Princesses).

All of the other points that Louise made are for a bit later on in the project when I am starting to develop my illustrations into final outcomes, so I will be looking back at those when I reach that stage.

Continued Research

Today I've spent a little while looking at the plots of all the fairytales, and breaking them down into 8-point plots. This will give me an idea of which characters and other elements I need to illustrate so that I can move on to decide which animals to use for which characters. I've also made a few notes on ways that the stories could overlap with each other if I later come to combine them all together. These are just ideas at the moment and I won't be taking them any further for now, but I wanted to be sure to keep a note of them for later reference.

Now that I know which characters I'm using I am going to continue researching the symbolism of various animals in order to assign them to the characters and begin illustrating them.

Zoo Sketches & Photos

On sunday I took the train up to London to visit the zoo and draw some of the animals. Despite it being absolutely freezing, and raining on and off, I think it went quite well and I got some useful drawings. I didn't manage to draw quite as much as I had hoped, and I took far less photos than I normally would as I was spending the time drawing instead. But the drawings I did get should be quite helpful to me, and I have plenty of photos from pervious trips that I can use as reference.

Sketches from London Zoo: Lion, reindeer, giraffe, gorilla.

Sketches from London Zoo.

These drawings should help me when I develop my work, as I have been able to capture the animals in many more positions and movements than I would have been able to just looking at images online. I also made a few quick sketches of the markings on some of the animals to help me later on in the project.

There are a few animals that I didn't manage to draw either because they weren't visible or they don't have them at the zoo, I'll be spending a while this week doing some quick sketches from photos I took at previous trips to zoos (I will give my self 30-60 seconds per image to try and get the same effect that I did when drawing them from life) as well as from a few short videos that my boyfriend took whilst we were there. 

Here are some of the photos (all taken by me on previous trips) that I'll be using:

Initial Drawings

Over the weekend I spent some time doing some initial drawings in response to the theme of "fairytales". These illustrations are very unlikely to be used later in the project, they are just a starting point to keep me motivated and to get me drawing. They are all done with fine-liners and coloured pens in an A4 sketchbook.

Looking back at these I can see some clear connections to fairytales such as Snow White, Little Red Cap and Rapunzel although this wasn't the intention when drawing them. I am particularly pleased with the way the typography piece turned out, and will possibly use a similar style later in the project, perhaps for a book cover. I am also quite keen on the image of the wolf in the forest and am very likely to use this style in the rest of my work; its the same style that I normally work in however with slightly less pattern detailing, which I think will work well for busier, fuller images.

Later this week I will be beginning to design some of the characters, and I am aiming to try and use a brush and ink for the drawings to try and get a more varied line thickness (whilst still sticking to this style).

Yesterday a parcel containing the book I ordered, The Annotated Brother's Grimm, arrived and it looks like its going to be really useful. There are some great illustrations in it, and each story begins with an explanation, and there are annotations throughout. I'll be using the book throughout the project to make sure I am sticking to the story lines and also to look for extra symbolism and imagery within the text.

Finding Inspiration

These are a few of the things I've found this week that are keeping me inspired.

1. Grimms' fairytales book cover by Tess Redburn.

I love the way that Tess Redburn had her design laser-cut into wood (and then photographed for a book cover), I think it adds a really rustic feel to the image. 

2. Grimms' fairytales book cover by Naomi Wilkinson.

I really like the simplicity of this design and the way that it tells a sort of narrative in one image (something I aim to do in my final outcome). I also love the limited yet bold colour scheme here.

3. Illustration by Budi Satria Kwan.

I love the combination of several elements within one image, adding a fantastical, magical feel to the work. I may use something similar to this in my work, but perhaps in a more subtle way with shapes in shadows and/or reflections.

4. Screenshot of credits from Tangled the movie.

Whilst I was drawing over the weekend I watched a few movies based on various Grimms' fairytales to keep me inspired, including Tangled (based on the story of Rapunzel). I really liked the end credits and the way they were illustrated, with a sort of map showing all the locations within the film. This is the sort of layout I am thinking of using in some of my images in order to fit in lots of different story-lines.

Week 3 (In brief)

- Finding inspiration

- Initial drawings in response to the fairy tale theme.

- Sketches and photos from my trip to the Zoo.
- Continued research: breaking down the plots of the stories.
- Tutorial with Louise.
- Finalised the choices of animals for the characters and began illustrating them.

Guest Speaker: Jamie Keenan

This morning we had Jamie Keenan come in for a guest lecture. I hadn't seen Jamie's work before so wasn't sure what to expect. He designs some lovely book covers using a lot of photography and typography.

Book Covers by Jamie Keenan

Jamie likes to create designs that combine two elements together, and often uses an "unfinished look, to give the viewer something to do". I really like the simplicity of Jamie's work, and the way he incorporates the title text into the images. My favourite of these covers is the one in the bottom right ("All shall be well") because of the use of handwritten type and the negative space.

Jamie made a lot of good points throughout his talk entitled "Things I wish I'd known", and I've picked out some of my favourites:

- "We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing."

Keep everything fun and always keep playing with different ideas.

- Don't become a "designosaur".

Don't be too tentative.

"We're not surgeons, if you mess up completely no-ones going to die."

- Try to turn positives into negative.

Bad news come sometimes be good news in disguise.

Things change.

- Do it yourself.

Just get on with it.

Create your own world.

- Believe in yourself and believe that you are the best illustrator in the World.

But at the same time, question everything you do. 

Be on a roller-coaster of ideas.

Overall this talk was really inspiring, as well as honest and realistic, and a lot of what he told us should be really quite helpful in the future.

Initial Research

Initial research notes.

After my tutorial with Derek on monday I have started to conduct some research into the Grimms' fairytales.

After reading through the list of Grimms' fairytales I have chosen to focus my work on the following six stories:

Cinderella, Hansel & Gretel, The Little Briar-Rose, Little Red Cap, Rapunzel, Little Snow White.

I am using some of the most well known stories as I feel that if I am going to be combining the stories together as part of my outcome, then they characters and story-lines will need to be easily recognisable. I hope to also look a little at some of the other stories and perhaps use a few elements form them in my work.

So far I have looked at the Grimms' version of each of these stories, as well any other popular versions such as Disney. I've made notes on the plots of these versions and will be choosing which elements to use form which versions in my work (most likely somewhere in between the dark, macabre versions by the Grimms, and the romantic magical disney versions).

I have also made notes of all the main characters that I'll need to include in order to conduct some research into which animals would be suitable to use. And with the help of the SurLaLune fairytales website, I've looked at any symbolic imagery that is used within the stories, as well as any significant quotes or descriptions. I've ordered a book entitled The Annotated Brother's Grimm to help me with this project, and that should be arriving on monday so I'll have plenty to read next week in between drawings.

I will be continuing my research over the next few days and then heading to the zoo on Sunday to start drawing the animals.

Tutorial with Derek

Yesterday I had a tutorial with Derek where we discussed my ideas and he gave me advice for writing my proposal and timetable. He approved of the ideas that I mentioned in my last post, and gave me a few helpful suggestions as well. So I will be going ahead with the idea:

Illustrate a small selection of the Grimms' fairytales, adapting the characters to be animals that reflect their personalities, with the goal of producing a book that combines the fairytales into one story.

One of his main suggestions was to try and draw the animals form life wherever possible as this will help me to capture a bit of character and personality in them. One artist that he referred to several times was Beatrix Potter and the way she successfully used anthropomorphism in her illustrations, mainly because she spent so long with the animals themselves and knew their characters well. Obviously I am unable to do exactly that, but I have timetabled to visit a Zoo at least once, as well as any other wildlife parks nearby, in order to draw as many animals from life as possible. the first of these trips will be on sunday to London Zoo where I plan on drawing and taking photos for later reference.

Beatrix Potter: Anthropomorphism

Until then I will be researching the fairytales themselves, looking at characters, symbolism, different versions and any other elements I may find useful. I will be breaking each story down into a few bullet points to help me when it comes to producing the illustrations, and also deciding on which animals to use for each character.

Throughout this project I am also keeping a Pinterest board of any images I find that are inspiring me, particularly relating to fairytales. Every couple of weeks I will share a round-up of whats been inspiring me and looking to see how that has influenced my work.

Fairytale Inspirations

Week 2 (In brief)

- Tutorial with Derek

- Settled on an idea and chosen the 6 stories to work on

- Began my initial research
- A talk by Jamie Keenan