Creative Strategy: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Whilst in Harrogate today with my girlfriend we went to Waterstones where I found this; a range of products based around The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It's interesting to see how one idea has been marketed in such a way that it now has an array of toys and additional items to go along side it. I'd love to create a character or something that resulted in a range of toys!

Life's a Pitch: Presentation Prep

Today we had our final meeting in preparation for our presentation on Monday. Needless to say, we are not ready. As a group we decided that we would brake our presentation down into slides and each person would research a different slide so that we all had an informed idea about a different part of the business. However, it quickly came apparent that not everyone had bothered to do their research and were clearly planning on winging the presentation. This became apparent when I suggested we have a run through and was met with resistance by one of our group.

Monday does not look to be promising.

Creative Strategy: Offlife

Having handed in my entry for the Offline competition for OUIL503, I felt it would be good to reflect up it. I spent a lot of time playing with this response and feel that my digital drawing skills have developed through this approach. I very much enjoyed creating this as I am a fan of narrative and hope that in the future I work with this pathway more.

However, I do feel that my skills are still missing something and this can be felt within the piece. My work needs more charm of something quirky I feel to grab peoples attention.

Here is some of the process I went through:




Here is the final outcome:

Creative Strategy: OUIL504 Self Evaluation

Here is my evaluation for OUIL504: Illustration - Process and Production:

Throughout this brief I have learnt many things, most notably the basics in both Dragon Frame and Adobe After effects. Both of which have been played with to the point where I feel quite confident in my abilities to run them properly. I personally feel there is much more time to be spent with After Effects to grasp its full potential. Moving past the digital aspect, I feel that I have also learnt, or rather developed, much further my understanding of screen printing. I was initially hesitant to go back to to this process, and I feel this hampered me later on when several issues arose with my screens (as mentioned in Printed Pictures: Screen Issues). However I feel my outcome for Printed Pictures is much stronger than that of Visual Narrative (OUIL405) from last year where I created a concertina/zine of a similar fashion. I believe that with the addition of screen printing, my work has progressed to a more professional level aesthetically. I look forward to further developing my skills with screen printing.
Concerning my attitude towards screen printing, and my work ethic in general, I need to be more assertive. There were many points throughout this module where I found myself coasting because I felt as though I didn’t have a specific thing to aim for, or I couldn’t settle on an idea. I wasted so much of the early OUIL504 module wondering what to do that I didn’t actually do anything. It was only when I forced myself to sit down and play around that ideas finally started to develop.
I found this to be most prominent during the early stages of the Visual Journal and Printed Pictures briefs. I found that collage, a process of illustration that I first began to develop last year in Visual Language (OUIL404), really was a great source of fun and inspiration for me. It was my ability to look back and take stock of how effective my collage work was that really pushed my Moving Pictures Brief forward. Although I didn’t produce much hand made collage work for the brief I did create a digital collage of images directly inspired by my Visual Journal work.
Concerning my final outcome for the Moving Picture brief, there are several things I would change if I were to do it again. Most importantly, I would have a look at the pacing of the piece, which I feel is somewhat off, it could do with being tighter near the end and the title portion feels rather segregated from the rest of the animation.
The final outcome for my Printed Pictures Brief I have contradictory feelings for. Whilst the piece works as an ordered piece, designed in Adobe Illustrator. It is this same order that leaves me feeling cold when I look at it. The print doesn’t feel like there is any heart to it and I am finding myself more impressed with my previous screen prints seen here: (Printed Pictures: Screen Print Investigation). I feel that the disorder, whilst not representing Huxley’s ordered dystopia so much, visually looks like a more engaging piece of illustration.
Going forward I feel that I definitely want to bring more collage process into my work. This continues to be a strong area for me and I feel that with a bit more time, I could be onto something very effective. In the future I also need to bring more visual research into my work. I feel that, although there is research of different practitioners throughout my work, it is mostly within Printed Pictures. This benefited my work greatly and helped inspire me during some difficult spells of that brief. I feel that my animation could have been improved upon greatly with the inclusion of more research within the brief. I need to make sure I am researching as effectively throughout to help inform my practise as a whole. Finally, and I feel that this is most important - I need to begin to understand my own limitations. What I picture in my head is always going to be different to what I actually produce. If I set my standards too high then I’ll end up being disheartened with my work no matter how well it turns out.

Creative Strategy: The Cost of Living

Here are my cost of living forms for the present and five years in the future:

To my surprise I found that I actually will save money in the future. I but this down to that fact that I hope to be owning a house in five years, thus the mortgage will be cheaper than my current rent costings

Things such as cost of living must also be considered during our presentation for Life's a Pitch. Rowena, who is dealing with financial matters, has agreed to consider these cost's within our presentation.

Creative Strategy: Andy Friedman

I recently discovered the caricaturist Andy Friedman and his amusing works. He draws an array of people including politicians, which is interesting to me as I am currently studying politicians for OUIL501. This has inspired me to draw more in that module, possibly pushing the visual aspects of the people that I am drawing to make them more comical - my mind immediately goes to Nigel Farage's muppet like face.

Creative Strategy: Big Heads - Matt Taylor

Big Heads this week was a very inspiring one for me. While I was unable to attend the session, I did watch it on the Big Heads Youtube channel.

Matt Taylor draws hyper realistic illustrations with beautiful colouring and I was intrigued to hear that he does in two very interesting ways. Firstly, he doesn't draw from reference per say, he traces the image digitally using his Cintiq and Photoshop. Secondly he uses Adobe Kulur to find a range of colours that work well together.

What was interesting about this was how several people have since said that he doesn't have integrity using this process. However I disagree. He still creates completely unique imagery using, what you could say, digital collage. He traces the image, adding and taking away where necessary, thus making the work his own. He also uses Adobe Kulur but Adobe doesn't tell him where to use each colour and in a way to compliment the imagery - so how is that not a skill in itself?

I feel like I learnt a lot from this Big Heads and want to adopt some of his methods to improve my own working.

Here are a few examples of Matt Taylor's work:

Follow Tommy 'Zoom''s board Matt Taylor on Pinterest.