OUIL405 Final Evaluation

OUIL405 Final Book

Evaluation

There was an unanimous enjoyment of the use of collage from people, which I'm really glad of as I truly enjoyed using paper craft and collage and hope to use it more in future. And Although it was an improvement on previous paper crafted work withe the quality of crafting I still believe there are some issues such as making sure my hands don't have marks on them to help improve the work more. I also think I want to look more into creating more 3D paper craft work.  

I need to work out my time better so I could spent more time on such thing as printing out and making a trial book before hand so when I came with issues like forgetting how to book bind and issues with margins and image placement I could have dealt with those and they wouldn't have lowed the quality of the book as they did. 

I also needed to spend a lot more time on lettering as defaulting to type seems to have made some people effect its flow when it comes to the other hand crafted elements. I will probably start experimenting with type in a book as away of preparing myself for later projects and work in later life.

The repeat pattern was a first for me and I enjoyed hot the energy of the line work got through in the inner pages as well as with the expressions. 

Although a lot of people found it funny I am not happy with the flow of the book I din't spend enough time looking at the type and image layout of the book as a whole and if it flowed well and to me it has become stilted because of this. I am however pleased with the character crafting and composition of the pages individually as it makes me feel a lot more confident in myself as a crafter.

OUIL405 Construction and Refinement

I learnt the significance of keeping energy in your like work when a fellow peer of mine named Olive said to me how when I spent time meticulously drawing the aces within the repeat pattern I lost al lot of the energy and charm that came form being vey instant with my sketching. As a result I am looking more towards the energy of the expressions within the line work than perfection.

Creating the wine glasses was simple but working out how to get the visuality of liquid wine within the glass was harder so I experimented a lot with different medias such as ink, posca pens, gouache, markers, sharpies and watercolour and found that the sharpies where more effective in that they allowed the expression of the character to be seen through the liquid.

Due to the crafted element of my characters it was suggested to me that I use hand lettering to write any speech or instructions in my book within a crit. However after many  different experiments with both hand written and default type I didn't like the way it was looking so decided to use a hand drawn custom type. In hindsight I should have left some time to improve on my lettering and give it more though and consideration. This is something that I need to develop in my repertoire for my own personal practice.

OUIL405 Composition, References and Kate Beaton

Reference

A lot of visual humour when using a character, especially a character that becomes drunk through out the book is the use of hyperbolic body language and expression. Looking at how disney animators used themselves as reference for this I and some of my friends built up a catalog of expressions and different poses.

Composition

I've had a lot of issue with composition in the past with my work and building up a base of body language and facial references helps but the other part of becoming better at composition was looking at how to position a person with in a set dimension as well as looking at the way some artist handle character composition within a set dimension. 

Kate Beaton's comic strips rely as much on the humours script as it does on the body language and compositions of the pieces to evoke humour and it's something that I want the images in my book to also mimic this formula of text and image working in tandem.

This is why I spent time drawing up the steps for the wine and changing them as I went also as I realise being precious over a plan doesn't allow for the development and improvement of the final work.

A big thing for me on this project has been making scamps to size, they've been extremely useful in working out composition and have taught me that it doesn't matter if you make 3 or 15 different scamps for one page you only stop making them when you are happy with the way the page looks. 

OUIL405 Crafting, Development and Crits

Choosing to use paper craft for my work was a turning point for my work and the way I would have to think about laying out the image and forcing myself to not get too complex. I've also learnt throughout my past experience with using paper as the main medium that it's better to cause other mediums such as paint to create parts of the charter like there clothes as it stops unnecessary time wasting and can allow for a better standard of crafting. Also it is best that if you are using paper craft to make big models as it is a lot more difficult to keep a high quality of craft when piece are small.

 The group critics and  peer anonymity critics gave reiterated a some key points to me when I look at this brief:

1. Keeping this book humorous through out is key
2. I need to plan my time wisely so that my crafting doesn't suffer
3. Make sure the book is focused and clear in it's message
4. Focus on composition and type

Hattie Newman

Megan Brain

I love the textured paper I used to create the skin and looking at the way other artist who use pawer craft incorporate detail into their work via texture is making me more interested in using texture's to create depth and expressiveness with the character.

OUIL405 Further development of ideas and critical turning point

Brief Overview:

• Media experimentation 
• Making multiple comics that look at wine tasting from different angles
• Talk with Mat that allowed me to think weather or not what I was doing fit the brief.
• Becoming more analytical of the work I'm making and making tough decisions where it fits the brief well enough and the level of the works appropriateness.

I began working on creating a book that contained a multitude of mini narratives that explored different parts of wine tasting culture in humours ways and  Looking towards what kind of media I wanted to use for the work such as water colour, digital or ink based. I became very focused on the idea of creating a multitude of different comics and breaking them up by creating 1 image pages that where critical looks at the types of wine that are available that I became way too engrossed int the idea of a comic and less focused on translating research into a picture book.

 I had an informal discussion with Matt about they route my book was turning and how it was veering  too much away from format of a picture book and more into comic book territory. Matt then said something to me which helped me to rethink the way I was approaching this book 'as an illustrator it's your job to pick and choose the relevant information for a project and sometimes you may make work you are extremely happy with but if it doesn't fit the brief you have to make the decision to take it out.' It make me realise although I was really into the way the work went it wasn't fitting the brief and taking my title of "A Trashy Guide To Classy Wines" It became more apparent that the book would work a lot better if if it wok more like a guide to wines and as Matt pointed out some of my simpler pictures such as the step guide I'd quickly sketched it the beginning (as pictured below) had a mixture of informativeness and humour that work a lot better as a book than my original plan. I began to focus on creating the composition and further researching the world of wine tasting and how I could use some of that information to inform and twist it into a satirical guide to wine tasting.