Website Design Workshop

As part of the course I will need to set up and maintain my own website. Having a strong online presence, which will include my website with further links to social media platforms, will be very important in my potential future success as an illustrator. I will need to invest time and effort into maintaining my website and develop it into a lively and easy to use tool of self promotion.

Website: www.lucygilligan.com

Portfolio Feedback 3: The Chase

Last week we were given another opportunity to gain feedback on our portfolios from professionals currently working in the industry. We visited the design consultants at The Chase in Manchester who have worked on a variety of assignments in advertising, publishing and packaging. In small groups we each talked through our portfolios explaining each piece and gaining experience in talking about our own work to professionals. The main areas that were mentioned in the visit included:

• Remove the logo and explanation that is included at the bottom of each image. This shows the title of the work and the materials used. He advised to lose this as with my printer portfolio I will be present to explain each piece. This is only need with my PDF portfolio.

• Designing postcards of my work to send out to potential clients will be a good way of promoting my self easily. Making sure I do it regularly and follow up with them to get work.

• Explain any narrative work. The pages and spreads from books/stories Ive include need at least a line or two from the story below the illustration to set it up for the client.

• Don't feel that you need to talk and explain everything to the client. Get used to talking about my work to anyone, make my explanations more concise. Learn when to let my work speak for itself.

All this points and the advice from illustrator Nicola Slater will help me change and improve my portfolio into something ill be proud and confident to show to clients.

Portfolio Feedback 2: Nicola Slater

After her talk Nicola Slater also took the time to look at our portfolios and give us all personal feedback which will help develop the work we include and make in the future.

These are the main points she brought up when looking at my portfolio:

• She mentioned my work was professional looking for the stage I'm at. This was an area I was worried about as working in collage means its harder to clean up my work digitally afterwards with my very basic skills, without losing the texture and look of the paper that I want.

• My work feature in drawings mixed with my collage is strong and I should move them nearer the front of my portfolio to make a better impact with them. 

• My style of work is more consistent than I thought. Nicola felt that all the work in my portfolio was made by the same person. That even though not all the work is made in the same materials they are still linked.

• The characterisation is strong in my figures from both my British customs work and my circus work. This is something I should develop in the future.

She also advised us all to place our stronger work at the front as in her experience clients may not look through to the end and may miss the best piece if its left till last.

Practitioner Visit: Nicola Slater

This week we had a visit from children's book illustrator Nicola Slater who sat down to talk to us about her experiences after graduating and her 15 years working working in the industry. 

After leaving university she entered the Macmillan children's book competition and by coming 3rd that year introduced her to book publishers, a contact which would help her with work in the future. After this beginning in children's picture books she was offered to work on a high profile campaign for Eurostar. This high pressure, high turnaround work with ad agencies was not what how she wanted work but promoted her to a wider audience of potential clients leading to her work on book covers. These 6 covers for the 'Princess Diaries' series was 'easy money' but wasn't the direction she wanted. She became known for this pink, girly style and this influenced the work offers after. After the pink/girly style of work ran low she stopped working like that and reverted to the style she enjoyed. She began getting work that she wanted to do, not what agencies or publishers wanted her to do. 

Nicola advised us to only show the work/style we want to do in our portfolios as that is the work agencies will see and ask us to do. We should be comfortable working in that way, it should be enjoyable not a chore. She warned that opportunities will come along which will make us decide between the way we would like to work and money offered to work in a way thats not right for us. She also advised us to be open to a variety of influences which will help us develop our style and improve our work. 

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Future Self Part 2

From now until the final deadline in May I will be working on Future Self Part 2. For this I was given the option of continuing with the work I started at the beginning of the final year or to start something different. As I will be continuing with my Illustrator/Authorstrator project in order to get it finished I think I will continue with the work I started. I already have research and a good amount of exploratory work from the first part to make it easier to get going again with the Future Self. 

I am planning on developing my idea of a collection of circus based characters by putting them in context. Giving the work some message or set format will make it easier for my to create more work in a specific direction which is something I knew I was missing when working on Future Self Part 1. I will be continuing in my research of circus/freak shows when they were popular (19th to early 20th century) and mixing this with my characters. 

By the end of the unit I hope to have made something which I can use to promote myself. This is why I am going to start working within a set format of a postcard. This specific size and shape will force me to make work that is not just floating on a bare page, something I struggled with in Part 1. It will make me think of how I can work with the space to better convey my message to my audience.

Roger Duvoisin

During the Illustrator/Authorstrator project I discovered the work of Roger Duvoisin, writer and illustrator of multiple children's books. His work involves a more loose, flowing style of line drawings mixed with strong blocks of colour. The quickly drawn black lines pick out the details for the subject without going over board and making them seem to busy and overworked. I hope to develop this style into something I could use in my own work in order to improve my collaged figures. My own figures, when all the details are made in paper collage, become stilted and stiff in comparison to Duvoisin's  which have more movement and animation to them thanks to the style of line used.

 

 

 

Images from: http://myvintagebookcollectioninblogform.blogspot.co.uk/

Illustrator/Authorstrator

After reviewing my work so far in the Illustrator/Authorstrator unit I will be continuing with this along side my new project. At the start of the unit I wanted to create a book aimed at children which would illustrate and explain a number of long standing British customs and traditions. As i have only completed a few spreads of this book I will be carrying on with it till I have finished the whole book I wanted at the beginning.

So far I have developed my collage work further and added ink drawn elements. Not only have I found this way of working enjoyable, its a lot quicker to produce the details of a character or background in ink rather than labouring over it in collage. I will be continuing in this style and work on my existing figures and sets to make sure they flow together and that I have enough of them in the end to create the book I want.

Town scene from my customs/traditions book