alice in wonderland: from first ideas to finals

as this week has been committed to giving presentations and chilling the fuck out after completing my first module of third year, i thought now would be a good chance to talk about the development and process behind creating my final three alice in wonderland illustrations because i haven't really done all that much else creatively this week, but hey, sometimes you've just got to give yourself some time off, and i've done that in generous amounts this last week as the week coming will be spent refining my dissertation for its final hand in this coming friday. so, without further ado, i'll talk through my process as briefly as possible and let the images do the talking. 

character design

for me, character design seemed to be the obvious place to start after choosing which scenes i was going to illustrate. alice in wonderland is such an iconic, well loved story, and as such has been reinterpreted countless times, so i really had to think about what these characters said to me personally, and how i then wanted to interpret them. alice is undoubtedly the centrepiece of the entire story and as such i focused a lot of energy into her, and in the end i wanted her to have a bit more of an edge and an attitude than the alices i've so often seen in films, because in the story i found that she became really quite head strong and confident as it progressed.

composition development

as part of the brief, a portrait format was set for each illustration and i initially found it pretty hard to work around, particularly for the mad hatter's tea party scene, where there's just so much going on. after countless thumbnails and reconsiderations of the scenes, i think i ended up with compositions that helped to show off the personalities i'd developed for the characters rather than masking them in an attempt to fit the brief's specifications, and while i think that perhaps i may have strayed away from the initial brief a little, i think it helped to add the life and vibrancy to them that my work so very much needed.

first drafts to finals

when the drafting is over, that's when the work really begins (or at least for me it is, anyway.) i very much feel at home in my sketchbook and never feel more relaxed or confident than when it's just me and my pencil, so when the time comes to start adding colours, textures and really considering how each element is gonna slot together, i begin to panic a little, which i think is really apparent in some of the earlier drafts of the illustrations. while drafting and redrafting is something of a frustrating process, especially when you have tight deadlines to meet, i can completely see why so much drafting is required to get to the final piece, because you can really look at all the good and bad within your work and work towards making it the best it possibly can be when the final draft eventually rolls around.

i hope you've enjoyed this little peek into my sketchbook and my working process, showing such initial stages of my work really is something of a daunting task for me, but i know from experience that it's nice to see the inner workings and bare bones of other creatives' projects, so i thought it'd be nice to open up for once and lay my creative process down entirely barely for others to have a peek into. i hope you've enjoyed it!

tweet me @xrobynm  |  follow me via bloglovin

saturday scribbles

well it was three months of tackling seven different briefs of differing calibres as well as writing a dissertation, but i've made it to the end of my live projects & competitions module and i can thankfully say that i've at least gotten one portfolio piece out of it that i'm pleased with. my alice work was a bit of a bittersweet journey, with lots of character development that ended up being a little futile after realising just how constrictive the required formats were, and then lots of rethinking of the compositions i'd chosen to fit within the formats, but i've made it to the end and now as i look at all three pieces together, i think collectively they've almost made the last three months of toils all worth it for me. as with my picture book in second year, i think i've managed to create three pieces that look like they're mine. it's perhaps something of an odd thing to say, but i think that they're different enough to a lot of illustration i look at for them to become recognisable as my own, as opposed to a regurgitation of someone else's work. whether they work or not is then an entirely different story, but hey, at least i think they have 'robyn' written all over them. i was quick to pop all these three images onto my online portfolio, and if i'm being honest, i'm liking how it's starting to shape up. hopefully the rest of my time at uni will provide me with another three (hopefully successful!) projects to add to it which will then make up my graduate portfolio – eep!

another project from the module which has received surprisingly good feedback is my work for the nhs live project which i've been working on with a coursemate, where in which i've dealt with character design and the illustrative visuals, and he's created a functioning app and some relevant motion work. for assessment, me and ashley simply had to have some rough visuals and a motion piece to propose our idea as somebody from our local hospital is going to pitch the idea to some funders to see if the project will be picked up and brought into reality, so for now it's staying as it is in its somewhat primitive stage. i'm not too sure when the pitch will be made, but after that we'll know if the project will be carried on or not and whether i'll be developing the visuals and characters more. fingers crossed that it does get picked up though, because however much it'll mean having on my plate for the last few months of uni, it would be pretty cool to see my work brought to life for a client as big as the nhs!

so, there we have it, the last three months of my creative life in a nutshell. it's been a little bit more negative than i'd have hoped, but i think i'm finishing on a positive. obviously it's a happy ending, but i do wish i could cut out the self loathing that occurs while working through briefs for my own good and the good of those around me. perhaps that comes with time though? let's hope. 

tweet me @xrobynm  |  follow me via bloglovin

saturday scribbles

this week i've been desperately trying to pull all my unfinished briefs together, including my alice in wonderland and my nhs work. after a few unsuccessful attempts at a book cover for alice, i think i finally cracked it and pulled a design together which is largely typographic, simply because i thought it'd be a nice touch to have some hand lettering alongside the two inner illustrations which don't leave room for any type whatsoever. i think i'm almost there now with my alice work as a whole, and after a bit of feedback and a few tweaks, i think i'll be pretty happy with them. it's been a bit of a slog developing the illustrations, but if i end up happy with the end results it'll all have been worth it; i just have to hope now that the tutors are on the same page as me on monday with thinking that they're almost there!

i've spoken briefly about my nhs project before on my blog, however i've neglected to show any visuals because nothing was really all that solid up until around a week or so ago. above i've decided to share a few app screens that i've thrown together for assessment purposes simply because we need visuals to present our ideas, however i don't think the project is anywhere near completion. for my live projects and competitions module i need to have work handed in by the 13th january, but because the brief is a live one i'll have time afterwards to get feedback from the client and further develop the idea and the visuals from there, which suits me just fine at the moment because i don't particularly have a lot of time right now! now me and my classmate that i'm working with have a clearer image of our idea and a working theme to go with, i think it could potentially becoming a little bit more interesting, but i'm just going to wait and see where it goes over the next few weeks. 

tomorrow i plan on finally getting around to redrafting my entry for the puffin design award, which is a book jacket for carrie's war. i've already roughed out the design i think i'm going to go with, so it's simply a case of getting my head down and getting on with the illustrating. i say that now, but i always find that book covers are a pain to design; if i've learnt anything throughout my first term of third year, it's that designing and illustrating book covers is much, much harder than it appears.

tweet me @xrobynm  |  follow me via bloglovin

saturday scribbles

seeing as i posted the last of my #illo_advent illustrations on christmas day, i thought for this week's saturday scribbles i'd show a brief glimpse into the progress of my alice in wonderland illustrations to date (i've been working on my nhs brief this week too, but that's all a bit unresolved at the moment so it's staying well away from being published anywhere until i've figured it out...)

the top two images were the first two images i sent off for feedback from the tutors, and the bottom image is a snippet from a reworked tea party illustration after responding to the feedback. feedback was basically that working digitally was flattening my images, and i still had room to make the images a little more bizarre and interesting – both points i agreed with, even if i was pulling my hair out over the lack of time i had to resolve them. i've still yet to hear feedback from my resolved illustration what with it being christmas (getting in the bloody way, sigh) but i'm hoping it'll be a little more positive and i won't have to sweat as much over much more reworking. it's not entirely finished as i have elements to add and my colour scheme to slightly reconsider, but i'm hoping that my technique's now a little stronger and there's a little more drama within the scene and the characters have a stronger sense of themselves, but we'll see.

next week will be dedicated to finishing the two inner illustrations for good, drafting and finishing the alice book cover, reworking my puffin book cover and continuing working on my nhs brief. i did intend to revisit my dissertation and start writing my story ready for macmillan during the holidays, but i just don't think time will permit it right now. what i'd do for an extra week...

tweet me @xrobynm  |  follow me via bloglovin