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. 

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finished picture book: the sloth who almost stole christmas

today i present and hand in my final *real* piece of work for the year, and i'm so stupidly excited about it that i might just bust! the idea for 'the sloth who almost stole christmas' has been floating around in my head since around october last year, so it's so incredibly satisfying to actually have my thoughts now out in the real world, written down and documented visually ready for people to have a browse through! a few of my friends and the tutors have had a read of my story in its entirety, and i'm pretty much getting thumbs up all round - one tutor even said he'd like to get a copy printed to read to his own children, what a dream! it's fair to say that i'm incredibly proud of the final outcome and i'm just so excited to be able to have it in my portfolio as a testament to the fact that i'm interested in writing as well as illustrating - note to self, explore more story ideas over the summer - and also to prove that i am capable of producing an entire picture book, on my own, from cover to cover. ah.

i'll not babble on any longer, but i am so darn happy to end second year with this hand in. squeeee! i'll leave you with some spread images to have a nosey at, which you can also view through my online portfolio.

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the sloth who almost stole christmas

these last few weeks we've been working on our specialist graphic projects module at uni and it's literally a module that i've been looking forward to for almost a year now after viewing the second and third year work ready for submission at the end of my first year of university. from the beginning of second year i knew i wanted to write my own story, and whilst thinking up christmas card ideas in october i stumbled upon a story idea revolving around santa and a sloth and the potential demise of christmas day if the present delivery were to be put into the hands of a sloth, and from that the sloth who almost stole christmas was born! your typical story of santa's engine breaking down, however this time in the rainforest with only a sloth to help him with his duties.

i initially thought that my story idea being so cliché and perhaps boring would go against me, however while working with the text and imagery i realised that it benefited me somewhat as it required me to be much more imaginative when considering my imagery and really got me involved with potential sub-stories and character development, and at the end of it i must say i'm pretty chuffed with what i've managed to pull together!

 

i've had so much fun developing the story, characters, spreads and typography that i'll be continuing this project through into my next university module so i'll have an entire book to a) send off for macmillan, and b) have as a fantastic portfolio piece. i can't quite believe how much fun i've had working throughout this module and now definitely know that a place somewhere within children's publishing is where i would hopefully like to end up someday. watch this space over the next couple of months for the entire book!

you can view my work on my online portfolio here.

 

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university project: advanced digital communication

since starting back at university at the end of september, we've been working on a brief called advanced digital communication. it was split into two parts: the first 4 weeks(ish) focusing on motion and interaction work and experimenting, and the second 4 weeks looking at a 'proper' brief - i say proper because i found it extremely difficult to feel like anything from the first half was going anywhere.

during my many battles with motion and after effects, i decided to give up on the program and opt for a more traditional way of creating motion - stopmotion. i felt much more comfortable working in this way and felt that the outcome represented my personality and style more accurately, and while my final piece was perhaps a little unfinished, overall, i'm not too ashamed to show it.

next on the agenda was to look at creating an interactive piece of work. i was a bit fixated of the idea of touch and how we make decisions every day based on things we do and don't touch and for a while i liked the idea of proposing an interactive keyboard with all the keys made of different materials - some nice, some not - and then monitoring how we adapted our language when communicating based on what we did and didn't want to touch. as it sounds, this idea was a little too elaborate to go about producing or simulating, so i left it there.

still focusing on the idea of touch, i noticed how we're often reluctant to interact with fragile things through fear of damaging them, and i wanted to create something that left someone with conflicting desires as they'd want to look at my artefact, however they also wouldn't want to through fear of damaging it. my solution was this interactive book that was made up of illustrations printed onto tracing paper, and it invites you to unpick the many layers of illustrations with pieces of card that are supplied, however to do so means you're at the risk of damaging the book.

onto the main (and more exciting) part of the module now! we were given a choice of two briefs: one based on mima's contemporary jewellery collection and one based on a british film festival. knowing i'm not much of a film fanatic, i opted to tackle the jewellery brief which within it specific making the jewellery accessible to children which was instantly right up my street. i explored the #wearmima facebook page and, much to my surprise, was really taken by some of the jewellery. i also watched videos from the vimeo page and noticed how the jewellery seemed to bring out everybody's inner child as they spoke of fantasy lands and the characters the jewellery could've belonged to, which instantly got me thinking of potential back stories for the pieces.

after creating back stories for four of my favourite pieces, my solution was to put these stories into a promotional booklet that would then be sent out to primary schools to be read by the children in an attempt to spark an interest and curiosity about the jewellery which would then get them into mima visit the jewellery in the flesh. the booklet also invited them to create and draw a back story for a piece of jewellery from the collection that wasn't covered within the booklet, with some optional starter stickers for the younger end of my audience to use if they needed a bit of help getting started. this feature also linked to an app that i designed where children could read about the pieces in the collection, upload their story and view stories others had created in an attempt to create some sort of community and make the kids and their contributions feel valued.

i wanted to include the final artwork for the entire book, however this post was already extremely picture heavy so i decided against it - hope you've enjoyed reading!

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the wind in the willows: final book cover

here's my final book cover for the wind in the willows, thank you for all the feedback and lovely comments you all left me, i really do appreciate every last one i receive :)

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the wind in the willows characters

i just thought i'd upload all the characters i drew for the wind in the willows book cover as most of them ended up just being decorations in the background!

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the wind in the willows book cover: your opinion?

so since making some minor character adjustments to my book cover, i've come to realise that i'm actually pretty happy with the design overall, meaning i won't be making any further changes to composition/colour/type etc. and just sticking with what i've got (because you can overdo it, right?)

since slightly reillustrating my characters to give them each a little bit more personality by highlighting their general feelings towards toad, i've been told that although the personalities shine through more, the overall vibe that the book gives off is fairly negative because of the expressions of badger and ratty, and may therefore put a reader off.

so, my question for you guys is which book cover do you feel is the most effective? the back page from the top spread will be the one used on whichever front cover i decide to go with, i'm just too lazy right now to create another image for the spread below (sorry!)

it'd be really nice to get some audience feedback on this, because ultimately, it's people like you that i'm targeting while you're walking around a book shop! feel free to comment below or tweet me, i try my best to reply to all comments and tweets that i receive!

thank you!

the wind in the willows: draft 1

so as i mentioned, this year i wanted to enter the puffin children's book competition just for fun, experience and to prove to myself that i can manage other projects alongside my university projects, and here is (finally) my first draft of the book cover!

i still want to tweak the back page and i'm considering reillustrating the main characters so that they interact better with the entire front cover (this design isn't how i initially planned it to be, but while arranging all my characters/text in photoshop i realised that my original plan wasn't really going to work,) but other than that i'm pretty content with the colour scheme, background and type (which is a first!)

here's the background pattern i created, it simply features some of the characters that the main four characters bump into along the way and i felt it was important to include them in the book cover design because they help influence how the story moves along.

any feedback on how to improve this design would be really appreciated, so if you've any comments at all i'd love to hear them!

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