agclientstudies

[agclientstudies]

Entry 6: Final pieces and finishing up

Night before Christmas 

Pinocchio 

I don’t think I’ve been more proud of a project that I have been working for Client studies. The experience has gained a better confidence in me where I haven’t felt like I’ve had to limit myself. Overall the experience was super nice and the people involved were lovely. 

I sent it into Slack for everyone's approval; i got amazing praise for my hard work! There wasn’t any need to edit anything or adjust certain things. Which, because, after i sent in the official files for them to use my iPad crashed straight after and I ended up loosing all my work from the past two years. Which. Sucked. Like it was insane, but thank god I sent everything in for Hijinx to use. And if it hadn’t been for me screenshotting my WIP’s to my friends online i wouldn’t have had anything to back up my process. Or uploading my uni work from y1 & y2 onto my portfolio. But still it was a punch to my gut. 

Screenshots of the Hijinx website:

My Artwork showcased in Cardiff bay! 

Working on the entire remotely from home it’s a bit of a shame that I can’t go down to look at my artwork in person, but the thought that it’s there and that it’s real has made me extremely proud working on this brief. It was super fun and I’d love to work on something like this in the future! Hijinx was very kind and supportive, and they’ve allowed me to move out of my usual comfort zone :) 

[agclientstudies]

Entry 5: More process, getting to it

The rest of November consists of me going mental over my dissertation, forgetting i have a dissertation, remembering i have Client Studies, doing Client Studies. 

More sketches via my process on Santa;

Sketch

Lineart, flats, loose shading 

Close up on loose colouring, I go onto painting ontop of everything to make it more rendered 

Background mocking up 

Full render

Colours may be a bit too blue and dull? About to change that! 

Mostly i sorted out some of the hue overlays, especially with the background 

Finished results will be included in Entry 6 

With Santa out of the way, i went onto working on Pinocchio. Here are more chats with Jon

Sketch ideas for Pinocchio; 

 Drawing this felt more like myself 

I think my favourite thing out of illustrating this was getting to design Lottie and do her lineart 

 Deciding on how to apply the background first 

bordered it again to not worry about printing and bleeds 

Feels very washy/painted?? Reminds me of water colours 

but the overall colours wasn’t sitting right with me, so i go onto playing around with it some more 

I wanted the stars to represent the toy maker, but you know what? Even i don't know why i included it but it was too late to get rid of it bwah. Still liked it though 

Full piece will be included in Entry 6 

On November 28th, last few talks with Jon was sorting out permissions to use for my work to be used on their website and show 

[agclientstudies]

Entry 4: Odyssey, Art

During the start of working with Hijinx, we were asked to see what days those who were on placements on availability and what interested us work wise for the brief. 

Being available Mondays and some of Wednesdays, I chose to work with Odyssey within Hijinx. To be honest I sort of didn’t understand what was going on, but I’m so glad i got chosen to do so because I feel like if i worked with anything that wasn’t pure illustrations I wouldn’t be was enthusiastic about the entire brief. I came here to draw and drawing i did get >:)

Their final layout for all involved 

Sohpia (one of the supervisors/mods) never gave me any call links. Jon DK was the real lad of the season. 

Working for Odyssey meant I would be working on two illustrations; 

1 illustration for the Twelve days of PAWB

1 illustration for their Pinocchio play 

To be honest Hijinx didn’t give me much of a overall brief requirements. All I knew i was hired to illustrate, and they pretty much gave me free room to do what i wanted. Normally I would have loved that but at the same time part of me wanted more direction on what to do? I contacted Jon to double check anything, he replied quickly. Honestly i felt a bit stupid but i’m glad i messaged him about any queries haha 

 While i got a very nice reply on what to do god i really wish I wasn’t given so much power. But for experiencing a work placement for the first time i’m also very grateful they were so flexible. I had a concept in-head wise, and when i finally got to jotting it down and actually sketching my artwork things started to feel more on track. So really, I feel like i cant complain. Like Jon said I had more space then the rest involved. 

Sketches around 14/11/20

To have the members of Odyssey as little elves in a Ferris wheel of Christmas stocks in mind 

I wanted the feel to be very old Christmas cards in mind. In any direction i was going to take with rendering these i knew i’d be semi painting over the top to give it more depth

Ended up liking this sketch and concept much better. I found it funny that Santa has to be looking at google maps to get to Hijinx 

The sign behind him would include Hijinx and the other groups. 

Background idea in mind would be a snowy forest 

Including the border so i wouldn’t have to worry about the bleed effect when it came to printing

[agclientstudies]

ENTRY 3: Getting to know Hijinx, Slack and communication

Now came my proper involvement with Hijinx using slack as our base of operations. The one thing i was a bit unsure of was the communication and talking back and fourth through the internet (although a huge part of me was relieved none of this was face to face, pandemic or not haha). 

Jon, one of the head organisers from the team, was the main person i worked with throughout my work placement. He sent me a zoom meeting link and we got talking and introduced ourselves in our first week. In October where none of this was official yet, we just went on to say hello, talk about what was in store for PAWB and what i had to offer, and talk about myself. I mentioned The Moomins quite a bit. Jon was super lovely and he made he feel comfortable right away! He went onto talking about how i would join in on some of their groups sessions every Monday. I was included in one of their Halloween zoom calls which was lovely. 

My reflection on this week was that i was glad to be at ease so soon- i knew my objective was to just draw, i have no other things planned that seemed overly technical, and i knew when their group’s zoom calls would be. Often i would fret on schedules because i like to have things written down visual in case i forget something. The whole experience has been very straight forward which i appreciated. 

I didn’t talk much in the main group channel, half due to shyness and the other 50% i didn’t want to seem like a pleb for confirming things i felt was confusing. Jon was happy to answer any questions or worries i had over in DM’s. 

I spoke with him how i would normally to any supervisor or boss- polite and trying my best to really not dabble off into nonsense. I’m very glad he just Got The Vibe. I’m very glad i worked with people who enjoyed emojis just as much as i did. 

While i enjoyed getting to know Hijinx, I felt like a was floating about. At the time I had to juggle this with the dissertation essay, and went onto focusing more on that to get its 600 word count (a nightmare), and It was hard for me to think of sketches so early on in October. Even though I had a clear idea of what i wanted my final outcome to be. My workflow improved during November to feel satisfied I crunched within the recommended 70 work hours. 

[agclientstudies]

ENTRY 2: Start of Client studies and CV

Lets talk about my cv thought process shall we :)c 

Starting from August, I had to tick off doing my CV and online portfolio to back up my client studies. It felt like a nightmare but oh well 

Starting out my CV for this project was the most nerve whacking thing out of the entire brief. In my head, i had to be an accomplished artist before 22 otherwise i’d feel like i’ve been set on fire. But that isn’t really the case. Listing all the previous projects from my first and second year and USW i had so much to offer. Done, one issue sorted. 

Education + trivia info is listed further down in the actual CV document. 

I expressed my love for concept and character art, along with my personal interests such as commissions, portrait work and tattoo designs. Something that sums me up just fine. I think looking back on the making of my CV i put it off for a week or so more then i needed to, because once i got it sorted it took less then an hour to get everything written. 

This was also a time where i finally had a chance to get my online portfolio sorted! Something I had been wanting to do for a very long time, it was a bit of fresh air to find a good enough website that felt like I could be organising myself and my work to show case better. 

In uploading everything on there I Realised I did a lot of stuff in terms of range?? from fan art to tv shows and books, to my own personal artwork/creations and uni work. It felt like a good mix for people to get to know me a bit better as a online presence. 

[agclientstudies]

ENTRY 1: Start of term and emails

With the start of uni kicking in for the new term and Covid 19 just still in our lives i was pretty nervous for managing everything. Just everything in general. The first project back was Client studies and i’m someone who has not attempted anything industry in her life. Often i have a habit of undertesting myself before something can even start. 

We got given our introductory lectures within the first official week of uni. Honestly the week before i had a breakdown and moved back home after staying in my flat for a few days. While i was excited for uni to start up again i also felt exhausted before anything even started. 

But honestly? It all turned out fine in the end once i got the encouragement i needed and the support, lectures, and talks i needed.

We were given a set of advertisements for placements provided by our head lecturer and clients advisor, Sarah and Laura. A lot of the placement opportunities had deadlines within the next week of when these emails were sent out, so i made sure to put in my CV and interest as soon as possible. 

my thoughts on the CV alone will be spoken about more in depth in entry 2 of this blog. 

Encouraged to apply for all listed in the screenshot, i could only manage applying to two on such short time between their deadlines. My biggest interest was in Rowanvale Books and the Hjinx Theatre Company. 

Rowanvale caught my eye for its book covers. I have a huge interest in illustrative covers for childrens book and fiction. 

However their requirements hoped for somebody to be applying with knowledge of marketing and/or insight into graphic design which either wasn’t really my strong point nor interest. Though this only dwelled more on me i decided to not go for them in the end. Not only this but they were very interested on an illustrator who could keep to one set style that they were keen on. I felt i couldn’t offer them what they wanted the more i did start to dwell. 

Hijinx however, was super intriguing to me. A theatre company that supports disabled and autistic actors they were looking for an illustrator to be on board for their twelve days of PAWB event for Christmas. As somebody who is diagnosed with Asperger's i literally jumped on the case to email them straight away. 

Sadly when looking back to screenshot my exact email to Hijinx my outlook has deleted the original message. Though i used the same structure as my email for Rownvale Books, including my Aspergers and how I’d love to work with them. 

Which is a huge shame.

Overall within the first few weeks of getting my cv and portfolio down in time for this brief and waiting for emails to come back made me nervous, yet at the same time i didn’t think too much on the bads. I finally got out of my comfort zone a bit! At the very least haha. I thought if nobody were to get back to me i’d deal with finding placements outside of the unis help when it came to it. 

But thank god I didn’t have to deal with that. 

Hijinxe came back to me, and i got the place! I felt a lot lifted from my shoulders already. I was to be their illustrator :)c I prefer drawing with set requirements and their placement information summary gave me just that. It felt easy peasy. 

Hijinx emailed me back with delight after i accepted their offer. They included what their new work flow would be and that it would be taking place on Slack. They made sure to include some links for their introduction that would happen in a week or so. Very exciting!