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NYCCS- Sophie Koko Gate

020519

I went to the New York City Comic’s Symposium to see Sophie Koko Gate unveil a preview of her latest animation Slug Life and I was blown away. It was hilarious and, surprisingly, very believable. She talked about her illustration and animation styles and aesthetics as being a part of a greater world where her characters are, in their own realms, the pinnacles of beauty and grace and within her animations, I very much believed the fantasy. I admired the work and craft that went into creating the story and I found myself especially in awe at the sound design and the casting of the voices of the characters. Very rarely in animations done by independent animators do i find the voices and overall sounds to be irreplaceable but in this one, the mood of the film would not have been the same with anybody else. It was really inspiring. 

I think i took most interest to the video of the slugs performing their mating and courtship rituals because I got to see a part of her that only becomes apparent in the work through a look into her reference; a side that’s very interested in how nature even works and how strange it really is. It made me reflect on my own interests in nature, science, and how life works symbiotically, effortlessly between organisms. 

On a personal level, seeing her succeed as an animator who’s work is very much experimental gave me a lot of drive to continue working on my own craft; to work to answer questions of the realm my work lives in and to keep exploring how nature behaves in it, just like how i ponder it in the real world. 

I took note of one thing she said that stuck with me because it was so outrageously funny but deadpan and quite snarky at the same time, which is so fitting of her work and of the characters in the realm she’s created: “An autobiographical work produced by an average looking girl with a very long commute”

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Presentation Questions

Describe your project goal in simple but concrete terms.

I want to work on and illustrate a houseplant care book and for my thesis I worked on the first chapter along with a few plant profile layouts to create a proposal for publishing houses.

What is one inspiration for your project?  It can be an artistic or conceptual inspiration.

I’m really fascinated by botany and horticulture and I love tending and caring for my plants and I was unable to find a houseplant book that encompassed all of the information I had gathered from a variety of sources. I felt there was a need in the market and it gave me an excuse to continue to learning about plant life. 

What is your project’s greatest success?

I’m really happy with the overall energy of the work I’ve created. After weeks of refining I think I finally feel comfortable with the visuals of the book as something that is scientific, introspective, friendly and personable. 

What is one shortcoming of your project?  

I have spent most of my time this semester fighting through my ideas of what makes good design. I don’t believe the design is where I want it to be still but I’m aware that I’ve made significant progress from the first few mockups I’ve created at the beginning of the semester.

What would you have done differently, knowing what you know now?

I would’ve definitely worked on the layout of the text for the watering chapter before having worked on the illustrations. I’ve found that it’s much easier to work around the constraints of text than it is to try and make the text conform to the shape of the image. 

If you are --or were-- going to continue with this project beyond the school year, what would be your next step?

I really love the trajectory I’m on with this work and I’d love to continue fleshing out more plant profiles of some of my favourite plants. I’d continue writing the Lighting and Introduction sections and I’d spend more time with the writing and design of the sections I have done already. Overall, I’d just keep refining all of the kinks the book has.

Who might be the audience for this work?  Or, how might you describe the work to a potential audience?

I’d say people like me but that’s really broad. An age group might be 18-35 yr olds because it’s a time where people find it particularly difficult to find themselves and find their way for a number of reasons. I want my book to exist as a reference for plant care and for plant troubleshooting but also express a sense of tenderness in the act of caregiving, both to the self and the people and things we interact with. 

How might you distribute the project to an audience?   Online, in a gallery, in print… be specific about the form.  You could discuss efforts to promote it as well.

I see my work commercially published and in book stores and plant shops alike. I’d also love to work on the promotion of the book through continuous instagram posts that would include illustration and animation. Before starting this semester I had a desire to start a blog about my life with plants and plant care and it’s something I’d like to continue to cultivate a sense of community over something that makes me feel really happy and at peace in my own.

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mockup layout with hand-lettered font

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layout ideas

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Finished WC Paintings 

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some sketches in terrible lighting mostly relating to the Watering section as well as the plant profile

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Week 05

Week 05, i’m going to be honest, i’m updating this probably during week 08 so i’m unsure what I’ve done by this point but I’m pretty sure it was a lot of sketches in my sketchbooks and then transferred onto copy paper and then onto drawing paper to keep the energy of the drawing. 

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watercolour plant profiles

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Week 07

My life has been getting hectic with preparing to move and bouncing hours at my part time job and it’s been frustrating me because i haven’t been progressing as much as I’d like to. I’m writing this about an hour before I have to head to work and I’m planning to, by the end of the night, have created mockup layouts for text. I want to create a mockup “book” using Bob’s suggestion with a binder so that even though it’ll all be terribly thrown together, i’ll be able to explain some sense of what I want the book to feel or read like. I have to learn to be less precious about my writing so I know that if it’s printed i can easily have the TA’s look over it and then i can really begin to break down the sections and illustrate in unison with the chunks of text. I also really need to update my schedule timeline for this project to accommodate all of the changes.

I will update again later tonight when I figure everything else out after work 

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Week 06

Rotating Crits:

Ben Katchor: Ben really liked my project and really related to my intention for making this book as a way to help people learn to live with nature again by bringing it indoors. He responded better to my more scientific botanical illustrations and I felt more confident in continuing to use them in my book as chapter dividers. 

Chang Park: I don’t really think Chang understood my project or why I was making it but he had a lot of good notes on things I should ask myself when making other kinds of work. He told me to think about routine and the mundane through absurdity (Dadaist inspired), communicate using the setting through the absurd or nonsensical, and create scenarios with multiple scenes occurring at once to create multiple point of views. I felt really confident leaving our critique accepting that this was good advice for my more experimental autobiographical/documentarian style illustrations but it wasn’t going to be a good fit for this project. 

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092118 Lisa Hanawalt Event

i went to go see Lisa Hanawalt speak on Coyote Doggirl at the Books are Magic bookstore in Brooklyn with my boyfriend where he surprised me with the Bojack Horseman art book i’ve been coveting. I was really excited to see her talk, be herself, and discuss her book, her new show, and her style of work because I feel like we’re very similar in the way we are always unsure of what we’re doing, need validation from others to remind ourselves to get out of our heads and understand that are work is of value, and is just overall very nervous all the time, using humour to cope. It was an amazing event, and after my breakthrough moment with Nora i really needed something to remind me that it’s all going to be okay and that finding my voice is going to take time, it’s going to be hard, but the process is of utmost importance. She’s inspired me to look into character design, a weird blend of comics with very short nonsensical prose of mundane moments, and to really dig deep into cultivating a conversation between what i make and why i make it. I’m going to spend the next week or two rekindling this conversation with my work and think less about if it’ll sell and more about if it’s in my voice and if someone reading what i’m making will understand my deep connection to plants. Overall, it was a grand ol’ time and a much needed boost in confidence. 10/10

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Week 03

I’ve come into week 03 not particularly feeling like I’ve gotten much done at all. I think I just need to learn to be okay with not knowing where this book is headed, or how I’m going to finish it. I’ve started experimenting with textures to try and alleviate the issue of discontinuity between the plants and their pots. I’ve also taken Nora’s critique of a lack of emotional, personal treatment of the plants in terms of their drawing and I think I’m going to narrow what I expect from myself by the end of the semester down to 20 solid plant profiles for the glossary (illustration and care regiments) along with the cover, the introduction, lighting, watering and everything needing to deal with self care and self awareness. For next week i want to have 3 plant paintings properly edited to what I think would be read to be a plant profile. I want to create a moodboard or inspiration board for the aesthetic of things I like to try and narrow how I can interject my own personal voice into the design of the book because it’s not something I feel particularly confident about. 

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Week 02

I’ve continued sketching out a few more illustrations and painting a few of my in progress ones. I’ve started culminating a format for the written portions of my book separating the book into Introduction, Plant Requirements, Plant Care, Essentials and Plant Glossary. I’ve spoken to Nora and she feels I should go towards a more emotion, personal approach disrupting the average guide book format as a way to experiment with interjecting myself into the project to mimic the relationship I have with my plants. I’ve spoken to Robert about creating a cohesive aesthetic and level of care and attention given to every plant and their pots and I intend on experimenting with graphic shapes and handmade textures. I’ve spoken to Collin about how I could work on making the text more personable and less scientific and sterile. Nora suggested I ask questions about my relationship with plants and why I’m making this and Collin suggested writing the care as I am and then editing it to sound conversational and, ultimately, accessible to everyone. 

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Week 04

We planned a work schedule for ourselves to keep track of deliverables and to understand how to get to our end goal. I don’t particularly feel confident in my schedule but it’s a work in progress and subject to changes 

I’ve worked been working on layout designs for the Plant Glossary, making 6 designs to receive feedback from before selecting colours or type. I still need to try out the designs with 2 other plants before I feel ready to work on the care instructions that will mirror the design of the illustrations. 

Over the weekend I want to complete the writing portions of air quality and self care so i have drafts to edit from. 

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Week 01

I came into the first week of class having completed about 60 illustrations for my plant care book but not much else in terms of organization, format, writing, or design. I have an idea of what I think I want but I’m not particularly sure how to execute it. We all spoke of our proposals for our thesis and I don’t particularly see myself doing anything else but making this book for thesis and eventually taking it to publishers to be launched. My ambitious goal is to have it completed by the end of the January but I’m a little uneasy on how to get there. 

Spathiphyllum Wallisii Variegata

Strelitzia Nicolai 

Tillandsia Xerographica