kj-howrie-personal-archive

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Visual essay art work (part two)

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artwork for visual essay (part one)

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Visual essay- Reflection

I decided to make a simple choose your own adventure game for my essay. I thought this format would be an interesting way to present my ideas about style, and also a chance to practice how to make simple games. I used Twine to make this essay, which is an open source tool that uses a simplified coding language, making it easier to create visual novels or choose your own adventure games. 

I learnt a lot about making logic gates and how to structure a simple game as I made this essay. In the future I’d like to learn more about coding and how to make illustrations more suited to a video game format, as I think narrative focused video games would be a really good fit for the type of work I want to make as an illustrator.

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Visual essay. I used twine to make my visual essay as I wanted to make a point and click adventure game

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Task four outcome. 

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Task four- Reflections

It took me a while to get into this task, but once I did I really liked it. I typically make comics, so i found doing editorial work fairly difficult, as I was trying to encapsulate a story in one image instead of using multiple panels. I really liked setting myself the restriction of only using one panel, as it pushed me to try and communicate an idea more simply than I normally would. I also used colour in this illustration, which I’m not very confident about, as I’m a lot more comfortable just doing line work. I’m really glad I pushed myself to colourise the drawing as it looks really good. I need to push myself out of my comfort zone more when making work as I find it very easy to just stick to what I know. I’m not going to grow as an illustrator if I don’t push myself to work in ways I’m not confident about. 

After a tutorial it was pointed out to me that editorial illustrations can be made as comics, and a lot of artists create work like that. After looking into Fien Jorissen, and Tom Gauld’s works I’ve realized that Illustrations in articles can absolutely be comics, and that there’s a wide variety of ways to make illustrations that accompany text.

I’m also planning to work more on how I draw figures, as my figure in this task looks really stilted and awkward. I’d like to add more fluidity to my figures, so I’d like to work on different ways to draw people.

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Task four. I played around with different levels of detail, to see what looked best as I didn’t want my image to look overworked.  

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Task four. I chose to  use the wolf/alarm titles for my outcome, as it interested me the most. I made a couple rough sketches of the ideas I had for the illustration. At first I was tempted to make a comic half set in the past, half in the present, to highlight that alarms use the same pitch as a wolf’s howl. I then looked into the kind of illustrations that normally accompany articles in new scientist and saw that typically comics aren't used, it’s more stand alone images. I then decided to draw a wolf howling on top of a fire alarm as a way of communicating that they’re on the  same frequency. I then played around with the framing of the image until I found something that was aesthetically pleasing and communicated my message effectively 

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Task three outcome. 

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Task three- Reflections

I found this task difficult, but I also really enjoyed it. This task really pushed me to experiment with how I communicate different emotions to an audience. I really enjoyed creating small pictograms. It’s made me think about how I have a fairly set way of expressing certain emotions in artwork, that is heavily exaggerated and cartoony. I think I want to try and branch out in how I express emotions in comics, and I think I’m gonna try to consume different types of comics and graphic novels than I typically do so that I can get a broader idea of how emotions are expressed by different illustrators.

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Task three. I didn’t do any rough sketches before starting this task, as I didn’t want to get too caught up in my own head, stressing about how best to draw emojis. I made my 100 images using a grid, which I then went back and deleted, as I made this task digitally. 

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Task two outcome. I made this drawing digitally, as I wanted to be able to move panels and change placement of scenes, so I could get the atmosphere right in this comic 

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Task two- Reflection

I think this task was a really useful exercise for me to do. I liked being more open and loose with how I design characters, as I often have a lot of my characters looking very similar, and I don’t really play around with different ways my characters look. I think this exercise led me to making some really weird characters that I think are striking and I’d like to use them in further projects. I also really liked making up a plot and scenarios by randomly watching different episodes of tv shows and making plot points through that. I think I can get really stuck in my own ideas of what a comic should be when I’m working, and this was an amazing way of getting out of my head and creating some interesting work. 

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Task two, drafts of comic. I made a really rough sketch to get the structure of my comic sorted out, and so I would have a better idea of what reference images I would need to draw my comic. 

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Task two, working out how to piece together story for two page comic. 

I split my plot into four blocks, then used procreate to move the blocks around until I found a story I could work with.  I really liked this method of creating a story, as it aloud me to think really clearly about the kind of narrative I wanted to create 

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Plot events, Scenarios, Text

Scenario 

A steam train pulls into a large station, with tall ceilings, decorated with intricate ironwork. Steam is billowing from the train. 

Text/dialogue  

Original

A few 'good sailors', whose luggage bore the labels of many voyages, strode aggressively about smoking small, foul pipes and trying to get up a four of bridge.

Cut up

few strode about of pipes luggage four admonitory his of a many foul bridge came first advertised voyages young up of bag smoking carrying minutes the trying get to Two whose board and departure labels while man time bore sailors' was the whistling shouting the before on small going on aggressively 'good a and

Plot events 

1 (black mirror play test)

Woman picks up knife and turns around, man looks annoyed and say “what are you gonna do with that, put the knife down” while woman rotates blade in her hand 

2 (black pink: light up the sky)

Woman sits on the floor and plays a guitar 

3 (the fall season 2 episode 1)

Woman and man walk down stair, woman crouches down to look at blood spatter on wall, looks back at man and says “nice shoes”

4 (stranger things

girl walks through a warehouse up to a group of people huddled around a fire and says “hello”

5(fresh meat)

Shot of pints being pulled in a bar, scene then cuts to a man pacing around at the bar, talking on his phone 

6 (Gilmore girls)

Man puts away guitar while two woman have a conversation, one of them stood still, the other pacing back and forth In the room

7 (umbrella academy)

Woman and boy walk through corridor, turn to door and look through, in the room is multiple lines of desks, that go back what looks like infinitely 

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Task Two characters. I used brush pen when creating my characters, as I wanted to be really loose and free with my mark making. I wanted to focus on making some characters that where expressive and looked interesting