Visual Skills End of Module Evaluation

I think through out this module I have developed lots of different techniques that at the start of this course I wouldn't have felt confident using at all such as paper cut and working into photographs to create finished illustrations, I have also become much more competent in some medias that at the start of the course I wasn't used to using such as  brush pens and Photoshop. One of the things I feel I've become much better at over this module is problem solving and  getting all my ideas down in a much quicker and a much more effective method, The main place where you can see this is the final brief we did where i worked on a large development sheet and I feel like it's one of the strongest things I've done so far and it's something that I intend to carry on using rather than where I used to retreat into my sketchbook I feel the larger sheets give me much more freedom. One of the things i'm most proud of in this module is that I've worked with a different media for my final piece in each project, This is a big change from the way I used to work where I would rely on fine liners for almost everything I did but changing from this has made my work so much stronger in my opinion. some of the strongest pieces that I've done for this module have been digital and this is something I definitely want to explore in my next project.

I think one of the initial weaknesses in my work for this module was that I would always do development work in my sketchbook rather than on a development sheet and I think this really hurt some of my initial planning, but I addressed this with my final brief and I feel my planning for this was much stronger in addition to working on development sheets I've also bought an A3 sketchbook so even if I do choose to work in it I have a bit more freedom. One of the other weaknesses with my work from this project is I do tend to jump from my initial ideas straight into my final piece but I think this is more down to time constraints, So hopefully for the next project i'll have more time to fully realize and develop my ideas before jumping in. Next time I also intend to rely less on brush pens in my development of ideas as although they help me get my ideas down quickly I feel like i'm becoming much too reliant on them as a media for ideas and I need to use a bit more variety. For my next project I hope to explore digital line work and line quality as we'll have more time to develop ideas i'll be able to explore this in more detail as I was starting to in the final brief. I think most of the things that I feel were weak or that I would have done differently were starting to be done by my final project as I was looking at my feedback and evaluations from the project before and taking it in to account for the next project and changing what needed to be changed in my process. The last thing that I feel I've really improved on throughout this project is the use of my blog as at the start i was really struggling with it i feel tha now i'm much more used to it I feel I have to spend less time working out how to use it I can focus on the brief much more.

Overall I've really enjoyed this module and I started to enjoy it more and more with each brief which I think really shows in my final pieces as I think they've become stronger and stronger with each brief we did and I hope to carry this on with the next module.

Visual Skills Final Crit

Visual Skills Studio Brief 4 Final Piece Peer Feedback

Visual Skills Studio Brief 4 Final Piece

 This is my final piece for this brief i'm fairly happy with how it's turned out although I would have much preferred to do it digitally as I originally planned , due to not doing it digitally I decided not to include colour or the text and i think this has harmed the piece slightly but I think I would have ruined the pieces by adding colour using a traditional method as i'm not as confident as i would have been working in Photoshop. If i were to do the piece again I would not have cross hatched and shaded the piece so I would have had more time to experiment with colour and might have been able to add it and I think this would have made the pieces much stronger than the cross hatching did, although one of the best decisions I made one this project is to add the black background as it really makes the cross hatching and the figures stand out I just wish the finish was slightly more even for it. After this project the part I most enjoyed was working digitally so  that's something I definitely want to return to and I think it had some of the strongest results out of the work I've done so far. In Hindsight I also think that the composition might have worked better if I would have had all the characters coming out from the center rather than facing each other as it looks too much like there about too fight which takes it too far away from the quote in my opinion. I think I would have also picked one of my other initial ideas as I bit of a bit more than I could chew with this project, to include so many characters and crosshatch it was overly ambitious I should have picked a different idea I would have had more time to experiment with.

Visual Skills Studio Brief 4 Brush Pen Experimentation

I did a practice brush pen version of my final piece over my printed out digital outline, I'm happy with how this turned out but I think the fine liner version was much stronger.

Visual Skills Studio Brief 4 Peer Feedback

Visual Skills Studio Brief 4 Blue Line Art

This is some of my sketched out digital layer that I plan to print out and put on the light box and sketch over to get the base for the characters and then I will work into them using fine liners and brush pens. ( the black line is the divide between the 3 pieces)

Visual Skills Studio Brief 4 Digital Line Art

This was going to be some of the final line art for my final piece for this brief but due to problems with not being able to get the piece printed in time I've had to change my original plan and go back to working in a  traditional media to be able to work at the scale I wanted to. I was really happy with how well the line art for this turned out and as you can see the line quality was starting to get stronger as I went along, as Gandalf was the final thing I did and the line art for it was definitely the best out of the 4 characters if I was to carry on I would have added darker shadows onto the characters as well.

Visual Skills Studio Brief 2 Sky Photoshop

 For this image I prefer the lighter textured version, I think the darker image is too dark, there's too much of a contrast between the dark and the light although i think both of these are a great improvement over the original version.

Original

Visual Skills Studio Brief 2 T-shirt Photoshop

 I think for this image I prefer the textured version as I think limited use of it really makes it stand out.

Original

Visual Skills Studio Brief 2 Cat Photoshop

 I'm not as happy with this one as the other ones I've done, But i think this is more down to the original line art than it is the use of Photoshop. Again i think the clean bold colour works better than the textured version though.

Original

Visual Skills Studio Brief 2 Cape Photoshop

 My favorite out of these two is definitely the one with the texture underneath as I think it really adds something to the image although I do really like the bold colours of the first image.

Original

Visual Skills Studio Brief 2 Pikachu Photoshop

               

3 different versions of my pikachu R that i used for my final piece I think my favorite is the simple white one with the bold outline and white background as i think it's the most visually striking.

Original

Visual Skills Studio Brief 4 Development Sheets

For this project I decided to work on separate sheets for my development work rather than in my sketchbook as i felt i was restricting myself by working to such a small format. I also felt that i needed to do more development work for this brief as i think this is something I've been neglecting in the other briefs.











I'm really proud of this first development sheet i think the larger scale has really helped me get all my ideas out on to one page, and seeing them all together has helped me start to merge some of the ideas and work out which parts work and which don't work as well.

Visual Skills Studio Brief 4 Sketchbook Work

The first thing I did for this project after I decided my quote was to come up with ideas for the format and how I could incorporate the text, I did this because I felt as though my work is a lot stronger working to a specified border.

Visual Skills Studio Brief 3 Self Evaluation

Visual skills Studio Brief 3 Peer Feedback

Visual Skills Studio Brief 3 Final Pieces

These are the preliminary versions of my final pieces I plan to work on the again slightly using a black marker to add the striped t-shirt commonly associated with a burglar, i'm quite happy with how they've turned out.

Visual skills Studio Brief 3 Development

One of the first things I did to start to develop my final piece was go into Photoshop and experiment with fully digital artwork, I really liked the result of this although I felt that at this point it was taking too much time and due to illness I was starting to run out of time the other problem was that the artwork looked to clean and i would have spent too long in Photoshop trying to correct it.

Next I scanned in some of my development work in and started to experiment with this in Photoshop although i was still working digitally it was a completely different approach although the same visual concept was there. i experimented with different composition and colour combinations, I liked the results of these as i felt they had a much more lo-fi approach to them and i felt that they fit the article much more than the first piece but fully digital is something i definitely want to come back to.