Responsive Final Evaluation

This module has been really interesting and has broadened my view of how I'll be working when I leave university, I feel like a lot of the briefs that I've taken on aren't something that I would have been initially comfortable taking especially ones such as the collaborative brief and the political poster. I think because I broadened what I did there's been some really interesting and unique results especially for the collaborative brief where we produced a design for an app.

I think my process has changed a lot for this brief as well due to the way I work and the shortness of the majority of these briefs I feel that I streamlined my practice a lot to get the work finished, so instead of spending a lot of time on the initial drawings and developing the design I dived in straight to the final image which I think in some cases has worked really well and others not so much like the political poster I feel like that could have done with some more forethought about where the text was going to go and the balance of the image. I think the strongest piece I produced were the Little White Lies Studio Ghibli piece and the BBC Radio 2 Artist in Residence brief as I think these are the briefs where I had the strongest concept and the most time to produce the final outcomes. The way I work is very time consuming and therefore it took me a lot of time to produce the work for the briefs making my normal process unusable it also lead to me having very few entries for each brief where as most people had multiple entries for briefs like the Film Doo one because of the way I work and the time invested in my pieces I don't have enough time to do multiple entries fro each brief I like to focus on one and make it the best I possible can so I'm more likely to win.

I feel like I've learned a lot from some of these briefs especially the Off the Page and Pantone briefs as working in collaboration was something that I really wasn't used to and I had two very different experiences on the one hand working in a larger group with everyone trying to put in there ideas was chaotic and didn't work where as the Pantone brief where I was only working with Olivia worked out much better as I felt we were both on the same page and we had a very clear idea of what we were trying to produce for our final outcome this lead to a much smoother project. For the Off the Page brief our tutor was also acting as an art director which was an interesting experience as due to lack of communication errors were made and we had to go back to the drawing board and the designs we made were scrapped, which was a very different experience as an image you've been working on and become attached to gets scrapped, It's taught me not to get too attached to the more commercial work I do as it could change at the drop of a hat.

Overall I'm really happy with the majority of the work I've produced for this brief and feel that some of it is the best work I've ever produced particularly the Radio 2 piece though I feel it is becoming slightly too much like Matt Taylor's work so I think I need to take a step back from that and look at how I can still use that process as I think it was really successful but also keep my own unique tone of voice as I don't want to just be a copy of some one like Matt Taylor. I feel like working to strict deadlines has taught me a lot as well as these were much shorter than the deadlines I'm used to it forced me to think about the way I work and what I produce.

Responsive Project Report

Responsive Pantone Individual Board

I feel the individual board for this brief isn't particularly necessary for this brief as I feel we both had a hand in a majority of the work and there are ideas from each of us in each others work, I think the final boards we submitted are a much better reflection of our work on the brief.

Repsonsive Syfy Final Boards

These are my final boards for the Syfy brief and I'm really happy with how they've turned out the designs are completely different to what I expected to produce for this brief but I still feel like it's been a success I even think after changing my idea for the final pieces half way through the brief that the first half wasn't a waste of time as the initial idea informed my final work. I also got a lot of experience with applying the design to a range of products I think the most successful ones were the website advertisements and the Ident which I made using some of the skills with after effects that I learned in Process and Production module.

 

Responsive Individual Briefs

Responsive Entry Receipts

Film Doo

https://www.behance.net/gallery/25567007/Star-Wars-The-Empire-Strikes-Back-Poster?unverified=1

Pantone

Syfy

For the rest of my briefs I sent them off but I didn't receive confirmation emails for any of them. 

Responsive Pantone Developed Boards

Responsive Pantone Home Screens

These are the 2 designs I did for the home screen of the app, I was considering which Locations would be recognisable to people in Leeds so I did the Broadcasting Tower and the main building of Leeds uni, I do think these images lean the images slightly more towards a uni student demographic but we can always propose more locations that would widen the demographic.

This was a third design that I started to develop that I felt wasn't working so I decided to abandon the idea and I did the broadcasting tower instead.

Responsive Pantone Crit Feedback

Responsive Pantone Initial Boards

These are the initial boards I designed for our crit, in retrospect they were far too simple and definitely should have included more text explaining our idea. It also includes an example of Olivia's half of the brief using some of her previous work she mocked up the kind of idea we had for the map side of the app.

Responsive Pantone Creative Agreement

Why have you chosen to work with your creative partner? What are your aims?
I chose to work with my creative partner because I wanted to work with someone who is easy to work and get along with I also wanted to work with someone who had a distinctively different tone of voice to myself. I also struggle with colour as I am colour blind but I think working with someone who has a good handle on colour will really help.	I have chosen to work with Joe because their work compliments mine and I feel would work well together. Joe is also easy to get along with and doesn’t feel that his view is always the best. He also has good design skills.
What are your specific areas of creative interest in this brief?
I’m really interested in visually exploring leeds and a more grounded approach to illustration, I’m also interested in drawing Architecture and exploring making a mock up of an app.	I am interested in exploring the application of this brief- making it fit an app, putting it in context etc.
What specific creative skills do you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief? How do you intend to use them?
I have good technical skills that I intend to use and I’m also well adapted to working digitally which will be a real strong suit when it comes to putting together the mock ups for the app.	I am good at working digitally, making mockups and applying my skills to solve a brief. I can use colour well and from previous experience I can use process to solve a brief.

What specific non-design skills do you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief? How do you intend to use them?
I’m good at time keeping and time management, which will be useful for this brief, I’m also reliable and can be depended on.	I feel that I am organised with my time and the job at hand, I am hard working and won’t finish the job until it looks excellent. I can compromise on my ideas and am open to new ideas.
What will your specific roles be in the collaboration in relation to your brief?
All roles will be split equally.	All roles will be split equally.
What will your individual responsibilities be in relation to your brief?
My individual roles will include making sure I turn up for sessions, keeping up with my documentation and making sure that I do my fair share of the work.	My individual role in this brief will be to manage my own blog and document all work. I will also turn up to all timetable sessions and make sure my share of work is done for that time.
What will your joint responsibilities be?
Making sure the work is finished in an orderly and on time fashion to a high, professional standard…and to win the competition.

Responsive Studio Ghibli Feedback

I got some really great feedback on my piece from the art directors at Little White Lies, as I came runner up for this brief my image got featured on there website and they explained why they chose me as runner up.

http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/features/articles/the-tale-of-the-princess-kaguya-creative-brief-winner-29617

Responsive The Guardian Final Board

Responsive Off the Page Final Boards

Responsive Studio Ghibli Final Boards

Responsive Breaking Bad Boards

Responsive Film Doo Boards

Responsive BBC Radio 2 Final Board

Responsive Political Brief Final Piece

I'm not really happy with how this image has turned out especially the text so I think i'm going to contact a friend on graphic design and get them to help me revise the text on it. I might also go back and redo parts of the image just so i'm a bit happier with it before I send it in.

Responsive The Guardian Political Poster

I decided to do a political poster for this brief as theres been a lot of talk about the election recently. I was stuck deciding wether to do a poster that celebrates the green party or slags off David Cameron and the conservatives. I decided to do a new version of a piece I did last year for a brief where I had d
David Cameron in a bandit mask and a striped t-shirt with the slogan "Fuck off back to Eton" from the viral video.

 

Responsive BBC Radio 2 Final Piece

These are the two final versions of my piece that I created, I can't decide at the moment which one I prefer I'm leaning towards the image on the right with little bit's of line work added as I feel the one on the left lacks a bit of definition in some areas. I'm really happy with how this piece turned out and i'm definitely going to be using this technique again to create work for 505. I decided to keep the colour very simple and just have a block background colour so I don't overdo the image, but I feel it works really well contrasted with the black and white figure.

Responsive BBC Radio 2 Initial Drawing

This was my initial drawing for my piece I decided to make it as detailed as possible to make working on the final piece as easy as possible. Early on I decided I wanted to base this piece on a musician but I didn't want to do just another guitar band, so I decided to focus on someone who had a unique look and was interesting to draw so I decided on Janelle Monae and looked on Flickr for rights free reference images to use. When I finished this sketch I was thinking about sending it in as my final piece because I was so happy with how it turned out but I decided to push on and if the final piece didn't work out I could always send this as there aren't any guidelines as to what the work should be that you send in.

Responsive BBC Radio 2 Artist in Residence

I wanted to apply for this job as Artist in residence for BBC radio 2 as I thought it would be a great opportunity, I think this is more of a job application than a brief so I'm not sure if it falls into Responsive but I decided to put it in as they ask you to send them a piece of work along with a cv and letter about why you want the job. I decided I wanted to create  a new piece of work to send in as I felt that I didn't have any work that I felt happy sending in so I set out with the express intention of creating my best piece of work.

Responsive Film Doo Final Poster

This is my final poster I created for this brief I'm really happy with how it turned out, I decided to take a much simpler approach to this image than I did the "It's a Wonderful Life" poster, I went for a shape based approach and based it on a specific scene where Darth Vader is leaving his meditation chamber. For the text on this image I decided to take a similar approach to my work for OUIL504 so I put a border around the image and put text across the bottom and kept it very simple. I also kept the colour very minimal the entire image is black and white except the panel on Darth Vader's chest which I think really pops out and draws your eye to it, due to the detail being very minimal on the character it helps keep him recognisable.

Responsive Film Doo Contextual Research

For this brief I went back and looked at a board I created for PPP earlier in the year that contained research into film posters specifically looking at Mondo posters and high end screen printed posters, I think this was a really good starting point for this brief and informed my direction with the brief.

 Follow Joe's board High-end Film Posters on Pinterest.

Responsive Film Doo Initial Ideas

These are two very rough Ideas I had for posters based on Back to the Future 2 and Interstellar, The BttF poster was going to have the futuristic town in the background but I felt like as I was working on the rough version it wasn't turning out how I imagined so I quickly moved away from the idea. The Interstellar poster idea was based on the dyson cylinder from the climax of the film as I felt the imagery for it was so striking but the problem was the film was yet to come out on dvd and it is only fleetingly in the film which made finding reference images very hard to find and due to the perspective of the image I would have been really struggling to produce a poster I was proud of  without reference images, so I decided to shelf this idea and potentially come back to it for Though Bubble next year.   

This Last idea is based on the film It's a Wonderful Life I was really proud of how this image was turning out though I was having to spend a ridiculous amount of time getting it to look how it does I quickly started to realise that I wasn't going to be able to do the rest of the image justice at this point and I didn't want to compromise on quality so like the Interstellar poster I decided to self it and come back to it at a later time I also was having trouble with how I was going to incorporate text into the image.

Responsive Studio Ghibli Development

I'm really happy with how this brief turned out and I think it's one of my strongest pieces I've produced, I tried really hard to keep my tone of voice whilst still keeping the style of the Studio Ghibli world, I decided early on to use a similar process to my Syfy brief in that I worked almost entirely in shape and in greyscale to begin with then overlayed a colour. as you can see on the second slide I did also attempt to incorporate a watercolour element that would have gained bonus points as specified in the brief though I felt that this would make a much weaker final image than if I did bold block colours which I did in the end. I also tried a version where I incorporated more line work but I felt it was distracting from the final image and removed it.

Responsive Off the Page Development

This is the final poster I produced I'm not really happy with how it's tuned out and I feel it could have been much stronger, the final image has come out looking much too static compared to the thumbnail which I think is the best representation of the idea. I think a lot of what doesn't work about this design is down to the limited time span I had to create the image whilst also handing in another module at the same time, If I had more time it would have been much easier to redo the final poster.

Responsive Off the Page Development

These are my initial designs I did for the brief I was asked to produce a rough design and at this point we didn't have a finalised design for the layout so I did a rough quick one in photoshop of what we'd previously discussed, I was really happy with the design at this point as I felt i'd managed to capture the ethos of the event really well and the screen being pulled from the book and going "off the page" worked really well there was a few problems though as the design got changed the design no longer went of the page and it became harder as the colour scheme changed to get the design to work.

We were all asked to produce a logo that could be used on the posters and related ephemera I went for something that was simple and easy to read at multiple sizes, I don't think the logo is great as I feel it's a bit plain it's functional but it's not exciting.

Responsive Off The Page Contextual Research

For this brief I looked at a lot of Saul Bass posters as for this I wanted to convey the message through a simple image that would be easily followed and will stand out as a poster, I feel like I was fairly successful with this though my image came out looking nothing like Saul Bass which I think is a good thing as I don't want to just copy his style I just took the mentality of his images and tried to apply it to my own work which I think it is debatable how well it turned out.

Responsive Breaking Bad Contextual Research

For the Breaking Bad brief I looked a lot at this board which I've been keeping over that last year where I saved some of my favourite illustration as the brief was quite open I felt like there was a lot of room for me to explore producing an illustration in any way I wanted and in the end I feel similar to the Syfy brief I was influenced by Matt Taylor and for this brief I again tried to merge line work and shape which I feel was much more successful than it was on my first attempt.

Follow Joe's board Based on Pinterest.

Responsive Syfy Contextual Research

For this brief and the way I was working initially I looked at the way Matt Taylor worked and the use of colour and shape after his Big Heads talk which I thought was really interesting and there was a lot of things that were starting to be incorporated into my practice.

Responsive Syfy Idea Change

Half way through this brief I changed my idea to focus more on branding for the Syfy channel than just doing a billboard illustration as I felt like this wasn't really working for the brief so I decided to focus on the pattern I'd been using in my illustration and to take it refine it and make it appropriate to a variety of products that would help the Syfy channel further there brand values such as more refined and targeted advertising at the specified target audience which already knows the Syfy channel exists having billboards at underground stations wouldn't really be targeting this audience specifically.

Responsive Syfy Peer Feedback

I got some really constructive feedback about my project so far and a lot of it was very encouraging I think at the moment I just need to push on and carry on developing the final piece and then see how it can be applied to a range of outcomes I also need to think about how it's going to work at a billboard scale.

Responsive Syfy Initial Design Boards

These are my initial design boards for the Syfy brief it includes my first attempt at putting the design in to context which in hindsight I haven't done very well.

Responsive Syfy Initial Ideas

These are my initial designs and work for the Syfy brief I feel like this piece is a big departure from the way I usually work in that I was primarily focused on working with shape rather than focusing on line work, Though you can see from the second slide I did attempt a version that merged the line work and block shapes though I felt this make a much weaker image, you can also see that I did my initial sketch as line work which became a problem when I was trying to work out which area should be which shade. I also worked exclusively in grey scale for this image which I feel was really successful for this image as I wanted the colours to be fairly muted so when I overlayed the colour it made it much easier to do multiple versions with different colours quickly. The final two Images are from a slightly different version where I increased the use of "Kirby crackle" which is an effect regularly used in old comic books to show cosmic energy and is very recognisable as a sci-fi trope while still being subtle. I think it works but the problem is it's making the composition very crowded and confusing which might not work very well for a billboard like I was initially planning.

The image it's self was meant to focus on the two people in the left hand corner watching a tv then behind them it will include lots of different classic sci-fi tropes and characters that are coming from the people's imagination, I think this is shown best in the version where the colour changes after the characters in the final version.

Responsive Syfy Initial Thumbnails

These are my initial sketches for the Syfy brief I think the idea is very clear in my head but because the composition is very dense it's hard to put down on paper until I actually start making the final work, But at this point I feel like i'm ready to crack on with this brief.

Responsive Film Doo Brief Analysis

What problems are identified by the brief?

The brief wants you to create a film poster for any film already released and widely available.

What is the brief asking you to do?

The brief wants you to create a poster the design must be a hi res one sheet at either (686mm x 1020mm) or (762mm x 1020mm) and the final designs will be put on behance as a project.

What is the brief trying to achieve?

The brief wants you to create work that will be exhibited at Cannes film festival should you win which would be a massive opportunity if you win.

Who is the audience?

I think this is dependant on the film you decide to base your poster on but the main audience is probably the judges which are assorted art directors, people in marketing and people related to the film industry.

Why I chose this brief...

I chose this brief because I feel like this plays to a lot of my strengths as an illustrator and if I do win the opportunity to exhibit work at Cannes and design a real film poster would be massive and great exposure.

Responsive Studio Ghibli Brief Analysis

The problems identified by the brief...

The brief wants you to create a design for a folding fan based on a template they provided, all styles are welcome but they will give extra points for styles based on the film "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya". The design must focus on the female characters of the Studio Ghibli universe.

What is the brief asking you to do?

Create a design to fit this template ...

What are they trying to achieve?

They are very general with what is wanted from this brief but from my research into Studio Ghibli the design should be fun and try to capture the light hearted nature of Studio Ghibli films but also have a sense of maturity.

Who is the audience?

Studio Ghibli fans and readers of Little White Lies which probably means it's aimed at an audience that will appreciate the craft put into an image.

Why I chose this brief...

I chose this brief because I feel like it's something I can win and I wanted to explore doing some more shape based work which I think will work well for this brief.