Extended Practice Comic Pitch

Here is the line art for my collaborative comic pitch, I forgot to post it when I first did it but now looking back there's a lot that I want to change. I'm going to do another post with an annotated version of the comic pointing out each bit that needs changing. We've decided for the pitch we're going to have the art in black and white and focus on getting it to be perfect then we'll propose that we'd work with a colourist for the final cover here is my attempt at colouring the page which is okay but i don't think it makes the pages stronger so it made sense to focus on the line art.

Extended Practice The Last of Us Print

I tried to produce a print to go with my zine, where as my zine will be inspired by the Last of Us this is very much just fan art. I'm not really sure wether this works as a print. I might leave this to print until last and only do it if I have time. I think the text feels a bit tacked on and even the drawing is a bit undefined.

Extended Practice Thought Bubble Zine Cover

This is my first attempt at my zine cover, I'm quite happy with how it's turned out but it's more in the sketch stage at the moment I'm going to contact a graphic designer and get some feedback on what they would change as I appreciate I'm not the best at judging type but i think the contrast between the brush type and the Gotham bold font for my name works really well, I'm going to put my contact details on the back as I wanted to keep the front simple and minimalist.

I'm going to screen print the covers with metallic silver ink onto black card, This will help give my zine a premium feel even though the inside pages will be photocopied. Hopefully the silver ink will make this stand out more.

Extended Practice Football Illustration

Here are some more illustrations I did for the football body of work brief, I'm happy with how these are turning out but I think I really need to start pushing this forward and I need to start experimenting more with different brushes. I want to work on more expressive pieces as well I think the Alexis Sanchez piece form the last post is the best one because of the expression on his face and I'm really happy with how well I captured it. I'm going to do some more research and look for better reference imagery, I want to do some illustrations based on football shirt designs and boots rather than just focusing on players, this will allow me to try and make some more shape based work.

Extended Practice Thought Bubble Cyberman Print

This is one of my prints I've worked on for Thought Bubble, I'm really happy with how it's turned out. I based the print on the original design for the Cybermen from Doctor Who, I based the print on the original design from the 1960's I love the design of the original Cybermen and think they're so much more creepy than the designs now. I'm going to have a go at screen printing this design Im going to do two versions one in black onto white paper which will be the standard version, i'm also going to have a go at doing a print in silver ink onto either dark blue or black paper similar to how I worked last year in OUIL504.

Extended Practice Type Treatment

This is the type I came up with for the cover of my comic I'm really happy with how it turned out I used the same typeface for this as I did for my Zine cover but for this I added some smaller text underneath in Gotham that really helps offset the brush type. I'm starting to really enjoy working with type and layout and I feel that in this project this is the part I've enjoyed the most due to the stressful workload.

Extended Practice Roughs

These are some roughs I did for prints based on videogames such as Journey, Portal and Shadow of the colossus.

Extended Practice Thought Bubble Contextual Research

As part of my research fro Thought Bubble I've been looking at a couple of artists and styles fro pop culture work that sells well, I've looked at people like Matt Taylor and others who work for Mondo Tees and I want to start to produce stuff similar.

https://uk.pinterest.com/josephshiels94/high-end-film-posters/
(I've had to post a link as for some reason Pinterest refuses to embed on my blog at the moment.)

Extended Practice Football Culture Illustrations

These are my first attempts at producing work for my Football Culture Body of Work brief I'm really happy with how these have turned out the Jurgen Klopp image is one of my favourite pieces of work I've produced. I think the detail works well with the bold blocks of shape with out losing any of the detail. These are the types of image I want to produce for this brief though I definitely don't want to keep the brief exclusively to world class footballers I think it would be really interesting to contrast these with grass roots football, I want it to be a celebration of football as a whole and not just professional football.

Extended Practice Football Culture Brief

Brief Title - Football Culture Body of Work

Brief - This brief is to produce a body of work based around the them of football culture this will vary widely and can focus on anything from the players to the fans, anything related to football will be used. I intend to create a body of work that explores this theme from grass roots uni league football all the way up to the champions league.

Product - The project will end with a big body of work that explores football culture that towards the end of the year will be turned into a publication this will neatly work as part of a collaboration with a graphic designer though I haven't organised one yet.

Tone of Voice - The tone of voice will vary from each piece of illustration depending on the piece,  but all the pieces will be connected through the aesthetics I want to keep a simple stylish aesthetic for all the pieces and this could lead me to using the same set of brushes for all the images and exploring creating digital imagery in a much more  experimental way than I'm used to.

Audience - There isn't really a specified audience for this brief as I will be making the body of work initially to explore a medium and subject though I think the audience will become evident towards the end when I put the product together and it won't simply just be football fans.

Context - I think my main two touching points for the aesthetic side of this project are Soccer Bible and Rabona both are high end Football Design magazines that place a big importance on football culture and are well designed publications.

Additional Notes - This project will allow me to create a body of work that will fill out my portfolio and allow me to just create imagery based on a subject rather than with an end product in mind.

Deliverables - 
A body of work based on football culture exploring digital image making.

Extended Practice Thought Bubble Brief

Brief Title - Thought Bubble 2015

Brief - I have booked a table for Thought Bubble 2015 and will need to produce a body of work to sell, this will include a set of prints and at least one zine. The products will vary based on the amount of time I have to produce the work to sell. I will also need to produce promotional materials so I can market myself throughout the event.

Product - A set of prints and zines based on pop culture, including prints based on The Last of Us, Sherlock, Star Wars and Doctor Who. The Doctor Who print will be created in collaboration with Tom Roberts and we will split the profits 50/50.

Tone of Voice - The tone of voice will depend on each prints subject, my style and colour schemes will tie the pieces together to give them a unified aesthetic. The majority of the work will be fan art though as this is what sells best so the characters and images have to be recognisable.

Audience - The audience for Thought Bubble is vary varied but I'd say the main audience is Males between 16 - 35, These will be people who are obsessed with pop culture and are much more likely to buy a print based of something like Star Wars.

Context - The work will be sold at Thought Bubble and then after that I'll be looking to set up an online store to sell the prints that I have left over.

Additional Notes - I don't at this point have work that I've created based on my own characters that I'm happy to sell, so I need to focus on fan art but hopefully this is the only time this year that i will need to produce fan art.

Deliverables - 
A set of Prints to sell at Thought Bubble
At least one zine

Extended Practice Football Programmes Brief

Brief Title - Football Program Cover Redesigns

Brief - This brief is to produce a set of football program covers the covers will be made in collaboration with graphic designer Matthew Brewer. The aim of the brief is to design a set of four programs for two sets of rival teams... Liverpool, Everton, Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday. I will more than likely design multiple covers for each team to give a better idea of how the cover designs would work over a season.

Product - The main product produced would be 4 football programme products, Matthew Brewer will be in control of finding the stock and getting the products printed as this falls into his side of the projects.

Tone of Voice - The programmes will be aimed at football fans on match day so we need to consider that in our designs, I think the best way to go is to make the covers colourful and vibrant taking into account each teams colours and basing the covers around that colour scheme. I think it would be a good idea to look at programmes of previous years especially years where the teams have been successful and try and incorporate some of those design elements into our programmes.

Audience - The audience for our programmes are fans of the teams picking up a programme on there way into the stadium so this is more than likely males 16 - 60, I know this is a big audience but I think the designs can appeal to them all as they all have football in common, The project is aimed aa any specific football fans more than any age group.

Context - We will do research into the history of each team and city to see if there are any more elements into the cover, It's really important for these covers to capture a sense of the cities and the fans.

Additional Notes - This will be my first experience of working with a graphic designer so it could be a really good opportunity to get some experience for when I leave uni.

Deliverables - 
4 sets of illustrations to be placed on the cover of football programs for 4 teams.

Extended Practice Statement of Intent

Rationale

Over the course of this year I really want to develop a few of my skills, the first skill I want to develop is my leadership skills, I think this is a really valuable skill to have as working in the creative industries I think it is essential that you can take on a leadership role in a project. This skill will make me infinitely more employable and also leaves me in a good position if I was looking to start my own company or if I was working as a creative director or project manager.

The second skill I want to develop is my collaborative practice, I think this goes hand in hand with developing my leadership skills. I think this is really important to develop as when I leave uni I will more than likely be working in collaboration with someone else wether it be a graphic designer, editor or as part of a studio. I want to develop these skills as again I think it will benefit me greatly when I leave uni, It will make my much more employable when I leave uni.

The third thing I want to develop this year is my sequential work, This is essential because I feel like this is the logical next step in my practice. I want to produce a body of work that exhibits my skills in sequential illustration, I will examine the way a page should flow together and look at composition and colour. This is all about getting my work published and out there in the industry where i can start to build up a public presence for my work.

The main thing I need out of this is to develop a diverse portfolio of work that I feel accurately sums up my areas of interest within illustration. The most important thing i've learnt from looking back at my work from last year is that i want to avoid doing fan art as much as possible, the only brief I should do anything near fan art for is the Thought Bubble prints.

Themes / Subjects

There are two main themes and subjects that I want to explore and I feel are or will become essential over the next year. The first theme is Cinematic work and I don’t mean this in that I’ll start making filmed work, What I really want to do is capture the cinematic feel of some of my earlier work in the first year such as my Vietnam piece. I feel like this is going to be a big part of what makes my sequential work stand out, to do this I’m going to be looking more and more at cinematography and it’s role within sequential work.

The second subject is Football, I’ve made no secrets of being a big football fan and I think that the two football pieces I’ve created over my time on the course are two of the strongest pieces I made at the times I made them, I think this is a really good subject for me to examine and will add some diversity to my portfolio as I don’t to be pigeonholed into just doing sequential work.

Products / Methods of Distribution

I think this will vary from project to project, for my narrative work I really want to find a synthesis between digital and printed distribution. To me the printed version will be the definitive edition though I would crazy to ignore the possibilities of digital distribution, I really want to have a go at adding some small animated elements to the digital versions of my comics. I think the main point for me is to make diverse work that will work both ways and will work in print and digitally.

Practical Skills / Media / Formats

I think this will again depend on the project, I will more than likely work digitally for the most part this year but I think it’s important for me to find a way to incorporate traditional medias into my work as I feel that sometimes my work can feel too digital and sterile. I really want to develop my design and typography skills over the year as well as I feel this is a skill that can really make my work stand out as a freelance illustrator.

Extended Practice Cover Feedback Matt Taylor

I emailed Matt Taylor as part of the PPP module to get his opinion on what makes a good comic cover but I sent him the cover and he gave me some good feedback...

This was pretty much what I was planning for the image but it's a bit of an ego boost to get good feedback from someone who is well established in the industry.

Extended Practice Cover

This was my third attempt at the cover, I'm really happy with how this image is progressing and I think the colour scheme will make the image really stand out. There are still bits that need improving such as the two front characters faces need redoing and I want to add some texture to the background before adding type. I'm really happy with the way the lighting has come out in this image though there are still little bits that need tweaking. I think I'm also going to be using this image as my piece for the Travelling man Exhibition over Though Bubble.

Extended Practice Cover Rough 2

This was my second attempt at the cover, I'm much happier with how this version turned out but i still thought there was something wrong with it even though it was much more in line with what i was doing for the page roughs. The typography in this poster again isn't great but I was planning on asking a graphic designer to help with it when I'd worked on the illustration, the type was based on old railway posters to match the english aesthetic we were going for with the comic.

Extended Practice Cover Rough

This is the first version of the cover I did I'm not really happy with how it was going so I decided to redo the cover, I did this before I did the rough pages and in that time I decided to change the male characters hair cut to a more militaristic and practical style to fit the comic and the writers vision of the character, also the type on this version is pretty awful but it was only to give the writer a rough idea.

Extended Practice Comic Roughs

I think one of the real benefits of this project being collaborative has been that it stops me letting the idea run away from me as usually when I'm plotting or starting a comic it keeps getting bigger and bigger but working from a script has really helped me but I've still had a lot of input in the general plot and setting but the writer takes on the characters motivations and makes sense of my rambling. With the pages I was trying to keep the panels and dialogue really tight to build up the tension then as the boat begins to crash and the male character dives off the boat the panels get much bigger and expansive to add a sense of scale.

Extended Practice Comic Characters

These were the first two designs I sent over to the writer of the comic proposal we're working on, these were very rough but they give the writer a good idea of the aesthetic of the characters and allows him to base there personality around that. The costumes are designed to look like they could have easily been scavenged, I think I need to change the white on the women's t-shirt as after 30 years I don't think there'd be any clean white t-shirts left, the clothes are designed for warmth as at the start of the series the characters are coming to England after a hard winter in France.

Extended Practice Comic Rough Layouts

Extended Practice Character Development

Extended Practice Visual Comic Research

This is a lot of visual research I did for the comic, These type of images are really influencing my work on this brief and the designs of the characters.

Extended Practice Comic Contextual Research

As part of this brief I looked back at some of my influences from first year and their comic work, Though my taste in illustration has changed a lot I still feel it's interesting to look back at these boards and consider what I though of as successful comic book illustration work.

https://uk.pinterest.com/josephshiels94/sequential/
https://uk.pinterest.com/josephshiels94/covers/

(Pinterest won't embed.)

Extended Practice Image Comics Brief (The Potential Big Kahuna)

Brief Title - Image Comics Series Proposal

Brief - This brief is to produce a proposal for a new comic series that will then be pitched to image Comics at Thought Bubble if they do pitch reviews again, If not the pitch will be sent via there submissions site after receiving feedback from pros at Thought Bubble 2015. I will be working in collaboration with a writer, so he will take on all the writing duties though I have had significant input into the plot and the concept.

Product - The main product to be produced is a 7 page preview of the comic and also to produce a cover, though I will also need to produce a cover letter and a pitch as part of the package, though I'm working with a writer for this my main job will be to make it look good.

Tone of Voice - The comic is set in post apocalyptic Britain thirty years after 80% of the population disappeared, the way we've tried to make our comic unique from the other post apocalyptic comics out there is that ours is going to be quintessentially British and we really want to try and find the beauty in the British apocalypse where as many other post apocalyptic media is based in deserts we want our comic to contrast these, It's also a story about survival. This will mean I'll be looking at beautiful landscapes and vibrant colours.

Audience - The audience for our comic is 16 - 35 year olds, mainly British people but I think our version of Britain is the idyllic idea of Britain that will also apply to an American audience. I want to keep the audience gender neutral as i feel the emerging female market of comics like Saga is a big market we could tap in to and strong female characters are a big part of the comic.

Context - I want to create a comic in a similar vein to series such as Y the Last Man and Saga by Brian K. Vaughn and Zero and Wolf by Ales Kot and Matt Taylor. The Great Salt Lake by Matt Taylor is another touchstone for the series.

Additional Notes - This comic has the potential to become my big kahuna as this will only be the start of the comic and I would very much like to continue it after sending the pitch to Image Comics.

Deliverables - 
1 Comic Book Cover
7 Sequential Pages
1 Cover Letter
1 Plot Summary
A Series of Character Designs

Extended Practice Briefs

Brief - Design and Print work to sell at Thought Bubble 2015

2 The Last of Us Prints

1 Summer Zine with Screen Printed Covers

1 Boba Fett Print

1 Sherlock Screen Print

1 Collaborative Doctor Who Print (Zoom Illustration)

This is the minimum of work I want to produce to sell at Thought Bubble, the majority of this will be fan art as that is what tends to sell best at Thought Bubble. I may look to produce more prints of original work depending on time constraints. All this work needs to be finished and printed by the 14th November at the latest.

Brief - Complete a Comic Proposal for Image Comics (Collaborative Brief)

1 Cover

6 Sequential Pages

1 Cover Letter

1 Written Plot Summary

A set of Character Designs

This is a brief I’ve been working on with Ewan Moore who is a writer from Nottingham, We’re looking to putting together a pitch for Image Comics and we’ll then look to get a pitch review with them at Thought Bubble, which means this brief will need to be finished by the start of November. Worst case scenario we would be looking to talk to the editors at Thought Bubble and then emailing them our pitch. I’d be looking to extend this brief after the deadline as well and finish at least the first issue by the end of 3rd year.

Brief - Football Program Covers (Collaborative Brief)

4 Unique Football Program Covers

• Liverpool
• Everton
• Sheffield Wednesday
• Sheffield United

This is a brief I have negotiated and agreed on with Matthew Brewer on BA (Hons) Graphic Design, We agreed to produce 4 covers for 2 sets of rival teams he chose Sheffield Utd and Wednesday and I chose Liverpool and Everton. I think this is a really good opportunity for a portfolio piece as I’d like to do more football based work alongside the comic book work.

Brief - Football Style Illustrations

A 16 page Zine based on Football Fashion and Design

I think this brief can run in the background for the year and I can gradually add to it, I want to focus on football shirt and boot design. I will design this as a mock brief for the Soccer Bible or Rabona as they are publications that I aspire to work for and they have big sections on football design and culture.

Brief - War Horse Folio Society illustrations

3 Full page Illustrations

1 Binding Design

I want to do this project as I want to produce some book covers, the only problem is as my first two briefs need to be done by November and then after that I’ll need to focus on my dissertation it leaves very little time to do this brief as it’s in on the 18th January. This could be a great project though as Folio Society and House of Illustration are both well known and well thought of companies.

Brief - Film Posters for the LCA Film Society

A series of Posters throughout the year.

Alongside 3 other people on the course we’ve decided to take over the film society, This could be a good opportunity to design some posters for our screenings and gives the posters a reason to exist rather than just being fan art. This is also another brief that can run in the background throughout the year, I need to talk to Adam about this though as he is the president and i’m not sure how the society is going to be run yet so this is all speculation.

Brief - Travelling Man Leeds Exhibition

1 A2 poster

This is a brief to produce a piece of work to be exhibited in Travelling Man whilst Thought Bubble is on. This could be a great opportunity to get my work seen by a wide variety of people working in the comic industry as Travelling Man acts as a hub around this time. I still need to get more details on this brief and what the subject of the exhibition will be or if I can use one of my pages for my comic as my piece.