27/05/16

End of project

22/05/16

pin pins pins! (and badges)

I started gluing the pins and pin backs to the little pieces of plastic. At first I used copydex glue, I'd gone to a hardware store and asked the man in there what kind of glue would be best for gluing metal to plastic and he suggested that, however after a day of wearing my little tester pin, it broke! and the glue peeled away like thick pva, so I decided to go with the good old trusty super glue and they seem to be perfectly stuck in place.

I also made a badge order this week, I designed some little circle illustrations and emailed them to 'made by lucy' who made my badges and delivered them to me within a couple days!! super super super easy process, I really want to make more orders from her in the future.

and stickers! I did so much this week it seems, I created the photoshop document for my stickers a couple weeks ago but I've been waiting for a friend to finish her sticker designs so that we could go and use the sticker machine together as it's easier and cheaper to do it in groups, I took our images to the printing room at the knighstone campus and we got the stickers printed, super quick simple and easy. Then all I had to do was cut them out!

So everything has been made! now I just need to package everything, I've bought some ziplock bags to put the badges and stickers in, and I want to place the pins on pieces of card and fasten the pin in place with the pin back. I decided to hand make the packaging and it turned out to be an incredibly painful and tedious process but I got it all done in one day (a WHOLE day of packaging) and they look super cute!

15/05/16

Vista Print

So this was a super simple but very fun process. I already had my images scanned into the computer and all I had to do was create photoshop documents and upload them into vistaprint and try them out on all the different products they had to offer! I made 1 design (for both cacti and sushi) of them just in a line, that I could wrap around mugs and print across postcards etc. after designing those products, I had a look at putting the design on baseball caps! and a few other things.
I then started to create a grid pattern for each illustration to print on the cover of notebooks. After uploading all of these images and placing them onto the products I wanted to order, I just picked how many of each I wanted and payed! I ordered about 5 of the cacti mugs so that I had one for my display and a few to put in a mexican shop in clifton so that I could see how my products would do, selling in actual shops, I also made a few more cacti t-shirts and postcards to put them in the same shop.

I also started the pin making process this week, all I did was create the photoshop document in order to print the images I wanted to make into pins and email it to myself so that I could print it with an inkjet printer once I'd gone home. After printing, cutting and cooking my shrinkle paper and found that the pieces had come out way too dark and a little too big, so I went back into photoshop and edited my documents, I made all the illustrations a little bit smaller (leaving a bit of room to fit a couple more in) and made them all lighter/ brighter so that they would come out the colour I wanted them when I cooked them. They came out perfectly this time, now I need to glue the pins in place.

08/05/16

printing printing printing!

I spent a couple days this week screen printing all my t-shirt and tote-bags, I actually finished all of them a lot quicker than I was expecting to so I have way more time to start everything else.
Having two different screens made the process flow a lot smoother, because whenever I'd finished with one screen/ colour, I would wash it off and leave it to dry while I started printing with the other screen and by the time I'd finished with that one the other would be dry. A couple mistakes were made, but nothing garment ruining, and I quite like the hand made feel it gives them, a couple had little marks of printing ink that had leaked through other parts of the screen, nothing major :)

01/05/16

I found a room! no longer planning for the life of a homeless student :)

Ordered some totebags, t-shirts and shrinkle paper on amazon this week so and a few packages have already arrived, hoping the others will come before the weekend is over. I also printed out some acetate sheets for my screen prints to be made so hoping they'll be ready for my to get started with on tuesday, if not I think I'm gonna get started on some sticker making

24/04/16

So I got into Falmouth Uni, but didn't get into halls. Which is why I spent a lot of my half term working aaand, house hunting. Not really going well, starting to think about how hard it would be to do illustration coursework in a tent...

Got a lot more drawing done over the holidays than I was expecting to and I can't wait to start drawing up designs and start MAKING.

03/04/16

Been doodling lots and lots and think that I've come up with a few good drawings that I can use to design some products, I'm feeling pretty confident with where this project is going although I'm worried that I won't be able to get much done over the easter holidays as I have a lot of shifts at work and a bit of house hunting to get started on!

27/03/16

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT-

I'm definitely feeling excited about this project as I've had a couple good ideas that I'm excited to try and play around with. Part of my project is going to involve lots and lots of doodling! which I do enjoy a lot and tend to procrastinate doing my actual coursework by doodling unrelated things, so hopefully this will mean my procrastination will result in actual work!!

13/03/16

Although I only had 1 week in which to start and finish this 3 week project, I feel as if I've produced a final outcome that I am really happy with, while I haven't managed to include the amount of research in my sketchbook as I could have done with 3 weeks, I am very proud of my self-promo map. I'm also excited about the fact that doing this project helped me realise that I need to stop doing the kind of art I THINK suits the project because of what I've seen done before eg. Childrens books illustrated with watercolours and start creating the kind of work that suits me, this has really helped me with my idea for the final major project.

06/03/16

After having half term, trip to new york, a university interview and some serious jet lag I returned to college with a week and a day left to start and finish a 3 week project, but I think I can manage. Deadlines do seem to be my strong point and while I will not be able to gather the amount of research and sketchbook documentation as the rest of the students doing this project will, I'm feeling pretty excited by the ideas I've had already. For most of the other projects we've been doing I've been doing what I think is right based of stuff I've already seen in that subject matter, rather than doing the kind of work and illustrations that I am good at and enjoy, and I'm trying to kick that habit and so when i started this project I took to my own personal sketchbooks and chose 2/3 pieces and ideas from it that I wanted to use for this project! We've been asked to create something to promote ourselves and our illustrations using maps. I've started designing some front and back covers for the little fold out map leaflets I want to make that I'm really happy with, however, deciding what places I want to put ON the map is proving to be a little more difficult than I thought.

14/02/16 - The Cube live project!

This project was super super fast past and very fun, working in a pair with a graphic designer made it much easier to complete the product in time for the due date. We'd started mind mapping ideas directly after our trip to the cube last week and decided we were both very interested in pursuing the theme of chinese culture seeing as the cube was originally owned by a Chinese overseas company AND there spotlight movies for the month of the program we are designing is asian crime films. We then decided to put this on the back burner while we finished our narrative illustration projects.

I started the week by illustrating a chinese dragon that would flow all the way along one half of the program when it is unfolded, Ellie then used her drawing tablet to make sure the lines of the dragon would work in photoshop and fit onto the size our program had to be. I then drew a couple chinese lanterns and translated the titles for each page into chinese and drew those as well. Ellie did the same to those as she did to the dragon and we were ready to start putting everything together! getting everything the right colour was incredibly difficult as I am not very familiar with photoshop but we managed to get the hang of it, and I began to put everything in place. We had a bit of trouble making the dragon fit correctly on the page but Ellie fixed that up sharpish.
Just after we thought we were finished, had packaged everything up and put it onto kellys usb drive, ready to send to the clients, we discovered we had missed some important information from the back of the program and had to sort that out as quickly as possible as we were running out of time.

07/02/16

On Wednesday we took a little trip to the cube in order to get some information and start some research for our live project that we're starting next week and it's left me with a tonne of ideas. Thankfully, I think the excitement for this next project gave me the motivation to finish my current one properly. I hate leaving things unfinished (i'm very uncomfortable with my unfinished final piece from the textiles option project) and I've left this project with a printed version of my finished book that I am very happy with, and that's a pretty big achievement considering I chose to use a medium I'm not super comfortable with and managed to make it work.

31/01/16

My portfolio week was kind of a set back for this project, I've decided on my final outcome and started sketching and painting the illustrations for my double page spreads. However I am seriously struggling to come up with a concept for a front cover! Unfortunately, due to the week spent not focusing on my book, I highly doubt it's going to be finished for the deadline. Though I am quite happy with a few of the pieces I have done for it, and even if I don't get to finish and print my book I will still leave this project with something I'm proud of.

24/01/16

I didn't get to spend much time on my book project this week as I had four requests for online portfolios! Creating these portfolios was a very exciting experience as it gave me a chance to look back on and think about the work I've done since I started this Art Foundation course. I like to think my online portfolios turned out ok as I put a lot of thought into them. Definitely back to the project next week though

17/01/16

Our newest project is something I'm very excited about as it's a part of illustration I've always been interested in. We need to create a book cover and 3 double page spreads for a book based on a certain word. The word I picked was Transmigration and I've decided to create a sort of adults picture book using a rather creepy poem I found called "The Transmigration of Souls" I've started a few quick sketches and I'm incredibly excited to start thinking about colour and actually creating my book.

10/01/16

After talking to my tutors and being told that they didn't believe our three week project gave a very good insight into what the visual communication course is I decided to go with illustration and I am very glad I did. This week has been a mixture of group and solo courses all lasting 1/2 days. It's been a very quick, fast pace environment to get us settled into the new year. I've very excited to get started on our next three week project.

13/12/15

Well I think I've finally completed both my projects to a standard I am sort of happy with, however, the restrictions I felt during these three weeks and the vague disappointment I feel for my projects outcomes has left me wondering whether I should continue in January with Fine art or Illustration. I've decided that over the Christmas holidays I'm going to give myself my own little project in order to help me decide which path to take,

6/12/15

My illustration project seems to have taken off a little more than graphics, I've got quite a few ideas coming along now and my problem is actually picking one to carry on with and finish off completely, One of the ideas I really like is an illustration of spock that I've been playing around with as I noticed the article mentions star trek really briefly and I thought it would be a fun topic to play with. I've become a little stuck on my graphics project but I'm hoping with my illustration project coming close to an end I'll have some time to properly think about, and find some inspiration for my middle eastern light bulb.