Debbie's Illustration Log

Friday, 2 December 2011

Exercise Making a Moodboard

This exercise was fun. I have not made a mood board before, so I looked at what other people have done on Google images, to see what they are all about.

I chose the word ' childhood' from the list of words and gathered many images from catalogues, Google images, and items around my house.

Some of the images I have used reminded me of my own childhood, such as the jammy Dodgers, Scooby Doo and captain caveman.

I wanted the mood board to be recognisable, so I added pictures of children at different ages, and also a family image.

I also added toys, and pictures of food including an empty crisp packets, wrapping paper with sweets on it, and a picture of Jaffa cakes-all good things a child might eat!

There are 2 leaflets that came out of my daughters health record, that are 10 years old and an immunisation leaflet, many people would recognise these items as being related to childhood.

In conclusion I really enjoyed this method of brainstorming, it was more fine than the spider diagrams yet it was more time-consuming, I probably would use the spider diagrams method to brainstorm, for this reason.

Exercise - Turning Words into Pictures 'Kitchen'

First Attempts

Second Attempt

Kitchen

I haven't found this exercise easy, but I tried twice to draw the same word, to see if my drawings improved.

Some of the drawings improved, and I did think of one or two more items to add to the list.

You can see what some of the items are I think, but one or two I had some difficulty with.

I used colour, with felt pens, Black Liner pen, and coloured pencils. The colour worked slightly better the second time.

All of the items I drew from my memory, without looking at my photographs for reference, so the detail wasn't as good, but I did find that I could think of a lot of items.

In conclusion, a good way of producing a picture list for ideas, that could be developed into a finished piece of work.

Childhood Spider Diagram

Seaside Spider Diagram

Angry Spider Diagram

Festival Spider Diagram

List of objects associated with each word.

Seaside

Pier

bucket and spade

donkey

big wheel

surfboards

inflatable rings

cuddly toys

Fish

crabs

Angry

my daughter

Childhood

Park

Cinema

Brownies

fireworks

funfair

Muppets

bedroom

Festival

flags

cheese

glasses

cars

stalls

marquee

I found that most of the words used for ' angry' word descriptive words, there were no objects other than my daughter. The hardest word for me was ' angry' I didn't come up with as many words for the spider diagram.

I asked my mum to do the same words as spider diagrams, she came up with quite a few words for ' angry', more than I did, but she struggled with the word ' Festival'.

I wrote my spider diagrams using my experiences, rather than looking them up on the Internet or a dictionary. I like spider diagrams, I find them very useful for working out ideas, I have used this way of brainstorming a lot.

Part Two Ideas

Exercise -Writing a brief.

I have chosen andy Ward, who illustrates for the Daily Mail, mostly because I find his illustrations fit perfectly with the articles. They are colourful, humorous, simple, yet convey the necessary information that draws your are high to the article.

The brief needs to include:-

What the illustrator is being asked to do.

Why are the client wants the illustration-what is it for?

Who the target audience is.

Where it will be reproduced and at what size.

Whether there are any restrictions as to colours they can use.

Whether it will stand alone or be used with text.

When they want to see the initial ideas, visuals and the finished artwork.

The brief-Daily Mail

An illustration is needed to accompany an article in the Femail section on how modern life is affecting young women called speech ' so stressed'.

The intended audience for this article is in the 21-40 age bracket.

The image will be positioned centrally on page and will need to be at least 3 column widths in size.

There will be no text to be placed on the image, so it must give enough information, visually, for our readers to understand what the article is about.

There should be pleased elements:

Alcohol

a mobile phone

children

home

car

food/cooking

I would like to see these elements illustrated so that they are circling her.

How you choose to illustrate them is up to you, but these elements must be easily recognisable.

Bright colours are essential, they must be eye-catching, drawing the readers in, but they should also be feminine. The female character, should be slim, larger than the other elements around her, and within the 21-40 age bracket. She must looks stressed, perhaps have steam coming out of her ears-she must look like she isn't coping with her life.

Looking at your past work, a computer-generated image would be best, as you would be able to get the right finish, colour wise, which you are very adept at. It must have a comic element, but still keep the seriousness of what the article is about, which is to highlight how all of these pressures are having a detrimental effect on today's young women in their health, their finances, and their relationships.