First self published Book!

Over the summer I also worked on a little children's book that I was going to self publish as a little insight into how book making works and thing like that.
I came up with the idea of making an alphabet book using my character Klyde..
It took me 3 days of solid work but I made 28 full colour illustrations and a front/back cover and all the other stuff needed for the book.  I wrote it myself too, which was a challenge as I don't think im very good with writing an engaging story.. although alphabet books don't have to have much of a story.
Here are a few sneak peaks at some of the illustrations in the book.
There not too fantastic as I did them all in a short space of time, but it was mostly an experiment anyway!

 

It was then made up and printed by lulu.com, which is a great little place to self publish providing you can put in the work to put the book together and then just upload it as a .pdf file.

I can also sell my books on the Lulu site if they come out okay. So it could make me a little bit of money and get my work out there...

The books came and they look fantastic! Im so pleased! 

This has been a great little thing to do, and a great practice into what I want to do in the future!

Id love to create and illustrate for books like this as a job... =D

Illustration Friday

Over the summer, I started doing 'Illustration Friday'.

Its a great platform to get your work noticed and also pushes me to create work based on themes I wouldn't usually work on. Theres a great community of Illustrators on there that can give great advice or show their appreciation. 

Ive learned alot from doing it every week and it has also been a great deal of fun! I think that by doing it, my illustration work has improved alot. 

Here are a few examples...

Mesmerizing-

I'm really impressed with this one. The composition looks good and the colours seem to work really nicely. I pushed myself to draw more realistic characters and a more realistic setting and it really payed off.

To me, my digital work has improved alot in terms or cleanliness and its overall impact.

Mysterious-

This was an experiment into making a storybook style illustration, using a character Id made up for use in Comics and Storybooks that I aim to produce during my second year. I think It came out really well and good easily be straight out of a storybook. 

Like it said before, my digital work is becoming much more refined and dynamic.

Imperfect-

My Illustration Friday debut. Which was received extremely well, considering I didn't take too much care over the piece in terms of execution. 

I based alot of my IF's on constructing a character from the prompt, so in this case I created and imperfect mouldy onion character. 

This was a great idea as it pushed my character design skills which to me is the most fun part of illustration... creating the characters to play around with.

It was featured in 'Friday Favourties' on this blog-
http://hello7arts.com/blog/2011/08/friday-favorites-imperfect/

Plymouth Music Accord Live Brief

At the end of my first year, I took on the live brief to create a new logo for 'Plymouth Music Accord'. I had to work on a new design for their logo then come up with a refined one and pass them onto Mel who would meet with the judges and choose a winning design from the other entries.

Excitedly, my design was chosen! This was great, as it was my first opportunity to work on a live brief and actually work for/with other people. 

My original logo design was this-

However there were a few adjustments to be made. The little people had to go, and there needed to be a few alterations to the text underneath, aswell as it being black and white.

I made these amendments and met with 4 of the team from 'Plymouth Music Accord' to see what they thought and make any more adjustments if needed. 

This was a bit scary as Id never really met with clients before and Im quite a shy person. But Mel assured me and went with me to meet them. They were really lovely people and were so pleased to have me onboard and creating a new logo for them!

I edited the logo some more and came up with this- 

It went down really well but after some more corresponding with Sylvia there were a few more

things to be changed, such as the thickness of the notes.

This correspondence continued for a while with lots of new ideas being thrown in on how to make the logo looks its best. 

Many different designs were sent to and from and the logo ended up looking quite different, in order to satisfy all the members of the group.
A new font was decided upon, and we changed the notes to more traditional ones, so in the end it looked rather different, but definitely suited the charity well.

Here is how the finished logo looks!

Im really pleased with how it came out, and although it went through many changes and the correspondence went on for weeks, it gave me a great insight into how working with clients is, and how they obviously want to get the best outcome they can. 

It was a really valuable experience and boosted my confidence alot!

It got me used to meeting and talking to people I dont know, and even talking to people on the phone- Something I used to shy upon. 

After it had all been settled, i went to see one of the members who wanted to personally thank me for the work and have my picture taken with her and the logo for the Plymouth Herald. 

It was lovely that she wanted to thank me personally and I had a lovely time chatting and having coffee while we waited for the photographer. 

You can see the logo on their site- http://www.plymouthmusicaccord.co.uk/

I owe alot to Mel for asking me to do this, and helping me throughout. Its definately helped to boost my confidence in my work aswell as personally, and given me a great insight into the creative working world.

Oh, and it was paid.. which is always nice.