Self promo print

One of my ideas for Self promo print-

its like a fold up book/business card

Covers and inside panel

Inside panels showing off a few of my book illustrations

Bio/statement on the inside panel

Website progress...

Its coming along.. slowly...

After many changes..

I feel im getting much more of an identity now, clean backgrounds and colourful and cute

illustrations. I think this kind of theme should be how my self promo things look...

I like clean things..

Jeremiah's Journey update

I had a meeting with Joanna from Jeremiah's Journey two weeks ago, and since then have created some more designs for Jeremiah ready to show her when requested. I think I need to develop it a little more at the moment and maybe come up with a new double page spread because I feel my digital skills have developed allot recently and I think it would be good to show off what I cant achieve.

My alphabet book on Utales!

Utales is a fantastic site and app that lets illustrators easily make ebooks to be viewed on ipads etc as well as browsers. I put my 'Klyde's animal alphabet' book on there a while ago and completely forgot about it, however I got an email yesterday saying that a few changes need to be make and then the book can get published on the site.

I had a look at the feedback given (from the editing team on the site) and I changed the font size and made a few other tweaks as what was suggested. Responding on the feedback has made the book look so much better, more professional and ultimately more fun to read!

After the changes the book was published on the site and is now ready to buy and download!!!

And a good thing about Utales, is that a portion of the profits make go to a great charity 'Pencils of Promise' which helps build schools in lesser developed countries! What could be better? Great children's books and a helping hand to those in need!

Here's a link to my book. A preview of the first 8 pages is available to see the changes I've made.

Ebooks for kids - Klyde's Animal Alphabet - uTales

Some of the feedback was really confidence boosting!

Here's a taste...

"Hi Toby, I'm sorry but we decided to unpublish the book again. We received many complaints that the font was too small, and I also urge you to have another look at the feedback you recieved earlier for how the book can be improved.

Our main editor truly believes there is more potential for this one to be a big hit, so if you would consider making changes - that would be fantastic!

/Nils (founder)"

"I like the clean lines and consistency of the stylized illustrations, and the characters are engaging."

"Adorable illustrations and very fun to read..kids will love this!"

Revised National Trust Cider House poster

Final poster design based on things said at the critique last week. 

Oh my

It won! =D

Illustrator Questions

1. How long after your education did you start illustrating as a job? (Full-time or part-time.)

2. Was there anything you did that kick-started your career?

3. Do you think it is important to have an agent?

4. Do you feel you have had to change or style or the way you work during your time as an illustrator, to meet the needs of a client or get more work?

5.What would be your best piece of advice to pass onto someone who wants to become a full-time illustrator in the next few years?

I sent these to Will Terry (http://willterry.blogspot.com/) 
and Shirley Ng Benitez (http://shirleysillustrations.blogspot.com/)

I got responses too, which are in my WBL write up

Behance Portfolio

I made a portfolio on Behance Network!
Its a little confusing at first, but the results are great and looks very professional! =D

http://www.behance.net/ZestyDoesThings

Buckland Abbey Cider House- Rough & Final?

Rough for the new National Trust competition.

Final maybe? If not, its very close to how it will look.

Jeremiah's Journey

Here are the illustrations I entered for the Jeremiah's Journey competitions/brief.
I went a bit overboard and produced better quality artwork than was requested, but that's not bad thing.

Character Design for the main character, Jeremiah.
It was asked that Jeremiah was specifically drawn in the brief.

Character design for Nancy, the aboriginal wise woman who helps Jeremiah near the end.

Coloured version of a double page spread. I included a black and white version as requested, but also handed in the coloured one just to show them how it might looked coloured.

Update on my Children's book

Recently my self published children's book Klyde's animal alphabet' has been circulating around my local area and is being sold in the local bakery/post office. My mum orchestrated the distribution of my book and has since send it off to distant relatives and anyone else who will be willing to view it personally.
My mum has also taken the book to the schools she teaches at and they have gone down very well in the early classes.
They have photocopied pages from the books to be used as worksheets for the younger children and read out the book numerous times.
Its all seems to be going well at the moment.

I also uploaded my book onto the site Utales, which is a service offering children's books to be easily accessed through iPads and devices like that. The site is free to upload and with that you can get extremely valuable feedback from the Utales people and also the users. I got some really great feedback with I will take on-board to make the book even better.
UTales works as an app that is free to download but to read the books you either have to purchase a subscription or buy the book in its Utales format. A portion of the sales go straight to me, and a small portion also goes to charity, which is great!

Illustration Agencies

http://www.beehiveillustration.com/
Children's book illustrators agency.

http://www.illustrationweb.com/
General illustration agency, but with children's illustration section.

http://www.thebrightagency.com/
Able to create own accounts and submit images, it seems to be an open agency.

http://www.organisart.co.uk/
A general agency with a strong focus on children's illustration as much as the other forms.

Penguin Design Award

I've been checking  up on the 'Penguin Design Award' all summer to find out the next brief and Its finally out and I couldn't be more excited! The book cover to illustrat this year is 'Grimm's Fairy Tales'!
I absolutely love fairy-tales and especially those of the brothers Grimm so this is really exciting and i will definitely be having a go this year as apart of the WBL module as well as the illustration practices module if I can.
Heres the link to find out more!

http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/minisites/penguindesignaward/puffin_brief.php

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. 

Health and Safety

Did this a while ago, but dont want to print it. So i put it here. =)
I did the quiz... only 2 times to get 100%.. Im a health and safety master!

Jack Teagle

An illustrator working on mostly editorial and narrative illustration. Worked on comics, t-shirts and posters during his university days and still continues to work on these things for clients such as Nobrow and working on live briefs and competitions for Anorak magazine and The Guardian.

He is inspired by Japanese things and badly drawn comics, and loves to collect toys and ‘Lucha Libre’ ephemera. He is also inspired by artists and illustrators like Gary Baseman and Ryan Heshka, drawing upon their painterly and comic styles.

He has a very bold and cartoony style, that looks almost childlike but his experience is shown is shown through the story telling details and the strong character building. Its clear that his style is heavily influenced by all the things he is interested in, and it makes the illustrations much more vibrant and imaginative. 

He experimented with screenprinting throughout university and did a lot of self published books and sketch booking to develop his style and begin to get a name for himself.  He then began to play with toys and editing them, which influenced his work further and also kept a blog that helped him to keep in touch with other people and students.

He then began to work on a painted style and this continues till now and works alongside his digital work. He got interested in narrative painting and developed characters inspired from his travels. He finished uni and grabbed any work he could before signing on to job seekers allowance to aid his work.

After a while he began to get a lot of work and offers for clients like Nobrow and got his places at a specialist gallery exhibition at Nobrow of his work. He also had a few other gallery offers and some poster work for other clients from his agent ‘D&AD’. He worked alongside other artists on a collaborative comic called ‘Spera’ and worked on a comic for Nobrow.

He took every opportunity that was going and did alot of work for a wide range of people, particularly aiming to grab high profile clients to increase his exposure and now considers to be on the right path and things are going well.

He advised to keep copyrights on illustrations to help keep them safe and provide extra income by selling off the rights. He also said to keep blogging and doing any work you can to get yourself noticed. ‘Keep your fingers in as many pies as you can’, meaning to go for it, and work your way up in the illustration world by doing everything and being everywhere.

Overall It was good to meet a working illustrator and listen to the trails and tribulations of an upcoming artist. There was some really good advice and things to think about. Ill defiantly take on board the idea of doing any competitions or live briefs to get myself noticed and help develop the way I work.

Assertiveness and Negotiation Skills

Aggressive behaviour- The belief is that your personal rights are more important than those of others.

A tendency for I win/you lose solutions/situations

 A tendency to-

·         manipulate

·         steam roller

·         coerce

Passive Behaviour- The belief is that your personal rights are less important than those of others.

A tendency for you win/I lose solutions/situations.

 A tendency not to influence but to:

·         go along with things/people

·         not object openly

·         say, “I knew that would happen”.

Assertive Behaviour- The belief is that your personal rights are as important as those of others.

a tendency for win/win solutions/situations

 a tendency to influence by:

·         seeing from the other person's viewpoint

·         looking for benefits for all

·         trying to overcome problems.

Assertiveness techniques-

Broken Record- A Request is repeated over and over again until desired response is obtained, or a workable compromise is reached.

Fogging- Training yourself to stay calm in the face of criticism and rob the critics works of their destructive power.

Negative Assertion- Agreeing with parts of criticism that are valid but without getting your self down because of it.

Negotiation tips-

·         Plan carefully for negotiations

·         Prepare targets and fall-back positions

·         Be prepared to compromise

·         Know when to make concessions

·         Be aware of the other party and their body language

·         Know when to put your cards on the table

5 yrs time storyboard

Self Promotion Comparison

Illustrator self promotion comparison-

Alexandra Ball - http://www.alexandraball.co.uk/ 

Alexandra Ball has a very simple design to her website showing a few snippets of her work on the first page, linking onto further works divided into categories. It has a very clean and seamless design, the small circles leading onto illustrations with a similar theme and there is a great deal of work.

At first it is a little hard to get through, until you realise you can click on the circles and then more of them to show more works. There are very short descriptions of her pieces that give enough information without presenting a large wall of text, which makes it easier to digest.

There is an about section, titles info which gives personal details, qualifications and a short description of how she makes her illustrations. The small illustration of her expresses her personality as a bubbly and sweet person.

She doesn’t seem to have a great list of clients, and allot of her work seems personal from what you can read in the little descriptions. But it does show that she has done alot of work, for a wide variety of things from book illustrations [for her own stories to unofficial artwork for other stories] to card illustrations. However it is rather unclear whether any of the pieces have been used in a professional context.

There is a blog which is linked to the first circle on the home page [‘Today’] which isnt clearly labelled. The blog consists of what seems to be personal work and random ideas, which show off her creativity and imagination, but also shows she seems to work in quite sporadic periods, often not updating for months.

The commission section on the homepage simply details how to contact her through her agent Illustration Ltd. There isn’t a direct contact form or a personal one and no links to facebook or twitter etc.

Overall its a good website and presents her work well, but I feel she could explain a little more about how to commission and what she has been commissioned for to give a better idea of whether she’s the right illustrator to work for you. There’s a great deal of work that shows of her style well and its fairly user friendly.

Jeremy Love- http://jeremylove.com/index.htm

In stark contrast to Alenxrandra Ball’s website, Jeremy Love’s is extremely slick, modern and dark. It presents a very user friendly interface with a simple menu and update section of the front page. The gallery and bio links are easily seen and accessible aswell as contact and resume.

In the gallery section there is a Professional work section which consists of freelance work and mostly game artwork, and a personal work section with illustrations and sketchbook work. The images do take a little while to load up, but that’s due to them being at a high resolution and a fairly big scale so the details can be properly viewed. The gallery is full on concept work for games and shows of his imagination and skills as an artist.

The bio section consists of a large wall of text and a kiwi [he’s from new Zealand] , it’s all very factual and not basically telling a short biography which although is informative, isn’t very exciting.  It does show that he has worked on a variety of projects, working on the third Narnia film, working as a signwriter and graphic artist for 10 years, and currently working with THQ studios. There isnt any client testimonials but there is a clear selection of big projects he has worked on, giving a good idea of what he would work on.

The contact page is very minimal and consists of ‘enquiries email’ and ‘chat’ email, which presents him as an approachable person and suggest he works for himself. He is contactable by email but there is no phone number or any other details or explanation of the exact process of commissioning, which may put new clients off.

I do like his website and think it is very slick and professional, but it does present him to be very professional himself which may put off new clients. Its a little easier to navigate than Alexandra Ball’s but dosen’t present that light heartedness and idea of his personality.

Timothy Banks- http://www.timothybanks.com/

Timothy banks website seems to have it all, and appears to promote himself really well from it. The site is clean and organized well showing off his art, projects and sketch videos in an easily digestible way. It has a unique scrapbook feel with lots of links and looks very easy on the eye. The large illustrations and bright colours make it approachable to most audiences.

There’s a few galleries, a portfolio and a few specialised galleries featuring work from his personal projects. The images load quickly and are presented cleanly, some with descriptions and some without, making it easy to read but sometimes leaving out titles and descriptions can make a few illustrations get lost.

His ‘about’ page is written from someone else view, which dosent give the personal touch, but there is a lot of information there including a quick bio on his life and also a client list and awards he has gained. The client list is impressive, from Nike to Cartoon Network and the few awards he has one don’t seem as impressive but still show him as a recognized illustrator.

He has a very interesting blog on the site too, that shows works in progress and development of projects. IT gives a good insight into how he works and ideas generation and although not updated too regularly, it’s still good to see how he thinks through ideas and a rough scale of how long he takes to produce work.

His contact page is the most useful of all the sites and it includes a contact form for easy communication and it also has a direct email address and easy access to his portfolio. Also on the front page has links to his Facebook fan page, Flickr and twitter which makes him really easy to follow and contact on unofficial business.

Overall its a really good website, and has all the good things of the other two sites and more. It presents him as a really successful illustrator, but the ease of contact make him seem more approachable to clients, unlike Jeremy Love.

What about me?

Taking upon all the good points of all of these websites will give me a good chance of self promotion, and at the moment I promote myself through a personal blog and that seems to suit me fine at the moment.

If I had clients and other illustrations work beside my persona l stuff, maybe a website would be better, and enable me to present all my works clearly without having to scroll through a blog. Its important to make whatever I do, user friendly and present me as an approachable illustrator to potential clients.