This post explores the process of creating my worksheet for the Big Family Press brief, investigating illustration techniques and media, while solving some of the issues I encountered during the illustration process. Further analysis of audience also helped me reach an analysed outcome.
Initial Experimentation
Information of my initial brief response and secondary research can be found here. For my initial drawings I focused on creating child-like illustrations of the animals and themes mentioned by Kiren in his prompts. I wanted to make these drawings bright, thinking about colour, shape and character. I chose to use coloured pencil to think about the childish implications of this media. These drawings helped me explore the ways I could create characters, which could be directly relatable for Kiren, thinking of things such as wearing clothes.
Developed Experimentation
In my developed drawings I used finer pencil to begin focus on tone and colour, which is important as Kiren would be riso-printing his collage and my design would therefore have to be black and white. Through this process I created my own prompts which I could use to spark inspiration to think outside the box for the animals, for example, what would a donkey wear if he wore a hat?
Further Research / Experimentation
One of my main concerns from these drawings would how they would be recognisable for a child, what could you do with cut out pictures of animals? To investigate this I bought some children's animal and nature magazines, putting myself in the child's position to create my own scenes and collages from these. I thought about how I could take the animal out of it's natural context, how I could humanise the animals, and what plays on the animal stereotypes I could create.
This research task helped me to broaden my imagination of what the different animals could do/be, this was as I wanted to work through the idea of 'loose parts' which gives the child no limitations of what each element can be.
Further Development
Having explored shape, colour and characterisation I then needed to apply my contextual research to my experiments. For this element of the project I was mainly concerned about my audience, creating something appropriate for a year 5 child. I have a younger brother around this age and I was very aware that although they like something funny and childish, they are acutely aware of things being 'too' childish, and will therefore reject something that is seen as babyish, too cutesy or too basic.Â
To overcome this I began to create characters that were not too childish and simple, while still maintaining a childish humour - something silly. These studies apply my composition experimentation to my contextual research:
Communication; Audience
Throughout the research and process stages of this project I constantly considered my audience when creating something for someone of a year five age. But before creating my final design I needed to test my prototype designs. I wanted to answer these questions:
Are the loose parts easy to cut and stick?
Will a child of year 5 age find the elements too childish?
My first test was on myself, to see how I could cut, collage and colour some of my favourite designs. Some of the elements were too small for me to cut neatly, which would be even more difficult for a child. From this I concluded that each element had to be bigger than a fifty pence piece, or it wouldn't be practical.
My younger brother, Donnie, is eleven, and is very artistic, he sees himself as more mature now, and will reject anything that's too childish. He was a perfect candidate for testing my piece:
Donnie really enjoyed using the worksheet, he spent a lot of time making sure each element was perfect, and seemed really happy with his work. He particularly enjoyed creating a name for the zoo, the signpost and the speech bubbles, he found it funny to create his own jokes and it made his final design personal to him.
Donnie told me he didn't want to glue down the elements because he enjoyed changing the scenes, clothing and scenarios. He had ease with cutting and sticking and didn't have any issues. However, he did find it quite difficult to know what he was doing with each animal. I suggested to him that I write him some prompts down on the paper - similar to the ones I had in my original drawings - and from there he seemed a lot more involved.
Outcome
I created my final outcome by photocopying my favourite elements from the experimentation process with consideration of my audience investigation of which elements were most successful. From working with Donnie I also decided to include some of the prompt ideas that worked with him, as I felt it would help push the child when creating.
I am really happy with how this turned out, I'm particularly proud of the characterisation of the animals, feeling my person style to be strong. However, some of the movable elements came out a little blurry because I photographed them instead of scanning them in - which is something I would have changed.
Assessment Evidence
Enquiry
For this project I began with critical assessment of previous projects to create a set of clear technical and theoretical aims for the project. I began with research into artists, analysing the age range and successes in a range of different children's book artists. I also conducted research into critical theories such as the ideas of 'loose play'.Â
KnowledgeÂ
I applied my research on children's book artists into my practice with exploration of the key successes with focus of shape/colour/characterisation, to explore the different style ques for different children's age ranges. Theoretically I consistently applied the idea of loose play to my work.Â
ProcessÂ
I used a range of media and techniques for this project, focusing primarily on tone shape and colour with consideration of the audience. I worked in coloured pencil, tonal pencil, pen, collage and digital enhancement. I also analysed the success of each media and process throughout with constant reference to my research.
Communication
I aimed to improve this significantly during this project with constant consideration into the audience, this was particularly successful when testing my outcome on Donnie, which allowed me to thoroughly explore the communication with my audience, gather feedback and improve my final design. This was supported by a range of children's book illustration research, and research into previous and current peer interpretations of the project.Â
Realisation
My work with Donnie was again the main strength of this criteria, this allowed me to thoroughly consider the success of my development process and apply this to create a stronger outcome.