The Met Office

I have been looking at some brief son YCN and D&AD, and i cam across a brief for the Met Office. They are looking for some creative ways to show either editorial or evergreen information.

After going further into the brief, the 'evergreen' information is about how the weather works, informing the audience on subjects like 'why is the sky blue' etc.

I think this would be the content i would work on, as it fits in with my practice quite a lot and i could experiment with different processes like paper cut and animation to produce moving images for the screen based appliances.

Papyrus Brief

I've started looking at other briefs that i could possibly start and focus in on my practice. On the course noticeboard was mention of a colouring boo brief for the Papyrus charity, which helps prevent suicide.

The brief consists of illustrating an A3 page for a colouring book, with the aim of de-stressing someone with anxiety or depression.

Before I read the brief, I had heard of this brief by someone in the studio at college, before looking at the specifications, I already had some ideas of what I could make for it.

The idea I first had was to create a big illustration, that would go in a consetina book, the illustration would consist of a city scape which within it would have activities that are recommended for overcoming depression, for instance, dog walking etc.

This would fit in with my practice quite well as it would be informing the audience of helpful activities which could improve their mental health or state of mind. I think I might do the original brief of the A3 illustration, but I also might adapt this brief to create a more informative colouring book.

I also think I could take this even further with a possible book/leaflet to go along with it, informing the audience on mental illness, especially in young adults. This could possibly be a big brief, maybe the major brief within this module, but I am going to talk about it in my tutorial on Thursday.

Re-think Of The Briefs I Want To Do

After Cop I have realised that the type of briefs that I want to do for Extended Practice should be more like the practical work I did for Context of Practice. As I want to be a teacher after I finish my degree, I enjoyed creating an education tool for children. The act of researching deeply into a topic and then creating a fun way of communicating these facts to someone really motivated me and informed my practice in a positive way. I want the work I produce for this module to be as exciting as the last and show through the work I make.

I've spoke to my tutor about this, and he agrees that this is the direction I should be going in as well. He mentioned maybe looking at educational tools for the core subjects in schools and suggested looking at a science topic.

Book Cover - Illustration Design

Since developing the diary idea, i have gone back to my other original idea. I prefer this design compared to then experiments with the diary design, I like the more illustration within this piece and I think it suits the audience a lot more.

Diary Cover Photoshop Development

Ive started experimenting with some different textures and colours, designs etc. with Photoshop, these are a selection of the best colours that i tested. Although i like the idea of the book looking like a diary, i really dont like the designs as they look really graphic, theres no illustration and they just dont look appealing.

I am going to have to rethink the idea and see what other designs i can come up with.

Diary Cover Development

Ive started drawing up some ideas for the diary cover, i want to highlight key things from within the book and hint at them without revealing too much information to the reader. For instance, Adrian in the book gets a girlfriend from school called Pandora, who he is madly in love with throughout the book. He also has a dog at home that ruins and eats everything, which causes rifts within the parents relationship.

I am going to play about with this design on Photoshop and see how it goes, im going to experiment with different textures and try to make it look realistic and a bit battered and bruised for being used for just over a year by a teenager.

Book Cover Development

These are some initial ideas of book covers for the competition. My first ideas are to make the book cover look like a diary, like a school excercise book that the boy has used for his diary, the book is set in the 80's so i thought of what would be used in those days. My other idea was an illustration of a boy sat on a stack of books reading as this is what i pictured when i read the book.

I have asked some of the other students from my course and the feedback i got was that they like the diary idea, I am going to work on this a bit more and develop the idea.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4

Ive started reading this book for the penguin brief online. This is the children's category in the competition, which is what i am most interested in. I have been reading it for a while and it is quite funny, it was hard to start reading at the beginning as the grammar was as if it was written by a 13 year old but improves so much as the boy loves reading. I would like to create a book cover that shows his love for reading as it is one of the main themes within the book so far.

Paper Craft - Comb Quilling

Another technique of quilling i have tried is with using a comb, instead of a quilling tool. This technique looks really nice although it takes a lot of time to do. This one picture took 7/8 hours of work and becomes tiring and tasking.

Although it takes a long time to create, i really like the technique as a whole and i have received a lot of compliments on the flower. I do think you would have to factor in the time when considering using this technique for a brief, maybe a mixture of this an other paper craft would be nice.

Paper Craft - Basic Quilling

I've started my one-a-week paper craft brief, i have started with basic quilling techniques, learning how to make the basic shapes with the quilling paper and quilling tool and create simple illustrations using this method.

This is a really simplistic method of papercraft although very time consuming.

Character Development

Ive started Character development of what was once a character from the inktober drawings, and although i like them, i dont think this is for me. Iam starting to loose interest in drawings things with no context behind them. My Cop work was really engaging to me, where i could thoroughly research something  and create something as a conclusion. This seems really tasking as there is no purpose for them, i like the idea of character development and it will be something i will do in briefs, but i feel like it is almost a waste of time as they are not going to be used for anything. I really want to make work with a purpose so i think i need to step back and take a look at what work i really want to make.

Inktober

After starting Inktober, i realised with the work load i had at the time, a drawing a day was hard to stick with. So i decided with the few illustrations i had created, i was going to develop each character each week. This will help with future projects, developing characters.