D&AD Annual

Anyone in the creative industries is surely aware of D&AD as it is usually the ultimate goal of any creative to receive one of their renowned yellow pencils, or if you are really aiming high, their black pencils. D&AD also release an annual book packed full of the very best work produced within that year over all creative sectors such as graphic design, photography, animation, film making, etc.

I have been fortunate enough to purchase the 2009 and 2011 edition and I can say first hand how full these book are of inspiration. After all, they are full of the best pieces of work from that year showing the most creative and effective ideas.
I would say if you are after inspiration in a more specific area, say logos for example, this may not be the most useful, however, if you just want to get ideas for your creative field in general, then I can not imagine and more useful book.

It's Nice That

http://www.itsnicethat.com/

I just thought I had better share this link, it is to a great website called 'It's Nice That'.
This website has a wealth of inspiration no matter what creative industry you are in, so if you are struggling for ideas, this you should be able to find a wide variety of articles to help get your creative mind working.

Don Kenn

Don Kenn is an artist whose work i can really appreciate.
His is work consists mainly of horrific, yet beautifully detailed sketches on post-it notes using a fine liner. Now I personally am a fan of fine liner, and when it comes to sketches, i find it is my strongest medium, yet i find myself amazed that Don Kenn is able to create such wonderful images, with as much detail as this on such a tiny canvas. While I can only assume they are not all made on the most standard sized post-it notes, the ones he uses surely cant be anywhere near A4.
Thanks to his use of this paper, his otherwise colourless images are now filled with this dull, eerie yellow which completely gives his work a whole new level of 'creepy'. If these images were created on regular white/cream paper, the effect would be much further away from what Don Kenn is after.

Another thing to note is, while his images are predominantly made up of these hulking monstrosities, there is a recurring theme of children present in his images. What I think this does is, gives his images some story, these are not just pictures of behemoths, these are pictures of massive creatures, lurking around innocent children, if this is to immerse the viewer more, or simply because of his affinity to children (he writes childrens television shows) I am unsure.

Final Piece No.1

As you can see, I have successfully completed the first of my magazine covers for Little White Lies magazine. Fortunately for me, I was able to create this piece using only a few of the tools available to me on Photoshop.

Begin the process I simply opened up the document I was provided with by D&AD in Photoshop, this gave me the Little White Lies logo where they wanted it to be as well as the correct sized document. I then opened up the scanned image of my illustration into Photoshop and moved it across to this document. Using the Burn Tool, I made all of the dark parts to the image slightly darker, including the hair and glasses. Then the only real change I made to the image was to add a filter to it, in this case I used the filter named Cutout, messed around with the options and created the image you can see above. I then scaled the image leaving some bleed. Finally, I edited one of the fonts I had already made for the magazine and placed it where I found most suitable.

I feel this piece shows some great progress on my behalf. I have managed to create a piece that I am pleased with using illustrations which I have previously been unable to integrate into other projects. I think another point to mention is that the moving from the comfort I am used to in Illustrator into the uncertainty of Photoshop shows development of my confidence and skills. While you could argue that my lack of skill in Photoshop halted the potential that this piece has, I am without a doubt aware that Photoshop is where I needed to put in the most practice in order to learn the ins and outs.

Cover Titles!

Using two different methods, I have successfully created two different titles for my magazine covers.

Starting with the top, I created that font by simply using the pen tool. First of all I created the the actual words without the 3D effect using the pen tool, copying any letter I had already created as I went along. Then, it was simply a matter of creating a 45 degree line at the length I wished and copying it all around one version of each letter. I then created a new layer and used the pen tool to make shapes around the edges of the letter using the 45 degree lines to tell me where to stop.

The second font was far more interesting to create, using the Pathfinder tool. To begin with I typed out the title. Then I placed different rectangle shapes and circle shapes across the title. Then selecting a rectangle/circle and the letter it was covering, I used the 'Divide' button in the Pathfinder option window. What this does is it creates new shapes where the two objects over lap for example, the T in Tinker was made by placing a rectangle over the top half of the T, then when I pressed divide, the rectangle with some missing bits became a new shapeand the top and bottom halves of the T became individual shapes. I then just deleted the rectanglular shape, and used the arrow keys to move the top half to the left and down slightly. Doing actions similar to this allowed me to create the title you can see above.

These two titles are intended for the single portrait idea and the broken glass idea repectively, though one concern I have is that the second title might make the broken glass cover look somewhat busy and messy. If this transpires to be the case then I see no issue really in swapping their placements, I dont think either will look to much out of place on the other cover.

Targets 13!

As you can see, I was quite successful in the completion of my final sketches. That is not to say that it was not a stuggle. I beginning my creations with the sketch of the charcter George Smiley, at the top. The main issue I had to deal with during the entire week was that, when I was sketching in my sketch book, my fine liners were very tempermental, eventually just not working on the paper. This caused me to start several different attempts at the first character, eventually having to scrap the attempt as the pens refused to work. This set back cost me quite dearly. I then thought that I might as well try to complete the sketches on my printer paper that I have at home, and luckily, the pens worked perfectly and so I was able to complete each piece of the pieces of printer paper and then simply stuck them in my sketch book. In order to save both time and ink, for the other 4 characters, seeing as I would only be using part of each portrait, I felt it necessary to only the draw the corresponding sections. Natutrally, even though I would only be using a quarter of each portriat, I drew alittle bit more for each portrait just to be on the safe side.

Even though, as I have previously mentioned, I have not drawn portraits properly since mid 2011, I am very pleased with how these portraits have turned out. From the moment I saw this brief, I very much wanted to create a piece that had illustration heavily involved as it appears to be a rarity in graphic design and I have yet to recieve a brief that has allowed me to do so, and therefore I feel that this brief allows me to show off another aspect of my skills.

By next week, I plan to=

• Complete the fonts that I will be using on each cover. I will be creating 2 different fonts for the title 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' that will be placed at the bottom of each poster. Some experiementation will be needed as I am not certain what path to go for, but I plan on trying to use a font that bares similarities to the rest of the cover.
• I will also begin the creation of my final pieces, getting both documents prepared, ready for the rest of the week.

Targets 12!

Over the last week I have successfully decided upon my mdeia of choice for when I created my final portraits and I believe I have chosen two layout designs that I will take forward for my final pieces. First of all, deciding which media I should use for my portraits...

The two illustrations on the left are my attempts at using fine liner, and the two on the right, biro. While I was once reasonably skilled when it came to using pencil, I felt strongly that it just would not work for this project, once the image was scanned in, the tone just would not be varied enough with my skill with pencil. Beginning with the top left, I used fine liner to create an illustration of George Smiley, and found it to be a success. Thankfully after having not really drawn portraits since June 2011, I had not lost most of my capabilites. I found that the tone fine liner allowed me to create was beyond what I had hoped. There was however a downside, when it came to drawing the very dark areas such as the glove and his right eye, a lot of time was consumed. This is the major draw back to using the fine liner, dark areas take far to long to complete and the tip of the pen covers such a small area, hence I did not finish the image, not only were my pens being ruined, but I felt that the illustration had served its purpose. I then created the image in the top left using biro. As you can see I completed far less of this illustration. This is because I found biro to be a failure in comparison to the fine liner I had just used. I could not create the dark that I had achieved with the finer liner, whether it was down to the paper I was using or the quality of the pen, I was unsure, but fine liner seemed to work so well that I felt it was unnecessary to investigate other options. One thing I had noticed was that I very much liked the way the outline of the portrait looked when I was using the biro and so I decided, after another fine liner illustration, that I would use biro again to see if simply creating the outline of the characters would be enough...as it turns out it wasnt, while I do like the way the illustration looks on the bottom right, it is no where near as promising and the fine liner was and simply was not suitable for this project.

I then moved onto creating larger version of my best layout ideas to see which would be the most suitable. While I do like them all, I decided that the most promising ideas were the two top ideas. One being the idea of just having one charcter on the cover, keeping in line with the modern Little White Lies covers. The second idea is that of having four charcters form the shape of one portrait. In detail this idea will have the characters dubbed Tinker, Tailor, Soldier and Spy split into quarters, seperated by broken glass but organised in a way that they take the shape of one portrait. I chose these two ideas as not only are they the two most drastically different ideas, but because they both have the most potential. The first will allow me to create a greatly detailed illustrative piece and the second will be greatly eye catching due to the broken glass idea.

Now that I know what my final piece will look like, the next step for me is to begen creating them, starting with, the final illustrations using fine liner. This task will take quite along time to complete and so because of this, I am making the completion of the 5 character portraits my only target for this week.

Targets 11!

Now that I had completed my research for this project, I could alter my previously uninformed ideas into something far more suitbale for this project. I then decided too, having realised my previous initial ideas were not entirely suitable, create some more initial ideas, using both, my new found inspiration aswell some of the developments on my previous ideas.

After looking at Little White Lies magazine covers, as realising that most of the previous editions had only one portrait on the cover, two prominent ideas became apparent to me. The first of which is to simply have the character George Smiley on the front cover facing forward keeping in line with the modern editions of Little White Lies covers. Obviously, being the main spectical of the cover, the plan would be to make the illustration something special, for me, this would mean focussing heavily of the darks in the illustration as well as paying attention to detail and tone. So to create this idea, I would first all need to draw the portrait using one media I am more comfortable with, such as fine liner, biro or pencil. then scanning in the image and editing it on photoshop. As you can see, the text will be placed at the bottom of the page, being clearly visible while not getting in the way of the detailed portrait I plan to create.

The rest of my ideas play on my previous idea of having the four charcters that bare the names Tinker, Tailor, Solider and Spy on the cover. As I said, the previous Little White Lies magazine cover tend to have one character portrait on the cover, and so as I feel strongly about the four charcters idea, I felt the only way I could make this work would be to have all four characters split into quarters made to form the shape of one portrait. So my other three ideas are the most promising ways I could split up the four characters and form one portrait. These inclde, a broken glass idea, diagonal segments and horizontal segments. I feel this developent shows improvement on my behalf, not only showing that I can take influence from my research, but that I can only develop my own ideas based on new research. I feel the way I tackled the issue of my conflicting ideas (wanting one protrait and four characters) shows increased skill. Unfortunately, I am currently torn between these ideas so in the mean time I will solve other issues, therefore, my targets for this week are=

• Create character sketches for the purpose of both, getting used to drawing the film character and discovering which media I am most skilled with so that I can eventually create the most detailed sketches that I can.
• I will also sketch the most promising layout ideas on a larger scale, giving me a better idea of which ones I should take forward