Substantial Brief - Secret 7 - Clearest Blue 2

I always forget to take screen shots when I work on my laptop and I always say it in my blogs and I never learn and it drives me crazy. But I used lines on pen tool to create a geometric style face traced on top of the lead singer's face. I knew I wanted to include one of my weird textures that I produced, so used that as the background.

I then put the two together, but I wasn't sure about it. I thought maybe the faces were too bright and stood out a bit too much with the background, so changed it to match with the peachy orange. I then remembered in the lyrics that they say 'halfway' a lot, so thought I should incorporate this into my design. So I put the shape bang in the middle and the faces in the middle of the shape and the edge.

I really like the aesthetics of this album cover, but I'm not sure if you'd be able to guess what song it was for as it might not seem relevant. But I think if i saw this album cover on the shelf then I would be drawn to it, which is what the brief is asking for. I do also think the two colours work really well to compliment each other which is why I think this design works. 

Substantial brief - Secret 7 - Clearest Blue 1

I had heard of CHVRCHES before so I already known the kind of vibe and style they give off. After listening to the song a few times, I actually quite liked it. Straight away it made me think of that Depeche Mode song that The Saturdays stole and completely murdered - I Just Can't Get Enough.

As I said before in my art school blog post, I started this album cover with doing lots of blue brusho. This is because I wanted the design to be bold and quite abstract, so wanted to work with textures. Then that thing happened where my laptop took over itself and produced lots of unique textures that I worked with instead. But after this happened, I think it was a blessing in disguise as it made me realise that I don't think there could of been anything I could have done to the brusho alone to make it into a winning album cover. And also I think blue is too obvious a choice, which sounds a bit silly but I think everyone's going to be using blue so I want to do something a little different.

So I went back to square one and looked at the lyrics.

[Verse 1]

Light is all over us

Like it always was

Like it always was

Shaped, by the clearest blue

But it's not enough

It's not enough, not enough

[Chorus]

Just another time I'm caught inside

Every open eye

Holding on tightly to the sides

Never quite learning why

You'll meet me, you'll meet me

You'll meet me halfway

Whenever I feel it coming on

You can be well aware

If ever I try to push away

You can just keep me there

So please say you'll meet me

Meet me halfway

[Verse 2]

Tied, to the shifting ground

Like it always was

Like it always was

You, were the perfect storm

But it's not enough, it's not enough

Not enough, not enough

[Chorus - Variation]

Just another time that I go down

But you are keeping up

Holding to a hope you'll undermine

Never to be reversed

Just another time I'm caught inside

Every open eye

Holding on tightly to the sides

Never quite learning why

Whenever I feel it coming on

You can be well aware

If ever I try to push away

You can just keep me, tell me

[Build Up]

Tell me tell me, you'll meet me

Tell me tell me, you'll keep me

Tell me tell me, you'll meet me

Will you meet me more than halfway up?

[Outro]

Shaped by, clearest blue

Shaped by, clearest blue

Shaped (will you keep it half-a-way)

By, clearest blue (will you keep it half-a-way)

Shaped (will you keep it half-a-way)

By, clearest blue (will you keep it half-a-way)

Annoyingly, unlike Worry, I couldn't pick up any lyrics that I could make visual. It has a lot of repetition in it of sentences which don't really mean anything or just sound unimaginative. I really was not getting anything from this.

I decided to scrap that idea and look at the singer herself, I thought I could incorporate her face into the album cover instead?

Then thought about what album covers that I like and would of liked to have been the one who designed it. 

                    

The disclosure face is something that I personally think is great. By coming up with something that instantly makes you know who the artist is on every single/album cover is very clever. I thought that maybe I could create my own?

Fashion Zine - Final small brief - Artist help

Although I thought my drawings were actually getting somewhere, I still felt a little bit lost. I had to have a stop and think, what am I doing, what do I need to make sure I include in my illustrations. So I went back to the brief that she sent me and wrote down the key features.

> Focus on the women - nothing else in frame
> Different races
> Different sizes
> Bright colours
> Inspired by Joanna Thangiah

Now that I have my features, I need to focus on the composition of the women - what position will their body's be in? I think this is the reason why my drawings aren't jumping out at me yet, they're not eye catching enough. This made me think, who do I know that I can be inspired by that has women posing in positions that are interesting to draw (I know that sounds dodgy but bear with me) 

Life model drawings?? I know my illustrations have to be fully clothed, but I thought that looking at these drawings would help a lot with body shape and proportion. But these aren't really in the right positions that I could use for my drawings to be in, as a lot of them were laying down or from behind so I gave this idea a miss. 

But then I remembered someone that I looked at a lot in first year that could help me...

Bettie Page! Some of the positions that she's in are a bit too risqué, but there are a fair few that would be okay for me to use as inspiration for my drawings - this one for example. And so my drawings started to look like actual women - yay!

I also went to Pinterest to source some inspiration for my lady illustrations, trying to find something similar to the artist that I had been given to work with but a bit more to my own taste. 

And I found.. Babs Tarr! It seems that she focuses mainly on women and women in comics, but I like her style of character design. I'm taking her work as my own little inspiration for my drawings and hopefully this will make my work become more successful. 

Fashion Zine - Final small brief - Rough struggles

Initial Ideas/Development

After thinking that I wouldn't struggle too much with this, when coming up with initial ideas, I found it quite difficult. I thought it would be a good idea to start drawing using my tablet onto photoshop using brushes so I could quickly come up with ideas. But because I never use this way to come up with development work (and now I know why) all my drawings weren't successful or helpful in the slightest. 

So I went back to what I know best (pencil) and started roughly drawing out initial ideas. I'm so glad I went back to using the old school analogue method because I found that my drawings were far more in proportion and looked a lot more human than my photoshop, I suppose you can call them, drawings. But I am kind of glad I used my digital method first so I have learnt for the future to stick to pencil and paper. 

Although I did still struggle with the style that she wanted to me to do, as it really doesn't come naturally to me. Portraiture isn't something that is hard for me, I think I'm quite good at drawing someone's face that being realistically or just simple lines, but doing the rest of the body... not my strongest. I find it hard to keep everything in proportion with each element without them looking like a mutant. So I had to keep practicing doing the characteristics of the face and body again and again and kept referring back to the artist that she gave me, studying the ways in how the structure and layout of the women are created. 

Substantial brief - Secret 7 - Art School

The way I created this album cover is completely bizarre and I don't think I'll ever be able to ever do it again.

I initially started making the clearest blue album cover, using brusho to create interesting textures and shapes, not totally sure on what I wanted to produce but just testing and experimenting. So I scanned in this texture into photoshop and started trying to play around with colours and contrasts. Then, for some reason that I still don't understand, my laptop started to malfunction. 

It created so many textures that I could then use! Although it did make me quite worried because I thought I had broken my laptop, it was actually an unexpected success. Because I had so much to work, it also saved me a lot of time, which made me very happy. 

After looking through the textures I created, one of them jumped out to me that I thought might make a decent album cover for art school. 

For one thing, it looks very abstract art, what I think other people think is all we do at art school. This being that we create weird abstract art that has some strange meaning that has something to do with the environment or social economics that surrounds us. It also reminds me of Mondrian:

I'm still a bit confused how I managed to produce this, but I like the meaning behind it. As I said, we art schoolers just produce abstract art and whack a deep 'meaning' behind it. But in all seriousness I actually think it works quite well. I also like how the nature of how I produced this album cover makes it totally unique and will never be able to be reproduced. Although, you could argue that I hadn't put much time into it like I have with my others. 

OUIL505 Putin Development

After the success of my first politician, I decided to go onto Putin, drawing him as a vulture. I did the same process as I did before seeing as it worked so well. But I found this merge a lot harder than before. It seems that some people are going to be easier the create than others. I also can't see it working in ceramic so I didn't try it out.

This makes me think that I'm going to be selective of what people I want to use and who would be needed to explain to children the most.

Annoyingly, I need to do responsive, as there's two deadlines coming up at the start of March, so this module might have to be on a little slow down

Substantial Brief - Secret 7 - Worry

I started by doing some quick roughs in my sketchbook, hands being the first visual symbol I could think of the show the picking up of pieces. My mind then thought of jigsaw pieces, then maybe the pieces coming together to form a love heart??? But I wasn't sure how to put all of those components together...

I still wasn't too sure, so thought I'd go onto illustrator and do some basic shapes so I could play around with them. I also took a photo of my hand to use as the basic shape outline like in my previous album cover design. 

I thought having lots of different jigsaw pieces would become too confusing, so thought just the one would do but then it wouldn't have the shape of the love heart I wanted. Then realised the puzzle piece could just be in the shape of a heart, tada! But this isn't really enough to be an interesting composition, so I went back to look at the lyrics again.

You came around to say that you’ve been away, like I hadn’t known

As if I don’t wake up every single day not seeing you go

As if this moon of ours only shines a half to make me feel whole

As if I haven’t felt your breath in every step I take when the wind blows

FEELING WHOLE! Like there's a part of him missing that he needs to fill up 

The finished result - Quite a simple design for this album cover, but I don't think it needed many frills, I don't think it would suit the song. Again I went for a limited colour choice, to me it was quite a mellow song, so crazy colours didn't seem appropriate. I am quite pleased with  the concept behind this artwork, because I usually struggle quite a lot with putting my work into context and focus a lot more on what the actual final outcome looks like. I don't actually think there's much I would change if I had to redo the album cover, as I think it links well to the song without being too obvious. 

Substantial Brief - Secret 7 - Worry-ing about this song

WORRY

I really don't like this song at all. I thought it would be okay because I've heard Jack Garratt before so I'm already familiar with it. But I've listened to the song quite a few times and am not inspired by the lyrics or the general vibe it gives off. Even when I open my sketchbook and go to draw something I don't even know what to do. So after getting annoyed for a while, I decided to look up the lyrics

My nights are broken up by the sounds of women I’ll never meet

And when my eyes are closed I can start to feel you staring at me

The right side of my bed has always left me feeling stuck in between (Oh, oh, oh, oh)

Everything I know and all the lies I tell myself so I can sleep

Pick apart the pieces you left

Don’t you worry about it, don’t you worry about it

Try and give yourself some rest

And let me worry about it, let me worry about it

You came around to say that you’ve been away, like I hadn’t known

As if I don’t wake up every single day not seeing you go

As if this moon of ours only shines a half to make me feel whole

As if I haven’t felt your breath in every step I take when the wind blows

Pick apart the pieces you left

Don’t you worry about it, don’t you worry about it

Try and give yourself some rest

And let me worry about it, let me worry about it

[x2]

(Oh, oh, oh, oh) (worry)

(Oh, oh, oh, oh) (worry)

(Oh, oh, oh, oh) (worry)

(Oh, oh, oh, oh) (worry)

(Oh, oh, oh, oh) (worry)

(Oh, oh, oh, oh) (worry)

(Oh, oh, oh, oh) (worry)

Pick apart the pieces you left

Don’t you worry about it, don’t you worry about it

Try and give yourself some rest

And let me worry about it, let me worry about it

(Worry) (Worry)

(Worry) (Don’t you worry)

I finally became inspired by the chorus (yaay), I thought I could visualise the picking up of the pieces that this (I'm assuming girl) left behind. No more worries 

Substantial brief - Secret 7 - At last REDO

Due to technical difficulties, I had to redo my at last design. Which actually proved harder than I imagined because I stupidly left it too long and couldn't really remember how I did it the first time. So again that's my fault.

But to try and help me along, I used my hand as a template for the hand that I previously did in my first attempt. This was actually was very successful and I think if I use a hand again I will definitely be doing this as it means the image will be more anatomically correct without stealing someone else's clipart. 

I looked at the little image that I had left from my initial design and tried to go with the similar colour scheme, but I had lost all of the colours that I had saved onto my swatches, yay. So I went with more pinks and purples than I did in my initial design. 

I'm not sure if I prefer this final design more or less than my first one. I suppose they're very similar, so there isn't much difference to pick on to say whether is superior. But I do like with what I have produced, as I think it links to the sensual mood of the song, especially the curves in the smoke. I like how I've used a limited colour palette that jumps off the page/screen again as it links to the mood. But maybe I should have produced more initial roughs and ideas, as I put forward one of the first things that I thought of when I listened to the song. Although you could argue it's what my visual response to the song was, which is usually the first thing that you think of. 

Substantial brief - Secret 7 - Dream 3

I admit, I have ignored Secret 7 for a few weeks and had been focusing on the penguin books instead which is still responsive so I'm not slacking!
Also the rest of the songs had kind of flattened me out, I wasn't getting any inspiration out of any of them really. It had become a lot harder than I anticipated...

Instead of ignoring it, which isn't really an option seeing as the deadline is coming up on my fast, I decided that I should take one or two days to do the remaining album covers.

I did like dream 3. I like how it doesn't have any lyrics so the artwork is purely a visual interpretation of the atmosphere it creates. It made me feel peaceful, so the colours blue came to mind. I also wanted to show stillness and complete tranquility. Tranquility always reminds me of the moon, how quiet it must be up there, so I knew I wanted to somehow include this into my artwork. But it also reminded me of a calm sea with the stillness, so not sure if I could combine these two elements?



I then had a brainwave through doing roughs, of a man fishing in the calm sea for the moon.

I drew it out 

Then vectorised it! I think working in vectors is quite good for this project, because it means that pixilation will not be a problem for submission! 

I'm actually quite pleased with how this turned out, because I think you can tell what song it relates to as it gives an aura of peace. Although I suppose you could argue that the moon is an obvious choice for this song so it isn't very inventive, but I don't think any other object would work as well. 

Responsive individual - Fashion Zine - Final small brief briefing

I got asked from a friend of a friend to do a small project to help with her university project, creating a series of illustrated women showing how the 'average size' isn't represented correctly in fashion. These illustrations will then be going into a fashion zine.

Knowing that by taking on this task it would help both of our uni work, I took it on. Even though I had never done fashion illustration before and the style of the artist she wanted my work to be inspired by is not how I work at all. But I saw this as a challenge more than something to be intimidated by, as there's no point hiding away from things that you're not used to especially at this early stage of being an illustrator. Anyway, she only wanted me to do four individual drawings of women in different sizes and race, so that can't be that hard surely?...  

Responsive Collaborative - Fifth meet up

At the start of the session, we decided to try and get the design for the packaging done so it was one less thing to worry about. I found it quite hard coming up with ideas, as we said before that we wouldn't it to be quite simple as that is the style of the saucy fish brand. But we thought that we should do whatever we thought would work so we had an open mind and didn't rule anything out before we had even tried it. So Laura and I got thinking and tried to put something together. Honestly I don't think any of my ideas are particularly going to be used for our final packaging, as it's either too much or not enough. But I don't think that we wanted any illustrations on the packaging anyway as it doesn't fit the brand.

After doing the designs, we thought that we should start thinking about what colours would work best for the packaging. We wanted all the boxes to be black but have a different spot colours that links to the main flavours or an ingredient that we had paired with the fish. We also wanted the three colours to work nicely together as a set so when the three boxes are together they can compliment each other. 

This then led to making magnets, an idea that we had come up with earlier in the process as we thought that just having the packaging wouldn't be enough. We decided to use the saucy fish logo as a device for promotion of the brand as well as creating some fun ones that would draw attention to the brand.

OUIL505 - Artists

Thomas Burdern

I found Thomas Burden on Handsome Frank. I was drawn to him for his use of object in his illustrative work. I like how it's not what people would necessarily consider illustration to be, as it's always seen as just pen to paper. But this is the direction that I would like my work to go down, using objects photographed to become the finished piece. He also considers colour, which is something that I need to start thinking about. I think I will do a similar thing in terms of colour scheme - using a bright and bold pallets. As well as drawing the attention of the audience, it also makes it quite satirical, and seeing as I'm doing politics I don't want it to be boring and serious. So I'm going to use the bright colours to counteract the 'boring' subject. 

Chris Sickels

Chris Sickels is an artist that Ben pointed me towards. I'm not sure if he is editorial, but I suppose his style could be used to depict contexts. But maybe I haven't looked at him in enough detail yet. Anyway, I really like his style! Using figures that he makes from clay and photographing them in a setting. I think Sickels will be a massive influence for my work, as this is something that I would very much like to explore. But I don't feel like my character work is strong enough yet so I need to investigate it a lot further first. 

OUIL505 - Editorial?

After having a tutorial, I was guided into doing editorial, which terrifies me. This is because after doing it once last year and epically failing, I've managed to avoid it since. I also have struggled with giving my work a context instead of it just looking nice. But! I will concur this! So this is quite a big project to give myself and I really want to pull this off.

So I need to get researching into editorial artists

The New Yorker is somewhere that I think what I've currently done would fit quite well. I wanted to see if they had anyone that had already done something with Donald Trump - knowing that I would find something as he is very relevant right now. I wanted to see how they went about doing it, not seeing it as competition, but observing the styles. The bottom uses object, something that I am interested in using in my own work. This makes me feel more confident, as they've just used the object and white background, so doesn't necesarrily have to have a busy background and composition for it to be successful. Whereas the top is a full image and uses humour to show Donald Trump's intentions for the U.S. I think I will take the humour from the top image and the use of object from the bottom as an inspiration for my own work.

Tang Yau Hoong

 

I'm not sure if this artist is the approach that I would like to do for my own work, as I would like to include 3D. But I think it is amazing. I would love for these to by my own, they're just so clever. I like how it's clear that they've been well thought out, which is what I want my own work to be like. The way that they have used negative space is so clever, thinking carefully about shape and colour. This is something that I too need to think about, as this draws the attention of the audience. I want someone to look at what I've created and be like 'wow that's amazing how did she do it?', I would love for someone to have the same response to what I had to these pieces.

OUIL505 Trump development

I had decided to focus on politics as the subject for my illustrations, so started with the character that I thought would be the easiest to turn into an animal, as well as being the most spoken about right now - Trump

I thought a pig would match him best, with the weird pink skin and greedy personality. So I drew a load of pigs, then trumps, then combined. I find this the easiest way to draw things out, because if I have a good understanding of how to draw two different things then it's a lot easier to then merge them together.

I then painted my sketches, which I think works really well. Although I used gouache which I'm really confident with, this isn't the style I ever work in. I think it reflects Trump as well as looking good as a composition.

Then I wondered if I could take it one step further, and turn my drawings into 3D... I had done it before with my tiger drawings at the beginning of the project, but this will be a lot harder. I do want to improve on my ceramic sculptural skills though, because although I have used ceramics before, I haven't really done many proper 3D models.

The result? I was so happy with how this first model came out! It's a bit clumpy, but I think you can tell who the figure is meant to represent as well as it being clear what the animal is. I'm not sure how I can use this if I use this material later in the project for my finals - would I just photograph it with a background or just by itself?? would I make them bigger?? I'm going to bring up these questions in my crit tomorrow and hopefully will be solved

Amy Hall OUIL505 Proposal

OUIL505 Artist research

Does anyone else use animals in this way??
>Merging animals with humans

Found on Behance - Katie Troy
>used collage of pig and stalin - merge together for the animal farm book cover
>ripped paper, 3D effect

John Tenniel - Alice in Wonderland - although this obviously isn't very contemporary - but depicts the human animals well

Kim Nguyen - Anthropomorphic animals 'anthros' - depicting animals with human personalities 

Charlotte Caron - Paints animals heads/faces on top of portrait photographs

Thomas Couderc & Clement Vauchez - People and animals merged together using 3D anaglyph technique - photography and not illustration but still looks cool 

Miguel Vallinas - Photography - animals in human clothes

What I got from this?

>A lot of artists mash up animals and humans, but it seems to be in a random way, not specifically linked to personality traits. 

>The  artist research shows to me that apart from in fabels & films, the link to animal and humans in art hasn't really been considered much. This means that there is a gap in the market for my kind of work, as it hasn't been done before - which is good.

>This research has also shown me more about different medias that I can try out which is useful.

OUIL505 Animals and behaviour stereotypes - research

I want to try and use animals and humans to help explain adult things to children. But first I need to work out what animals are best to use for certain people. So I found a wiki link, and picked out the most important pieces of information...

Thought processes:
>It seems that animals and their personality traits are used mostly in children's films to show messages, originally in fabels but now more so in disney and pixar films.
>Can they be used to give children that don't/won't understand current affairs a better understanding?
>Could be used to show satire?
>But, the best way that I could do this is to make a book - which is something that I really don't enjoy doing and seeing as the point of applied illustration is to do what you love, it would be a terrible idea.
>But, I could make a product for children to still help explain current affairs using animals??? - figures?
>This means that I can finally explore clay properly, which I've been wanting to do on this course for ages!

>Possible animals for Trump? -pig, vulture, croc, snake, piranha, rhino, wolf, moose
>The idea of mascots- what would you want your team/company to show?

Responsive Collaboration - Fourth meet up

We wanted to use this session to get a design on the actual packaging, but when we came together we thought that maybe first we should do more packaging designs as we sort of ran with our first idea. I found this quite difficult, as it was hard to not just do close variations of what we already have or coming up with something really obvious. I always struggle with coming up with something inventive, so I started by quickly doing all the obvious ones so I could get them out of my mind. Then for some miraculous reason, I came up with something that was based on what we had done, but with a twist. 

I came up with the idea to use the fish shape, but for it to be wrapped around the packaging (the fish shape being cardboard to be wrapped around the plastic container). But then I realised that you wouldn't be able to see the fish, and it specified that the fish needed to be the hero. So we decided to reverse it, so the negative space would be card, and the fish shape would be cut out so you could see the fish! We were really happy with this idea, as we could still incorporate the logo but have a twist on the original idea. 

We then tested out the net to see if it would be stable enough and if it was successful in aesthetics too. Luckily we found that we could fit the net onto an A3 sheet, so would be cheaper to print off and would save more paper (something that saucy fish would approve on). We also decided to put the wave from the logo onto the fish and have half of it in coloured cellophane to incorporate the logo even more. I'm very excited about our idea, because it's easy enough to do but not in a boring way. It's also different to what they already have on the shelves, so should pop out and attract the buyer.

Next time we're going to think more about what's going to go into the packaging in terms of layout and font. 

OUIL505 What am I doing?

I really didn't know what to do for this project. So when I came into the studio, I looked back at the posters to see if they would give me some guidance. I went to the ethics poster and saw how people linked between ethics and illustration:

>Phallic objects

>Racism

>Eco friendly

>Not offending people

>Profit - equal pay

>Freedom of speech

>production ethics

>moral stories

>social commitment

>subliminal messages

this really hasn't helped me at all. 

So I went and spoke to Naomi because she's always full of ideas and makes you feel a bit better about your life. She kept saying how I need to think about how illustration can be used functionally and that's the most important part of the module. I think I'm really over thinking this whole ethics thing. So I thought the best way to get ideas flowing is just to draw. Literally anything that comes to my head, then (hopefully) it'll all come together. 

By just mindlessly sketching, I realised that my go to is always animals and my go to material is gouache. This made me realise that maybe this is what I should focus on? If i do animals (obviously put more context to it) and then paint? or I could experiment with my ceramics?? 

I then thought that animals and ethics could link quite well!? I could do current affairs that I'm interested in/care about and use animals to tell the story like fabels!

I think I'm finally onto something

I don't have my application just yet but I think the first thing I need to do is start researching to create a solid theme. 

Responsive Collaboration - Third meet up

Annoyingly, I was ill on the day we agreed to meet on, so my team went on without me and experimented with creating some nets that we could possibly use.

They found out that they're actually a lot harder to make then what they initially thought. They decided to try out interesting shaped nets as we agreed before that all existing packaging was pretty samey. But this made them realise that all the packaging is in a square or rectangle because they're the easiest to stack (which these ones they created aren't) so maybe we do need to follow the crowd in this aspect. 

So they then came up with having a deep(ish) plastic tray (the plastic being one of the plant produced plastics that I researched) where the fish is, with a thin cellophane on top that you tear off. In an ideal world, this would then be it, but it isn't practical for shops as the cellophane would collapse and fish would be everywhere which isn't nice. So this will then be in a cardboard box with a shape cut out on top. This is the plan anyway. 

We then met up as a full team on Friday 

We started to think about what actually is going to go onto the box. Because they've literally given us nothing to work with - no box information or content or anything - we interpreted this as us needing to come up with our own flavours. So we created a mind map of what usually goes onto food packaging. 

Then we went onto creating 3 different fish flavour ideas, using our own understanding of food and with some help from the internet. This makes me think that the brief is a bit weird. Why give creatives a task with coming up with different fish combinations, but we did it anyway.

But it was quite fun to do, even if it did make us all quite hungry. I think that we all thought we were top chefs coming up with these culinary possibilities, but seeing as this isn't our field I thought we did pretty well. Now we need to think about how the packaging design will look like. 

So we decided to do some more mark making, this time thinking more about the crispiness, as this is one of the key features of the new fish. I thought it would be a good idea to create some rubbings, see what kind of textures they made. We went around uni and outside to collect these marks, and I thought they were quite successful as they look like crispy batter. I'm not too sure how we can use these, maybe as a brush on photoshop or a background over lay? 

We were also very organised and went down to the print dungeon and got a printing slot for our packaging, to give ourselves a day that we know we had to be ready by. Hopefully this will make us super organised with our time scale!