OUIL505 Project Report

OUIL505 Evaluation

Initially, I was excited for the freedom this module brings, finally being able to essentially do what we've always wanted to do. But, the thought of it being a heavily research based module scared me, as this is the area that I always loose marks in. I really wanted to prove that I can do it, mainly for myself. I also knew that it would help me discover myself, so I did want to do as well in this module as I could. 

In this module, I have learnt some creative skills that I can bring into my future work. Strangely, I've learnt a bit about graphic design when putting together my cards. I think it is important as an illustrator to have at least a basic understanding of graphic design and vice versa, especially when it comes to type and layout. I've also learnt how to make my work look more professional, as this is the first time that I would show my work to a company and be proud of it. This is something that's very important for the future, as presentation is the first thing that a client would see.I’ve also learnt how to make stickers and double sided cards, which is a creative skill that I will need to have for next year, as well as helping me for PPP when it comes to self promotion. 

My strengths for this module I think has been my time management, as I've been so into the module that I haven't been wanting to do anything else but. There wasn't a point in this module when I was looking around at everyone else's sketchbooks and realising that I 'm behind. This is something that I want to try and keep up in all of my modules, as it increased the enjoyment for the process. I think another strength in this module is my openness to trying new things, as this is the reason why my outcomes became so successful, taking the risk of choosing editorial. I also think my visual quality of my illustrations is another strength, because they are the reason why the aesthetics of my products are successful. I think I've found a material that is best for my practice and now I need to capitalise on this in later modules. 

My weaknesses in this module I think is that I needed to do even more research initially when choosing which category of illustration to go into, as I think this is why I was so lost in the beginning. If I could do this module again, I would have given myself a better understanding of all of the options and routes I could have gone down.  

This module has definitely taught me a lot about my practice. It's taught me that I shouldn't stray away from an illustrative practice because I haven't done it before. I've found out more about myself as an illustrator, which has been the best thing I've ever received from a module in illustration so far. I've realised that editorial and product combined works very well for my practice, and more specifically doing political satire. I think that this is something that I might look into in the future after university for my work, as this is the first time I've been extremely happy with the final outcomes that I have produced. It's also something that genuinely gets me excited, and will even do research into to develop my knowledge further. Which, if you know how I work, is quite a big step for me, as research is something that I usually avoid. Finally finding an area that really interests me is amazing, I'm actually relieved, as so far on this course nothing had particularly come out to me of complete interest. 

It's also interesting to see that one of the first things I wrote down in my research book is that I said I'm definitely going sell my own work when I leave uni, and within a couple of months I know that this probably isn’t going to be the case. This shows that we are still in the learning process, and can't be for certain what's going to happen to our practice in the future. It also shows that you can’t disregard any options, even now, I still have another year to refine my practice. 

OUIL505 Presentation Boards

OUIL506 Final Physical Products

OUIL505 ?!?!?!?!?

I quickly had another look on Trump's official website to look at any merchandise that I missed out, and found this?!?!

What the fuck is this!? This just shows hoe excessive these american campaigns get. It's just ridiculous!? Why would you want a jacket for your dog with a political leaders campaign on it!? why!?

I think if I had more time, I should have created some spoof mock ups of merchandise which would have linked more to the idea of excessiveness. But I can have this as a proposal for the future.

OUIL505 Proposal Redo

My initial proposal for this module has changed quite a lot compared to my outcome, so I redid it:

OUIL505 Last minute application

I was so determined to make my own physical foam hand to go with my products, but the one I had ordered online hadn't turned up yet, so thought I should just make a mock up one online and come to face that facts that it wasn't meant to be. But! It came in the post yesterday!! Which is quite annoying because I had taken photos of all my physical products yesterday morning, so I couldn't professionally take photos of it. But, I had already spent £6 on it so was not going to go to waste!

This is the illustration that made me think to apply my work to a foam hand. I wanted to replicate one of them foam hands from the illustration, because I thought it would work really well as merchandise to go with the top trumps. 

I'm really happy with the result, because it links to the whole campaign theme as well as having a clear connection to one of the illustrations from my top trumps cards. The photo isn't the best of quality, but with it being so last minute I did what I could. Plus it's another physical thing I can hand in! 

OUIL505 Application mock ups - non physical

I wanted to make as many physical things myself, but some things I either didn't have time for or just wouldn't be possible. I tried to think of what would be most relevant to apply my illustrations to, and I tried to think of what people usually have for campaigns - badges, t-shirts etc. So that's the kind of route I chose. I also wanted it to be relevant to the trump cards that I produced, so that if these products were next to my trump cards on a shelf, it wouldn't look out of place.

OUIL505 Photographing products

Today I rented out all the photography equipment (lights and all) to take some professional-ish photos of my final products. We had the induction for how to use everything and had used them in the collaborative part of responsive, so was hoping it wouldn't be too bad. I was really excited at the start of the day, because I had never really taken photos of just my own work before,  and was looking forward to see how they would turn out.

These are the photos I've chosen to include in my design boards:

Annoyingly, we had the lights on too low a setting, and the photos came out a lot darker then what it looked like on the camera. But luckily it was easily fixable on photoshop, and I'm going to take this as a learning curve - photos look way brighter on the camera than on the computer.

I am quite happy with my photos, bearing in mind that I know nothing much about photography. I'm happy that I've got some good quality photos for my boards, as it will make them look more professional like they're a real product that I'm introducing to stores.

OUIL505 Editorial application?

I've been thinking about what Ben said in my tutorial about applying my illustrations in an editorial context, and thought that I definitely need to mock it up. So I found an article from GQ about the debate about trump having small hands meaning he had a small dick and applied my illustrations. I thought I should have a combination of full page and spot illustrations to see what works best. I quite like the full image, although I don't think my illustration is really appropriate for the GQ audience, it does link to the article. I think that editorial should be something to definitely consider in the future, which is a really weird thing to say considering I hated it last year. It shows how much your work can change within a year, which makes me excited for next year!

Not sure if this is definitely editorial, but I wanted to see how else I could apply my illustrations successfully. I thought maybe for an anti-campaign using billboards? I think my illustrations work quite well with the text and having hand drawn images instead of photos (which people usually use for campaigns) would work better to catch people's eye. I think this idea is something that definitely could be expanded on, but is a bit too late for me to do anything about now which is annoying... 

AMY ON 7TH MAY - I've just reread this, and maybe dropping the c bomb wouldn't be appropriate to be seen in a busy town centre shown in the picture. If I were to do this campaign then I would use my appropriate language for my audience.

OUIL505 Final Crit

After the megacrit it was really nice seeing what everyone had produced, especially as everyone has gone so far from last year it's crazy! I didn't find the feedback incredible helpful because I had already printed my final stuff so already knew what I was doing. But it was nice to see that people really like what I've done which is great.

After having the group peer feedback today (which I usually find more useful than megacrits), it helped me think about where I could distribute my product. They came up with:
>Joke shops
>Forbidden Planet
>Urban Outfitters
>Magma

I found this useful, as I wasn't quite sure of where to place my cards and all the rest of the merchandise because they're too satirical for places that sell normal top trumps i.e. Wilkinsons. I have never heard of Magma so I think I should probably google.

I naturally clicked on the tag 'Trump games', and turns out they sell top trumps! Well trumps because they aren't created my 'Top Trumps'. I think my cards definitely can have a place here! As well as the rest of the merch that comes with it t-shirts, badges etc. Although they don't seem to push the satirical boundary which mine do, but they're still definitely not your bog standard trumps. The company 'Magma' seem to be pretty big online which I think would be good for my products, as this means people in the U.S could also find and buy my products.

OUIL505 May the fourth bring you stress

Today was definitely the most stressful day of the whole module so far. I was so excited to finally print out all my cards that took me ages to perfect, as well as my box packaging and my first time printing my own stickers. Alas, James was not in when I turned up to my print slot. So, none of the print guys that came to cover knew how to print off double sided. They also don't know how to print stickers, so had to scrap that idea. At this point my excitement turned into despair. After ten wrong printed out pages later, I finally had an almost perfect print. It's 2mm off being perfectly double sided, but I just wanted to get out of there and was the best I was going to get without James being there. At least my packaging came out fine…
Then a little bit of luck came, as they changed staff and the girl that covered them knew (kind of) how to make stickers so I ran down and begged if I was able to slip myself into the slot and I did yaay. But she wasn't really too sure what she was doing, and after a few misprinted sticker sheets later, I finally had them done!

Roller coaster

So because of this, I lost a lot of time. Spending 5 or so more hours longer at uni then I needed to when I could have been blogging or making presentation boards. I know it's hard to replicate James, especially which such short notice, but I don't think it's fair that our work has to suffer because someone else is ill. The system really needs to get sorted out quickly.

OUIL505 Ready to print

I've finally got everything ready and spell checked and ready to print! I'm really looking forward to seeing how these turn out and having them physically. This is my first time printing cards and stickers so I'm really hoping that it'll go well as I don't really know what I'm doing. But I told James beforehand and he told me how to lay out the documents so should be fine!

OUIL505 Final Cards

I've finally finished all the writing for my cards wooo! I thought it would be a lot harder than it actually was... I think once I got one down, the rest of them just started flowing out nicely. But I have to give a shout out to my brother and sister for providing with me with the Penis information and the Peeping Trump information. 

I'm so happy with how these turned out, especially as I have no graphic design experience, so laying out the cards was quite challenging. I'm glad that I made the illustration fill out most of the page, as it makes the cards more fun to look at. 

OUIL505 Front Card Design

I've finally got the front design for the card nailed!! After quite a struggle and a chat with Ben, I needed to keep reminding myself that the illustrations needs to be the main focus of these cards! So I changed the idea of having a circle into a rectangle that fills up most of the page. I also decided that I wanted all my cards to have the same format, so the illustrations that didn't have backgrounds, I used one of the illustrations that did and layered it so it looked like I had given them all backgrounds. This made it a lot quicker to do all the rest of my cards.

(this is a screenshot so the quality is the worst)

OUIL505 Front card struggles

I'm finding this part the hardest compared to everything else that I've made so far. I really don't want my cards to look like they've been made on paint. But I also need to remember, that in the real world if this was a job, I wouldn't have to be doing this and a graphic designer would do it for me. I'd just be doing the illustrations. But obviously right now I can't do that... So need to try and give it my best shot.

Buutttt because I always want everything to be/look perfect, I'm making this take a lot longer to do than it should... I'm hoping when I finally crack the layout of the card, then it's just a case of copying and pasting my new image into the next card and slightly changing the text.

I can do it!

I know this is terrible graphics, but I googled top trumps again to see the different layout formats, and I liked how this one has different sized shapes placed together. But I need to remember that I need to have my illustration as the main focus of the card, seeing as I'm doing an illustration course.

OUIL505 Social Media

I got twitter to try and grab the attention of Donald Trump or any kind of supporter to try and see what they would do. Annoyingly, nothing. I suppose only having twenty odd followers doesn't really help, but at least I tried I suppose!

OUIL505 Final Packaging Design

From the feedback that I received from my peer reviews and tutorials, I really needed to rethink the design for the front of my box, as it isn't exciting enough. I needs to be clear that I am taking the piss out of this whole stupid campaign and not trying to stick too much to the original top trumps design.

Originally this is what I came up with:

Which isn't thaat bad. But it definitely does still need more! I needed to make the colours brighter and the whole thing to be more comical!

The tutors and peers both said that I should put one of the spot illustrations on the front of the box, but when I tried this, it looked out of place. It looked like I had just stuck it on and didn't merge with the rest of the design. Instead, I thought of changing the stars which I originally had in the background and change it to a patterned version of the Donald Dump illustration. I also really wanted to include his hair on the front of the packaging, so I came up with including it quite subtly, but placing it on the top of the 'T' of the 'TOP' . 

FINAL OUTCOME:

I'm really happy with the outcome of my packaging. Bearing in mind I'm really not a graphic designer, I don't think I did a bad job on the type or general layout! I think it looks quite clean and professional, and you know exactly what you're getting from it. I could have put a big illustration on the front, but I think it would have ruined it. Plus I'll have all my illustrations on the cards inside, so don't think it's missing out on them at all. 

I can also use this for the back of my cards, which saves me a lot of time!! It also links better with the rest of the product, by having some similarity running through the designs. 

BACK OF CARDS: 

OUIL505 Final illustrations

I finally have all my paintings finished so now I just have to put them onto my cards and stickers which I'm hoping won't be too complicated… I think as long as I scan them onto my laptop at 300 dpi then I don't think much can go wrong. But I'm a bit worried because some of my illustrations are spot and some of them have a background, so I'm not sure how I'm going to work with the two. I think I'm going to have to have different compositions for each card, which might not look too bad.

Overall I'm really happy with how my final illustrations came out. I managed to paint some quick drawings that I had done previously in my sketchbook which saved me so much time. I think this has taught me that I need to always be sketching throughout the module, as it may create a new idea later on which creates a successful final. They're also they're the kind of drawings which I just created from the top of my head. I think this makes them more successful as illustrations as they're not generic and have more context.