Extended Practice Statement of intent

Leeds College of Art BA (Hons) ILLUSTRATION	Level	06
OUIL603 Extended Practice	Credits	60
STUDIO PRACTICE Statement of Intent

Name	A	Blog Address
Date
Rationale
I would like to produce work that is more professionally finished and can be included within my portfolio or on my website. I feel I have not produced work that represents me as often yet; but rather produced work to finish briefs to a deadline. I would like to produce more commercial work and work that can be translated across products. I also would like to get involved in more branding and see how my illustrations can be used to support logos. I am hoping to experiment further with book cover designs and posters as I feel that I am not strong with these, I really battle with them and I want to get my head around it as this would benefit me in the future. It will be interesting to see how my drawing style can translate across a variety of briefs from book covers to cushions to show how flexible I can be as an illustrator. However, to stay true to my passions I will still use humor as much as possible. I feel that my strongest module throughout the two years on the course has been Context of Practice because I am taking real life situations, social groups and occurrences in the news and translating this across within my work; which I would like to explore more outside of the module and in my briefs.
Themes / Subjects
- Book illustrations - Product & Packaging - cushions, t-shirts, album covers - Informative / Educational - Poster designs
Products / Methods of Distribution
- A book cover that will be printed on high stock paper - An educational poster about diversity - A poster advertising a music festival - An album cover representing a band - A cushion design - A t-shirt design - Commercial character design - A 16 page zine to be shown at a comic festival
Practical Skills / Media / Formats
- Technical drawing skill - Digital drawing & painting – Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop - Composition within an image (more for poster designs and album artwork) - Working to a deadline - Developing concepts - Working to a variety of formats from small album cover work to whole book covers

Brief 1: Ohh Deer Cushion Designs	Deadline 6th November 2015
Rationale: Completely open brief, designs to fit in with the brand and be added to the shop. It leaves me the scope to be experimental and perhaps work with pattern design, which I would like expand on from last year. This is the type of work I see myself doing more of in the future.
Brief 2: Talenthouse - Borns album cover design	Deadline November 17th 2015
Rationale: Create visual artwork for the band. I want to get involved more in album covers because I would like to experiment more with interpreting sound into image and this would show more versatility within my work.
Brief 3: House of Illustration - War Horse	Deadline January 18th 2016
Rationale: Illustrating the new edition of the book War Horse by Michael Morpurgo. I think this is going to be one of my big briefs because I am not familiar or confident with book illustrations and so this will be a challenge but a rewarding one when finished. I think this will be portfolio worthy if executed well and if I win it would be a great achievement and push me to explore book illustration further.
Brief 4: Graphic Competitions - Chicago Latino Film Festival (Poster Design)	Deadline January 8th 2016
Rationale: Create a poster to become the face of the festival o n the cover of newsprints, programme books, electronic ads and more. I chose this brief because I want to explore composition more and I feel posters will allow me to do this. It also means I can be experimental with colour, as well as image and type. These are all my focuses for the year and I feel this would be a fun brief to run alongside other big briefs to keep being experimental and play.
Brief 5: Graphic Competitions - Embracing Our Differences	Deadline January 4th 2016
Rationale: A pretty open brief of art of any medium or size promoting social change through communities towards prejudice, exploring diversity and embracing individuality. I chose this brief because I think it grasps my interests outside of being an illustrator in equality and moving on from Context of Practice it is a great opportunity for me to show how I can further my passion of equality within my illustrations now and in the future Brief 6: Penguin Book Awards – How to be a woman              Deadline: March 9th 2016 Rationale: Non-fiction book cover based on ‘How to be a woman’ by Caitlin Moran. Timeless and classic and displaying the books funny context, it must be accessible and easy to pick up and exist within popular culture. I think this brief would suit me very well because I have a keen interest in what is current and popular culture and I think I am able to translate this well throughout my illustrations with use of humour. The only challenge I will face with this is the typography as it must be extremely well executed, and that is where my weakness lies. I will be exploring this with digital drawing and painting using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and then translating that across onto InDesign.
Additional Project Proposals These will be my main briefs but on top of this I wish to explore Threadless t-shirt designs, secret 7 album covers, YCN when their briefs are released, and take on individual commissions from small businesses that want rebranding. To do that I may need to collaborate with a graphic designer and use my illustrations alongside their logos. I think all of the briefs I have chosen give a sense of versatility with my illustration 'style' and explore a range of medium. This will benefit me with my portfolio; and I have chosen briefs that are a mixture of big 'kahuna' briefs that will be a challenge for me such as book illustration, and small fun briefs that I enjoy doing most such as cushion covers.

Contextual References

RESEARCH ACTIVITY: Research pattern designs and the cushions	Deadline
Details Look into the cushion/soft furnishings market see what is trending. Look at seasonal patterns that would fit into a November theme, perhaps Autumn/Winter shapes and colours.
RESEARCH ACTIVITY: Read War horse and research war imagery	Deadline
Details I need to read extracts of War Horse to get a feel for the book and start to explore war imagery; which would stand out the most on a cover. Explore compositions for this, and colours to suit the book’s mood.
RESEARCH ACTIVITY Research past Latino festival posters and the festival itself	Deadline
Details I want to look at previous posters to get an idea of what worked and were successful in advertising the event. I also want to look at the festival, the vibe it has to inspire colours and shapes for the poster. I want to listen to some of the music that is included at the festival; which may trigger some ideas.
RESEARCH ACTIVITY Look at past equality posters	Deadline
Details I want to produce an equality poster for the ‘embrace our differences’ piece so I need to explore perhaps symbolically how to illustrate equality. I will look at character design more for this and colour, stereotypes of people.
RESEARCH ACTIVITY Listen to Borne, research past album covers, past secret 7 pieces too	Deadline
Details I need to listen to the music as I have never heard of Borne, and get a feel of the vibe to translate as an illustration with use of colour and shape and composition. I have not worked on many album covers thus far so need to look back at old submissions of this on Talenthouse; as well as past Secret 7 submissions, I think that would be a good platform to start. RESEARCH ACTIVITY Read extracts of ‘How to be a woman’ and look at the covers of contemporary books within popular culture that fall into the same category, see what is successful. I will need to produce a questionnaire of what people perceive as a ‘pickupable’ book, what makes people want to read it? I also need to explore humorous book covers to get an idea of different types of humour that I can translate across in the book. I need to consider the audience for this in terms of the imagery used and colour.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS / TEXTS  - (Harvard Referenced)

MAGAZINES / JOURNALS / ARTICLES – (include publication date and details)

ON LINE REFERENCES  / WEBSITES / ARTICLES (include specific urls)

OTHER REFERENCE MATERIAL (Films, events, exhibitions, conferences)

ACTION PLAN – use this section to identify specific tasks that you need to complete in order to resolve the brief.
Brief	What do you need to do?	Deadline
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BA (Hons) Illustration - Level 06

OUIL603 Extended Practice

STUDIO PRACTICE

Project Proposals

10 steps to producing persuasive project proposals

1.    Set clear aims and objectives

2.             Be SMART

(Specific , Measurable , Achievable , Realistic , Time Conscious)

3.             Use words from your brief

4.             Justify the need for your proposal

5.             Describe your audience

6.             Describe your motivations

7.             Consider the reader

8.             Eliminate vagueness

9.             Visualise the ending  

10.          Assume nothing