The Final Pieces

Here are the final pieces side by side ...

I added in those last few suggestions from my tutorials such as the shadows to finish them. Overall I am really happy with them and how they turned out.

Tutorials

I went to see both Georgina and Dolores with my art.

I went to Georgina first, who suggested I add shadows to my work to make the figures look more grounded. Something I did, as I had intended to do it as shadows were present in my roughs but I had missed them in my finals.

Dolores also liked the outcome but suggested a few tweaks here and there. She liked the boy in green, but felt I ought to darken some of the line art around his skin as when printed I might lose some of the detail as the colours were too similar. I have altered the line colour to make it a little darker in my final pieces.

Other than those few tweaks, the final pieces were approved. I also decided not to try and complete the second fairy idea for the deadline. I felt with the time I had left I wouldn't get it to the same standard as the completed Much Ado idea so in the end there really wouldn't be much of a decision as to which was better. I will however continue with the idea in my own time as I think it would be worth drawing out for a promotional piece or portfolio work.

Finals - Process

Here are the basic steps I went through to create the final piece. I decided to do them as two separate images and place them together at a later stage to make it easier

I started with the girls.

1 - I started with the lineart. I traced over the original image, correcting the mistakes in the new lineart. You can see I altered the stance slightly of the second character. 

2 - Next I did the block colours. I stuck with my original basic colour scheme of pinks/lilacs and greens. The pink and green work as opposites but I kept them in the same tome so they still worked well together. The second character's colour palette is more similar to the background so you can still definitely see and notice her but not as much as the girl in green, obviously making her the central character.

3 - Next I added the background from the original rough sketch. I really liked the effect and didn't see the need to recreate it when that was exactly what I wanted anyway. I also shaded the image using the selection tool and gradient tool. That was a new way of shading for me, I usually paint in block shadows, but I feel this method worked a lot better.

4 - I coloured the lineart. The black looked good but was slightly too harsh and flattening. By colouring the image,I feel it brings it more off the page.

Next, the boys, following the same process as the girls mostly

1 - I altered the sketch slightly by redrawing the legs.

2 - Block colours. I was using the same colour scheme of green and purple/pink, going more purple with this character. I used slightly different versions of green and purple so they weren't identical to the girls, I felt that wouldn't have looked great. However by using slightly different colours, its easy to see they match the girls, who the couples are and the images work as a set and clearly look like they match.

3 - Shading. Again, I used the gradient tool.

4 - The line art was coloured

Finals - the sketches

Rather than sketch digitally, I sketched the figures for the final piece on paper with pencil. I tend to draw better traditionally but ink and colour better digitally. I made a few proportion mistakes whilst sketching, but I liked the overall expressions and figures too much to do them again when I can draw the figure correctly in photoshop with a tablet.

Here the legs on the guys are slightly out

The second character here is slightly out of proportion from where I've changed my mind on where to put her halfway through sketching

The Pitch

For the Pitch, I took in my two preferred ideas, the fairies and Much Ado and received feedback towards both.

The general feedback was positive towards both ideas. Both of them are extremely different what with one being about the simple characters and the other the entire scene. 

It was decided that this piece was a lot better with the addition of the two new characters, it gave it more depth in terms of its narrative.

With the fairies, the feedback I received was that I need to be careful of colours for when it comes to printing, as making the background too dark would mean I would lose detail and I needed to be aware of that.

Both would be suitable for Olio. My general work leans more towards the much ado inspired idea so that might be the better one to focus on, but with the fairy work being slightly different and a bit of a change that would also work well for me to show in Olio. Whilst working on both ideas I couldn't pick which one would be better for Olio and personally liked both, though the much ado idea meant slightly more to me personally than the other. But on a professional level there wasn't one idea that was better than the other. It was decided that it would be my choice, I could do them both and see which came out better

I decided to start working on the Much Ado Inspired piece and see how I felt once that was completed. 

Tutorial

Today I had a tutorial with Georgina, just to show my rough ideas before the pitch  the next week. She liked both ideas but she had suggested improvements for both.

Much Ado

Georgina suggested that only having the two characters was a little simple. I could perhaps add an outline or shadow of two more characters, one with each of the originals, to add another layer of interest and narrative to the piece. Instead, I decided to fully add in he second characters rather than just hint at them. This filled the page more whilst still keeping it simple and made the previous version look too simple to be of any interest anymore. It did also add more narrative as it made it look more like the two characters were being pushed together by the meddling second pair.

Fairies

For the fairies, Georgina liked the idea of the character sat to the side writing about them but to make her seem more like she was bringing this world to life through her writing, Georgina suggested I put a gradiant over the image so it went from black and white to full colour. I did this with the rough sketch and it definitely worked to add that bit of narrative, to make it seem like the world was coming to life the further through the image you went.

Research and Design

I researched general information about letters looking for more inspiration. I looked into some of the origins of letters, like the first stamp. The first stamp used in the British postage system was the penny black in 1840. The first postcard was also sent in 1840 with a penny black stamp.

The victorian era has always been of interest to me, particularly because it links in with another topic I've always been interested in, fairy mythology. Fairy mythology before the victorian era was incredibly dark and twisted but the victorians made light of fairies, turning them from something to be frightened of to the fairies we have today, like the flower fairies imagery. 

I used that to inspire an idea for olio. In my sketch I drew a lighter fairy scene, with a girl not from fairy sat to the side, writing a postcard or a letter to someone else about everything in fairy.

I wanted to cram as much into the sketch as possible, the exact opposite to the much ado about nothing sketch. The characters are what is important, but I wanted it to be busy with lots of smaller details to only see if you really look at the picture. I also wanted to prove I could draw a scene rather than just basic characters.

I decided to take both the much ado about nothing piece and the fairy piece for my pitch.

Much Ado About Nothing

In honesty, I was struggling to settle on an idea for Olio that fitted the brief. However, when I was looking at back at research, particularly Romeo and Juliet, I remembered another Shakespeare play. My all time favourite Shakespeare is Much Ado About Nothing, and I remembered a small scene towards the end where Beatrice and Benedick have both written sonnets about the other but have kept them hidden. Hero and Claudio however find them and give them to the other. The small insight into what the other really feels contributes to the plays happy ending and with the little push from Claudio and Hero, the pair are finally together. Here is that particular scene, from the film version with Kenneth Branagh ...





From this, I drew up an Olio design based on this scene. I didn't directly use any of the actors here as reference but used my own characters for it.

This is the rough mock up for the much ado about nothing inspired idea. I didn't want to clutter the design with too much of a background, plus my speciality has always been to focus on the characters, so they were the ones I wanted to emphasise in this work. What started out as a rough colour backdrop turned out to look sort of like half of a heart, so I decided to mimic it behind the other character to try and make a subtle heart shape to link the two characters together as being partnering pieces of art work.

I really like this idea. It fits the brief, it's based on something that means a lot to me and it focuses on characters, the thing I feel I'm best at.

Designs

I started to digitally redraw the music idea, but halfway through decided, like with the neighbours idea, something about it wasn't sitting quite right with me. I felt I could come up with a more compelling idea so decided to set this aside for the time being.

I was much happier with this idea. I added in a rough colour palette as well to see what it would look like. With this particular idea, I was thinking of invitations being a form of letter, so here I went with invitations to balls. The colour palette would be the most important aspect of this idea, as I wanted it to be incredibly busy but also all of the attention to be on the main characters, particularly the woman. I wanted this to be the idea of a couple meeting at the ball and all his attention being on her when he first see's her in the dress. There would be people in the background but not fully coloured, like the tonal range project we had with georgina, these would only be in tones and shadows and not fully coloured.

With this one I had the idea to concentrate on personal letters, between family as an example. I was running with the theme of a picture is worth 1000 words, and a collection of photos from one womans life would represent that, the photos acting as a note to the next generation of what she was truly like. I left this still in its basic sketch form, as if I finished it I just wanted it to be in sepia tones of old photographs.

Designs

I moved on to doing my initial ideas digitally in the correct size ratio so it was easier to plan the ideas out. First off, I've redone the neighbours idea. I like it, it's very basic but also quite fun, but something about it isn't sitting right with me.

InDesign

We had a session with Dolores in which she showed us how to use InDesign. Below are my brief notes from the session ...



InDesign

File - new - document [not book]

Add no. of pages, a multiple of 4 for print/ publishing

bleed - how far to edge of page

slug - area outside the bleed

Pages palette
zoom shortcut - alt makes it zoom out

file - place - picture is loaded onto mouse

click and drag to size image, let it go places


draw a frame with no image in it, file - place - open
image goes into empty frame.  elliptical tool works too

blue box for resizing goes around frame
select the image
object -  fill frame proportionately

pressing w previews the file

fit frame to content - if the frame is a circle it expands to fill as much as possible

use tools that say proportionately

A master in pages palette default
masters act like templates - whatever you put on it goes on everything
You can put page numbers on master pages

shift command as you click something copies it

put A's in each corner then current page, number - command shift - object - arrange - bring to front, number goes over everything else

Place - can be used on text document
insert image into text - place image on new page
window - text wrap
wrap type - detect edges

file - packages
everything gets saved together in folder

Colour Work and Idea Development

I had a sudden new idea for Olio, most probably coming from the research of the more romance based novels and films as well as Paperman. I had the idea of two people living next to one another, with the man who has decided to try to get the girls attention so sends her a note via paper airplane.

With Georgina, I took the rough sketch and looked at tonal values and how they affect an image. With the neighbours sketch I painted with watercolours the tonal values, splitting it into 3 shades as best I could. It was really useful as tone isn't something I usually think about in its most basic form. Its also good to consider what with creating an image intended for print - if there isn't that much of a tonal range the image may lose details when printed I hadn't thought about previously. 

We then used a limited colour palette and coloured the image according to the tonal values we'd already laid out. I was struggling to use watercolour so swapped to use pencils.

Whilst looking at tone, this was also my way of experimenting with watercolours and pencils as perhaps a possibility of working with them for Olio. I never usually use them, mostly because I'm not particularly keen on watercolour. That hasn't changed as I found using them for tones extremely difficult. Pencil I feel would also not be a good idea. I'm better with them than watercolour, but with having to scan and reprint the image I felt there was a greater chance of losing detail and the image not looking its best. Therefore I decided to stick with my tried and tested method of colouring my work digitally.

Ideas Development

For my initial two ideas I expanded on them and drew them in proportion to the sizes of the Olio.

For the mermaid, I had to turn her on her side. I couldn't think of an image to lay alongside it, I felt this particular idea was better being solitary. However, I think this particular idea may now need to be put to one side as I feel it loses something being turned horizontally. Also with the gutter you would lose part of the mermaids tail and the image wouldn't flow as well. I think I will revisit the idea for personal work but for Olio I wouldn't be happy to compromise what I think would be a better layout to make it fit this page size.

Working with the Letters to Juliet, I decided to make two separate images. I liked the period idea, of drawing the young girl next to the wall, as if she were actually Juliet. In this sketch I've toyed with the idea of contrasting the old image with a modern setting, a modern home with a girl in modern clothes writing a letter to Juliet. I feel that would show the whole idea of letters to Juliet well. It's a nice idea but personally doesn't feel right to me.

Developing Ideas

I drew a second version of the letters to Juliet idea, adding a little more detail with putting the letters into the wall.

After a session with Georgina where we discussed ideas, I was given an idea by a friend when we were discussing the suggestions laid out in our initial brief. I took the idea of a message in a bottle and wanted to play with it. What if it wasn't someone putting the message in a bottle I could draw but someone taking it out? I decided on a mermaid who likes to collect bottles, but can't understand the paper bits inside so just pulls them out and discards them.

Both would need a second image accompanying them or turning to cover the double spread by themselves.

Initial Ideas

I started to sketch out some very rough initial ideas but only in single panels to start with.

Left - I had the idea of someone receiving a letter from a credit card company, so the main character would be sat on the floor of her room surrounded by piles of clothes, accessories etc. Very much inspired by Confessions of a Shopaholic.

Right - an initial sketch with Letters to Juliet in mind, a young girl in period dress sat with the wall from the film behind her.

I also had an idea based around the music I looked at earlier. One panel, a boy trying to write/ compose, in the next a girl sat listening to the radio, as if she were listening to his song he wrote for her - a message just for her.

Beatrix Potter

Whilst doing research, I looked briefly at Beatrix Potter. She is perhaps one of the most relevant artists to relate to Olio because before she even began her books, she was writing stories about Peter rabbit in letters to the son of a former governess which she also illustrated for him. He had been ill and she sought to entertain him with her stories. The letters are what ultimately turned into the books we all know and love today.

Whilst the illustrations in the letters aren't the full colour versions, they are like the small sketches that can be seen throughout her works between the full page colour illustrations.

Reference 

http://yorktown.library.pitt.edu/libraries/is/enroom/illustrators/potter.htm

Ideas and Research

A few ideas I had for Olio ...

- Letters to Santa

- Letter in a bottle

As well as normal letters, I found a few examples of other kinds of messages from one person to another. I looked at Paperman, the short film by Disney ...

Research - Songs

I also looked at songs and song lyrics for initial inspiration. Below are some examples of what I found ...










This song is more about leaving a voicemail message than a letter but it's still a message

Pinterest

Here is the link for my Pinterest board dedicated to Olio - there are both videos and images related to research influences, ideas and possible drawing references for later in the project ...

http://www.pinterest.com/amymusgrave93/olio/

Research - Films and Books

When looking at Olio, a lot of my ideas have initially come from books and films I have read and seen.

In a sense, I feel books themselves count under the category of letters - they are a message from one person to another through written words which often affect the readers just as much as personal letters.


Below are a couple of examples of romance books, films and plays I looked at that contain letters ...


Me Before You - Jojo Moyes

The letter in this book is written from one friend to another and doesn't appear until the very end, but the use of it is incredibly poignant. It's highly emotional and thought provoking, the point of the whole book. The emotion is again the whole point of the written letter.

P.S I Love you (2007)
based on the book, by Cecelia Ahern

The whole plot for this story revolves around letters. It's highly emotional, like with Me Before You, and the theme's revolving around the letters are romantic and about letting go.

Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet has been retold several times in all sorts of film adaptations revolving around the original play. In the story, letters that are meant to be passed on to Romeo to explain the plan to fake Juliet's death never reach their destination and as such result in the plays tragic ending.

Pride and Prejudice (2005)

based on the book by Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice (2005) is one of my favourite films, which also contains letters. Darcy leaves Elizabeth a letter when they fall out and he wants to explain to her his reasoning for his actions. The letter leaves more of an impression on her than his spoken words probably would have. 

Our Girl (BBC TV Series, 2014)

This drama from the BBC focused in an army medic, Molly, away in Afghanistan. Whilst it touched briefly on letters home in the programme, the writers of the show wrote fictional letters between the main characters and relatives back home that were posted on the facebook page for the show as promotion.