Reflecting

As the deadline for this presentation document is approaching, I'm looking back over the project so far and reflecting on how its gone.

Overall, I'm really pleased with how everything has gone, and the final images are looking how I hoped they would at the start of the project.

Certain aspects of the project have been more difficult than I expected, particularly the planning the layout of the fairytale land. However I feel I managed to find a good way of resolving this issue, by creating a rough 3-dimensional version of my plan, and photographing it from different angles. This also helped me to avoid the pages being too repetitive, something which I had not thought about at the start. I've also managed to get around this issue by using different colours to represent changing seasons throughout the book, which is something I would not normally have done as I tend to use limited colours.

I feel this project has helped me to develop my own style, combining techniques and styles from previous projects to achieve something I'm pleased with. I've also begun to draw using a brush and ink rather than a fine liner during this project, which is a technique I now much prefer to how I was doing it before. During the project, particularly the early stages, I have discovered an interest in character design, and in fact I believe that the characters have turned out to be the strongest part of the book.

Throughout the project I have been to numerous tutorials and work in progress meetings with various tutors, all of which have been really helpful in providing new ideas and inspiration for my project. Speaking to tutors at regular intervals throughout the project has helped everything go quite smoothly, as I could work on any suggestions they had straight away before getting too far into the project to be able to change anything. 

I am quite surprised at how well I managed to stick to my original time table, and I stayed on track throughout the majority of the 17 weeks. My initial timetable however did not consider time for things such as my Creative C.V, Portfolio etc. but I managed to get those done over easter. 

Keeping this reflective journal has also been very helpful to my project, and its something I will continue to do in some form or another (perhaps in a notebook rather than a blog).

Looking back at my earlier blog post reflecting on my feedback from Negotiated Study, I set myself these goals:

- More variation in lines (thickness etc.)
- Make the colour less precise or more offset.
- Experiment further with type
- Perhaps print onto other textures such as wood?

As for the variation in lines, I have been working on this throughout the project, using brush and ink instead of pen (as I mentioned earlier in this post) and that has been really successful for me.

Half way through the project I did experiment with off-setting the colours more, but as discussed in the blog post and at a tutorial with Jonny, I didn't feel it was right for the busy images I was creating for this project, so I've stuck to solid colour.

I haven't had much of a chance to experiment with typography in this project, although if I get my book printed and bound in time, I plan on looking at possibly illustrating some quotes form the stories to display on the wall, so this may change soon.

This goal was set with the assumption that I would be screen printing my final outcomes, which turned out not to be the case. However I have instead looked at using paint and ink textures within the digital illustrations so I have still managed to experiment within this area.

I still need to print my final images and bind by book together, as well as finalising my plans for the exhibition. But so far I am happy with the majority of what I have done, and have really enjoyed this project.