Overall, I feel the project has been a success. I have researched into how to visually retell stories that were intended to be consumed orally or through written word and have created outcomes which visually retell stories in a modern day setting. My illustrations tackle the issues that come with social media by highlighting negative scenarios it can cause. I am happy with the way I have answered the brief in conceptual and technical terms. I feel I have answered the brief in an interesting and thought provoking way which I aimed to reflect the time and culture we are in (similar to old fairytales) and teach lessons to viewers about the problems which social media can cause (similar to the lessons taught in old fairytales too). My outcomes reflect the research I have gathered throughout the project and reveal my insights, revelations and findings of the topic. Not only have I learnt a lot about our growing unhealthy consumption of social media today, I myself have become more aware of my own social media intake and feel more strongly about the negative impact it can have. I feel the impacts social media can have on one’s mental health and social interactions needs to be addressed more. Young adults need to be more aware of their intake and think about what implications it is having on their lives. Therefore, I am happy with my subject matter because it is something I believe in and want to create awareness for.
When I started the project I thought I had a clear idea of exactly what I wanted to achieve, I thought I would create a social commentary about the way we use social media through illustrations. At the start, I thought I would create eight illustrations using a minimal colour palette and thought they would be all created by hand but in the end I created five much more modernised, detailed and coloured pieces with stronger concepts and heavily using Photoshop. I have never spent as long on digital programmes to create my illustrations before I did this project, I spent a lot of time playing around with composition, colours and scaling on Photoshop. In the end, I was pleased with the journey and processes my project went through to create my final outcomes.
In my outcomes I created a variety of different perspectives, retelling each fairytale from either the perspective of the main character, from a third party perspective or from the perspective of a different character from the original story. This has allowed me to retell the tales in a range of different ways, focusing particularly on the subject matter of social media. I feel these different perspectives and how I have modernised each fairytale make my illustrations more interesting. I visually retold each fairytale as if they were occurring now, this made the illustrations more comical, relevant and relatable to the audience. For example, Pinocchio as Donald Trump tackles current affairs in political news and makes viewers consider Trump as an alternative character which I hope will be thought provoking and entertaining.
After lots of rough sketching,observational drawing,developing ideas in my sketchbook and experimenting with mediums – I began to problem solve each of my fairytales thinking about the concept behind each fairytale, how I was going to successfully portray them and in what illustrative ways would I do so. Playing with different mediums in my sketchbook allowed me to gain a visual language which I could then translate into my final outcomes. I used a range of traditional mediums in my development and final illustrations such as watercolour, wax crayon, ink, collage, fine liner, pencil, pencil crayon and acrylic paint. I then used Photoshop and digital painting on my Wacom tablet to finalise my outcomes, playing around with scale, colour and composition. I particularly enjoy this way of working using traditional and digital methods, this project in particular has allowed me to see how I work best as an illustrator and helped me develop my way of working which ultimately helps improve my practice. In my opinion, the most successful areas of this project have been the concepts behind the fairytales and the mixed media illustrative approach I have taken to create my outcomes. I feel using combining digital and traditional methods of illustration helps harness the best out of my work and I will continue to practise improving these skills.
This project has been a great lesson for me to practise my editorial illustrations and helped me learn how to convey a narrative through a single illustration. It has improved my image making abilities and made me realise what type of illustration I do and don’t like doing more. Although I thoroughly enjoyed
creating my first editorial illustrations, retelling old stories, playing with different mediums and incorporating text into my work, I think in future I will avoid retelling more children’s stories. In future, I would like to tell my own story, visualising it and character developing with no past influences. I needed my illustrations to be recognisable to the viewer as I was retelling stories, I achieved this through colours, type and conveying the characters themselves However, I found I didn’t want to depict the characters faces like the old Disney characters but equally I didn’t want to recreate their faces to be someone completely different. Therefore, I excluded the majority of the facial features. The facial features I included were enough to retell my stories and get my message across though, they also allowed the viewer to imagine what face they would like.
I wanted each of my illustrations to be teaming with intricate detail, allowing the viewer to discover new elements and textures in each illustration as they looked more closely. I wanted each illustration to work as a final image but also work when the viewer zoomed into certain areas. Using small details and a range of interesting textures I feel i achieved this, this is one of the main things I am happy with about this project.
In terms of considering what I would do differently, I might change my figurative style to be less naive but ultimately I think instead of focusing on how I would change it I would focus more on how I could expand it. I think in future for this project I might retell more fairytales and create a larger series of them. Or I might focus on one fairytale and make it more of a story showing narrative about social media in a modern day setting through either a comical book or short children’s book.
Considering where I would take this future, I want to approach magazines, newspapers and online platforms next in the hope they will show my work. Either by using my illustrations in a social media article of their own, or featuring me as an illustrator and talking about me and my work in particular. Some places in particular I hope to approach are Gurl-Talk, G-IRLS, Colossal and Bored Panda. For post graduation development, I hope that through this project I will get the chance to create more editorial work which will be published.
This work fits into my wider practise as I feel I now have a broader understanding of what it takes to create a successful editorial illustration, something I had never tried before. I feel my eye for composition has improved and through trial and error I am more able to recognise when elements aren’t working and what ways to better them. This project has allowed me to obtain work which is different from some of my past pieces, this in turn has helped me broaden my portfolio. As well as this, I feel my illustrative style has developed, I am able to be more critical of myself and my confidence in digital illustration has grown. My digital skills were something I aimed to improve before even starting this course as at the beginning of this course my digital skills were almost non-existent. Playing around with each illustration’s composition, scale and colour using digital programmes was a key exercise which helped improve my personal development.
Going into the next project, I will continue to use and improve my mixed media illustrative style, getting involved more into collage and using different materials within my work. I will also be delving into a different way illustration is used, this time I will be focusing on packaging design and making my own templates to create 3D illustrations for the first time.
This project has made me realise what is particularly crucial to the way I work is to create a library of imagery which I then develop and use to create my finished outcomes. The start of my illustrations for this project were just as important as the last, this is something I’ll be sure to keep in mind for future projects. I am now able to acknowledge that what is especially important to me and my practise is to have both a personally fulfilling element to what I do as well as a connection to my audience, creating work which people can relate to and engage with to find meaning from.
Rosie