External work - year 3 semester 2
Last semester we also had a module like this and I did very poorly due to not really understanding the module well and not expressing what I did and the time it took and how it fulfilled the brief. This semester I was very worried about that and put in a lot of effort to undeniably have done the work. I hope in this writeup I'll be able to go over each external piece I have done and show my effort and dedication to trying to become the best future professional I can be.
My aim this semester was largely to try a large number of different kinds of tasks and to do the reasearch I would need in order to potentially freelance in the future. A big part of this would be getting experience selling in person,
Classes
This last semester our classes have been focused on preparing us for working in the outside world. We had a lot scheduled and I attended most of them but due to a mixture of other commitments I will speak about later and mobility troubles I did not attend all of them.
The first class I can't remember well outside of us going over some potential external work and being told to prepare a proper portfolio to send to Fig Taylor and fill out the working with others form to plan out how we'd use our hours. Some of the things I planned got done and some of them did not and I also came up with projects later in the year.
<-- working with others form
the feedback I got on my working with others form was largely positive but I was told to try and think about my target market and how I could interact with them in order to figure out how to improve my project. My website review from Fig Taylor amounted to the fact a lot was going on and it was kind of messsy and hard to navigate. I have the origional version on the link but have taken to hear what she said and want to make a more streamlined portfolio website that gives a clearer idea of who I am and what I want to do.
On the 18th we had the head of the english manga company SweatDropStudios in, Laura Watton aka PinkAppleJam talked to us about how studios can be formed from like-minded artists as an alternative for working with a larger studio and how they can provide a lot of stability for an artist. She also went over how she goes about attending cons and even spoke on navigating being an artist who attends conventions and works full time while being disabled. I actually emailed her after the talk to thank her as she was very interesting and also very appreciated from the standpoint of me being an artist who lives with chronic pain. We have also kept in touch by following one another on twitter and I often look at what she's doing as inspiration for the sort of work I might like to try out after I graduate.
We had a class on Lettering with John Charles the next week, it was very informative and we learned to use Adobe Illustrator to do lettering. The shortcuts were very tricky at first but after a while, we all managed to fully letter the practice page and make different shaped speech bubbles. I later kept a lot of what I learned in mind when I was making my comic pages for the main project.
Next Matt Garvey came to talk to us all about his experiences in the field, he told a lot about social media management and suggested we each should try our hands at scriptwriting as it is in a lot of ways a higher paying job than art. I forgot to take notes but I did reflect on what he said and even took a little look at my unused scripts. If I were to try and sell scripts I think I would have to hone the craft a lot and make a point to practice writing in my free time but overall I think I suit the art side better as I find my scripts are often pretty stilted and lacking especially in comparison to my prose which is a lot higher quality and easier to follow as stories. He also suggested we keep a tight schedule and try and cram work into every hour, this makes a lot of sense as a person with two jobs who is also raising a baby the way he is. I actually do keep and have kept a schedule throughout university as planning hour by hour helps give my days structure. I've provided a couple of photographs of some of my timetables from recently below. I will admit I am struggling to find leisure activities to cut out as he suggested to my classmates as most of my non-working time is spent trying to regain the ability to move or trying to keep my home clean and myself fed.
Next we had John Charles in, he showed us his art progress as well as his scripts for his own comic. We did an exercise in character design but the main part was the opportunity to create a short comic or splash page for the next issue of his comic. I spent the night after that lesson reading through all the material he sent to us and ended up creating a sketch for a splash page as the scripts didn't really call to me at all. I finished the sketch and considered sending it in but I was also thinking a lot about the fact this comic's tone and humor had not been appealing to me at all the whole time I'd been reading it. I put it away for the day and the next morning when I went to look at it I realized that it wasn't my best work and I didn't feel like a piece I made for this specific comic would ever be one I was proud of. Usually, this would be fine but I had at this point already a large amount on my plate and if I was going to work for free I wanted a piece I would be happy having in my portfolio out of it. I decided against sending it in.
However, I did value seeing how the comic was planned out using photographs collaged to make the layout of pages and panels and actually attempted the same method in the sketch I made. It was pretty successful and something I have since added to my tool belt and would love to discuss more with John Charles when I see him next.
^ we got sent the complete comics to look over
^ I really liked this method of planning a page
my sketches ^
Feedback sessions
A couple of times this semester we had the chance to receive feedback from professionals in the field. This included giving presentations to a panel and getting one-on-one advice from Kevin Gunstone and John Charles.
I didn't actually send in work to Kevin Gunstone as he was looking at comic scripts and I was primarily creating a game this semester. However, I did show some progress to John Charles. I sent him a copy of my game so far, my latest presentation and a very rushed bit of concept art for my companion zine. His response to most of the work was very positive, especially my colour pallettes and visual consistancy but he also reminded me that the shading on the final product needed to make sense in order to look good. I had slapped down some shading very quickly the night before on the proof of concept and it was very messy and inconsistant. I kept that in mind when working on the final comic as you can see here.
Start of Semester 2 Presentation
Once semester 2 started we had the real work, it was time to present my idea in full to a panel of people, some would know the idea from the previous semester and some were fully new additions and I was very invested in making my concept clear and selling it to them. I worked on not only making a solid presentation which included my concept art, a full potential story for the game, and merchandise ideas, but also on using the actual look of the presentation to establish a mood and artstyle. This ended up going very well, the panel enjoyed my pixel style and also really enjoyed my looser style I had used on my animatic and the matching character design art I did for the bakers who were each the basis for one of the game levels and would be present in the companion zine I wanted to make. I also took the base example platformer in Gdevelop and essentially reskinned it to look like the kind of game I wanted to make and recorded some demo gameplay footage as a way to get my concept across. I later scrapped this iteration since I felt it was important to code my game myself for better or worse.
The pitching process was honestly a great catalyst for coming up with ideas and I ended up putting many ideas in the presentation to look for guidance on which ones would be a good idea and which ones were a little weaker that I could maybe scrap. What I ended up receiving was even more ideas, it was nice how much fun the panel seemed to be having with the concept but later led to me having to really prioritize completing the concepts I most wanted finished.
Progress Presentation
The progress presentation came along very quickly. I used the same template as my last presentation and showed my progress so far, I included examples of what I stated above and attempted to include a video of the game in that current state but sadly the video didn't load into the presentation so they didn't get to see it. But I did have a demo of the game in an early phase available on itch.io and put another slightly later recording in this copy of the presentation for you.
Password for the sample game is Gingerbread
The response to this presentation was very positive which was good but also left me without very much new to think over and refine. However, it was very encouraging to see that in the eyes of the panel it was a complete concept.
Fundraising activites
As part of the module we needed to raise money and awareness for the final exhibition so we would have funds with which to build things. We ended up doing a lot of external activities this way.
The introduction class had us create valentines cards for a valentines stall the following week. We practiced paper cutting and while the results were cute it was slow. When I got home I ended up creating several watercolor cards and produced more at the first stall in order to help bulk out our stock. I focused on making cute puns as they sell well and one Mothman design I made was popular enough on social media I ended up selling 2 copies and a digital file before the stall even began. This was where I learned that selling digital files for prints is very affordable. I also posted some of my designs to social media in the following days.
The actual stall was meant to run for one day but due to the success and the fact valentines was coming up, we were asked for volunteers to come in and run the stall over the next 3 days. I ended up volunteering and worked the stall the next few days, I mostly took care of the morning shifts with classmates coming in the afternoon to take over, I was very glad Laurence and Alejandro were both willing to help with setting up the table since the person who had volunteered with me didn't make it in the mornings and I couldn't set it up myself. It was very tiring to walk to the stall every day but it was really fun to interact with customers and make sales and I really like the feeling of selling work and seeing the customers in person. In future though we tried not to overstock too much as a lot of customers were kind of overwhelmed by the variety and we didn't come close to selling out.
On the final day we accidentally ended up stepping on the toes of the second first years who were selling zines and hadn't been warned the 3rd years would be selling but we did our best to set things up so both were visable and I ended up getting to meet and make connections with people who weren't in my year. This included being invited to take part in a certain Zine Gareth might soon become aware of, though sadly my idea of a comic where Garfield attempts to sell my teacher as an NFT did not get made due to time constraints.
The flyers were also me ->
After this, we had the task of coming up with a strong idea for a Zine to sell as a class to fundraise. We came up with a lot of theme ideas for art books and the vote settled on Frogs as a theme. We made a Zine called Frogs and toads and I worked very hard creating a replica of the painting 'The Swing' with frogs as I think it's a beautiful painting and is infinitely funnier when frogs are involved. I worked very hard to make it detailed and it became very popular with teachers and students. All the work in the book was lovely and it sold very well and I even had one of my teachers pay me so he could print my picture for his wife. We sold out of the zine when we brought it to the popup shop and set up in two locations, the popup shop proper and the Ember lounge, we also sold caricatures of people as frogs, I sold 3 and even was asked for my contact information for a later commission. The zine was successful enough that we reprinted it a few times and considered an issue 2.
The full artbook PDF is available on the etsy store for the class.
After this, the Catalyst building was opening up and they wanted people to come and draw the guests to make the place look more populated and artists to sell at tables at the market on the weekend that they were holding. I was planning on doing both. On opening day we went into the new building and drew people, we largely went unnoticed but we got in a lot of drawing, however, it was very sensory unfriendly. The second time we went I got overwhelmed and had to leave early.
For the market I started preparing what I wanted to sell, I settled on Zines, I made one brand new one and properly scanned an old one with plans to sell both sharing a table with a classmate who was going to sell stickers. I sadly ended up violently ill and couldn't attend the actual event but I created the Zine and now have a print-ready file I can use whenever I'd like, I'm planning to sell copies of btoh zines at the graduation exhibition.
Extra on-campus work
Early in the semester, I decided to try and make new connections on campus, the first way I did this was by attending a staffs media mixer in hopes of meeting somebody to work with on my game. I didn't meet anybody from the games course but I did encounter a large amount of the acting and film students, join the staffs media mixer facebook group and secure an animation project to work on which I will elaborate on later. I wanted to attend more after that evening to up my odds of meeting a games student but I never actually saw another advertisement for another session despite being in the facebook group so wherever they advertise it is not easy to find.
I also worked with my teachers on helping make a video that would help promote the course. They sent out an email looking for willing students and I went in. It turned out they'd canceled the use of the studio and emailed me while I was walking there but we decided to film something anyway which wound up being sent to the school board and approved. It was my first time in front of a camera like that and I was incredibly nervous but I also really enjoyed talking about the course and am planning to help with another video during the exhibition to help give a virtual tour of the exhibition space.
Another thing I've done this semester has been trying to help a classmate. One of my classmates during pitching said he wanted to learn to animate this semester, and I just so happened to have done an animatic in a similar vein to what he wanted to achieve last semester. Because of this, I offered to send him materials and to give advice when he needed it. I mostly sent animatics I thought were good examples or gave details of my process but I also sent him an animatic file to look over in the program we both use, Clip studio paint, to show how everything functioned in the file. I didn't want to give him my hot mess of a file from last semester so I made him an animatic with each trick I knew in it.
Another classmate of mine did a Draw this in your Style challenge on her twitter and I participated. This kind of challenge is a good way to bond with other artists online as well as get your work seen under a popular hashtag.
Independent external work
For this module, it's important to take initiative and do more than just the class work. For this reason, when I saw a class for autistic comic creators in manchester being taught by an artist I admire I decided that despite it conflicting with my class schedule I should attend. I emailed the address on the post and they accepted me to come to the class. It was held at a museum and had multiple key speakers who talked about how to become a comics professional as an autistic person, the conventions that existed that were autism friendly, and how autism impacts how we communicate. It was a really interesting day and the lectures and exercises lasted from around 10am to 5pm. We created some short comic ideas as well as practicing framing but most of the day was lectures.
What I really enjoyed though was meeting a ton of professionals and students who were all very friendly, I exchanged social media with all of them and was invited to join a larger discord server where I was actually able to meet game developers who helped me with my game code. The person running it also creates an anthology of comics by autistic creators every year called Sensory and I'm seriously considering participating next year.
I also knew I wanted to contact the people running KoyoCon to see if they had room for any new designers this year. The con is held in a city near my home town in denmark and so would be perfect as an affordable convention to attend for me in the next couple of years. They didn't have any vacancies but they said they'd keep me in mind for next year and I'll apply for a table when they start being available again for the next convention.
Another project I've been participating in is helping create an animatic with Charlie Griffiths. He's been assembling a team to make his short animation 'shrinking feeling'. We met at the media mixer and exchanged contact information. I have since attended character design meetings where I've helped with the exploration sketches for different designs and have even been credited with one of the major character designs. We had another meeting to go over the script and Charlie sent me his storyboards which I experimented with to make some short test animations. In yet another meeting we discussed how to improve the flow of the storyboard process as well as what team members we still need to find as we currently have a bit of a skeleton crew. There were also a lot of meetings of just meeting other people on the team. Due to organization the project is far from finished but we've been working on a schedule for production after graduation and I'm very excited to see if we can manage to finish this to a high quality.
This is my first time working in a pipleline like this and I think the experience is pretty valuable for all involved to see what works and what doesn't.
The Your City Beer contest was brought to my attention by Gareth a short while into the semester, it was a contest where a festival was looking for a beer can design based around stoke on trent for a light summer Pilsner. It reminded me of a life drawing of one of the bottle kilns I did last year and I worked on recreating that image as a been can design. I reworked it entirely with the new layout in mind and entered the contest. I didn't win but I did receive free tickets to the full festival. It was a really nice design challenge as I enjoy surface pattern design and even though it didn't win I am very happy with how the can looked. I think the title text let it down a bit but it is still better text than I can usually manage so I'm not too unhappy.
While working on my game this semester, I thought it was important to work on merchandise. This in part was because I knew I was being encouraged to make some sort of comic work to go with the main game to portray the story better but was also because I wanted to practice building a brand. Near the start of the semester I asked my step-brother for help making a 3d model he later printed for me of cookie cutters which I then made recipie backing cards for. I also workshopped some print ideas and contacted my mother who is a baker and have sent her several designs for a set of custom cookies based on the game that I can sell at exhibition. I even got my food safety certification to make sure I would be allowed to vend food at the event.
My only gap was when it came to clothing, had I had more funds I would have liked to create some simple graphic shirts to go with the game as I think the final colour pallette would have looked very good as clothing. I did however sketch a few concepts, I personally like the colourblock shirt idea as I think it would be very wearable which is something I look for in my designs in general. I also have looked into itch.io and bandcamp as potential places to sell both computer copies of the game as well as the soundtrack once it's finished. I think the game would have to be at least £5 to be worth the effort of having completed it but the soundtrack would be on a pay what you like baisis as I think it would encourage people to check it out.
During this semester, all this external work adds up to trying to be prepared for my next step in life and breaking into the art industry. I'm still not certain what exact role I want to fill, but I also have found I can be happy in a lot of different roles. I had a discussion with Gareth near the end of the semester about my worries that I wouldn't be able to gain a good social media following and how that concerned me because I am aware my art style lends well to being seen in that kind of setting. While I will keep trying to work on that and have been workshopping a character I'd like to make some youtube videos with, he directed me to look into a job designing cards or wrapping paper. This would suit me very well and is actually something I've wanted to do in the back of my mind since before I started university. He gave me a gift bag made by a large company called Card Collection and I've been looking into them. They have a very specific kind of portfolio they want to see so I think during the month I have before my lease is up, I'd like to try and build my portfolio of surface pattern designs and send in an application not just there but to a few other companies.
My primary interest is freelance art but the security of a company like that would be really nice to have and it's work I really like and suit. I found a few connected companies on my search and will be looking around for others once I get back to denmark.
Wizard character exploration art for social media
colour pallette is nice and easy to use