PPP// Reflection over 2nd year of study + Goals for summer

Above is the slideshow I presented to my tutor that I've uploaded onto my ISSUU account. In this slideshow I talk about how I've taken a far more professional approach to my work as a creative this year, the inspiration I've discovered and the projects I've worked on. I also talk about the methods I've developed this year and my hopes for summer.

For this summer I want to begin to develop an external animation that I'll hopefully be entering into Manchester Animation Festival later this year in November. I want to begin animating the project in early September and I don't want the project to last over 1 minute 30 seconds. I also want to refine my drawing style, because I believe personally that practicing animation isn't as important as practicing drawing. Because each frame is a drawing, if you're not confident in your drawing, then how good is the animation going to look? That's my personal opinion however. So I'm planning on finishing a sketchbook a month over summer, which is something I've done before and found it greatly helped build my confident with drawing.

This part of my year of study has greatly helped me as a creative. I now have begun to develop an online presence both on social media and the digital art market place and I also now have business cards, CVs and Information Sheets to hand out at networking advents. I've discovered so many talented artists that have encouraged me more than I already was, to continue to draw and to continue to animate. I'm looking forward to starting my 3rd and final year at Leeds College Of Art and hopefully I'll have more opportunities to work on my own projects within the university.

PPP// The relationship I have with my sketchbook

My current sketchbook may only be a few pages in,
but as the deadline approaches for this personal professional progress I've decided to post the pages of my sketchbook now, prematurely before I reach page end. Here's a link to a video of my sketchbook pages that I've uploaded;

I wanted to have a sketchbook as a sketchbook. Which, sounds a little weird right? But I'm being honest here. I've always treated my sketchbook like final versions of my illustrations, like the only output I had of showing my work to people. But as I've been updating my online portfolio social media pages with (near) daily uploads of drawings I'm proud of, I can afford to just draw, draw, draw, draw, DRAW in my sketchbook. To scribble down life drawings, to focus on things I've never drawn before and have a page of studying that thing, to test out colours and materials and even thumb nail drawings I'll later do! It's just a sketchbook. These are just drawings. It's important not to be precious about your work, because you're always improving - just as long as you keep drawing.

Recently I've perched a number of good brushes as well as copic marker pens, which I've been using non stop on another personal project 'daily comics'. I also managed to get my hands on some lovely soft pencils, fine liners and a dip pen (WITH INK)! On a few of the pages in the video, I've tried to use the ink. I'm not as talented with brushes and drip pens as I used to be, but that's because I haven't practised with them for a few years and it's something I want to work on to improve over the summer.

  Here's what I want to improve on over the summer in my sketchbook(s):

1. Shoes, learn to draw SHOES - boots, heals, flats, creepers, it doesn't matter - draw them shoes!
2. Natural Poses, because t-poses are fine but not all the time. Come on, let's put some life on these drawings!
3. Animals, If I'm only creating characters that are human where's the fun in that? I'm a cartoonist, I can create whatever I want! Let's get drawing some cats and dogs!
4. Backgrounds. Backgrounds.    Backgrounds...                     I will love you, Backgrounds.
5. Clothes and hairs, because everyone (should) have at least one of those things.

And here are some materails I want to refine further:

1. Dip Pen with Ink
2. Acrylics and Watercolours
3. Artists marker pens
4. Pencils (Including coloured) 

PPP// Animators out there part 3 Anatola Howard

Giraffe Soup from Anatola Howard on Vimeo.
Anatola Howard is an 18 year old first year animation study, currently studying at CalArts in America in the Character Animation department. Above is her first animation whilst studying at the school, titled 'Giraffe Soup'. I discovered this film whilst looking at the CalARTS page on youtube and found they'd uploaded her work onto their public page for the course. The look to this animation is adorable, told from the perspective of a child and their interpretation of the food in front of them. The whole film is quite magical in a way, although my Vegan friend claimed to feel physically insulted by the fact I described a giraffe melting and then being drunk as 'cute'. I'd highly recommend following his artists progress online!

PPP// Animators out there part 2 David Davis

David Davis Animation Reel 2016 from david davis on Vimeo.
David Davis is an animation who previously studied at CalArts in America, above is his animation reel for 2016 from the previous three years of study he did at the school. I discovered Davis's work on LoopDeLoop where one of his entires really caught my eye (seen at 00:14 in the video). His animations are lovely, the movement he manages to capture whilst keeping such a solid form to his characters is wonderful and I can't wait to see more of this stuff in the future!

PPP// Animators out there part 1 Clara Horst

Erika & Anju from Clara Horst on Vimeo.

Clara Horst is currently studying on her 2nd year at CalArts.
I discovered her end of year film on Tumblr a few weeks ago and I've been following her updates ever since. Her film titled 'Erika & Anju' focuses on a new developing relationship between two women, who of which sufferers from anxiety. The visuals for the animation are lovely, very character conscious and stylised in a way that blends each character together seamlessly with their surroundings.  It's clear Horst is talented with visual storytelling, as the animation moves smoothly and each shot looks like it's own illustration. The only negative thing I have to say about this animation, is that in parts the narrative is a little too muffled. Other than that, I love this piece! I can't wait to see her 2017 film next year!

THE LINE Animation Studios

THE LINE studio is a team of animation directors based in London.
The studio specializes in 2D animation and has released a number of commissioned animations for companies and musicians. The studio has worked for E4, FreeView, TALKTALk and many other companies, with advertisment animations.  The studio has also worked with two musicians to produce music videos. I've checked their studio on LinkedIN and apparently there are only 10 members of staff working permanently in the studio.

I was introduced to the studio when someone in my class did a presentation about how she wanted to work for them, as she was interested with the compositing the studio did with stop-motion on their commission animation film for FreeVeiw. This film is apparently the studios largest project, with over 44 artists involved. On their website they've created pre-production pages with their films; showing storyboards, animatics and character designs for most films they've made. The concept art and character designs for this animation in particular and wonderful, they've really caught my attention. I've looked into a possible internship placement, but for 2016 it's fully booked. I'd love to gain some experience from the studio, I may apply for an internship in 2017.

PPP// Freelance Future? Manchester Animation Festival

Over my second year of studying animation at LCA I've become more and more aware of the differences between engaging within the industry and self employment when working as an artist. I've also become more aware of the 'business sides' of being an artist and how these artists manage to keep their creative heads above the water of self employment. Although I'm leading towards getting employment within some form of creative study in the future, right now, I'm still open minded to the idea of self publishing my own work online and advertising myself online for possible freelance work.  As a freelance artist, I'd have to maintain self advertisment online on social media and attend a number of advents to promote myself and my work; all this can be ricky, as I'll most likely have a month to earn enough to pay rent. However, selling my work online and advertising online for commissions seems rather simple to 'set up'.

Starting this summer I'm planning on developing developing several prints and posters, to then post on sites such as RedBubble (which is an online store where artists upload their illustrations/art and consumers can purchase in a number of forms, such as posters and cups) . I'm also planning on entering the 2016 November Manchester Animation Festival student film contest, with an animation I'm currently developing. Although this idea is very vague and hasn't appeared on my blog yet, I'm planning on finishing the storyboard for the animation before the start of 3rd year in September. I'm planning on making the animation roughly 1-2 minutes long.

PPP// Complete Daily Comic Video

(Video Ver)

PPP// Daily Comic Pages 10/05/2016 - 16/05/2016

PPP// Creative CV Edit

 I noticed I'd entered one of my social networking links wrong, after I changed the theme on my tumblr blog place.  'Tumblr.com/mollypukes' should of been 'mollypukes.tumblr.com'. I've made the changes, luckily before printing any versions!

PPP// Final Promotional Package

I put together an A4 sheet visually documenting all the work I've developed as part of the personal promotion brief 'BRAND ME'.  In this sheet I've put together elements of my attempts to brand myself such as:

• Creative CV
• Informational promotion (Illustrations) 
• Letter Head
• DVD cover (Animations)
• Business card (back and front) 
• Logo

I've very happy with the final results for all of the elements I've made in response to the brief set, I'm planning on getting the business cards in particular printed soon for my own benefit as a current freelancer whilst studying. 

PPP// Promotional DVD and INFO sheet

To finish off my 'promotional pack' for advertising myself as a creative, I've designed a cover for a promotional DVD to give to possible clients which contains animated works and an A4 sheet that promotes my illustrations, which includes character designs and concept works.

PPP// Business Cards

Front 

As well as redesigning my personal indent I also redesigned my concept for business cards. Here are PNG images of both the back and fronts of my business cards. The cards include my icon, my artist name as well as birth name, my Email and my Instagram (most active social media page) and a definition of what sort of creative I am (animation - illustration).

Back

I'm interested about getting these cards printed, after consulting my tutor about their layouts, at Leeds Printing Company however I most likely won't be able to get that done before the deadline because I can't afford their (cheap) costs.

PPP// Creative CV

After finishing my personal Indent, I decided to use the illustration from that indent in my business cards as well as on my creative CV.

I want to focus my creative CV on a soft balanced colour scheme so decided on green, orange and yellow; these colours are eye catching. To help balance out the yellow I softened all the shades in photoshop with the layer option 'soft light' and outlined the text with white, so it was still readable. I included my social media links and email, as well as a little bit of silly information about me and the skills I have. Because I haven't graduated from leeds college of art I left out my education as well as work experience, as I have non related to the creative arts.

PPP// Youtube UPDATE

In my first year of studying at LCA I used my youtube channel as a sort of bucket - a way of pouring WIP animations and clips and keeping them together, in order to later upload them onto my Blogger. However, this year as youtube is another frontier I'll be presenting my work for possible clients, I've cleaned up my act on youtube. Although I've been less active on youtube as I have Tumble and Instagram, I've cleaned up my home page. Veiwers will be welcomed by a few of my videos I've selected as examples, in hopes of earning an subscription.  Although it hasn't worked so far, as I've only gained 9 subscribers this year (the shame, SHAME). Hopefully my youtube channel will pick up as much popularity as my other social media pages.

PPP// Indent final

For my indent I decided to scrap my original idea and start afresh, taking inspiration from a cartoon self portrait I posted on my Instagram. I traced over the doodle I posted online in photoshop to give it a cleaner digital feel and then tested out colours for the illustration...

All 6 of the images above have the same base colour, as well as purple shadow; however each is under a different setting for the layer, such as 'pin light' or 'screen'. I struggled to decide on which colour scheme to go with, until I paired the illustrations with the background colour I wanted to use.

I ended up picking out the second to last colour mix and added additional highlights to the hair and skin of the character, resembling myself. I also set the outline layer to 'dissolve' which is something I've grown rather frond of doing, as it gives the outline a textured hand drawn like look which I adore. I used a text I found pre-installed into my photoshop and played around with the sizing to produce lettering I felt balanced out the illustration on screen.

Final Indent (GIF Format)

Although this personal Indent isn't very complicated as far as actual motion animation goes, I'm non the less very fond of this! I feel like it represents what I am and what I create as a creative very well, with colours and with a cartoon character that resembles me. I'm planning on using this Indent within my showreel to introduce myself, but will change the onscreen text to suit the showreel.

PPP// 2015-2016 Showreel making

Here's a link to my 2015-2016 showreel;

I opened the showreel with my personal indent, but changed the text from 'Animation-illustration' to 'showreel 2016', other then that it's the same animation footage. The song I used is copyrighted, but youtube passed the song and informed me that the copyright owners apparently 'approved' the usage, and that their adverts would appear along side the video on youtube. I put together segments from animations that I was most proud of, from my second year studying at leeds college of art as well as a clip from the previous year. I wanted to include some form of hand drawn animation, which I haven't managed to do this year because of certain reasons - reasons revolving around my accommodation.

I'm proud of the over all video and I'm currently spreading it all over my online social media pages and art forms.

PPP// Daily Comic Pages 1/05/2016 9/05/2017

PPP// Daily Comic Pages 26/04/2016 30/04/2016

PPP// Daily Comic Pages 20/04/2016 - 25/04/2016

PPP// Currently Idols part 3 - Carla McRae and Florencia Namur

Carla McRae is an Melbourne based illustrator and designer who I discovered earlier this year on Tumblr. She works with beautiful pastel to bold colour pallets and textured lines; on anything from tiny pencil scribbles to entire wall paintings. I've been hugely inspired of her skills in drawing, as she manages to pull together so much with such basic firm lines. I've been retreating back to traditional working from life illustrations recently, but I hope to be able to get to a point with my work where I can define objects and elements easier with simplistic stunningly wonderful lines and colours, like McRaes  in her most recent works.  Carla has recently held an art exhibition, where an entire wall of the room her work was presented in was a piece of her art; she work on the wall on the days running up to the opening of her exhibition titled ' still. '.

Carla McRae

Carla McRae

Florencia Namur is an Chile based illustrator and cartoonist who I've been following for the past few years online on social media. Recently she's expanded her online freelance commission based business into fashion, with her illustrations being featured on tshirts, posters, phone cases and even bags. Namur sells her work on online sites such as Society6, which is an online website where original artists can sell her work on the online market place, without having their own website. Namurs illustrations focus around fashion, her characters often keeping to a pastel japanese street fashion theme with soft vibes of anime/manga. 

Florencia Namur on S6