Gemma Aylward BA Illustration Y2
BA2a Project Summary This unit has been adventurous for me, with the amount of different experimentive mediums I’ve used to create and display my work. I’ve become more decisive on how I like to create my work and who to make it for as a target audience. The reports have also given me a better understand about reflection on both my own and people/places relating to the Illustration industry. I’ve definitely had to doubt myself and learn what truly makes a piece of work or a person an illustration/illustrator. I think this unit has been the one where I’ve used a wider range of resources for research for my work, and this developed over the time period of the unit. The start of the unit, my research for the Fiction projects were relied heavily on the internet as a resource, with the one exemption of visiting Eaton Park for primary research. This changed drastically for the Fact project as I used a variety of research sources such as books, the internet, archives, surveys, museums and primary meeting people. The idea of meeting people for fact was a little nerve-wracking for me to do, but I’m glad I eventually did it because it was great to meet an actual bike enthusiast and to have his opinion on things. Working from a broader variety of research definitely gave me an insight onto different ways I could work which made it a little difficult on making decisions however I found it better to have loads to work from rather than nothing. I’ve always had difficulty myself when incorporating text with image in the most efficient way. I found this was highlighted further in the Narrative Illustration task to create a book cover with the authors name and title. My original designs lacked of the text and image complimenting each other. I was forcing the text to work with my cover image but the way I was doing it wasn’t working at all. I wasn’t very experimentive at all as I was only using digital text and very limited typefaces. After a while of not working on them, when I went back, I decided to do a bit more research for appropriate cover designs and played around with traditional typefaces to inspire how it should look. I’m pleased with my end result, I eventually kept it digital but I felt that I had made a design that had text and image that were compatible with each other for the first time since my final outcome for BA3 in first year. Another element of the year that was new to me was the collaborative group project. I hadn’t done a collaborative project like that before for that length of time. It was a big insight that to ensure to reach the deadline of the exhibition that we had regular meet-ups and speak about our ideas for the project efficiently. This was definitely one of my favourite projects because I was working with a variety of people who I hadn’t worked with before, and we all had our different individual styles which was great because it brought a range of influences for our ideas. It’s something that’d be happy to do again, as long as I get similar, component people to work with again who would be just as committed. The exhibition wasn’t my first, but it was my first official exhibit with the course. It was great learning about co-ordinating spaces between our own work with others and the venue itself. We had to move our installation piece around a few times before we were pleased with it harmonised with the space around it. We were quite lucky with how transportable our installation piece was but if we were to create a more stationary piece of work, I think we’d have to spend more time than we did at the venue to specify exactly how it would all work after seeing how much other groups had struggles. What I did like about our group work was that we made it relevant to a current world problem, the refugee crisis. We worked on developing a Zine which allowed people to take the ‘exhibition’ away with them and donate towards the cause, raising £18. Creating a Zoetrope proved to be the hardest piece of work I made as it had to ensure it functioned correctly. I felt like this was a major fail for me because I hadn’t created it up to my expectations based on what I saw from the Museum of Childhood. I realised whilst making it that card wasn’t going to because it was too flimsy and caused friction, slowing its speed. Looking back at the Zoetrope’s in the museum, they were made of metal which was smooth meaning that it was strong and smooth enough to reach the speed’s that they did. If I knew about a way to source the material I needed at the time, I would had rather made it out of metal as I think that would had improved my Zoetrope to look both more professional and effective as a method to watch moving image. What I am pleased about the Zoetrope is that it broke my boundary of creating a graphical book which is what I most likely would had ended up making if I didn’t have such a varied resource of research. Overall, I’ve enjoyed how this unit has broadened my horizons as to what Illustration can be and why that is. I’ve become more experimentive and learnt about new resources to use when researching for projects and how valuable that can be when coming to a close to creating the final outcome. I also feel that I’m learning more about the compatibility between text and image but I still think that is once criteria that requires more work on my behalf to improve. Conceptually, I think I have grown, and realised that final outcomes don’t have to essentially be something of a graphic and 2D sense. I consider my main priority as an illustrator is to have a target audience of children. I find children’s innocence and creativity to be a major influence on how I go about my work as I’d love for it to be able to actively support their imaginations further. I consider illustration important for children because of their curiosity of the world as they develop their personality, I believe that illustration is an essential way to communicate, and educate, for all children about different lifestyles in a friendly manner. I find that the choice of colours and simplicity of the design of characters is a way of exploiting children’s curiosity to capture their attention, in order to communicate to them. By exhibiting illustrations aimed for children in a gallery space, it puts it into a different context. I feel that it’s a reminder to people that these illustrations are pieces of work that communicate in their own right and not just an image to support a piece of text in order to help children understand and read. It’s also a great way for illustrators to advertise themselves to the public for possible future commissions and to get their style and name recognised as a whole. That is why I’m looking into House of Illustration as a gallery space. House of Illustration is a charity that promotes new illustration talent and offers an illustration-led education programme. House of Illustration became a gallery space only in 2014, after being founded in 2002, and it is the first public gallery to do so for all forms of illustration in the UK. ‘… it is the place to see, learn about and enjoy illustration in all its forms; from advertisements to animation, picture books to political cartoons and scientific drawings to fashion design.’ House of Illustration (2014) This means that House of Illustration doesn’t concentrate solely on illustration for children, but it does contribute exhibiting children illustrations, considering it was founded by Sir Quentin Blake most famously known for his illustrations for children. I think that it’s wise for House of Illustration to openly accept all forms of illustration, and to be the first in the UK to do so, because it welcomes and celebrates all of the illustration community which helps every illustrator receive influence from others and to get their own work noticed. Speaking with House of Illustration’s Administrator Miss French, she tells me more about what House of Illustration contributes to the illustration community. ‘We do hold talks and masterclasses that bring in professional artists to share their knowledge with audiences. I suppose it's more about promoting the art of illustration here and its accessibility, in all its different forms (some people cannot think past children's books!). From this I get the impression that House of Illustration is about educating others that are interested in Illustration and what they can learn from other illustrators that work in a wide variety of mediums for different audiences. I visited House of Illustration whilst they had two exhibitions happening. Both of the illustrators of the exhibitions have created illustrations for a children audience. The first was Lauren Childs, well known for her work on Charlie & Lola, and the second was Ernest Shepard who’s known for his work on A.A Milne’s Winnie-The-Pooh and Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows. My original thought was that House of Illustration were exhibiting two well-known illustrators which I felt contradicted their aims of promoting new illustration talent, however the exhibitions themselves were pleasantly different. Lauren Child’s Dolls House exhibition gave a new outlook to her approach to her illustrations. Seeing these diorama-type structures reminded me that showing a narrative isn’t always a 2D approach, but can be later converted to 2D, with 3D visual elements, when used for print. By putting her work into a gallery context in House of Illustration, we see further into the imagery as not just 2D illustrations on a page but as piece of artwork on its own. The EH Shepard: An Illustrator’s War exhibition was also a different take to what we usually see from his children illustrations. The images he produced had many different purposes whilst he was at war on the front lines. At this time Shepard was still a cartoonist for Punch magazine but as I went on through the exhibition, I could see his style develop from a cartoonist into a more illustrative style. He also producing personal works as well, such as illustrations of his wife that he sent to her through the post. Seeing this exhibition was a different outlook from the work I usually seen produced by Shepard. It taught me how he developed from his cartoon style to an illustrative one. I think that is what makes gallery exhibitions important for illustrations. As an exhibited collection, the gallery informs us on the behind-the-scenes that go into their illustrations, such as how the illustrators lives having an impact on their style and their ideas, just like what House of Illustration did with this certain exhibition. It makes us stop and analyse the details of the work in their own right. House of Illustration were also the first gallery space to exhibit this collection from Shepard also. I believe in a sense that it is still showing new illustration talent because it was a side of Shepard that hadn’t been explicitly exhibited before to the public. Although the time I visited House of Illustration it involved two known children illustrators, future events consist of illustrators and illustrations of a wide variety such as graphic novelists, life drawing classes, letterpress printing and more. I think by learning about these different sides to illustration from one gallery space, it helps other illustrators, such as myself, become influenced and motivated to combine their styles with something new and innovative which I think is what helps illustrators develop further into their practice. From the information that I have gathered about House of Illustration is that as a gallery space it promotes all forms of illustration, including children illustrations, but with a different outlook. I feel that this approach is what makes House of Illustration a perfect gallery space to learn about different styles and different illustrators, especially for newcomers into the illustration environment such as a student as myself. I believe that House of Illustration is important to educate everyone about how broad illustration can be, that it’s not as simple as an image in a book for a child to help learn to read, but much more than that. It is definitely somewhere I’d visit again and again to learn more about different illustrators in the industry, in order to develop my style and practice to become more suitable for the right target audience, and for me that is an audience of children.
Memories of Childhood Biking I’ve created a prototype zoetrope to visualise the movement of cycling as a container for archiving people’s memories of cycling from their childhood. Each recording is an account of someone’s memory of when they first rode a bike or a particular memory that sticks in their mind. 82% of people agree that learning to ride a bike was a milestone in their childhood/life. I believe this way of an interactive archive could be useful for pre-school children who are yet able to ride without stabilisers to understand how they might find cycling an importance in their life. The feedback I received I thought was fair. They found it fun and interactive which I wanted it to be and the comments for improvement I agree upon as well. They believed that I should had used a better choice of material for zoetrope which I mentioned before I wish I had done. They recommended I could had tried checking out the 3D Workshop space at the university that I had forgotten existed. Another they recommended was having the recordings playing without headphones. The reason I used headphones was because I thought the studio space would be noisy and it'd be difficult to listen to like what had happened before during the exhibition for Experimentation and Expanded Forms project at the church. If I were to present this in front of children to play with, I do believe that the sound should be playing out loud without headphones as I would imagine a few children surrounding the zoetrope to watch the animations and would all need to listen at the same time. The feedback also recommended that I experimented with lighting. This was something I hadn't considered throughout the whole project. I'm not too sure how I could experiment with lighting and what sort of effects that would have on the piece. Perhaps a way I could experiment with it is by having a light source in the centre and treat it like the zoetrope like a bedside lamp, however I feel doing this would distract the viewer from the animation itself. Overall I'm pleased with my ideas and that people found my final outcome fun and interactive. The only thing I'm disappointed with is the execution of the final outcome as as a professional, working piece, however I'm aware what would had made it better and will consider these different aspects for future projects that may involve similar elements.
Making the Zoetrope proved to be more difficult than I expected. I used resources that I had at hand such as card and cardboard but after constructing it, I realised more and more along the way that it was the wrong choice of medium. The card caused friction slowing down the pace of spinning greatly and the base was not sturdy enough to keep itself straight when it spun. I was overly disappointed with how my zoetrope turned out looking like. It didn't have that professional look to it. As I was developing the zoetrope for a long time, I realised using a smoother and sturdier material such as metal like the ones in the Musuem would had been a wiser choice, however I was running out of time and I wasn't sure where I could get this type of resource.
My original test animation I produced had the bicycles facing the right hand side and when I printed and spun them with my right hand, it was in reverse! So I made sure that for all my further strips frames were in order from Right to Left.
For this animation strip, I attempted making it look like the person was cycling on and off screen, however when in the Zoetrope, this didn't happen at all, the animation wasn't fluid. I looked back at the animation strips from the Museum and noticed that none of them did this type of technique and this is probably why. I decided to change it so that image was more static in its positioning on the frame.
I made the animation more simple and included the two lampposts to refer to movement of up and down the street still, and it worked a lot better.
I'm not pleased with my final prints of the strips because they're 60cm long and I didn't plan beforehand to buy and print onto A2 in order for it to be on one single sheet. I had to print my work on an A4 printer and onto different sheets of paper and stick them together. This attributes to my Zoetrope looking more unprofessional. I wish I had more time to ensure I could book a slot at the university to print on A2 but making the animation frames and the Zoetrope took up more time than I had expected. I think my time management in this past week wasn't efficient enough for me to produce an effective and professional looking Zoetrope and animations.
Below are Digital Animations of the Strips.
I presented my ideas that I had developed in the past week and the group thoroughly enjoyed the idea. I asked if presenting a film or the interactive zoetrope would be best to present for the fact show, and the interactive zoetrope was what preferred and I agree upon also. The motive of cycling is that it's an interactive activity of pedalling yourself forwards, and the idea of allowing the viewer to interact with the zoetrope is most appropriate. They also suggested that for each strips that I use different point of views and angles so that each one was different. I liked this idea because it includes the speakers's perspective of their story which I find is more appealing to watch.
My next step is to now begin making the zoetrope and the animation strips based on the recordings to create my final outcome. Recordings from Survey from Gemma Aylward on Vimeo.
I really liked the idea of a child reading out other people's memories of riding a bike, I feel that it brings it back to being a child at that particular time of that persons life. I'm not too keen on using one video of every sound recording as hearing the same voice straight after one another sounds very bland. I think if I were to do it as one video, I'd want a mix of different children voices so that its not the same continuous voice going on. I do like the recordings as individuals though, so I feel that I should present them as individual clips that the audience can flick between. I think that adds audience interaction which is something I like my work to have.
I learnt to ride a bike properly when my next door neighbour had the stabilisers taken off of her bike and I wanted to try it too! A few years later we were both cycling around our street and rode full speed into each other, resulting in both of us falling off, her flying over the handlebars and her bike landing on top of her.. ouch!
My first bike was five pounds from a friend. Used to have family bike trips around some lakes and the woods, stopping at a place where a lady sold home-made cottage cheese. I just remember cycling up and down my road for ages when I was first allowed to go out on my own. The first time i rode a bike, i didn't know how to brake, and thus I went straight into the hedge at the end of my driveway. I had to remember to dodge the dog poo. Used to go to the park with my dad and he'd hold my seat whilst I tried to balance. There was a certain part in the park that all my family and siblings used to use to learn to ride our bikes. I still remember the moment my dad just let go of the back of the bike seat and I was riding the bike without stabilisers for the first time. Me and my brother both got our first bikes which matched but were different colours for Christmas, so we spent Christmas morning riding round the house. When I was little I used to sit on the seat of my dad’s bike while he cycled standing up, it felt like I had my own personal driver. I tried to ride bike up a curb and stacked it and grated my knee all up. I used to wake up at 7 most days in the summer holidays and go on a long bike ride along the canal with my adult cousin and take a bowl, milk and cereal with me and we would make breakfast and eat it on the banks of the canal. My sister plonked me on her bike that was far too big for me and pushed me down the hill. Amazingly I managed to hold the handlebars rather steady and remain upright all the way down the hill, despite my feet waving around and the helmet slipping over my eyes. As you can imagine my journey was terminated in a very prickly manner and it was a while before the trauma wore off and I was ready to give it another go. There was a little hill in the park and I would walk the bike up it, to then just ride down with my feet off the pedals. My grandad is a keen cyclist, bikes are his passion, so it was great once I learnt because we could spend time together. We still go for bike rides now. My first bike was a £1 from a yard sale. It was my dad who taught me up and down the street. I’ve fallen a few times, would bash my teeth but always got back onto a bike, it never put me off. I also have a lot of scars from falling off, because I would always go too fast and forget to brake. My brother taught me how to ride a bike, it was either ride a bike or get conkers thrown at me. I remember looking back and seeing my parents grinning their heads off. After speaking with Sinead about possibilities of what the context of my animations could be, I referred back to my survey where people had told me their stories of riding or learning to ride a bike as a child. I thought to develop these into recordings that overlap my animations from a Zoetrope, similar to how Fusco's created her films with Rebecca Davies. Me and Sinead agreed that using a children's voice would be quite a good choice as it's people reminiscing about their childhood. On the same day as my tutorial, I visited Seb AKA The Bike Man, who is a bicycle mechanic in Norwich. It was great to meet and visit Seb and to see his workspace. It was great to see his personal space and how he works. Seb himself is a bike enthusiast and I gathered a lot of information about Seb and cycling being a hobby then later on a career for him, as well as different type of bicycles and the sort of people that would visit him for repairs or to buy/hire. I found each bike in his space filled with different characteristics and personalities, not one was alike another. I also documented some of what Seb had told me to record later on for the idea I developed earlier this day.
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