7. Development of Creative Thought and Structure in Illustration and Graphic Art.

To develop ideational fluency one must branch ideas in different ways by using mind maps and brainstorming. I've been known to use brainstorming when struggling for words or ideas, as it's a great way to generate more ideas, I sometimes even draw pictures to aid my idea process. Ideational fluency is definitely more about quantity over quality, as the more ideas you have the more you have to work from. Where Brainstorming is more about thinking off the cuff, mind mapping gives you the ability to make a network of ideas that branch off one another.

I made this brainstorm for a project on fashion design, the brief wanted clothing designs that were inspired by an art movement. Because I had difficulty choosing I brainstormed as many as I could and looked into the ones I was interested in on the internet, I ended up choosing Suprematism as it then linked with another project at the time and I felt geometric shapes fit into fashion well.

For Managing a Creative Environment, I feel that no other creative environment inspires me more than my own. Even though it's my bedroom, I surround myself in posters, printouts, music and collectables that are personal to me and inspire my work. 

I'm not saying that my room is the best studio, as most of the stuff that inspires me could have the complete opposite effect on someone else. Take my music, I listen to it every time I knuckle down and get really into some work, although most people might think it sounds more like noise than music, it's what stimulates me to work. An illustrators studio must have stuff the individual is passionate about for it to be a good source of stimulus.

The picture above is from the presentation, and it really caught my eye because it illustrates the perfect creative environment for this particular Pixar employee. It is less likely for an employee of Dreamworks to have their studio like this, as they'll have different sources of stimulus.

6. ‘Production & Outcomes’ influences & reactions

It is common for all work to echo that of which the time period in which it was made in. This is called "Zeitgeist", an idea that is altered and influenced by the events and happenings of their current time. To illustrate this point further I'm going to compare two different Alice in Wonderland films from different times, not only am I going to look at what influenced the films, but what techniques were available at the time thus changing the outcome.
First of all I will look at the 1988 version of the film by Jan Švankmajer, it is known for being a even more bizarre take on the novel. It uses stop-motion animation for most of the non-human characters, which I feel reflects the time in which it was made heavily. The dark nature of the film could also be reflecting on the fact that the film was released the year before the fall of the berlin wall.

Now if we compare that to the recent release of Alice in Wonderland directed by Tim Burton, we can see that techniques have clearly changed along with the overall feel. This film gives off a different atmosphere with its bright colours and state of the art special effects. The film somewhat reflects our time, as it's heavy use in CGI and it's IMAX 3D cinema release shows. 90% of the movie was shot in front of green screen which says a lot about our time saving attitude we have today.



Working methodology, working with different techniques and exploring for the best outcome helps illustrators work professionally and independently. To show this in action I will show how I used the process in my work.
For my brief, I decided to look at image manipulation, by all means but digital, I wanted to do everything by hand at first, so I looked into and studied a small art movement called Suprematism.

I then started to find different ways to manipulate observational drawings with Suprematism. I then explored into alternative digital manipulation, such as animation, moving photo's while photocopying, making people out of other photos and folding photographs. I made myself practice these techniques until I found the right one that suited my idea.

In the end I digitally distorted my observational drawing and painted them onto wood, combining both hand made and digital. Without all the previous exploration, I would've stayed with my original idea of having a handmade only outcome, exploration helped me stay open-minded through my project as well as give me ideas for a final piece.

5. Development of ideas and structure in Moving image

For my first key point (Character Design), I have chosen the antagonist, Tetsuo Shima from the 1988 cyberpunk animated film, Akira. Tetsuo's appearance changes drastically throughout the 3 acts of the movie. In the first act of the movie, he is just another member of Kaneda Shotaro's (antagonist) biker gang. He dresses in a light blue hooded sweatshirt and light blue jeans, his appearance consists of bright colours, these are very non-threatening colours for someone who's in a biker gang, which reflect the characters problems with being the most in-experienced member of the biker gang, the other members of the biker gang wear muddy colours, much darker and intimidating. After the Bike crash and most of the second act, Tetsuo wears a light blue hospital gown, he also has a bandage on his head. He wears this clothing while he's being incarcerated and experimented on by the government, again light colours to resemble his inferiority. However he wears a white vest and light brown trousers in act 2, but this only when he steals Kaneda's and tells him to back off, this is foreshadowing the scenes in act 3 were he's trying to find Akira. In act 3 he wears the same white vest and brown trousers only with a red cape. I see the red cape as the final element in his transformation to a villain. I found that as he transformed in to a villain, his appearance changed too, into something more intimidating. To make a convincing villain, you must not only write one, but also make the villain look like one too.

Throughout the film, Tetsuo changes a lot. When he is injured and captured by the government he develops super human abilities, with this he becomes power mad, and destroys Neo-Tokyo in a quest to find out who Akira is. The name that had plagued him since the experiments. He also battles with Kaneda as it is he who he blames for he's feelings of insignificance. This mix of Kaneda treating Tetsuo unfairly and his sudden gain of power, develops the villain that we see at the end of this film.

Next I'll demonstrate the digital storytelling principle, I have selected the movie (former comic book series) "Scott Pilgrim vs The World". Before this movie even came to the cinemas, it was released as a video game that was downloadable on most of the latest video game consoles. 

The movie itself was made for a very specific kind of audience, as the movie had a lot of references to Japanese animation and 80s and 90s video games to name a few. I think the release of the game before the movie was a strategic way to grab the target audience's attention to watch the movie. It also got those who liked the game to read the original comic, and obviously those who liked the movie, to play the game and extend the amount of buyers.

4. Reflective Visual Journal, RVJ

The RVJ is where most of my ideas are going to take shape and evolve into finished pieces. It's a representation of my journey throughout my projects and will show my development of ideas and outcomes. I've found that the best way to develop ideas is to use both my experimental side of my brain and my analytical, as seen below.

The top half of the picture is my playful experimental work, while the bottom half is showing how I used the paint splashes to improve my final piece, I wouldn't have been able to get a result like that without experimenting. This is a development process that requires me to constantly switch to either side of my brain while working. By experimenting and visually thinking with quick drawings and then evaluating and noting down ways to improve my experimentation, I'm in a cycle that will always bring me the best results I can achieve. I know from past experiences that ideas don't come to me while I'm sitting down and over thinking about my subject, they come during the process of "physical thinking" and "analytical thinking".

It is a must for me to reflect on every bit of my work in my RVJ, it is the only way I can independently refine my work. Without critical analysis I won't get my best results, I need to ask myself if my work can look and work better to produce a better outcome. In my eyes there's no such thing as perfect, but by taking steps forward and improving outcomes, I can get as close to perfect as I possibly can.

In picture above are scans and photos taken from an old project I did that shows clear iteration. Each panel is a different outcome. In the first one you can see a quick sketch I did from a photo, the second you can see I decided to use watercolour which I think worked, however I felt that the monochromatic colour did not, so for my final I used full colour and watercolour on an A1 sheet of paper. I found that this way of working is the best way to perfect my final outcome.

3. ITAP Lecture, 12 Oct 2010.

Clarity is important when it comes to visual communication. In the lecture I was taught that it is very important when looking for legibility in text. Typeface, size, colour and layout are all things to keep in consideration. Legible text is something the viewer can casually read without over concentrating or straining their eyes. Cases of illegible text can vary from many things, but all have one thing in common, lack of clarity. A good example of this is having yellow text on a white background, as said in the lecture; yellow on white is never legible.
Yellow text on white is hard to see without putting unnecessary concentration into reading it, to avoid this always choose colours that make your text more conspicuous. This picture of an old copy of the times was in the presentation, and is a classic case of illegible text as it's far to small and cramped together to read casually.

The same applies for font size and layout; prominent text is a must, but avoid the use of over the top fonts or big font sizes because even though big text is legible for headers, too big can be just as illegible as too small when it comes to presentation, always think about your layout and composition.

The lecture also taught me about visual hierarchy, which was about what your eyes are drawn to first; this comes into effect mostly on advertising, if that be on the front of newspaper or on a billboard. Designers use bolder letters or complementary colours to grab the viewer’s attention to one specific thing. This is in action on the front of every newspaper in the shops today, bolder letters for the front page story followed by a picture to coincide it.

The first thing the viewer is drawn to whether it is the newspaper title or the front story; has the boldest typeface as the editor thinks these two things are the strongest selling points. The main things to think about when using visual hierarchy is big and bold headers, complementary colours and striking images, because these are what the eyes are drawn to first.

2. Research Language

In this lecture I learnt about many different Research techniques. Research itself is a way to further investigate a selected subject, to find more about your subject and to understand it enough to make your own legitimate contributions towards it. To do a piece of art work without research may result in it not being as strong as it could be. There are different forms of research, primary research and secondary research. Primary research is information that the researcher has found themselves, this could range between study drawings of a specific subject (visual research), to data the researcher went out and found themselves. In the presentation, I learned that illustrator Paul Davis gathers information from around him by taking photographs, drawing and scanning, this is because he hates missing potentially good ideas. I also work in this way as you gather the information yourself and you witness it at first hand.

Secondary research is information found on the internet, in books or even on television, as long as it’s been found out before. As a illustrator, I find that my preferred way to find information is through visual research, drawing what’s around me and taking in the world around me, I also find that I often take photographs on my phone for future reference, I have many photos of things most people would think is useless.

I also learned that if you’re thinking about making living off being an illustrator, then one of the main things you’d need to think about is target audience, who is the artwork for? An understanding of the audience in which the artwork is for will help a great deal when it comes to design. For instance if you’re working on a children’s book, you might want the look of the artwork to be playful and vibrant. A good example of this is the Mr Men books by Roger Hargreaves.

It would be a waste of time putting high detail monochromatic pieces of artwork in the book as it wouldn’t be as appreciated by children. This is why keeping the target audience in mind will vastly improve the outcome. All this can be done by simply researching before you design anything, looking before you leap so to speak.

1. Connectivity

I have been shown that one can grab an idea from earlier artists work, as long as it isn’t copied exactly and originality still shows through it somehow. For example, during the lecture Picasso’s Las Meninas was shown, it was a study of an earlier piece by Diego de Silva Velazquez, When seen together it is noticeable that both of them are very similar, yet Picasso had put his study into his own style and context.

This process is similar to when a musician samples a section of another person’s piece of music and uses it in a completely new song; it is out of its original context and had been changed to the point that it has a new meaning. However to grab too much of an artist’s style or to completely copy a piece of work is a sign of unoriginality.


It is possible to take an earlier piece of work and change it in a way that makes it more current, this is sometimes done in advertising. There is one advertisement I saw in the lecture for a Japanese style beer called Asahi Beer that referenced Hokusai’s great Wave of Kanagawa. This connection was made because the artwork fit into the Japanese theme.

This time round the connectivity is quite obvious; the seller is connecting the product to the culture it’s based around, emphasizing the fact that the beer is Japanese. If the advert was subtle not many people would recognise the reference and wouldn’t be as rememberable to those such as the target audience; those who like Japanese culture or Japanese beer. This taught me that creating something that references earlier work while keeping your own style and concept is done frequently in modern day media. Its intention can vary to what the artist wants to portray, it’s sometimes done for controversial purposes, or even for comedic and humorous purposes for entertainment or for advertising.