Howkapow!

With our new brief (which is awesome!) we have to design merchandise for an online shop called Howkapow, which includes tea towels, mugs, and a circular tray. We were given a choice of themes we could base our merchandise off, which were:

• Scandinavian fairytales
• Food

I chose scandinavian fairytales because I like working with things where i feel there are less limitations to go crazy and do whatever :) And plus I really like the story of 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff'! I know I want to illustrate goats, I just need to figure out how! Ka pow?

I started off by taking a trip to the farm to go and see some goats! 

I also did some landscape painting whilst I was there, I had a great view of the Derbyshire hills, which inspired me. It was a nice day towards the end!

Here is some progress of my goats :)

I should have worked in a bigger sketch book as this was only A5 but i feel safe when I work small!

Goat horns are so cool, i don't know why but i've been obsessed with horns since childhood!

A tundra!

That's it so far but im so impressed with how it's going so far!

Ben Jones

So Ben Jones, a stockport college graduate has been in over the past few weeks to learn about teaching and during his time here he's helped us all. He gave our class a really nice talk about the industry and what it's like out there once you've graduated from University. Ben is currently a freelance illustrator and has done many kinds of work after he graduated, like editorials for newspaper and magazines,which he is required to do in a really short space of time as they go to print as soon as the story is ready so that the paper can keep up with the news headline. It also needs to be eye-catching so that the article can grab your attention amongst many others. He's also done Book cover designs, and explained about those too. With book covers you are given a relatively long time to complete them in, from weeks to months. You stay in contact through e-mails and phone calls and the commissioners can choose to have your work changed if they do not like something or it is not ideal.

Another very good point that ben raised it to do with your roughs, he showed us some really poorly sketched roughs and explained as long as you can explain and the commissioner can see what you're trying to do, it doesn't matter how basic / bad the rough is. It's very useful to know this!

Ben gained recognition through competitions and urged us to take part in them, because they can really set a career off. He also explained that as well as his freelance job, he also had to keep another job on the side as freelance work can be unreliable.

Image from:

http://illustrationbenjones.blogspot.co.uk/2010_03_01_archive.html

Final Swan!

Sooo I've left it a little while now and I've managed to complete my swan.. I'll throw in a few details about how I got to the finals along the way :)

Templates

Printed and cut ready for sewing and stuffing!

And heres my swan hat, It's turned out not as good as i'd hoped it to be only because i literally ran out of time again. The hat did not fit properly on her head, the opening was too small so I had to balance it on top, it turned out alright on the final photos but i thought it was a bit silly to look at to begin with.

(sorry it's sideways!)

Aaaaand here come the Photographs!

This was my first choice, but when I had it photographed i thought the shots would be more from the exact front, when i looked through them they were all facing a bit side ways and kind of ruined some of the good images. We had to be careful placing the swan so it didn't just look like a bundle of cloth too.

And here is my final, I zoomed in to edit something on Photoshop and saw that it looks a lot better from  this angle and distance, i'm a bit disappointed because i really wanted to see the hat but I guess it's alright.