Yorkshire Tea Whippet

We decided to design a mascot for the Yorkshire Tea brand for the collaborative brief. Thinking of Yorkshire related things we ended up deciding on a whippet/greyhound because its endearing and appealing to a wide audience.
Here's my sketches

Channels

Thanks to the software workshop I have discovered the joy of working with spot channels.
This is the future. The future is now.

Its so easy to change the whole colour
So I don't have to make colour decisions before beginning
And it changes according to the opacity

Save the children

Page two, much quicker now I've done the first one and decided on my colour preferences and the general aesthetic. Churn em out. 

Save the children

First page of my save the children booklet entry for YCN

struggling with this bizarre mandatory colour scheme but i've made it a little more acceptable by using the designated colours at different opacities 

is distress appropriate?

Save the children new plans

The feedback I got in the group crit was mostly positive but it was raised that i may be portraying the fathers in a negative light if i accuse them wasting time and being at the pub instead of reading to their children, especially since most of these fathers are probably busy doing work and important stuff

ive changed my plan to making a booklet about reading from the environment
it will follow a loose narrative of a family reading the booklet text from several different environments
the text will be disguised into the environment so the reader of the booklet is also reading from the environment.
I'm going to sketch and draw it digitally now that i have a solid plan for the booklet, id like to try more purely digital drawing after my underwhelming results with digital in the last module

Threadless

So I think I'm gonna do some of the Threadless contibution competitions for one of my responsive briefs.
They have mad prizes and seem relatively simple, the briefs always sound enjoyable and
There are a lot of good people entering which decreases my chances of winning, but there's a lot of rubbish too so it's worth a shot.
Also it would be a good exercise, trying to produce work to fit this genre
To find out what kind of design is actually popular I looked through the winners of previous competitions.
Some I like, some I don't, but the winner is selected through a vote system so studying what gets votes and exploiting it should be of benefit to me with regards to winning. We'll see

It seems the most common approaches to victory are specific but widely recognised pop culture references, indulgently high levels of technical skill but mostly a succinct and logical solution to the brief.

Visual Journal

Been drawing stuff from my reference blogs, little direction but it's been fun.

Contract

Priorities

1. Quality final product
2. Do not kill or injury each other as a result of creative disagreements
3. Share an equal and fair workload
4. Don't argue foolishly, compromise and communicate instead
5. Set realistic achievable goals

Foreseeable problems and how to avoid them

1. Falling out - Talk about the problems instead of stewing bitterly. Communication 
2. Not doing enough work - Set clear quantities of work to be done by self assigned deadlines. Keep to this workload and have the relevant progress to show for each meeting
3. Failing to arrange structured meetings - Set a regular time during the week to meet and dedicate this time to the project.
4. Deciding who does what - Divide up tasks logically before completing them, don't deviate from this. Further into the project who does what will become clearer based on strengths we have previously demonstrated.
5. Dwindling attendance - if structured meeting cannot be attended for whatever valid reason, rearrange for a more convenient time or communicate in another manor, by phone or internet, at agreed appropriate times.

Study Task 1

Dan Clowes

• One of the most important comics artists ever, specifically of the past 20 years
• Builds surreal/mundane contrasting narratives around apathetic disenfranchised and often emotionally disturbed characters
• Grounding of realism in visual aesthetic combined with sci-fi esque fantastical events and creatures 
• Most famous for Ghost World, story of cynical teenage best buddies Enid and Rebecca, as it gained cult classic status and was made into an Academy Award nominated movie. 
• Worked mostly on Eightball, comic series, where most of his books began as strips 
• I suppose he doesn't really need to promote himself anymore as he's reached a level of esteem high enough that there are multiple books published about his life and works.
• Our practices align in that I aspire to be him. 
• Also every aspect of his practice is something I wish to achieve. His proficiency with fluid brush strokes, the kitschy yet vaguely haunting 50's nuclear family aesthetic of his worlds and work, the captivating contrast between realism and utter nonsense in some of his stories, his ability to encapsulate the nonchalance of youth, his garish but complementary colour palettes, even the grooviness of his lettering. He is the master. 
• Influences include, Charles Schultz (coincidentally enough), George Booth, Will Elder, Dik Brown, Mort Walker. In a short documentary I watched about him the other day he listed all sorts of mad stuff like campy old horror comics from the 50's with humanoid insects on the cover and obscure european comics of the past, one in particular that clearly greatly influenced his colour choices.

Jack Teagle

• Mostly known for comics and fan art of The Simpsons, has broken into a trendy urban-outfitters-merchandise area recently with tshirts and superhero wrapping paper and such
• Acrylic paintings, bold garish colours
• Simple bold line work and shapes
• I read somewhere that his characters are all based on toys and action figures, which is quite evident when you look at them. There's a brittleness to some of them, a non-flexible rigidness one would get from using plastic toys as reference
• Often uses pre-existing characters like The Simpsons to create new narratives with the already established 'puppets' 
• Promotes self by attending comic fairs and conventions to sell work and network etc. Also won D&AD New Blood in 2009
• Influences "My influences come from a lot of popular culture, older video games, alternative comics, silver age comics, Tokusatsu and Kaiju, it’s all stuff that I came across at an early age, and the influence has always stuck with me. I’ve grown up in a very mundane place, I’ve lived on a farm for most of my life, so I like mixing my influences with the everyday, it makes my art feel a lot more personal."
• His alignment with my practice is mostly around his interest in self published zines and comics, which I enjoy too working with for the simplicity of the medium as well as the challenge of condensing a complete narrative into a limited number of pages.

Charles Schulz

• Legendary creator of Peanuts comic strips
• Created universally recognised characters Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Woodstock
• Studies of childhood friendships and naivety and such, often poignant thoughts delivered through the minds of children
• Influenced pretty much everyone who drew any form of cartoon since. Bill Watterson, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes
• Influences include Milton Caniff, Bill Mauldin, and George Herriman
• Alignments between our practices comprise of things I wish I could do to his level, the charm and knowing innocence of his characters, fluid dynamic lines and shapes, concise expression of ideas, utter mastery etc. etc. 

R. Crumb

• Most prominent figure in underground comics of the 60s and 70s
• Known for controversial, psychedelic, drug fueled, hyper detailed ink cartoons
• Draws constantly, obsessively. In Crumb (documentary) he described himself to become horribly depressed if he isn't drawing
• As a result many of his characters and the figures he draws are referenced directly from life, often he draws people in the street but to an impressive level of detail as if they'd posed for the drawinig
• Worked at various magazines to promote and publish his work, most notably Zap! where he accrued his fame 
• Our similarities are probably few, but I would take from his practise that I would like to draw more characters inspired by observation.

Eleanor Davis

• Illustrator and maker of comics, How To Be Happy 
• Comics based mostly on emotions, humanness, interactions and relationships, autobio and thoughts, vaguely surrealism anecdotes. 
• Chunky unthreatening naked body shapes
• Visually harmonious, flowery colours in amicable contrast
• Power Combo with Katherine Guillen as Never Ever Even http://nevereverevenillustration.blogspot.co.uk/
• When asked about influences 'My family, my friend, Kate, we’ve been best friends since we were in high school. I feel like I’m naturally kind of obsessive and cowardly and I guess I don’t really do a very good job of living life on my own very well and so I feel like the people I admire most and am closest to and have good influences on me have been folks who are really good at experiencing life and making good choices that they believe in: traveling and meeting new people and being open-hearted, you know, being brave. So those are my big influences. My friend Maggie, my friend Lacey, just ordinary folks who know how to live life well. I think a lot of artists don’t know how to live very well. You’re just too focused on this one thing.'
• I suppose her practise influences mine in that I like to make comics and cartoons based on experiences and moods, perhaps to a more personal extent as thats what makes hers so memorable. 

Yorkshire Tea Board

Follow Hollie's board YCN Yorkshire Tea on Pinterest.

Collaberative

For this brief I'm working with Tom Roberts. I think this will go well because we get along alright and Tom is good at things that I am not, like time management and organisation and speaking and presenting and making mock ups and proposals and project boards. All of the difficult stuff.

Made some blogs

gonna fill them with visual journal reference imagery so i dont run out of things to draw

people
http://peoplestillpeopling.tumblr.com/

places
http://placesthatareorarenothere.tumblr.com/

things
http://thingsandstuffandobjects.tumblr.com/

animals
http://animanimanimals.tumblr.com/

and general illustrationy inspirationy things
http://fatsamsgrandslamspeakeasy.tumblr.com/

and then one for my drawings and stuff 

http://hollieholliesmith.tumblr.com/

vaguely productive day....