UNIT 8; PROCESS AND OUTCOME; BIG FAMILY PRESS

Briefing, Research and Project Proposal

For this project I was given the child, Kiren, Kiren's list of prompts included a giraffe, a donkey and a monkey along with some other things. I decided to use the animals as a focus, as he also mentioned a zoo, I thought it would be a nice idea if my worksheet for Kiren could be for the purpose of him designing his own Zoo. To fit with the theory of loose parts I wanted each animal to be completely editable. My research showed that children seem to find illustrative content that was relatable, more intriguing. For this reason I wanted to add the option for the animals to act as humans, with the idea to incorporate things such as hobbies, jobs and clothing. 

Initial Drawings

For my intial drawings I focused on creating child-like illustrations of the animals and themes mentioned by Kiren in his prompts. I wanted to make these drawings bright, thinking about colour, shape and character. I chose to use coloured pencil to think about the childish implications of this media, and also due to the success of my Riso project in Unit 6 where i developed coloured pencil illustrations.

Development 

I felt these drawings helped me explore the ways I could create characters, which could be directly relate able for Kiren, thinking of things such as wearing clothes. In my developed drawings I used finer pencil to begin focus on tone and colour, which is important as Kiren would be riso-printing his collage and my design would therefore have to be black and white. Through this process I created my own prompts which I could use to spark inspiration to think outside the box for the animals, for example, what would a donkey wear if he wore a hat?

Further Research 

One of my main concerns from these drawings would how they would be recognisable for a child, what could you do with cut out pictures of animals? To investigate this I bought some children's animal and nature magazines, putting myself in the child's position to create my own scenes and collages from these. I thought about how I could take the animal out of it's natural context, how I could humanise the animals, and what plays on the animal stereotypes I could create.

Research Application with Further Development 

This research task helped me to broaden my imagination of what the different animals could do/be, this was as I wanted to work through the idea of 'loose parts' which gives the child no limitations of what each element can be. With my investigation of shapes, texture, colour and context, I began to develop the characters for my animals. For this element of the project I was mainly concerned about creating something appropriate for a year 5 child, I have a younger brother around this age and I was very aware that although they like something funny and childish, they are acutely aware of things being 'too' childish, and will therefore reject something that is seen as babyish, too cutesy or too basic. 

To overcome this I began to create characters that were not too childish and simple, while still maintaining a childish humour - something silly. 

These drawings are a good study of character, but needed to be developed to incorporate the studies of texture and pattern suitable for riso:

Audience?

For the last assesment feedback I was told I need to investigate audience and final design further, with testing and consideration of how the piece would work to it's function. I considered the audience with both my research and development thinking about childrens books, age range and my testing of children's magazines. But I needed to test the success of my final design. My first test was on myself, to see how I could cut, collage and colour some of my favourite designs. Some of the elements were too small for me to cut neatly, which would be even more difficult for a child. From this I concluded that each element had to be bigger than a fifty pence piece, or it wouldn't be practical:

The second stage of this research was to create a prototype and give it to a child of a similar age range, providing them with the same brief Kiren would have, and gathering their thoughts from this. My younger brother, Donnie, is eleven, and is very artistic, he is also very picky and is in the stage now where he will tell me he's not a child, and reject anything that's too childish. I thought he would be perfect for me to test this piece on because it would provide me insight to whether it is age appropriate and as to whether the worksheet works:

Donnie really enjoyed using the worksheet, he spent a lot of time making sure each element was perfect, and seemed really happy with his work. He particularly enjoyed creating a name for the zoo, the signpost and the speech bubbles, he found it funny to create his own jokes and it made his final design personal to him. Donnie told me he didn't want to glue down the elements because he enjoyed changing the scenes, clothing and scenarios. He had ease with cutting and sticking and didn't have any issues. However, he did find it quite difficult to know what he was doing with each animal. I suggested to him that I write him some prompts down on the paper - similar to the ones I had in my original drawings - and from there he seemed a lot more involved. 

From Donnie's work I knew I had to keep in the key elements of a sign for the zoo, signposting and speech bubbles as this allows a personal spin on the collage. I also decided I would include the prompts in my final design as it would help the child when creating. 

Final Design 

This final design includes some of my favourite characterisations, textures and patterns from the development process. I used my research of audience with Donnie to incorporate key editable text elements, and also include prompts to help the child's creative process. One thing I note is the slight colour and quality change of each element. This is because I used photographs of the work instead of scanning it in, I would perhaps improve it next time by scanning the images, which would eliminate lighting and tone change in the different pictures. 

Conclusion

Enquiry

For this project I began with critical assessment of previous projects to create a set of clear technical and theoretical aims for the project. I began with research into artists, analysing the age range and successes in a range of different children's book artists. I also conducted research into critical theories such as the ideas of 'loose play'. 

Knowledge 

I applied my research on children's book artists into my practice with exploration of the key successes with focus of shape/colour/characterisation, to explore the different style ques for different children's age ranges. Theoretically I consistently applied the idea of loose play to my work. 

Process 

I used a range of media and techniques for this project, focusing primarily on tone shape and colour with consideration of the audience. I worked in coloured pencil, tonal pencil, pen, collage and digital enhancement. I also analysed the success of each media and process throughout with constant reference to my research.

Communication

I aimed to improve this significantly during this project with constant consideration into the audience, this was particularly successful when testing my outcome on Donnie, which allowed me to thoroughly explore the communication with my audience, gather feedback and improve my final design. This was supported by a range of children's book illustration research, and research into previous and current peer interpretations of the project. 

Realisation

My work with Donnie was again the main strength of this criteria, this allowed me to thoroughly consider the success of my development process and apply this to create a stronger outcome.