APP Home (AOI): Evaluation

The Final Piece
My aim for this piece was to show a different perspective on the city of London, having been inspired by the work of Jan Pienkowski and storyboard techniques. I wanted to produce that magical appearance to portray London as being ‘Wonderland’ and the home to many little stories that are silently significant to the development of it as a city.
By using purples and blues I have set London in a surreal night time scene and also created connotations of magic. Purple is a colour heavily associated with this as it’s incorporated into all things Halloween as well as being used in fantasy art.

Most of my learning outcomes mention being able to undertake a project in a professional manner and produce an effective piece. I believe that my illustration is effective and is a perfect amalgamation of known and unknown methods; I was able to explore into the territory of digital painting, and yet I could also rely on my knowledge of watercolour and inking.

Drawing the Buildings - Perspective and Composition
In regards to my project as I whole I found drawing the buildings and perspective most challenging. I haven’t really drawn buildings before so I had to look carefully at my references to make sure that they were done accurately. I wasn’t able to do all of the tiny details in great detail, but I had managed to draw the general outline.

I explored with the perspective and used what information I had gathered from my research to achieve this. I would like to experiment with perspective in my other projects because it’s a really handy tool and I quite enjoyed creating an unusual composition. Even though my experiment with my second perspective wasn’t as effective as the first I learnt that larger objects leads the eye, so I should’ve drawn the Big Ben at the bottom and shifted the bus to the side. I did try this out in Photoshop (as shown in my experiment) but it didn’t turn out so well. This is because each of the buildings were drawn for the first perspective so when everything was shifted around, the perspective had to shift, which was quite hard to do even with the warp tool. Maybe next time I'll draw the Big Ben and the Bus at the bottom of the page so that it was bottom-heavy, but as I've already mentioned this was my first time I explored with an unusual perspective. At least I'll know for next time!

Poster Sizes
I have created two versions of my poster, one fit for A3 so that I may include it in my portfolio, and one in Double Royal.
The Double Royal poster design was more effective with the type placed beneath the image so that I could show the full illustration, and although the A3 version doesn't obscure any objects of the illustration I just find that the type sits more comfortably in the Double Royal. Unfortunately when I tried to carry this composition across to A3 the text would've been at a very, very small size, and I would have to cut it down so that it was actually smaller than A3 as the illustration wouldn't fit otherwise. This is why I thought it best to have two versions and present my Double Royal poster as a mockup.

Research
Initially, it was quite difficult to research into London folklore until I found one of the books done by Helen East. If it weren’t for this book then I’d still be stuck trying to figure out stories to portray and would’ve gone for the ‘obvious’ ones such as The Portrait of Dorian Gray or Sherlock Holmes. By looking more into the lesser-known narratives I was able to widen my knowledge and learn more about London.

Experimenting with Different Materials
As it was a purely illustrative piece it pushed my boundaries as an illustrator. I have played with aspects I wasn’t experienced in, experimented with watercolour, and managed to mix both traditional and digital media effectively. It has shown me that even though digital painting is difficult it all pays off in the end, and the methods of experimenting with colours are endless.
I have also found my ‘signature style’, which was something that relied on detailed line drawing and also watercolour painting. I would’ve like to do something entirely watercolour-based but wasn’t able to with this drawing as I hadn’t converted it onto watercolour paper. Next time I hope to try it out with watercolour!

I found experimenting with watercolour most enjoyable, because not only did it make me use unusual materials that I wouldn’t normally even think of, it made me realise that unsuccessful results were okay (the rock salt was perhaps the only method that worked). It was all part of the learning process.  Now it only makes me want to try more experiments!

Update - 14.12.13
I'm glad that I left my adjustments a couple of days after I had produced my design because I was able to look at it with fresh eyes. Even though I haven't managed to find the time to tackle a new composition I was able to change the layout of my poster so that it resembled the Double Royal poster but in A3 size. I preferred this text layout, and it was more consistent with previous AOI and Serco Prize Poster designs.