Commercial Practice Evaluation and SMART Targets: Final Illustrations

I am really impressed by not only the quantity of illustrations I managed to create for this project, but also the quality maintained throughout all of the designs. I have never before managed to complete multiple illustrations to such a short time period, this is definitely an area I want to continue working on as if I am able to work more quickly and effectively this will be beneficial in my future endeavours.

One area I am especially happy with the development of was my front cover of the book, considering the quality of my illustration for a book cover during Level 4, it is clear to see the level of improvement I have achieved so far over this year.

I am really happy with the narrative I feel I managed to achieve during this project, despite having to make multiple alterations to my script and storyline. I am heavily invested in continuing with the progression of this story and making alterations in future so I can complete the whole story I had originally intended with the use of my little girl character as well.

I’m really happy with the choice of fire spirit I went with as I feel it holds a high enough fear factor without making a younger audience uncomfortable by its design. I feel it works especially well with the rest of the surrounding illustrations as well due to the choice of colours and textures I used in this character.

I would love to incorporate text within my narrative rather than being just a picture book, but I would need to explore this further once I had a narrative script written. Perhaps using a heavy texture as a stand-out area for the short pieces of text could work well?

• 24 fully illustrated pages

• Front, back and spine designs ready for printing

• The creation of an author title

• Added narrative to the story

• Development of preliminary pages

SMART Target:

Goal: To complete the creation of my children’s illustrated book ‘Gobby the Guardian’

Measurable Success: I have enjoyed trying to gather feedback using social media and would like to continue this throughout the continued development of my book. I will consider my book a success if I manage to have it printed by the end of summer with at least one sale!

What I aim to Achieve:

Realistic Achievements: If I return to university around the 17^th September like I did in Level 5 that will provide me with a total of approximately 15 weeks to work on this project. Currently I have spent 9 weeks developing the pages I have so far, going from 8 to 24 in this amount of time may not be achievable; however I am not looking to rush this project. I am aiming to hopefully complete the book and have it printed before my return to university but if this isn’t possible I will continue working on it as necessary. I do hope to try and remain focused and time efficient so that I can achieve this, considering I will not need to complete all of the annotation alongside in a sketchbook and can focus primarily on developing the narrative, thumbnails and illustrations which I feel is what will make this project achievable.

Time Plan: I will aim to have this goal completed before the start of my third year at university, by working on it over the summer. I hope this will help me gain a better understanding of the whole self-publishing and marketing process which can support my studies and explorations during Level 6.

I thoroughly enjoyed this module as it really resonated with where I am aiming towards in the future. I found it interesting having to work to such a strict time schedule and having to make adjustments to my plans where necessary to ensure the completion of this module. I am definitely keen to continue with the progression of the skills I have developed during this process as identified within my SMART targets which I will aim to achieve over the summer holidays before my return to Level 6 in September.

Evaluation

Concrete Experience:

I chose to complete the ‘Macmillan Children’s Book Competition’ out of all of the available competitions as it provided me to opportunity to work on developing my very own children’s illustrated book based on my own original concept. For this I decided to continue the development of my previous modules storyline about my Nisse and young girl; however I made some drastic alterations to the style and aesthetics of the design.

The brief provided by Macmillan was to create 48 pages of thumbnails alongside 24 fully illustrated pages, I chose to discuss this with my lecturer so we could develop a more appropriate brief considering I have never worked on such a large quantity of illustrations during any of my previous modules and felt I would be unable to successfully achieve this. Following the discussions with my lecturer I was able to refine the brief and lower the page amount, in the end I developed 8 final illustrations which all maintained consistent and appealing graphics.

I would have liked to have been able to incorporate pages with the young girl character during this project, however I realised it would be a lot more manageable and achievable to limit the amount of characters used in the narrative so the amount of essential pages could remain as low as possible. I am happy I made this decision as it enabled me to complete much higher quality illustrations as I was able to focus on their refinement rather than rushing to provide quantity.

Reflective Observation:

Strengths

I managed to achieve the creation and completion of the highest quality and amount of illustrations I have ever previously achieved in a module which has left me feeling motivated.

I took the initiative to adapt my storyline and page requirements to ensure I could complete this project against the deadline, which was supported through my use of a time plan which I made sure to keep updated with my progress and external influencing factors.

I feel this project has really helped me identify just how much my skill as an artist has developed. Throughout this project I made many decisions which led to the creation of my final character and I feel due to my intensive research I was able to refine these skills so quickly in order to achieve this.

Weaknesses

I spent a lot of time experimenting with unsuccessful versions of my characters which ate up a lot of my time, although it did help towards the refinement of my final design.

I feel the book may have worked better with the incorporation of text on the pages, acting as a script for the story. I would like to explore this in the future however I didn’t have enough time to complete this during this module.

One element I am slightly disappointed in is the fact I couldn’t complete the original 16 pages I had set out to create, however I am still happy I managed to achieve half of this in the given time scale considering this large workload isn’t something I have worked with previously.

Abstract Conceptualisation:

I am heavily invested in continuing the development and completion of my ‘Gobby The Guardian’ strory as I realy love the concept and story I have developed for this illustrated book. Due to this my main goal would be to continue working on its development over the summer. I would love to develop this character into a series where they go on adventures around their home and surrounding areas, perhaps they could even discover other Nisse creatures living nearby?

Active Experimentation:

Target 1 – Complete the story of ‘Gobby the Guardian’

I am hoping to get to a point where I feel ready to self-publish the completed version of ‘Gobby the Guardian’ over the summer as my first illustrated children’s picture book. I would also be interested in exploring the use of one of the sustainable printing companies I identified during my ‘Contextual Studies’ module to achieve this.  

Target 2 – Continue my development into children’s illustration styles

During the summer holidays I will continue working on my skill level within this area by working on the completion of ‘Gobby the Guardian’ as well as attending events and tutorials relevant to the industry of children’s illustrated books to support my growth.

Conclusion

I am really impressed with how I resolved each of the challenges I faced during the development and production of this project, I feel my investigations were thorough and I used my annotations to ensure my direction was clearly portrayed to the audience. I thoroughly enjoyed this module and would definitely be interested in completing the ‘Macmillan Children’s Illustrated Book Competition’ again in the future, hopefully managing to complete the full briefing requirements so I can submit my work to the live competition.