Following on from a book concept test I decided to start the main plan for the remaining four weeks and completed the interviews I would need for the book over the first couple of days of week 5.

Something that I wanted to improve on from when I did the questionnaire was I made the questions too broad and people didn’t understand leaving some of the answers quite short or off topic. Another issue was I didn’t ask specific friends and it as just a general thing which isn’t bad for data but isn’t the personal response I need from friends this time round.

I decided to message people individually with the following text:

And recited the following responses:

Elliot

Elliot wanted me to use his strange place he replied with from my survey, which to be fair was brilliant – ‘Underground rave in a church, It was a weird event for the setting. Not the first place you’d expect to rave’

Joey

‘There is this bar off Liverpool street and when you go up there at night you can see all the lights and the workers working into the night’

Jacob

‘Once I was on a train to work and loads of Dortmund fans got on. There was like an explosion of black and yellow and the noise was insane’

Darcy

After Brexit, where I’ve lived up to now seems different. There’s a crack down the middle whatever side your on’

James

‘The farmland in Zimbabwe, where I grew up, is such a crazy strange place. What now seems to be an endless conflict with even the army getting involved, but while this is happening the crops are dying’

Bryony

‘When I was in Japan we were walking to a temple one day and around it it had these gardens with the most amazing trees’

Guy

‘Well something that I think is strangely beautiful is when you can see the light coming though the window and especially through the gap in the curtains’

Cian

‘I was once on a double decker bus, the only two people on the bus were me and the driver, and we pulled up at a stop, got out of his little booth and told me he was gonna grab some food and jumped off, running across the street to a small off licence. So I was sat, at the back of the bus (on the ground floor) in a pitch black bus all alone in the early hours of the morning, thinking… I could very well steal this bus’

Alice

‘New York is strange and is definitely a concrete jungle inpoints, but on the other hand the parks that are there are very appreciated’

Alex

‘In Tokyo there are often a lot of street corners that have internet or power cables, trees and signs which creates a sense of organised chaos’

Josef

‘Hackney is just weird, it has such a history with bloody gang violence and hard times yet it has become a hipster gentrified paradise’

Myself

‘The strangeness of the university open day is bad enough without the endless opening and holding open of doors, accompanied by the awkward thanks as you pass one an other’

Lorenzo

‘I don’t think it’s strange in a bad way but Woolwich market is one of those unique places with loads of different cultures living side by side and thriving’

Sophie

‘The most strange frustrating place I can think of is probably all the new bathrooms that are all beautiful and clean, yet it takes half an hour to work the tap’

I am really happy with the responses I got as I think they are each unique and give me a wide rage of idea and places to work with. While at first I wanted even more responses overall I think that this is a workable amount and ensures quality over quantity. Now I look forward to starting the image making.

After my last project were I laid out the plan for the reminder of my project, I spent some spare time experimenting in indesign and this eventionlly developed into a quick test of my second final idea concept so I decided to develop this and turn it into a very rough mockup that I could evaluate.

Personally when looking back at the cover I think that while the text and the overall composition is poor I do feel that it has a personal touch and is something that sets up the book quite nicely.

In my evaluation of my first concept test the end papers that I used was something that when looking back I was really happy with and I’ve decided to use it again and still love it. Now that this image has been with the project for a while now I personally feel that it is starting to become a symbol for it and I will fight for it to stay in.

When it comes to the execution of the main concept of the friends and there strange places I am really happy. I think the double page spreads looks brilliant and and I personally believe the concept works and is effective.

I haven’t made any changes to the back page but have not forgotten that this is something that I hi lighted in the last test that needs tone improved.

Overall I think it was an interesting test and is defiantly something that I will use to use as a starting point in the process of developing my idea into a book. While I think the concept works great there are some issues. With the speech bubbles they don’t work well with square images and sometimes there is a disconnect with the digital images. It has also been pointed out by my peers that the repeat of the same style of speech bubble gets boring which is something I should work on when I move on to the next tests. I will also need to modify the bubbles to fit the images in which I produce.

Following on from me picking my anchor I needed to spend some times just to get my head straight and flesh it out a bit so I could then start experimenting and testing. The basic premise of the idea is that on every double page spread there will be an illustration of a friend on the left side and an illustration of a strange place they describe on the right.

I first decided on a course of action to get the elements of the project I needed; first I will start interviewing my friends and family to find out what places they find strange, ill then illustrate them and then the place they find strangest.

Following on from working out the process I decided to plan so that I would have a clear updated structure for the final four weeks. For weeks 5 and 6 I aim to finish the interview the image making and the tests. For week 7 I aim to have finished the design of the book and printed the book. Finally in the last week I will allow some time for the printing to overrun as well as moving on to work on extra deliverables such as tote bags and posters.

I have also spoken in previous blog posts about wanting the book to possible to have text and the way I believe that I can communicate that these are the places people are talking about is to use speech and thought bubbles. I have already begun to start experimenting with all different shapes ad sizes as well as using a wide range of mediums from digital to ink. Singing motile different mediums to create link make to my mission statements.

Looking back having this pit stop to work out the idea, come up with a plan and then do a quick bit of experimenting has been really helpful. It has helped me prepare for the next stage and visualise how the final outcome could look.

Moving on from my crit and me writing my 5 mission statements I decided to start focusing on generating ideas. I spent a period of time reflecting on my mission statement and different way I could reflect them a final outcome. Here are the main ideas:

Idea 1 – New Yorker style Magazine

My first idea that I come up with was to create a New Yorker style magazine full of articles and stories about strange places which I would illustrate. I could link this back to my what is beauty project. While this Idea would be easy to execute, I feel that it has been done before and Is something I have done before so doesn’t interest me as much. As well as this it arguably doesn’t meet a few of y mission statements such as the focus on the friendship aspect.

Idea 2 – Friends and their strange places

Inspired by the book of friends side project and the crit with the head of illustration, the main concept is that I will have one page with an illustration of a friend and then on the other page I will illustrate a strange place of which I will gather from interviews. I also aim for there to be no text and instead speech or thought bubbles to indicate that they are speaking. I feel that this concept matches all my mission statements and has a lot of room fro growth.

Idea 3 – Brexit book

This idea is inspired by the beret march I went on about a week ago. It was from that march that I realised how our country felt so strange to so many people after brexit and I felt this could be an interesting theme for book to take on. The initial concept is that there will be 12 illustrations inspired by Europe across 12 pages as a reference to the 12 start in the European flag. This idea could also be structures like the pervious in which interview people about brexit and then illustrate there ideas. I like the concept but again like my first idea I worry that this is overdone and I’m really bored of brexit at this point. As well as this I worry that it is a bit of a tangent form the evaluation of the project.

Idea 4 – Magazine cover idea

This idea was inspired by a book called the Parisiner in which a number of illustrators were asked to illustrate covers for a fictional magazine called The Parisiner. The concept is that I will create this illustrated designs normally associated with The New Yorker but instead so it for just strange places that aren’t typically conceived as interesting such as Stratford or Bromley. I this this idea would be a light to execute and would really play with humour well. However I don’t see how my friends could have an impact on this one although maybe they could suggest the places.

Idea 5 – Expand book of friends project

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, one of my personal project has become connected with mu current ones and it was suggested by the head of illustration that this could possibly go on to be the final idea and take a number of forms. I believe that this idea would give me great freedom to explore a number of different way of exciting this however it needs work as I would need to include more aspects of my mission statements.

After carful consideration and a second crit with Olly I have decided to go with idea 2, friends and there stange places as I feel it answers all mu mission statements and is a natural progression of my project. While most of the ideas I’ve come up with are strong in some areas they are all missing one or two aspects and just aren’t as unique as idea 2, and example of this is idea 4. While some of this ideas haven’t been picked I will record them just incase I want to like back or use elements of them later. I also showed these idea to my peers and it was a wide consensus that idea 2 was the strangest and is something new.

During my idea and experimentation phase I decided that I wanted to get better at drawing people as while I was finding it okay using the artist I was just looking at as inspiration for illustrations of places I was growing frustrated with my lack of ability with being able to draw people. I had seen that a few if the artist I was looking at, most notably people like Niemann and Blechman, had personal sketchbooks that were just filled with drawing after drawing after drawing. So I decided to start the side project 40 people in 40 days in no way connected to my current project only inspired by the research from it.

During my development of my first final outcome I did realise that these images were really cool and started to chuck them in, but It wasn’t till I asked the head of illustration at Ravensbourne for some advise on my project that I realised how valuable this project was was. after my crit with Olly where I was feeling a lot happier with what I had to do I just was a little lost on how I would now direct my project. He didn’t agree with all that was said about the first concept but did agree that it was a little over ambitions and that these images were far more interesting and that I you start to look at how I could focus the project round these drawings. This advise would `and these images inspired by my research would later go on to inform my final idea.

 

In my last post I talked about a crit I had with my tutor and the targets we set:

• Find and anchor
• Write 5 mission statements

It was agreed that once I had my five mission statements I would then be able to find a common interests or an anchor and then move on with a new idea that fitted the brief better.

Initially when I set the brief I intended for the project to be about pink lakes in Australia and mountains in Ireland formed by the gods when actually the project has evolved as through research I have become aware that it is not just mystery that makes a place strange, and so I want this project to reflect that.

My mission statements would be pointless unless there was one about one of the inspirations and major parts of the project my friends.I think that the final outcome definitely has to have some sort of element inspired by or including my friends, and thus should be a key part of finding my anchor.

As I have drawn inspiration from all sorts of mediums and illustrators of different styles I believe that my final outcome should reflect this. I would like tommy final outcome to feature as many different mediums of illustration as possible from ink drawings to digital.

Adding some humour into the project is not a must but if possible is something that I would like to include. I defiantly have a less serious style and definitely take myself less seriously and think this allows my work to be humorous.

A last mission statement is that I want it to include perspectives of and views from other countries that I have visited and of which other people have been to or come from. While I won’t it to retain a bit personal and real I do want it to be diverse and and adventure for me too.

I shared with Olly my project so far and my first final outcome book concept. The main feedback was that my project was far too broad and I needed to find an anchor to link the project together. He also believed that the narrative if the book which I had started to create with the text wasn’t working and wasn’t leading anywhere. On the other hand he was impressed with the image making and particularly enjoyed the ink drawing of my friends. This is something I should look further into.

Together we set the following goals:

• Find and anchor
• Write 5 mission statements

I agree with this feedback as I have regretted certain elements of my brief for a while and this coupled with my panic when it comes to problem solving lead to me deciding to put my head down and make lots of work rather than solving problems such as what linked them together and what was new about my particular book. I always had an inkling deep down that there were issues and this crit has exposed the problems and corrections I need to make to move the project forward. In some respect my project will move more away from my initial brief but I am okay with this as I believe I have and will be able to  evidence this in my sketchbook.

Following my catch up on some research I decided to collate all the image work I had done and create a test of my book concept to test it and then to have it evaluated be my tutor and my peers. Overall the test was 100 pages long with a few images missing and the majority of text missing.

I am not really happy with he cover and honestly it was only really a quick experiment and place holder until I have time to spend the appropriate time oh which I plan to do later. Somting that I found informative was that the majority of people read the cover ‘Friends and places strange’ which I hadn’t spotted but now see why this will have to be changed.

The end pages of the book it something that when I look back on this design went really well. It is graphical and eye catching yet gives a great introduction to the body of work featured in the book. 

I haven’t spent much time on it but I am aiming to create a narrative throughout the whole book almost telling the story of the project in the final product. It is going to need a lot of work and I will have to spend a lot of time writing. If I’m honey I do really like this but I worry that I won’t be able to sustain it and that it has been done many times before. Despite this I do think a lot of the images do work well with text with it so times providing context. The imagine I created of the pink late is a great start to the book and I intend to keep it as the first image.

I think that the inclusion of double page spreads is really effective as they break uo the flow of the image and text format of the usual double page spreads. Having an image across a docile page spread highlights it and allows the reader to appreciate it more.

I decided to include drawing of my friends from a personal sketchbook as I felt that with just having images of places I was really loosing touch with the essence of my project and that was friendship. I aim to have more aridity and clean them up as well as looking at more effective ways to communicate there meaning.

Lastly the back back of the book is as of yet black except for the barcode illustration I made, inspired but the one Christoph Niemann had on his Sunday Sketching book, turning the barcode into buildings. I am really happy with this idea and believe that it shows attention to detail however, I feel that it isn’t that great of a drawing and will need more work if I will be included in my final outcome.

Overall I am really happy with what I have created so far. I can see that there are gaps and there is work to do but I feel I can effetely plan to meet the challenge and aim to use the majority of the work in this test in the final concept. I have discussed this test with other people as per my proposal and people seem to be impressed and exited to see it finished. There are a few people that don’t quite understand what my project is or mean so I probably need to work on being more clear in communicate my message.

While I was spending a short time focusing on generating ideas and experimenting I’d had a few crit in which I had been suggested to look further from my stringer area I.e. illustration and start to look further to widen my knowledge. I first started to correct this in my experimentation by starting to look at photographers but I was reminded that I should start looking at things such a literature, philosophy and music.

I started of my research into philosophy by looking into the uncanny. ‘The uncanny is the phycological of something as strange strangely familiar rather than mysterious. This quote from Sigund Feud is interesting as I believe that this links back to my perception of why people perceive places to be strange or rather the uncanny. Almost none of the people from my survey named a place that they hadn’t been to which proves that there is an air of familiarity about these places I.e. hackneys chase over time. I also believe that this idea of strange places being about pink lakes and mountains forged by gods as I believe that places people have encountered almost in there day to day is what is remembered rather than mysterious lakes.

Following on from this I started looking into the definition of the word Abjection to see if it had any links. Abjection, by Julia Kristerds definition is considered to be the breakdown in what is self and what is other. While abjection is soothing that I don’t fully understand I do feel that there could be a link between this and the relationship that people have with certain areas.

My final look into literature was to read Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. I found this book very interesting as it was unlike anything I had read before and was certainly a new perspective to widen my research. My initial first impressions however were I was fascinated with the structure of  the book and the inclusion of the illustrations throughout. While I don’t think that the illustrations totally match the glamor and the phycadelic aspects of the story I do believe that the illustrations are very impressive and I understand the aim of the illustrator Ralph Steadman. One of my other takes aways from the book was the dominance of the importance of the drugs and the effect they supposedly had on Hunter S. Thompson and his attorney. The key messages that I get is that Hunter S. Thompson questions the idea of the American dream and that the use of the drugs is to allow him to be able to see society through a higher plane of understanding, and to see the fakes our society is built on.

I also started looking into music and any connection I could see with my project. I realised quite quickly that there are quite a few songs where artists have perfectly captured the feelings or the souls of certain places, for example there are a flurry associated with New York from Empire State of mind the Frank sinatras New York New York. Something else that I found interesting was just like in my previous blog posts about building stories arounds places rather than just taking them from face value, song lyrics are full of metaphors and stories about places and are just full of inspiration for images. This has made me think that maybe when I ask people again to describe a strange place I could ask for music to help me build out the story.

Looking back on the research I have just completed I would say that honestly I am disappointed and hoped that I would have developed more leads for developing my final concept idea as well as inspiring some images and this didn’t happen. On the other hand my research into philosophy did back up views on why places are strange for people and my look at music backed up my view that stories help me make better images. Overall I would say it was worth as I didn’t eliminates some lines of enquiry.

During my 3rd week I was just going though my notes and what I’ve made so far and made a little evaluation of what I’ve got and then an updated plan for the remainder of the project. The focus of this evaluation was to focus more on the numbers and what this would look like in a book.

So far my final concept test has 17 images across 30 pages and therefore may not make my target of 100 pages in time for the decline but I believe this is fine as I am  happy with the overall quality of the work so far. I may need to start thinking about what form for the boo is realistic with size differences as well as come companies only doing books of a certain number of pages, If I find the time I may do more research to develop a bigger base to illustrate from.

I plan to spend the rest of this week and week 3 continuing with the images making. In week 4 I plan to get my sketchbooks up to date , update my blog and finalise my cover and the general design of my book. I have also not shown my work to anyone for a while or even had a crate so Intend to have one soon to make sure I’m on the right track.