Personal Module Evaluation

Personal Module Evaluation           Zahra Aliyah

     To begin fully understanding what the three projects where asking for and the suitable outcomes was the challenge. To be able to work within the guidelines and have the proper understanding of what is being asked and producing a piece for a suitable target audience. ‘ Hidden stories’ was the project I struggled most. I had difficulty grasping the concept and creating a piece that was suitable for the audience and how I would present it.  With the other two projects to compose a successful final image counted on good detailed audience research giving me a direction to base my ideas off.  Editorial featured mainly a male audience at the average age of forty-six and with the competition fan art again featuring mainly males dominated audience with a wider range of ages between 17-35. But Bond was not only target audience Bond was a brand.

   Research was vital at the beginning stages of ideas and designs. Editorial and competition brief had a specific target audience in which we ourselves had determine and discover the key conventions. Artist research such as Becca Throne and William Russell Flint immensely helped with initial ideas with my projects giving me a insight to what suitable work to produce. However at first, some of my work had ignored this knowledge and my own personal preferences resulted in a James Bond piece which was argued as not suitable for the  target audience and branding. To over come this problem I researched into other Fan art Artist and then amended my work taking a different approach to my piece. I came up with a few ideas experimenting with color and different materials with all projects, but to be able to determine which path was the best for my final piece I gained for tutor and peer feedback, which helped me create suitable images for my final outcomes.

   My tutor and peers aided in the development of my ideas giving me an insight to what worked well and what didn’t achieve its purpose in the terms of target audience. I explored different outcomes and edits to help be decided on an appropriate final piece looking at the use of colour and how it can change a mood or pre impose ideas into audience head due to it’s own personal conventions. Colour was important for editorial, After studying the illustrator Becca Throne who currently produces work for BBC History magazine and majority of her work features only one colour experimenting with different colours within my own personal work was very important. Colour is mood to the audience eye. With my James Bond piece I looked at the Illustrator Gillette to help with the redirection and influence my work. Gillette’s work also featured on the idea on the use of only a few colours; in his Novel covers creating sophisticated stylistic pieces. So choosing the right combination for my image was important and to help me do so I referred to the colour wheel to compare complimenting pairs.

    When composing my final pieces I personally prefer the uses of traditional art such a pencils and paint. However this is a digital generation, if not forgotten.  So I decided to collaborate this, initially drawing my ideas or piece and the scanning it on to the computer an editing on Adobe Photoshop adding background, colours and text. The reason I decided to digitally edit my drawings was the findings through research. Both Editorial and Fan art are generally digitally modify, as it’s one of the conventions of this genre resulting in both digitally based outcomes. With the Hidden stories brief I felt it was a chance to explore my own personal preferences and take a creative approach on simplistic piece of work so therefore decided to create a physical piece exploring the ideas of multimedia and a chance to convey a image other than digital.

   Developing ideas would be a weakness of mine. Coming up with initial ideas based on research and planning I can do, however within my work I can get lost and get distracted from what the brief is actually asking me to do. My James bond piece I explored the idea of a bond girl. You can visually see my development and how some of my ideas losing the iconic Bond branding. But after feedback and revaluating my final outcome with the influence of Gillette’s work I felt I composed a stylistic successful piece.

  There are  parts of this module which I felt were successful such as my research and my Hidden stories piece in the fact I took a difference approach and experimented with multimedia. The Editorial which was my least favorite brief I felt  I grasped the concept well and created appropriate illustrations for the magazine and audience, yet I don’t believe the digital editing of my illustration to the magazine was professional enough and dead space is present. This is due to the lack of my editing skills. I would look into widening my knowledge in this field if I were to compose it again. 

  Modifying my future approach to this module I would focus on development ideas and work with different outcomes for all my projects in more detail resulting in a wider range of material to work with. My lack of time management effected the quantity and quality of some of my sketchbooks as I focused and explored irrelevant ideas e.g. James Bond. If I were to do this module again I would look into widening my development with my sketchbooks looking at alternative ideas and time managing my three projects better, possible introducing a schedule.