Self promotion - The envelope task

During the second week of the module we were all given a small envelope, the task was for us to make a small promotional pack that would fit inside of the envelope which we would then show the rest of our class the following week. I did not really have a clue what i wanted to do and the small format made me feel quite trapped. i drew up some initial sketches for what i wanted to do but i thought that i should think simple as i only had a week to do this. Below is the basic planning page from my sketchbook.

Using my initial Pinterest research i manged to come up with a few designs, at first i thought it would be cool to make a little pop up monster card which would stand up on someones desk, that way it is something that the owner would want to keep and put on their desk instead of throwing it away. Another ideas was just to make a really nice print which had my details on the back of it, that way the owner gets something work keeping and because the details are on the back it will not obstruct my artwork. Finally i had the idea of expanding past the envelope size by making something that fits into the envelope but then folds out to make something a lot larger. The image on the bottom left shows a basic plan of what i wanted to do, the plan was to make a monster that stretches open to reveal its massive mouth and long arms. I really liked the long monster idea so i started to draw out some plans, i thought it would be best if the item broke down into three sections as then i could keep the paper size smaller meaning the printing cost would be less. I quickly decided that it would be a lot cooler if the stack was compiled of three different monsters standing on top of each other like a totem pole. Below are the three monsters that i mocked up to be stacked together. 

From top to bottom the stacking order goes from left to right. I messed around with feet shapes and head sizes so that it would get wider at the bottom. I started colouring the one on the left first and once he was finished i decided that he looked pretty good on his own and maybe he would be more effective this way. I used some of my Aztec patterns to complete the image and below is the final result. i think it works pretty well!

I ended up just using this idea as i thought that he was strong enough on his own and did not really need the other two although i would like to make the other two for future reference at some point. 

I printed my image on A4 card and i included the above image so that i could fold the card in half and glue it to give a double sided effect. I essentially made a large business card and i was pretty happy with the end result. Once this card was complete i moved on as i wanted to add a couple of other things to the pack, at the point i still had a few days before it was due in so i thought i would make the most of it. I looked through my sketch book and there was one image that i had previously worked on and wanted to finish, i thought that this promotional pack would give me to opportunity to finish this image and make it into a miniature poster. Below is the image in it's black and white format. 

For a while i made a big thing about getting rid of the line work and stripping it down to pure colour, i really love that style but i didn't want to forget my roots so for this image i wanted to keep the line work and just fill it with vibrant colour.

Some obvious problems occurred when i coloured this image as it came straight out of the sketchbook, for example the image just cuts off and some of the image was lost. The finished image (later in post) demonstrates how i handled that minor problem with the use of some boarders and crop marks. I really liked this image and i think that the colour palates were well thought out, i ended up printing this one on my ink jet printer on some Hammer White paper which has a parchment texture over it, i thought that was fitting seeing as the image was of a medieval theme.

Finally i wanted to test out the new sticker paper i had recently purchased so i drew these guys free hand using Sketch book Pro, pretty simple designs but i thought they were perfect for little sticker designs. The prints came out really well and i just cut them out by hand.

Finally once everything had been printed i made a simple little band to hold it all together, it fitted perfectly inside of the envelope and i was really happy with the results.
I think that this was a pretty nifty idea and it explained enough about me without giving too much away, i think i will use some of these elements for the next stage of self promotion.