AD 32 - Artist Research - Charlie Padgett

Charlie Padgett was another artist from my illustration research folder. This one is a little different as I chose him because I feel like the characters we design share similar traits and the concept of his images largely work around a character as the centre piece. I also chose him because he uses some crazy colour palates and unique texture shading methods which aren't to different to my own. Upon first glance I'd say that his work was hand painted but after a closer inspection I believe it is rendered digitally and the textures and then emulated. I like to work in a similar way at times as I am not very strong with hand painting my images, it is something I have not really played around with, though I prefer going through the digital route as it best plays to my strengths.

A closer look at some of the images reveal my earlier suspitions, I can see custom made brushes used on the yellow image on the left as well as obvious varying speech mark opacity layers around the characters mouth. The image on the right is a little harder to tell but I still believe it's digital, nothing on his sites really explain his design process, I know from first hand experience that you can make brushed that emulate a traditional style.

Its throw back time!
Above is one of my images from second year, it was my first attempt at digital colouring without any line work. I felt like this would be a good example of emulating traditional methods, it has a acrylic like look to it when in reality it was digitally drawn using Sketchbook Pro.

Padgett works within illustration and graphic design, designing logos for campaigns and having books published for kids to name a few. He has quite a broad range of work and he stretches himself nicely across the board having designed apps, posters TV ads and even record covers. His big name clients include Happen Inc and Shake it records. Although his workload is quite broad he has quite a lot of editorial clients so i'd say that's where his work is at its comfort zone.
In addition to his wide client list I'd say his images are fun and informative and id say that they are mainly aimed at a younger audience. The naive characters and strong fiction based scenarios support my assumption in response to his target audience.

Above is an image Charlie illustrated, it was to go with an editorial concerning the 'cloak of anonymity' that becomes present online and how it brings out the worst in people. This was quite a cool concept, one that I can understand and relate to, it would have been cool to work on something like this. I like how Charlie illustrated the person as a monster, that directly engaged my interests as an image maker and I would have gone down a similar route if I got to illustrate this editorial.

This guy doesn;t really have a great online presence as he only seems to have two online portfolio sites. His work has been applied to editorials, apps and posters, all of which are naturally pushing his work out for the public to see, maybe he doesn't have many sites because he feels his work promotes him enough.

Padgett works as an art director for 3feet Factory and previously he had worked as an art director for Curiosity Advertising, Wondergroup and Barefoot advertising. Through many years of experience as an art director he would have naturally gained some strong contacts within the field, enough to give him a good amount of exposure should he need it. I couldn't find an online store for Charlie though his site mentioned that he made a series of prints, maybe that was for a client to then sell on. Most of his work seems to have came from his full time job, 3feet Factory works to develop original content, stories and images to be viewed on digital devices. A lot of images from his portfolio site seem to have come from his every day job, it's good to see the two sides of his profession come together.

It's evaluation time!

So the first module of third year is done, I feel really good about everything that I have accomplished so far. The standard of work that I produced over the summer really had an impact on my attitude towards working during this module, I feel like I finally homed in on a style that I can use effectively. I managed to complete all six of the workshops and because of such I now have some strong pieces that could potentially make it into my portfolio. Throughout this module I have gained a better understanding of my own practise and where it truly fits within the illustration world. I have thought more about application of images as well as the potential jobs I could gain from the way that I work.

I redesigned each brief to best fit my strengths which I learned was character design, each workshop now played to my strengths meaning that I could get a consecutive style throughout this module. I chose to extend the museum of Spectres and Spooks workshop as it felt that it targeted my personal interests more than the others, I enjoy drawing monsters and things of that nature so it seemed pretty fitting. I went on to create flyers, tee shirt designs, tickets, enter signs and additional mascot characters, these pieces are some of the best I have ever created and for that I would like to add them to my portfolio. Sadly I ran out of time as I wanted to make a few more characters for the brief but I will definitely carry them on in my own time.  My tee shirt templates were a little rough so that would need to be revisited and neatened up but seeing as they are only mock ups I think they are fine for the hand in.

I feel like I got a good range of work going throughout this module as I managed to adapt my style to fit each brief. The found object, Stationary and Spectres and Spooks focused on character design using my regular angular style with darker ink work where as the Draw Draw Draw workshop allowed me to focus more on the development of the characters through sketches. The final outcome for that workshop was a little different from everything else as it was comprised of shapes and had no shading at all, it was a little abstract even for me, but I liked it none the less.
Finally the synchronised swimming workshop really tested me, not only was I limited to a square format but I also gave myself the task of conveying a difficult concept using minimal imagery. The workshop was supposed to symbolise how difficult and stressful synchronised swimming can be for the swimmers, I used an octopus to mimmic the confusion under the water, his tentacles mimicking the woman's legs kicking out of the water.

For me I have been pretty consistent during this module and have kept up a good level of work throughout, Caroline's DRAW DARW DRAW workshop was the only one that I had some trouble with. I kept getting stuck with the direction of my characters and couldn't come up with a solid composition, in some way this was good as it made me draw more which was the original intension of the workshop.
The final dust jacket for my book cover came out as I wanted it to although it nearly went pear shaped as the spine did not line up the first time I folded it around the book. That was probably the most stressful part for me but with a little help I managed to make it much more presentable. The pencil that I made worked pretty well and goes nicely with my finished book, the finished pencil was a little rough around the edges but it was only a machete to demonstrate the idea.

I have found a good balance between blog and sketch book this time, instead of keeping things totally separate they are now two of the same thing, work crosses over between blogs and hopefully it was easy enough to understand.

If anything I still need to work on my time management skills a little more as I wanted to produce some more characters for the Spectres and Spooks workshop, I can still complete these in my own time now though which is fine by me. Over all a good module for me, good amount of work, better understanding of the industry and an even better understanding of what job i'd like to have in the long run.

Summer work - The write up

Over the summer I wanted to keep a constant flow of work going to get me ready for the fast deadlines to come in the third year. I wanted to keep it fun though and I would often draw my own stuff to stop me from thinking that it was a chore. This however was not the case as I started to enjoy creating my sketchbook pages for the upcoming module; I finally homed in on a style or two that I am confident with and because of such I could just jump straight in. A lot of the pages were just working from the text book that we were given, I would take parts of the text and just go my own way with it really. I also included a bunch of random things that I myself found during my summer, there are a few pages dedicated to musician Bob Peck who just writes these ridiculous yet catchy songs. There are also illustrations based on nursery rhymes in there, they actually started the ball rolling and helped me gain an idea of what I wanted to do for the chosen story task. I made a bunch of posters over the summer as well, some were influenced by text from the book, some were my own quotes that I found and others were just for fun.

The large ‘Bug Wars’ piece was lightly inspired by the section of text about collective nouns for insects, one of which being an army of ants. It’s also nice to reflect on these images now that the module is almost over as another workshop involved us creating images based on those collective nouns and my outcome was completely different.

The piece named ‘Under Da Sea’ was just for a laugh, I wanted to see if I could make an image out of nothing, I did not map out the composition of that image, my goal was to make up elements as I went along as composite them accordingly. I think for a first attempt it turned out pretty well and also helped me gain some ground when dealing with my synchronised swimming workshop as it helped me understand how I emulate water.

The piece name ‘HYDE’ was another one for fun, I was looking at monsters for my dissertation and Jekyll and Hyde was one of the more popular searches, a lot of illustrations I found depicted the two characters within one image which I found interesting. After getting inspired by these illustrations I wanted to give myself the challenge of making my own depiction of Jekyll and Hyde. This poster ended up being my favourite just because I feel that the colours and my emulation of smoke really set the scene.

‘The Early Bird Catches the Worm’ was one of the more solid images for me, it started off as just a doodle but I just couldn’t stop working on it, it was a good training session that helped me speed up my process as this image was completed within the day. After printing it out it got some good feedback on my Instagram and Facebook page. Over the summer an art collective group got in contact with me over Instagram and wanted to showcase one of my pieces, they also wanted to make it into a tee shirt which was pretty awesome. The guy never set an exact deadline for the submission and mentioned that I could email him whenever I was ready. After starting the module I completely forgot about it but once the hand in has happened I think I will use this image for the tee shirt design, I get some percent of the sales if the sell any of my shirts and it is free publicity which can’t really be frowned at.

The image named ‘MANTIS 3D’ was an image I made in response to some text from the book about putting 3D glasses on a praying mantis to see how they perceive depth, apparently they are the only insects to be able to do such a thing. I thought this was fantastic and had to draw it out, in my sketch folder there is a version that I attempted to make 3D but I wasn’t sure if it actually worked. Either way I wanted it to look like a retro horror movie poster and I think I captured that pretty well. One of my favourites from this series.

I worked on a bunch of other images and sketches over the summer but as they are either on a digital space or on spare bits of paper I would have found it hard to psychically include them in the project but all of it has gone on one of my portfolio pages which I will include here just to cover everything.

http://instagram.com/jiantillustration    

The great illustration world - Industry research

Ever since I started this course we have been asked to think about our futures and the jobs that we can gain within our practice. That was quite a scary thought seeing as the illustration world is infinitely large, there are so many different paths we could take, and just as many decisions we will have to make. When I first started I was sure that I wanted to go into children's illustration and in the second year I continued on with that by taking on the Macmillan children's book competition as part of one of my modules. To quickly evaluate my second year I learned that I wasn't great at sequential imagery but what I was good at was characters design. I was also pretty good at applying my art to different contexts such as note books, prints and even 3D resin toys, if anything I'd broadened my target audience and learned a bunch of great skills along the way. 

Whilst I was away on my internship at Hallmark I got a better grasp on the illustration industry, I got an inside look on how the metaphorical industry machine works. There were so many different job titles within one field of design; it was incredible, there were art directors, illustrators, graphic designers, editors and so many more. Although I enjoyed making cards designed for kids I wouldn’t want to do that for a living, it felt too precise for my liking and I would like to work on a broader scale whilst still considering my main target audience.

 During the internship I also came across illustrator Aaron Blecha, I mentioned him in another post but he is just incredible, he really inspired me over the summer and I think it shows in some of the poster pieces that I created. During this module I took another look at him but this time I looked at the many different ways he has applied his style. It seems really retro and heavily influenced by cartoons, that’s probably why I liked him so much as I take similar inspirations with my own work.

He has illustrated children’s books, graphic novels and has even designed a label for glow in the dark cola which is pretty neat. The strengths of his portfolio lie within character design, every character is very well thought out and his great understanding of poses and cartoon anatomy strengthens his work further.

After having a few moments of realisation mixed with a few tutorials with my lecturers I can see clearly that my strengths also lay within character design. With that being said I can see myself going for commissions similar to those that Aaron Blecha would take on.

During my second year I also came across Steve Simpson, he greatly influenced my work for the make and sell module in second year. Again I referred back to him during this module for influence but also to investigate his practise. Simpson has landed some huge commissions in his career lining up clients such as Guinness, Heineken, Rowntrees and 7up. He also has his work on chili bottles, coffee cups and even apps for phones and tablets. Simpson has also got a large market within children’s publishing having illustrated books, puzzles, clothing and even animated commercials. This guy really is the real deal and I aspire to reach such heights myself.
Steve’s career started out with animation, he chose to leave that field and focus on illustration purely because he felt that he was stretching himself too thin across the board which is fair enough. Having skills in the animation world had its perks though as he had recently worked on a commercial for kids which allowed him to use his old knowledge to animate in his new style which was very effective.

Aaron Blecha also worked for clients such as Disney Tv and Cartoon Network So I can see some links between the two. Throughout this module I have looked at dozens of cartoons for my references and after looking through my final outcomes I can see where my style is taking me, or more importantly where I want it to take me. I can see myself making characters for Cartoon Network, Disney or even Nickelodeon, may it be concept art or advertising or even the title cards that open the cartoon. There are tons of indie based cartoon channels and sites that would allow me to submit my work to gain some ground, sites such as Indieanimator.com would be a pretty good one to look at.  I already have a basic understanding of rotoscoping and have made some little shorts for the complementary studies module; I also worked on the concept art for an Animated Exeter Ident which actually won the pitch. That being said I wouldn’t really want to animate my work as I’d rather work on the generation and concept behind my characters. I can see myself working as part of a team with animators and story boarder’s at my side as I think that best suits both my style and my personality as a person.

After looking into cartooning jobs I found that common roles include: Story artist – Background/layout artist – Studio Background artist – Technical Director – Director of Photography – Photoscience Engineer – Editorial Cartoonist – Production Background – Pencil Model Sheet Artist – Morph.

The Editorial Cartoonist and Pencil Model Sheet Artist look quite appealing to me as they seem to have very little tie –ins with the actual animating process and seem to focus more on the development and creation of characters.  

To extend my interest in cartooning id want to look into potential internships that would allow me to get my foot in the door, id also want to look into submitting my work to bigger animated companies as well as keep an eye out for competitions and or recruitments.

Finally to wrap things up, I wanted to mention a potential opportunity I could have gained over the last couple of days. 

I regularly update my Instagram weekly, this allows me to get my work out there and the use of tags allows a wider audience to see my work which is always great. I uploaded an image from the Spectres and Spooks workshop the other day and an animator liked my image. I went onto his profile and he had worked on cartoon feature films like Space Jam!

He also got to work on one of cartoons greatest, Buggs Bunny which is incredible. After being a fan boy for a little while I went on to look through the rest of his work and I found that he works on little indie animations that seem to air on American programs. I want to message this guy and maybe ask him about his career and see if I can get any information that would help me in the cartoon field. It might also be good to maybe inquire about his current cartoons and ask if he needs any additional characters for them.

(Quick note - Blogger went down for me yesterday and because of such I had to write this on word and paste it in this morning, some images are missing because of that so apologies for the block of text, just wanted to confirm that I did in fact do my research) 

Mini workshops - The Museum of Spectres and Spooks

Here is my finished ghost poster design, pretty happy with it overall and I feel good about my first proper hand rendered type of this module. I have taken inspiration from Aaron Blecha and came up with a style that works for me, one that I am confident in using. If I was to be really picky I would move the word 'THE' up a little to the right to centre it but I don't think it hinders the composition at all.

If you look through my sketch folder you can see that I made a spider diagram depicting where I wanted to go with this workshop, this one is the one that I am most excited about and because of such I had quite a lot of ideas.

One of the first things I wanted to do was create a flyer for the museum. The image above shows the development from ink to digital colouring, I wasn't a big fan of the image in the middle so I played around with just having a glowing face in the middle of the flyer. That idea was a lot better but I still felt like it could evolve some more, it could be better.

Above is my revisited and enhanced flyer, it looks much better now after I decided that the whole canvas would act as my slimy ghost. I threw my design onto some tee shirt templates also, the blue was just to experiment but the green one is pretty cool. I liked using a few black lines to add in details, the artwork and style has evolved since the first poster design and I like where it's going.

The tickets above were the first thing I made after the poster, the little green ghost in the bottom right hand side of the poster was my favorite so I wanted to incorporate him as part of the ticket. I think i prefer the bottom version as it seems to glow more and the square texture in the background makes it look more plush and ready for print. I designed it so that the purple line would be perforated so that the owner can keep the ghost as a memento, I also left out some of the details because I wanted to include a flyer with every ticket. This was a smart move as I didn't want to have too much type on my image and now it balances out nicely. Obviously for an adult ticket i'd just switch out the part that says 'CHILD' and i'd also just bump the price up.

I have also made a welcome sign to direct the people who come to the museum. This one has a mixture of full line work and pure colour inking, thought I would combine two of my styles and blend them into one, I think it works well.

After playing around with my design I actually decided that the black background is better and it makes everything a lot easier to understand. I'd like a green text though maybe to match the green glow around the hand.

I think I have narrowed it down to two designs. I think I like the one on the left more, simple and too the point. The other one has a more ghostly look but it seems a little harsh on the eyes. Might just want to brighten up the green text a hint more to get that glowing ooze effect,

Right I have revisited this ten thousand times and now I feel like it should be either of the above two. Just not sure about keeping the hand green as I worked hard to get a nice skin colour on the original image. I shall try the image with just the text being green and then i'd like to move on.

This is it, I think this is what I wanted from the beginning but I took the long way around to get here. Nice and simple, green text, enhanced the colour with a neon green layer mask and now I am happy with it. Time to move on and extend this workshop even further.

Mini workshops - The Museum of Spectres and Spooks - figuring things out

When this workshop started we were given a specific Pinterest board to look at, we then had to choose three images from said board that would help to inspire our image. The three images that I chose will be in another post.

Above is a collection of images that I looked at to get inspired for this workshop although I was already excited because this one really appealed to my interests as an illustrator. I am a huge fan of monsters, aliens and all things gruesome and because of such I wanted to get stuck into this workshop before we had even been fully briefed!

As per usual I looked into cartoon ghosts, some of which were from some of my favorite childhood cartoons such as Scooby Doo and Spongebob Squarepants. I've always been a big fan of cartoon monsters as they never really seem to scare me and their exaggerated features just make for great characters. Things that are green and glow in the dark also just appealed to me both when I was a child and now, I do enjoy a good glow in the dark sticker.

Moving on I had a look at Aaron Blecha who is an absolute boss!
I found him whilst I was on my Internship at Hallmark and he is just amazing, he has worked with clients such as Disney and Cartoon Network, he has also illustrated kids books and even has his own brand of Cola!

As far as aspects go this is exactly where i'd like to be as an illustrator. His work is vast and stretches all across the board, reaching out to a younger audience whilst still being able to please the masses and gain all types of commissions. His character design is fantastic and everything has this toxic look to it which is pretty awesome. This was sort of what I was hinting on in the above paragraph, grungy and gooey aspects just appeal to the male audience, in a stereotypical way of course. Boys like monsters and farting, it's simple maths!

Stationary workshop - figuring things out

In response to some of my earlier thumbnails I started to research Marvel's Silver Surfer to get some inspiration. I love how animated this guy gets and I feel that he shows great control over his body even though he is in a completely weightless environment. One of my original ideas was to parody this great hero by illustrating a Pritt stick surfing around on the Surfer's board, leaving a gooey trail behind to illustrate how far he had come. Whilst looking at the Surfer I was also interested in the cosmic trails that are left behind by his board and I think this helped to animate the character. These are all things that I should consider when making my character.

After playing around with the surf board idea for a while I figured that although it would be cool to parody one of my favorite Marvel characters it would make more sense to come up with something a little more original. Above is my first mock up of my Pritt stick character, I like how he turned out and the glue has been emulated fairly well but after having a few words with Tristan I noticed a few points of improvement that could take action. Tristan mentioned that my characters expression might not fit the piece and the characters shape is a bit rigid. These comments were fair and I was happy to take them on board since this character was still at the early stages of development.

In the article that we were given it talks about the original Pritt mascot and how he appears to have a bit of a hard life and I think that is maybe what I was going for with my characters expression above, I wanted him to look fed up and annoyed about his gluey trail he had left.

For me as an illustrator i'd think that my style of work would be targeted towards a younger audience and even though my original sketch is cartoony he might be a little bit grungy for kids, I should consider this during the next stage of development for this character.

 After revisiting my character and expanding on what I had already learned I came up with a slightly cute and more relatable character (see sketch folder for plan sketches). This one has better form and shape to him. The image above contains characters from the Worms game franchise and I feel like their thumb like shapes helped to inspire my character in a few ways. I started off struggling with animating a solid cylindrical object and I didn't want to give it arms or legs because it would become less apparent that it was a glue stick. I eventually chose to throw reality out of the window and started playing around with some crazy poses for my glue stick character, I didn't want it's simple shape to limit me.

I also wanted to limit myself by not giving my character a mouth, that way i'd have to convey emotions with body shape and eyes alone. Above are a bunch of different brand mascots which i'd looked at to see how other artists have dealt with giving life to random objects. The little pizza is a good example as it uses minimal features to bring it to life, the peas in a pod are also a great. Either way I think I have captured my characters emotions well using the minimal elements I gave myself.

 Above are some development shots of my final image, you can see there is quite a change in between original pencils and digital inking. The original drawing shows satellites and astronauts getting caught up in the glue trail, this changed to rockets in the second image and I had gotten rid of them completely by the third image, This was because I felt that the busy glue trail already added a dynamic element to my image and it did not need much else.  During the third image the glue layer was hidden so I could focus on the character and the earth.

I also added a small moon to show that he is on his return trip back to earth and to really exaggerate his journey he has taken the long route back.

Here is the final image, I made the swirling pattern using ink, I then scanned it in and added a linear light gradient layer mask (what a mouthful!).

I was tempted to add some stars into the mix but I feel that they would take something away from the gooey trail floating free in space. The texture was definitely needed on the earth as it gave it a much needed lift, it was way to flat on its own. I wanted to experiment with glue textures but after completing it I can see that it isn't really needed. This is probably one of my strongest images from this module and it demonstrates a good understanding of character design and composition. The trail was a little bit hard to understand at first but maybe that was because I was looking at it for too long, I thought about moving part of the trail behind the earth but decided against it.

I went for the full size image that would feature the editorial text on the opposite page, I think that was a good choice as it gives my character a lot of room to breathe. Also the large scale image gives a sense of depth and scale to my characters mission.

My mini statement of intent writes about focusing on the character creation and generation of ideas. This workshop helped me aim towards those goals, after writing my statement I decided that I would like to showcase some of my characters at the end of the module via cartoon title cards, This character will hopefully become one of them.