Progress Tutorial - January 9th.

General

• I have a good quantity of testing, I just need to be sure that this us all well and clearly documented on my blog.
• I have found out a lot more about myself as a drawer, and what I want to get out of drawing. (making note to include and discuss in my final evaluation.)
• Remember the emphasis is not on the end product, only 20% is on technical quality. 
• Visual Journal - This is "a bit chaotic". I ought to make an Issue collection, which documents the general story of my sketchbook. At the moment this is definitely not clear enough. I should mark out the best bits and highlights.

To Potentially Test:

• Animation with handwritten annotations.
• Male and female magical hats - could I use blue to signify boys and pink for girls? Just to further drive home my cliche men v woman point?

Moving Image - 

• "simple effective visual concept that captures the quality of your media"

Pointers to improve on/advice.

• I really must set myself specific timescales for production and really stick to them.
• Use one image, of hand created text which I can use for all of my animation stings - this will save me some valuable time and probably mean that it is of a better quality.
• Simplify down what I am creating, so as to have definitely answered the brief! Later I can add more to it potentially. 
• Following on from those lines, I should really just focus on creating three stings.
•  I should consider just including some of my handwriting, with some little annotations and quotations. 

Printed Pictures

• 'Simple effective images that work well when I discuss them" - I was aiming for very minimalistic etchings that basically described/were of the key concepts of the book, so this is positive feedback. 

• I need consider how they all work together, some of them seem rather random, and they definitely have a confusing sense of continuity.
• So I will organise them into sets, already I can draw out two sets - the witches hat and the wizards hat, and the two clashing together - (which inspired my tutor to say that that basically is what sorcery is, which made me feel like I had achieved a little something!). A second set is the staff themed three, so that leaves the owl (granny mind borrowing and talking to the tree who was once a wizard), DEATH'S hand (who is holding a cocktail stick of party food from the party that he has just been summoned from), and the Librarian's arms holding some books. 
• Perhaps I could extend that set by continuing with the strange character holding something unlikely theme? That would just generally communicate a sense of how weird, wonderful, imaginative and humorous Terry Pratchett's characters are.
• Aesthetically speaking the "use of colour and texture works well but you need to ensure that line quality is defined". 

Photographing/viewing under clear perspex and against fresh white paper

I was also shown a very good way of presenting my etchings nicely, to take a picture of them and to see them in a much better environment that really improved how they looked and made all the colours and contrasts look vastly improved. Basically it seemed to improve their quality.

I also really need to consider how I want to present my final etchings. As they are loosely aimed at existing as book illustrations for the story ('Equal Rites) I should think of a more interesting, neat or just charming way of either packaging or presenting.

• I'm fond of using tracing/clear paper, so why not experiment with placing a sheet of this between each etching, maybe in a stack a bit like a book?
• What sort of order should I consider?
• I could include relevant quotations neatly hand written onto the clear paper, that would also help to better convey what each etching is about, also for me I think this could help them to seem far more engaging and really make the most of the lovely little size that the prints are/will be.