Nobrow - London Visit

Whilst in London we also got the opportunity to visit Nobrow in their shop/studio in Shoreditch. Sam Arthur gathered us all in the shop and talked to us about how they started and what they do. He then led us out of the shop, through their studio and downstairs to the print room. 

I really wish he had shown us around the studio because it looked fantastic! Individual desk spaces, huge computers and plastered with inspirational images. It was my idea of working heaven!

The print room was also fairly interesting but much less swanky. Sam continued to discuss how they work and how they sometimes collaborate with illustrators. He said that they get a great deal of emails and portfolios in the post that they just don't get the time to look at.

He discussed the importance of self promotion and that as an illustrator you need to develop a much harder skin and not be discouraged when people don't respond.
I really loved all the work on display in the shop and found the whole visit very inspiring. Also gave me another kick to learn how to screen print! Running out of time!

Serpent's Tail - London Visit

Last week we all went on a jolly trip to London for gallery, studio and portfolio visits... 


One of the studio visits was at Serpent's Tail publishing, an independent publishing house owned by Profile.
Our appointment was with the marketing director Niamh Murray. She showed us lots of really great book covers and explained how it goes from an idea to a finished book cover. She showed us examples of rough work that had been sent to her from various illustrators and explained why it wasn't suitable or why they had to change it for the finished cover.

She also talked about Amazon and that to successfully market a book on there you have to have a suitable cover. The title needs to be large and easy to read because Amazon only allows you to see a small thumbnail example of the book. This is something I have never considered when designing book covers in past projects.

Another interesting thing she talked about was how an illustrator had sent in his own interpretation of a series of published books as an example of what he was capable of. As a result he did eventually get the chance to do the cover art for one of their books. This is worth doing to catch the attention of a potential client. Seeing an illustrators work in context can clearly make a huge difference.

I've never really felt that my work is suited for book covers and haven't enjoyed producing them in the past. Unfortunately it's something I'm going to have to consider when producing the cover of my children's book in the near future. This visit was very informative, inspiring and have given me a lot to think about.

Before we left we got the chance to have a short portfolio visit with the art director Peter Dyer. One by one we went and showed him our work away from the group. When it got to my turn I suddenly felt quite nervous. We sat down and he immediately began looking through my portfolio. He flicked past the first few pages without saying anything. He got to the monsters and I felt that I should say something as it had been silent up til now. I said that I was hoping to become a children's book illustrator after graduation and that my strong point was character design.

He replied something along the lines of 'well I don't know anything about children's books so I can't really give you any feedback.'

I kept quiet again after that...

Once he reached the end of my portfolio he said that my new pig story art work was an improvement on my Uganda story work. I thanked him and gave him one of my business cards but I couldn't help feeling that the whole thing had been a waste of both of our times.

FMP Progress

Lots of progress has been made for my FMP children's picture book.


I've produced several story boards and rough books that have helped me to refine my ideas to an almost finished state. I still think there are elements of the book that could be improved on but I still have 8 weeks to pull it all together.


Below are some examples of what I've been working on... 

These are 3 of the pages from my most recent rough book. I'm really happy with these three.

These are a few of my characters and background objects from the book. The textures and designs might still change. I also want to incorporate some hand rendered texts into the book.

This is my possible colour pallet for the majority of the book. Once the paints have been introduced in the story the colour pallet will become more like a rainbow.

Manchester Museum Bug Event

I'm very late posting this...


On January 28th my class took part in the big Saturday event at Manchester Natural History Museum. The theme was bugs and we had all been working on bug themed images and activities   for it. 
We were given lots of ideas for different things to design such as masks, posters, paper models, animations, badges, work sheets, colour in pages etc...
We also had to chose one insect from a list to focus our designs around... I chose the scorpion and decided to design a mask, worksheet and badges.


Below are my finished designs...

Myself and fellow student Becca Hadfield were the only two to pick scorpions. We sat together and at first seemed to be scaring the children with our masks and paper model scorpions. As the day went on the kids became more confident and enjoyed all the colouring in and cutting out.
Overall the event went very well. Everyone seemed to have a good time and learnt a little bit about insects. Below are examples of my mask and Becca's paper scorpions cut out and fully coloured in.

Reference Pigs

For my FMP I'm going to be illustrating a children's picture book about a blue pig :D
I've finally written the first draft of the story but won't be showing it on here until it's closer to being finished...


The main character of the story is a piglet so I've been looking at lots and lots and LOTS of examples of pigs. Photographs, videos and illustrations... Here are some of my findings including some more images from the MMU special collections library!

From looking at these images and from looking at the way real pigs behave I was able to start working on a design for my main character...


In the past my most successful character illustrations are the ones that focus on simple basic shapes. I wanted to keep up with this style for this book... Here are a few pig character sketches...

Special Collections Library Visit

On Monday the 23rd of January we had a class visit to the Special Collections Library in Manchester Metropolitan University. 


I bolted straight to the children's book collection and began sponging up inspiration for my own children's book. I had been struggling with the writing of my book up until the visit but have since been able to write it to an acceptable standard.


I looked through all kinds of children's books from new to very old and noticed lots of similarities such as the incorporation of text with image and also the use of white space rather than full bleed images. During the Uganda Children's book project I was focused on producing the most colourful and full images I could and hardly considered the idea of white space. I think this was my greatest downfall.


The point of my FMP is to write and illustrate my own children's book but more importantly to avoid the mistakes made in the Uganda book and to utilise everything I've learnt through doing my critical journal.


Looking through the special collections has really helped to inspire me and help me understand what makes a successful children's book. Here are a few photos of the books and pages that really stuck out for me...

Nicola Slater

On Friday the 27th of January we had a visit from a well known illustrator called Nicola Slater. I really love the style of her recent work and found the talk to be greatly helpful.


She talked to us about how she had progressed from graduate to children's book illustrator and the difficulties she faced on the way. She also explained exactly how illustrating a children's book work and goes from the idea to the finished thing. 
She also showed us some examples of unsuccessful children's books she has illustrated. I didn't understand how they could have been so unsuccessful because the illustrations were so well produced and far superior to the work I have been producing for my children's book.

The talk made me feel much better about my own work because I saw how much progress Nicola had made since graduation. I know that I shouldn't rush to be at the same professional level and should focus on getting my ideas out of my head and onto paper.


She also discussed her regret that she hadn't acted on her ideas more. She said she had wanted to draw little characters and photograph them interacting with objects in city locations. I really liked this idea and had considered something similar myself a while ago.

Another thing we discussed was the Macmillan Children's book competition and how I had been reluctant to enter due to a lack of confidence in my own work. She explained that the judges are looking for something that stands out as an original idea that could work as a book and not a finished piece that could be printed up there and then. I have confidence in my own ideas, just not my ability to produce professional images. The talk has definitely given me the confidence to enter the Macmillan competition this year.