Week 17

In the morning, I checked my email & Moodle to recieve the assignment brief. I used the weekly session guide on Moodle to get a better handle on the project and what we would actually be doing tomorrow, which I appreciated, as it helps with the stress I experience when getting a new brief. At first I was nervous about doing 3D work, but the packaging design brief was inspiring, since I've been wanting to work on more editorial or publishing type illustration recently (I'm hopefully applying for some publishing internships this summer.)

I then went to the British Library's Fantasy exhibition, not specifically for this project, I just wanted to see it, but I suspect it'll inspire me later down the line. I liked the presentation of the exhibition, with the vaulted archways that split up rooms and the translucent wall dividers, creating an otherworldly, but it was cramped in places, especially since there were a lot of people inside. As for the work exhibited, it was largely Western fantasy centric, but I enjoyed the range it covered and thought it represented the many sides of fantasy well — covering everything from Ghibli movies to Gormenghast. There was a nice mix of works I was very familiar with (it even included the book I was carrying in my bag at the time!) and works I didn't know, and I liked the inclusion of films, video games, and even costumes. I especially liked seeing sketchbooks, manuscripts and notebooks, I love seeing people's sketchbooks and processes in general, but seeing some of my favourite author's (Ursula K Le Guin's) sketchbooks was very cool.

As for the art on display, I was really captivated by Bernard Sleigh's Map of Fairyland: when I think about fantasy, I often think about maps, since a lot of the fantasy books I loved as a kid and still love contain maps, and the detail and colour and border of this map is so beautiful and characterful.

After the introductory session, I'm feeling rather excited for this brief. I'm nervous about balancing my workload, especially with CTS also running, but I think i could get a lot out of this project. For the theme of my packaging, I thought about doing something more conceptual, but I decided I want to do some straight-up editorial/publishing illustration right now.

Inspired by the British Library fantasy exhibition, I wanted to do something based around fantasy. I thought about my interests and skills, and what I like about fantasy - I really like sharing my interests and I really like getting people into new books. I'm worried it's kind of repetitive for stuff I've already done, since I've focused on fantasy a lot before... but I do enjoy it, so, I think I'll keep going with the idea for now. I decided to focus on people who are interested in fantasy but maybe not regular readers, as opposed to catering to the fandom angle.

I decided to focus on making fantasy accessible for people who want to read it but don't at the current moment. I struggled a bit with the audience persona task, as I didn't want to narrow my options down immediatly and I was struggling with coming up ideas of what people who don't read fantasy (or don't read that much) might want, because it's a wide range of people, and I didn't want to be super specific so I could target multiple people. I decided then, that I should do primary research to be able to more accurately identify and cater to my target audience.

My initial idea is to theme my project around maps - when I was a kid, a book with a map in the front was a sign that it would be really good, and I want to share that joy and excitement about fantasy with other people.

In order to gather information about my target audience, I created a survey on Google Forms. You can view it here. It contains demographic information questions (so I can see what groups struggle with what) & then questions about reading habits, what barriers people experience to reading, and what attracts people to books. I showed it to my CTS tutor for feedback, and then made small posters for it, and put them up around UAL, to get more responses from a wider range of people.

I then set up this blog page!

One of my ideas is to create some kind of subscription service or other book packaging that can make literature accessible for people. I decided to research other book subscription services to get an idea of how they market themselves and create unified editions.

The first service I looked at was Illumicrate, a book subscription survery for fans of fantasy/sci-fi that offers luxury editions of both new and upcoming books, as well as novelty items for fans. I took notes on their model and the design tactics they use.

I then looked at Left Book Club, a very different approach that focuses on introducing people to new ideas, and has a much more minimal and information-first approach. I wasn't able to find as much about their model and how they advertise which books they sell on their website (it's gated behind joining), but they have a rich history.

Other things I encountered in my research was Verso Books's book club, which allows people access to every book they release in their library of radical literature. A couple of survery responses have mentioned audiobooks or narrative podcasts as alternatives for print books that can be more accessible for people who struggle with reading due to time constraints or disability.

I also found Abolitionist Future's reading groups and their guide to setting up reading groups as a good resource for structuring reading groups/book clubs and identifying what works to include.

On our session in Friday, I looked over the responses I'd had to my survey. I mostly got responses from other students, which was good in terms of gathering information, but I wanted to get responses from a wider range of people. However, it's still informing my project well. Key points I picked up on:

• One of the number one reasons why people didn't read books was a lack of time in the day
• Lots of people liked detailed and enticing cover designs
• A lot of people use audiobooks as an accessibility method for reading
• People also wanted a dedicated time in the day to read.
• Whether representation of marginalised cultures or overlooked viewpoints matters to people was exactly 50/50! I don't know what exactly I can derive from this, but it's really interesting.
• Multiple people mentioned preferring illustrations to photographs on a cover, and more people mentioned liking blurbs on the back of a book than liking reviews.

I think there's a lot here I can derive to work on my project. Making sure I put a focus on evocative illustration, and providing accessibility tools like audiobook or phone versions, as well as useful summaries.

I saw this book-like object in the assortment of 3D workshop samples, and thought it might be fun to try and do something similar for my packaging.

I then had my tutorial with Carlos, as Eleni was working on something else. I found the tutorial useful, and got some good feedback from Carlos & classmates. One of his suggestions was picking a book to use as a case study for this project, so that I can show off tailoring the design to a specific book. He also suggested I start thinking about scale and size, and what I want this product to look like in people's hands. One of my goals is to make it seem as unintimidating as possible, so I would probably go for something compact.

Carlos and also Eleni (when I was able to talk to them) were interested in how I was thinking about accessibility in books, and Eleni said that thinking about accessibility in this way will be incredibly helpful for when I want to apply to publishing internships.

After all this feedback, I'm trying to establish where my project will go next. I think it's been a bit scattered and I need to zero on ideas, and also get some visual research going for where I'm taking this visually. I did some mindmapping (love mindmapping):

And I also started collecting some visual references. The map at the top is Bernard Sleigh's Map of Fairyland, which I saw at the Fantasy exhibition and has majorly inspired this project. The colour schemes are playing around with calming, refreshing colour schemes that link to my theme of water. I picked the name 'Here be Dragons!' because of its association with maps and also with fantasy. The 'here be dragons' inscryption didn't actually appear on more than one vintage map, but sea monsters and dragons were illustrated on maps to imply unknown or unmapped areas, or just for decoration. I think it's fun and enticing, and implies adventure.

The two fonts are from the Velvetyne type foundry, which we were linked to in a digital session all the way back in Intro to IVM (that feels so long ago now!) I've wanted an excuse to use either of these two fonts for a while, respectively Trickster and Hyper Script - they're both really exciting and artistically lovely fonts to me. I think they'd both fit well in this project, but for now I'm going with Trickster, as it's more legible & less intimidating.

I've floated the idea of including embossing in my project, but I don't want to put too much workload on myself if it's going to be a long and difficult process. I randomly stumbled across The Victorian Web, a site with a great book design section, including lots of embossed books.

Digital session in the afternoon! This was an induction to using Illustrator for lasercutting. I've done lasercutting in Intro, and had to use Illustrator for that, but I relied on the image trace function and I'm not very familiar w/ the program. This was a good time to just play around in Illustrator and get some practise using the tools and making shapes. I learnt how to use the Pathfinder function, which was very useful. Here are my shapes.

oh my god theyre so small

I visited Foyles bookstore in central London, to photograph cover design trends and gain inspiration for my visual direction. I took lots of photos, and observed lots of interesting trends, and I aim to write them up on Monday.

Week 18

To prepare for playing around with designs tomorrow, I wanted to gather some visual references and research to draw from. I supplimented my map research yesterday with some more fantasy maps from books I've read and enjoyed, including The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin, which I've picked as my case study book. The two book maps have lovely defined lines, as well as illustrative borders and compasses, and I'd like to include those elements in my work, as they help lend a sense of immersion to the map.

I compiled the photos I took of various book covers at Foyles, and tried to find visual trends in modern fantasy book publishing that I could draw on. My observations are noted down on this photoshop canvas. Some of the trends I noticed that I'd like to include is strong typography, filigree/decorative/frame elements, and prominent colours used on the cover.

I've been feeling like this project's been, a little bit scattered? It's been enjoyable, but I think it's the time where I really need to consolidate my ideas and get working on something. Up until now, it's been kind of unclear what my project actually is, and I think that's also because I want it to do a lot. I've decided I need to actually settle on something - it's a book club that breaks down books into small accessible chapters, with audio & ebook versions, and provides summaries and content warnings. It's... I don't really know how good it is of an idea, so I'm having doubts about that, but this project isn't about that, it's about the illustration. I don't know, I'm enjoying this project, I'm just not particularly sure how good my ideas are, and the short timeframe is putting me under pressure to hurry up with it.

For tommorrow, I wanted to prepare some visual references for my water theme. I used reference images on Unsplash for water reflections and bubbles to help me draw, and just played around trying to create imagery.

Studio lab tiiiiiiime. Here are the initial sketches I did, pulling from my previous references. I do really like the textures and ideas in these.

I picked the shallow gift box, since it made the most sense for a book, and I want to try and make something simple and stylistic, not luxurious and intimidating. It looks like a book! Perhaps this is an uninspired choice, but none of the other options felt like they fit. My first drawing was taking the map motif, drawing it on the net. I wanted to create something that flowed around the box and worked with the 3D form, but it was a little difficult to see how things come together just flat.

Then I did the exercise drawing on the folded net, I found this more difficult since the paper we were using was thin & flimsy. I tried a different motif with this, drawing dragons, because they're referenced in the title but not in the project. I wanted to continue with the same idea of the design 'travelling' across the box, and I think it would work well with the typical sea-monster 'curves sticking up above the water' style.

I liked where these ideas were going, so in the last bits of the lesson, I picked up my laptop & did some more little concept sketches, thumbnailing possible designs & motifs I've referenced that I could use. I picked some fonts (Trickster as previously mentioned and IM Fell English DW Pica - I like both of them & think they fit the fantasy theme, my only concern is that they feel too English for a product that's supposed to be socially concious and including underrepresented voices in fantasy? But they do get the job done r.e. connoting fantasy.)

Had CTS, updated this blog.

Started off my morning by drawing some designs. I wanted to create this movement all the way around the box that guides the eye, and with my references in mind, I drew these fantasy map designs. They were feeling quite bland, so I played around with decorating them - using a frame border or decorative filligree elements innspired by map decorations, both elements I'd noticed on many books in my research on Foyle's. I also played around with border designs, perhaps to put around the imagined 'page edges' of the book box, as sprayed or painted edges is a common thing in luxury books.

As you can see from my notes, this just wasn't feeling right when I drew it... it reads pretty boringly & doesn't include much of the water motif I was going for. It's not very engaging or fantastical, and I worry it comes off as intimidating to new readers. I wasn't sure where to go next in the moment, so I decided I'd take it to my tutorial on Friday & get some feedback then.

I then decided to test out something I had an idea for ages back - inspired by that wooden box in one of our studio sessions that had the curved side that I posted about a while ago. I thought the curved 'spine' resembled a book and it would be a fun touch to add to my box. I played around with some spare blue card I had, measuring & scoring lines to make the card curve - not as curved or elaborate as the box I was inspired by, but worked well. I discovered an odd number of sides works better than even.

SoM in the evening! I enjoyed Lewis Davidson's work, it was super intruiging to me as a known lover of science fiction, but it wasn't super relevant to my project. Seeing Kalina Pulit's work was very interesting, as I'm interested in art direction as a future career path. I liked seeing Kalina's moodboards and hearing about the process they took to respond to briefs.

Going into this session, I was feeling quite lost and unsure about my place in the project, and I was hoping a tutorial and some criticism would help me put my ideas more on track. The other students in the tutorial really liked the project concept, but some found the map design too intimidating, while some really liked it. It had a lot of overwhelming information & detail on, and since I wanted to market to non pre-existing fans, I want to go for something simpler and more welcoming. Eleni suggested I refocus more on the water theme & emphasize it. They also suggested focusing on a specific book (which I considered, but I'm a bit averse to... I don't know why, I just don't want to specify down,) as well as considering transparency & colour.

I definitely came out of that tutorial with more ideas! I'm still a little frustrated that I'm not going to have the time I would want to play around with materials and use the 3D workshop, but it is a very short brief. I sat down and did some more sketching, trying to focus more on the water element and a more abstract approach to maps. I used https://www.templatemaker.nl/en/ to create a shallowbox template, using the A-format size of book - a smaller printing size that's portable, inexpensive, and typically used for genre fiction as opposed to literary works.

I showed this sketch to classmates and they seemed to really like it - I think it has more dynamism and motion, and still feels kind of geological, with the seafoam at the bottom creating coastline-esque shapes. I printed a very basic mockup on printer paper, and folded it to see how the lines matched up on the actual 3D shape, since I wanted the design components to continiously flow around the box. I drew over the printout to correct some of the lines, and I plan to unfold it and scan it in at home.

Week 19

I made a mockup of my new box design with the curved back. It's scaled down, but I just lengthed the back side of the box and split it into 5 equal divisions. I printed it out on watercolour paper so that it wouldn't collapse & hold its shape better. I think the curved back worked really well & definitely lent it a bookish feel. Also, I think the thicker paper helped with some of the problems I'd been noticing with the paper models, namely the front of the box bowing outwards. I secured the curved back by making a tab that fills in the gap left by the curve, and then little tabs off that that stick the back of the curve, around the middle 'bar.' It's hard to describe, it worked well at holding the box together but made it a bit hard to open.

To prepare for the photograph workshop on Tuesday, I made a very bare-bones mockup elaborating on my initial design sketches. I picked this sea-green colour scheme for my general relaxing vibe, and tried to focus on flowing, geological shapes.

I'm really happy with how this design is looking! I used the Trickster font as I'd planned, but I also distorted it using the puppet warp tool to make it flow better with the design & for the sake of the composition.

Printed out my net on the self-service printers in Digital Printing, with just some thicker paper they had lying around. Folded it, but didn't do the tabs that hold the curved back down. As a result, the back of the box lid was too high, and I had the same power with the front bending outwards. I also noticed that the printed colour rubbed off along the folded edges.

For the photo taking, I brought in props: a paperback book (The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson, an incredible anti-imperialist fantasy), a bookmark (from Owl Bookshop Kentish Town, my local book shop) and some pillowcases from my house. I was aiming for cosy reading in bed vibes.

In the studio, this was the pitch I wrote for my photography intention:

• MESSAGE: A relaxing, calming & stress-free view of reading, that’s also a little bit magical. Enjoy reading & explore new worlds with this book club
• CONTEXT: Commercial. Perhaps on social media/online? Not super attention grabbing, refined, stripped back. On the train or bus - since lots of people read on their commute.
• AUDIENCE: People who don’t read that much, but want to read. People who experience barriers to reading & would benefit from audiobook programs, reading assistance, etc. People who value new perspectives and want to read books with socially conscious themes.
• EMOTION: Calm, relaxed, stress-free. But also invigorated, refreshed, excited. Explorative & enticing, while still being chill. Comfortable, easy, low barrier to entry.

References I found for my photography:

From the designers mentioned in Kalina's presentation, I found Georgina Scott's set design for Burberry (w/ photography by Leonardo Scotti.) I really like how the mundane setting of these photographs makes the products not seem imposing, which is unusual for a luxury bag - they have this candid, relaxed feeling. The candidness & the theme of construction constrasts with what we usually expect in marketing for handbags. I really like the photo I included, the warm light is very calming, and the sheet creates a lot of visual interest with the folds.

This (right -> )is from photographer Tyler Mitchell's Dreaming in Real Time exhibition. This exhibition is very calming and bucolic, and uses lots of lovely warm light and calming, steady scenes. I particularly like this photo - the contrast of the shoes on the blanket, the colour contrast, and how romantic and sweet it feels.

From MAKI studio, found on Behance. I liked the papercraft background, it reflects and emphasizes the product and makes it seem artsy and exciting. It's really unique and eyecatching. I don't think I have the time to do something like this, though...

Then it's photography time! I played with using pillowcases to make different backgrounds, and wrinkling them to create visual interest. I think the bookmark & book really worked as props. I also played around with using the orange films to create a warm look - I think them just covering the camera is too intense, but I'd definitely like to try and include warm light sources to really land that cozy before-bed vibe. I think 2nd and 4th on the left are some of my fabourites - I think the white bedsheet in particular really works, you get great shadows & it matches the colours of the book & emphasizes the blue.

Feedback I got on my photoshoot! I'd definitely like to include some more objects for a more cozy feel, especially warm lighting... I don't know if I can get a desk lamp in, fairy lights would work, though? And give a very magical feel, especially if I could put them inside the box like a fantasy treasure chest. I liked the critique that my photos look like they belong on Pinterest - I wasn't aiming for an 'aesthetic' feel, but I was thinking of social media as the place where my images would be spread, so that's good. Otherwise, I'd like to improve on the angles a bit - some of mine are a bit awkward.

Tuesday evening I did CTS reading & looked at paper online. I was annoyed by how the printing rubbed off on the edges of my box where I folded it, leaving these nasty white marks. It looked unprofessional, and I also wanted to print on coloured card, for a more crisp, matte feel. I looked at GF Smith, because I like their colourways, but they ship online and I was nervous about it arriving in time. I found out there's an art shop near UAL that stocks the Daler Rowney Canford card (another brand I used before in Intro To) & decided to buy some card from there.

After CTS, I sat in the cafe and worked on my actual artwork. I wanted it to be flowy and textural, and keep to this blue colour scheme. I explored making the dragon parts a contrasting colour (like red) but it just didn't fit. I experimented with adding these watery textures (bubbles and waves) in groups in the top half (because it looked very empty), in a similar way to how maps have those clusters of little mountains or trees. I don't really know how well it worked? It just feels a bit off. Oh well. I added the compass rose & ribbons to bring it a bit closer to the map theme.

I added the text on Illustrator, using my previously assigned fonts. I attempted with using the 'envelope distort' text thing, but the letters were hard to read and didn't flow well. I then used text along a path + puppet warp to distort the text (but still keep it readable.)

I went in to LCC in the morning, and picked up some card from the nearby art shop. I then, with my prepped files, went into Digital Print to print my design. The first prints had the double-sided-ness wrong, but I got it right on my last piece of card! I then took the nets to Print Finishing to get them cut & folded on the big scary guillotine, to avoid human error. I folded a version on white card (just to see what it looked like - it wasn't great, the contrast against the white paper was off) & my final box, the blue card one. I experimented with adding a closure flap on the white box to secure it together, but it was very difficult to add one at this stage.

Video of the big scary guillotine.

There's definitely some things I would improve in future versions - the gluing together at the back is kind of janky and I forgot about how much darker CMYK makes things. The text constrast isn't great, which is bad for an accessible product. It doesn't join up around the box perfectly, but despite that, I'm really happy with how this came out. I like the textures and shapes of the design, I think they're inviting and exciting, and the curved back creates a little touch of visual interest.

Photography day! I came into this very nervous, and learning about the insane time constraints didn't help. I brought in the same props as Tuesday, but I added a little battery powered string of fairy lights, to add more warm lighting and a magical feel. The constraints on the photography environment itself was pretty severe, too - I would've loved to play around with different lighting, but I get why that wasn't possible. Unlike every other group, VJ did not allow us to move the camera in any way, which meant I had to redo my staging under a lot of time pressure and really stressed me out. However, I think I adjusted my photos well to the upright staging, and I wanted to try more stagings with the fairy lights, but didn't have enough time. Here's the photos of me taking photos:

And my photos:

I was too stressed to remember to zoom the camera in, the first one is out of focus for the same reason. However, I do really like the second one, it conveys the right cozy vibes & I think it has a lot of potential after post-processing.

In the Digital Skills session, I used overall hue/saturation & curves editing to make the image darker, then isolated the box with a clipping mask to make it stand out more. I then used an airbrush on Overlay layer settings and various amounts of Gaussian Blur to make the light from the fairy lights stronger. I think I approximated the cozy look I was going for well with this editing and it looks like an effective social media graphic.

I also tried adding text in Illustrator using the 'type on a path' tool.

Overall reflection: I was under a lot of stress with how short this project was, but I think I produced an effective outcome that met the brief well and communicated my ideas well. I would definitely like to use the 3D workshop better in future (embossing and foil pressing would work very well with this project) and it's a shame it wasn't possible in the time frame.

Through a Lens

Week 20

Collected some sounds for workshop on Tuesday.

Noise of my mechanical keyboard. Deep and clicky.

This is super quiet (my phone mic is very bad) but it is the noise of my cat meowing.

Writing on paper. A nice rhythmic scratchy sound.

Playing around on the bass - playing notes and letting them ring out.

Playing around on the bass using a pick.

We had a project briefing about the new animation project. I'm a bit intimidated - it's a lot of stuff I have no experience with, and learning that I'm going to have to animate over the holidays isn't great fun. I did enjoy listening to the sound examples, but when it came round to actually doing them, I really struggled - sound is something I'm so unfamiliar with that I found it very difficult under pressure to just get used to the software. I understood the principles of the project, but I wasn't able to create any work about it due to getting really overstimulated and under stress. I don't have that many ideas for my project right now, but I'm very interested in narratives, so perhaps doing something with storytelling?

After CTS, I decided to do some research on animation to take notes on how animation interacts with sound, and gain some stylistic references and movie ideas. I started with Hiromu Oka's work, specifically his risograph animated visualisers for the band STUTS.I love the visuals of his animations, but I feel like the movement doesn't match up to the rhythm in a way I find kind of unsatisfying.

I returned to the project brief to pull from the listed references there, and found the database Panimation, a database for finding trans, female and nonbinary animators and motion graphics workers. I found the work of Phuong Pipou Nguyen, a freelance animator. I particularly liked the final short film they made at Gobelins, and took notes on how it uses sound (see below.) It uses atmospheric and magical sound effects as well as sparing amounts of dialogue to create a really lovely, emotional experience.

I also found the work of Marcie Lacerte and their short film Invisible Monsters and Tomato Soup, a short film documenting people's weird dreams over the initial Covid-19 lockdown. I liked how it mixes audio with interviews, and the page also includes lots of details about how the film was made, including how it was animated on 3s (8fps) to create a dreamlike and cartoony feel.

I've been following the Gobelins university grad films for a while, I like them a lot since they're all so different, and they're a great database for just looking at cool animation. I watched some of the grad shorts (like The Name) and some of the recent 3rd year students FX animation experiments, which all have lovely sound design.

Finally, I looked at Victoria 'vewn' Vincent's work, another animator I've been following for a while. Her short 'Agoraphobia' also uses audio from an interview, and her longer film (but still short) Twins in Paradise has a very careful, empty feel to the sound design.

Building off of that, I decided I wanted to do something centred around poetry. I really like poetry, especially poetry with strong rhythm, and I think it would make a really nice soundtrack for my animation, with me adding sound effects, probably with my bass guitar. The first poem I thought of was The Night Mail by W. H. Auden, because my dad read it to me a lot when I was a child and it has a really strong rhythm, then I hit on using poetry influenced by rap, or just rap itself, since that has a really strong rhythm. I'm particularly interested in rap and slam poetry.

Looked at a lot of poetry. Put a list of everything I watched in the dropdown, kind of felt like nothing hit the spot for that rhymic feel I was looking for. Did like Caleb Femi's use of imagery a lot, but nothing clicked. I used this NYT article about intersections between rap and poetry, as well as the abstract of this paper to find poets - as well as just asking other people I knew who liked poetry if they had any poems that they thought fit what I wanted. One of the difficulties was finding a poem that had a good 10-20 second clip I could use, like a specific group of lines I really liked, and ones that had both rhythm and lyrics I was inspired by.

SoM was super interesting! It was kind of funny how both of the animators didn't really like frame by frame animation... I can relate to that. Either way, it was interesting seeing both of their very experimental work, and learning about the oppurtunities they got. I didn't find Sophie Koko Gate's work particularly visually inspiring myself, but I really liked her absurdist humour and committment to this kind of gross and unsettling visual style. Maybelle Peters's explorations of different mediums and different ways to animate were interesting to me, and I really liked her stop-motion short.

Coming into this lesson, I still didn't have a poem, or a soundtrack, so I decided to just try and pick one that I liked and work with it, for the sake of not falling too behind or pushing too hard to make things perfect. I found Debris Stevenson's poetry, which I loved, but I didn't find the lyrics were inspiring imagery when I thought about it, so I decided to pick the aforementioned poem Coping by Caleb Femi, and particularly these lines:

Shoutout to us boys who play out here,
God knows how we do it.
Maybe God doesn't know,
maybe an estate, tall as it is,
is the half-buried femur of a dead god

I feel like in retrospect I should've picked maybe one of Stevenson's poems, to work with a stronger rhythm, but I was just really captivated by the imagery in these lines, and I had ideas in my head about what to draw.

I didn't follow the workshop in class, because I was too worried about the poetry, and not having a draft for my sound. I know this is bad, and I keep falling in the trap of worrying so hard about other deadlines or working ineffectively to the point where I fall behind and have to play catch-up when I'm supposed to be working. I did do a bit of stop motion animation, after familiarising myself with Bandlab and thinking about what kind of sounds I wanted to use. I play bass, so that feels obvious and also fun to include, and when watching the Gobelins FX practices, I was really enchanted by the 'sparkly' marimba/glockenspiel sounds used for magical effects. For my stop motion animation, I played around with visualising those sounds in a graphic way.

Digital skills - I'm already somewhat familiar with Photoshop's limited frame animation capacities, having used it before very infrequently for animatics or beginner animation, so it was easy for me to get the hang of. I think I'm going to use the Timeline option for my animation, since it visually makes more sense for me, even if doing frame by frame is somewhat convoluted, and also it allows you to set a frame rate to stick to instead of setting durations frame by frame. I drew this little guy walking, and then gave it a tshirt to try and create some more movement as I've seen done before. I don't think I got the way the shirt would move right, but it was cool to try. I didn't record any of them, but I also played around with using tweening for opacity, position, and warping.

I've animated in Adobe After Effects before, for a very short looping video on my foundation course, where I used the motion tweening functions & did some basic frame by frame animation, and I was considering using it for my animation. However, since Photoshop has decent motion tweening actions, and I'd have to be drawing the frames anyway, I think I'll just stick with photoshop to save the trouble.

Week 21

Used a handheld recorder borrowed from the Kit Room and used it to mostly record me playing around with my bass guitar and experimenting with making different sounds (using a pick, using my fingers, using my nails, muting the string, chords.) There were some issues because my bass strings have been weird for months now and make a buzzing noise, which picked up on the recordings and impacted the sound quality a lot.

The original video I was using, of Caleb Femi reading the poem, had background noise, and I fixed this by messaging my friend who's doing Sound Arts at LCC and asking if he can scrub the background noise from it, which did work! Thanks Cai. I then picked the bass samples that sounded the best and rearranged them to create this little accompaniment, and then used BandLab's built in instruments to add some marimba for that magical effect. I wanted the soundtrack to go on a journey over the poetry clip, from darker to more magical and hopeful.

I'm feeling eh about this. Sound design isn't something I have any experience with, so of course it's not good, but I get pretty stressed when things aren't up to how I want them to be. I don't want to spend any more time futzing with it though, so I think I'll just keep going forward. It works for what I want to do.

I found the media theory lecture interesting - I really want to read more theory, but I've been struggling with it recently when I put a lot of pressure on myself to work hard on my art, and I can't find the time.

Filled out the worksheet we were given. I definitely want my piece to be more on the 'express' side of the impress/express scale, because I love trying to visualise and express emotions through art, and that sort of is what I want my piece to be about - the power of art and creation for marginalised communities.

I also produced a moodboard from the narrative of my animation, a story about a Black boy's poetry creating a magical force. That first shot with the character stepping up to the mic, I felt it was too disconnected from the rest of the animation and couldn't justify its place.

Worked on blog catchup. Burnout has meant I've fallen behind on blogging and needed to spend a lot of time on catching up.

More blogging.

Had tutorial with Eleni [FIND TUTORIAL NOTES FROM HOME.] I've tried to keep the moving parts of my animation as minimal as possible as to make sure I'm not doing too much work, while also still keeping it as an animation that makes sense.

Worked on my styleframes and polished up my storyboard a bit - will post the full styleframes in the holiday section.

I tried to work on my animation consistently, bit by bit, over the latter two weeks of the spring holiday (I took the first week off for a break.) I struggled with focusing, because I didn't enjoy what I was making or much of the process of making it, and as a result, I really don't have much finished work. However, I did take a useful and relaxing break, and should be able to tackle later projects better.

Two passes at styleframes: I started the way I normally do when thumbnailing anything, which is in black and white, so I can easily think about colour and contrast. Then, I used Photoshop's Gradient Map function to explore colourways. I wanted something with a big range of values and high contrast - the final green/maroon colourway I settled on, I picked because of the high contrast and the fact it's not a colour scheme I normally use.

My first go was very clean and shapey, and I liked it a lot, but I thought I'd do another pass with more textured brushes, and I ended up preferring that. It felt more atmospheric, and I drew with more different values, to create more colours while still keeping the strong contrast.

I struggled with getting the movement to feel natural, especially at 12 fps, it felt like it always came out stuttery. Safe to say, I don't think I like frame animation - but that's okay. I would've liked to have had a film that looked nicer. That first shot will be the character stepping into a spotlight as magic faintly swirls, and the last shot will be the same glowing effect from the middle shot rising into the air to form a human figure over the poem's estate building.

I was nervous coming into uni without a finished piece of work, but I do have my extended deadline and I think given what my tutor has told me about being able to take my foot off the gas given the quality of all of the rest of my work, I'm sort of at peace with it. I did enjoy the title design workshop, here were my first titles, following the themes of scale (first two), texture, and bold. I then talked to my peers, who all really liked the textured title, but I liked how the bold title fed back into the shapes in my film, so I decided to combine the two.

I really enjoyed the screening. I love taking opportunities to look at my classmates's work, and I made notes of animations I particularly loved - there were a lot! For my critique, I had Yaz, and this is what I said:

I really liked the camera angles you used, I think the subtle movement of camera and the pull away from the skater falling over gave your animation so much visual interest and character. I liked how you had moments of stillness when the skater jumps, and taking away the background, it put so much emphasis on the jumps and created a moment of tension before they landed. Why did you go with the limited circle viewpoint? I like how you've used a lower frame rate and motion lines instead of more frames per second - it's very stylistic while still being easy to do. The animation ending with the heartbeat playing is a really effective final moment.

Here's the criticism I recieved from Megan Butler:

regardless to your work being unfinished what was shown was still super impressive. the use of angles of characters and colour really stood out. I liked the contrasting dark purples with light green and beige. I'm not sure if the audio starting at the blanket title was accidental or not but I actually really liked the effect it gave it stood out from the rest of the animations showing. overall, the animation was an amazing start and I'm looking forwards to seeing it finished.

As for my short film - turns out I submitted the file with the audio wrong, and I wasn't able to fix it in time, thus the audio played during the opening title card instead of during the film. A lot of people really complimented this, saying it was a really interesting touch, whereas to me, it was just another thing that had gone wrong with this project, and that even my final product wouldn't be as I wanted it. Still, it's a good lesson for how new, interesting ideas can come out of mistakes.

I think, overall, this project was a strong test of my ability to respond to briefs. Animation isn't something I want to do, and neither is sound, but I think looking back, there were lots of ways I could have approached this project from other angles that would have made it easier - a simpler artstyle like Lan Wang's, rotoscoping like Yaz Alhanfif, or been more clever with moving drawings around like MeiLing Fan (all which were animations I really liked.) I do have this habit of panicking when I get the brief and ending up not really thinking clearly about what I'm doing, and then forgetting to, you know, include things I want to do. This is definitely a project to learn from as I go forward into longer projects in second and third year. I want to not push myself too hard and always make sure I'm thinking lots through what I do, bringing things I want to do into a project if the project doesn't interest me, and put less pressure on myself making a strong finished piece if it means I get to explore things I enjoy more.

On the good side of things - the criticism I recieved complimented my colours and style specifically, which I was really happy with - I think my styleframe did look very good. They also pointed out my use of angles, which I am proud of. I did think I interpreted the poem in an interesting and evocative way, through the visuals and sound.

Through a Lens

Week 23

A new project! I was pretty stoked when I found out this one - finally, a comics and print one. This is very much my shit and I'm super happy to be doing it. I was immediatly excited by the prospect of making a reproducable publication and a visual narrative - but I'm trying not to jump straight into having a finished idea, right now. I'm trying to bring the ideas I want to do into the project.

These were the objects I brought in for observation - a Pterosaur soft toy that lives above my bed that I bought to help with me starting A-Levels, my favourite (and only) necklace with a long story attached to it, and the Gay's the Word bookmark I use in almost every book I read. Here they are!

I enjoyed the drawing task, I'm always up for using fun materials and playing around. I don't draw from still life often, but I enjoyed picking compositions and details to draw, and trying to create texture and visual interest. Plus, I always love drawing on coloured paper. Binding it into a book at the end definitely created some compositions and combinations I didn't create myself, and I enjoyed that spontenaity.

My only little germ of an idea right now, is that I've just picked up rollerskating. I've loved the idea of skating for a while, but only just bought some boots and decided to learn. I'm a super beginner skater looking for good places outside to skate, and I have, secretly, had the idea of making a comic about my rollerskating journey for a while... so why not fold that into it?

My CTS project, totally coincidentally, is about a graphic novel about ice skating. Honest to god I did not plan that. However, it does mean I've been researching comic techniques in general (I reread and took notes on Understanding Comics), and analysing Tillie Walden's graphic novel Spinning. I'm planning to read 99 Ways To Tell A Story, which is a graphic novel exploring the same micronarrative in many different styles, for both projects.

As for Spinning: Spinning is an autobiographical graphic novel about Walden's childhood as a competitive figure skater, that puts a lot of effort into creating the atmosphere of an ice rink as something intimidating, timeless and beautiful. Walden also illustrates ice skating as a stressful combination of precision moves, drawing with elaborate motion lines and 'maps' of the skater's position. I'm inspired by Walden's skill of using absence to make the skating in Spinning feel powerful - when Walden skates, the background often falls away, creating a feeling of tight focus.

I think I feel more positively than Walden does about my skating, though it's definitely been a rocky journey as I learn and fall over a lot. I'd like to try and create something about my rollerblading journey that's as atmospheric as Walden's, something that illustrates how skating feels for me.

My plans for Thursday:

Go to Regents park, (the south london destinations in the reader sound fun, but I live north and none of them particularly pique my interest), and spend some time documenting the place in accordance with the tasks in the booklet, as well as documenting my skate equipment. If I see any other skaters, I'll ask if I can draw them, but I don't know if I will. Then: go skate! After skating, I'll try and illustrate, as Walden does, the sensory, aesthetic experience of skating, and how I feel when I skate.

Also today, I read the accompanied reader, and did some research from the reading list.

From the reader: I enjoyed the texts 'Poverty, Poetry and Dreams' by Ana Miranda and 'Being Alive' by Tim Ingold. In the first text I mentioned, I was interested by the idea of an independant, unconstrained form of 'publishing' as an expression of popular, marginalised art, a way to share not just information byt stories, hopes and joy. In the latter, Ingold's writing about Yolngo artwork, and a series of artworks representing a journey, that the readers take their own journey through, thus bringing the journey into the present. That inspires me a lot when I think about comics, a medium that one takes a spatial journey through. A comic about a journey that the reader journeys through could definitely connect to my ideas.

I also read Isabel Duarte's article in Futuress about Maria Lamas's career as editor of a fashion magazine, which was linked in the project brief. I was interested by how the form of the magazine on its own became revolutionary, by exploring new layouts and formats, it imparted feminist revolutionary ideas in its design as much as its text. I linked it back to The Medium Is the Message, where the medioum is layout and composition, that encourages people to read and think outside of the box. Really good article & I'll definitely be thinking about it in my piece creation.

I also put in a request for the LCC Zine Archives for anything about rollerskating, roller derby, wider skate culture, or sports communities, as well as zines with unusual or interesting formats, shapes or techniques. I'm kind of enticed with the idea of doing a non-rectangular book, but I don't know what I'd do with that right now, and I need to do more research. I have a friend who works at 56a infoshop, and I also asked him if he'd seen anything with a similar subject matter, and he'll get back to me later.

I took the bus to Regent's Park with all of my skate gear and drawing tools. I sat down on a bench and spent some time drawing the scenery around me and my skate gear.

After that, I skated around for a while, and then sat back down to draw - trying to visualise the sensory, aesthetic experience of rollerskating. It's all from my point of view, so lots of drawings of my own boots, and all the bigger pose stuff is imagined. I am aware this wasn't really what the brief was, but from the feedback I would get on Friday, it seemed to still really resonate with people.

Yellow is drawings of my view when skating. On the right side, I did some sketches of what I see when I look down while I skate, the foot movement is really simple and satisfying to me. Below, I drew some more views, and how people (especially kids) will be interested or excited by seeing someone rollerskate - and started trying to visualise what I feel in my body when I skate.

I really like that top drawing in brown. I was trying to visualise how the feeling of the rough ground travels up my legs when I skate, and the feeling of pushing off and then contacting the ground again, the really great sound it makes, and the exciting satisfying flow of movement. I tried to doodle my whole body, but it didn't really work. Right side, I sometimes skate bubbles, which is this way of moving where you're pushing back out on both sides and back in. It's really satisfying, the flow, the tension in my thighs sort of resolving as i come back together, then pushing out... I tried to draw the path of my feet.

Left side - I fell over a couple times, I'm used to it. Right side - using chalk pastels to try and recreate the movements of my skates when I skate, as well as the texture of the ground. Now i look at this, I probably should have tried taking rubbings.

Continuing to trace my movements with pastels. I really like chalk pastels, and the oil pastels I used previously, and I'd like to carry those through into my work.

Returning to the assignment and trying to capture my experience of skating with drawings influenced by emotions. I'm really happy with these.

Tutorial! Both Rourke (student) and my tutor Eleni liked the way my drawings invoked feelings & senses. Eleni pointed out that the more abstract work I did is great because it makes sense in context. Eleni suggested returning to the initial exercises again and practising drawing with various emotions. She also suggested thinking about different perspectives and compositions to emphasize the feelings I'm portraying, and perhaps experimenting with more diverging styles from my own.

I've been feeling pretty good about my drawings - I agree they're a different approach to the brief, but they seem to be effective. I am also really enjoying the chalk and oil pastel textures I've been using, and I expect I'll keep using them. I think I'd like to draw my actual comic digitally, for reasons of ease, but adding chalk/oil pastel traditionally would be cool. If I'm risoprinting it, I could add chalk pastel in another colour layer, which would then be easy for me to draw on top of my printed out drawings with tracing paper, and then scan that in. I'll ask about that in the risograph department.

I also looked at the publications in the centre of the studio - although I didn't do the analysis task (I will do it, on the comics I get out from the zine library) Here's one I really liked, Robert Hunter's The New Ghost. I loved the colour scheme and the panelling choices.

Digital skiiiiills! Here's the scan I was working with:

and here's the edited version:

It's pretty subtle, but it's closer to life, and the middle page crease, and multiple bits of scanner dirt have been fixed, mostly with the help of Clone Stamp tool or Spot Healing Brush. The colour adjustments were done with lowering the contrast, and using Selective Colour to make the pink chalk, which scanned in as orange, more pink.

Sadly, I wasn't able to change the colours of images on InDesign - no clue why, but it was a problem some classmates also had. It's a shame, because the Colour Wash function looked really good for mocking up risographs.

Week 24

Filmed some very basic reference footage of me skating back and forth to help me with this comic project. On Monday morning, I decided to use it to revisit some of the tasks from the initial briefing exercise. I started off drawing a simple drawing of myself skating in black brush pen, thinking about drawing myself with passion and enthusiasm, then added chalk & oil pastel effects that try to convey those same feelings.

Then - just zero'ed in on my skates, and tried to draw them with increasing levels of frustration and anger. Did some fun stuff with turning the oil pastel as I drew to get this wiggly, uncontrollable line variance. I think these were super effective and I enjoyed drawing them, focusing in on tone too. After really enjoying that, I wanted to combine it with the cleaner, brush pen drawings I did that I was also really proud of. I drew in pastel, then stuck a sheet of translucent paper over the drawing, then added nervous lines in brush pen. I do think it worked well, and I think I'd like to risoprint in that effect.

Storytelling workshop! I enjoyed the image analysis exercises, and the storytelling exercises. Over the course of this studio lab, I figured out the story of my comic, its beginning / middle / end, helped by the exercises we did as a class.

Picking an image and drawing 5 minutes before and after - the image I picked was that POV shot of my rollerskates from my initial drawing session.

Picking an image and drawing a month before - Same image. I got into skating after having a bad mental health episode and deciding I needed an outdoor hobby.

Same frame as beginning, middle and end - I enjoyed this exercise a lot - the placement of my frame really dictated the feeling of the story, I felt.

I want my narrative to have the contextual lens of passion - which can lead to both enjoyment and nerves! I wanted to put a lot of work into capturing the emotions I feel when I skate, (as my favourite thing about illustration is its power to convey emotions), using comic panelling and textures similar to my work on paper. I'm settled on risograph printing - the colours are really vibrant and evocative, and it's a method I love using.

I was wondering if this project is pretty pedestrian (no plans for crazy binding or other off the wall stuff), but I have been wanting to do a straight-up comic for ages, so I'm happy to get the chance. I've also been doing a fair bit of comics analysis for CTS, so hopefully that can build on this.

I visited the LCC Zine Library, read two boxes of zines (one box about rollerskating, skating, and general sports fandom, and one box about creative layouts) for research. The full notes I made are scanned below! The rollerskating zines were either an external writer/zinemaker learning about rollerskating and explaining it to the reader (usually these were regular publications, with a more traditional publication feel,) or people's personal journeys in rollerskating or derby or skating. I think I preferred the second, they had a lot of passion and energy, and I really enjoyed reading them and seeing where our skate journeys lined up. The more DIY zines, in my opinion, did a better job of conveying their passion for skating, in being more approachable and direct and expressive.

The second box I looked at was about unusual or artistic zine formats. I really liked 1/2 by Laure Boer, Anne-Pauline Mabire, Lucie Pindat, and Chloe Thomas. It was close to my project, as it was pretty much a visual diary, and I really enjoy how the images were presented to create a narrative over time, and set against sketches - creating this feeling of a whole experience represented here. I also really enjoyed the little inserts that added text, on a different paper colour - I thought they were a good way of stylistically adding explanations, and weren't invasive. There were some other zines I looked at too, mostly interested by how they repeated or contrasted images to create a narrative or atmosphere.

During this session, I figured out the format & physicality of my production, and did thumbnail sketches for each page. I learnt how to make this really cool four-page square book that folds out from Jamie, which I'm going to keep in mind to use later down the line. I didn't really want to do a bogstandard bound book, so I thought a concertina book would be interesting - it has a strong forward direction, which fits the theme of skating, and means you can view the whole narrative at once if you like, which I found interesting. I made various mockups this session, originally trying to fit everything onto one A3, but that would make the book very small, and I wanted a larger, artistic book as opposed to a smaller, holdable one.

Eventually I settled on printing on two single-sided A3 sheets to create a 6-page (5 pages + 1 front cover) concertina book. I planned to use bookbinding tape to attach the A5 pages together, that way I wouldn't need to make the pages smaller with flaps, and the book would lie flat and be more easily constructed.

With a format & a narrative, I set to drafting the comic!

I wanted to have this journey of objectiveness vs abstract-ness - when my character gets into the flow of skating and the whole emotional experience of it, I wanted the work to become more abstract and expressive, more about feelings than what I was seeing or doing, since that seemed to really resonate with people. I settled on yellow and pink for riso colours as they're bright, airy and expressive, and I really like the range of yellows, oranges and pinks you can get when you combine them.

Working on comic!

Traced the drawings of my skates from my initial visual diary entry, so I didn't have to draw everything again. I like this page a lot, I wanted to start the comic off slowly, by having the panels occur across small timeframes, with little movement, then slowly building up speed and motion across the narrative.

While the studio session was helpful for refining my story and defining my aims with my publication, it was also not that useful to me, as I'd already started on my publication in order to make something complete by the time. I want to create something artistic and fun, sharing my experience, perhaps to fellow skaters, as opposed to explaining skating to outsiders (like the zines I talked about before.)

Continuined working on the comic - I printed out the two pages I'd inked on printer paper, and then used tracing paper and an oil pastel to add texture in the right places. I wanted to both add shading and 'objective' texture/details, as well as adding more abstract & symbolic textures and elements to convey that emotional/sensory experience.

Scanned in & added textures to comic pages!

I added some minor shading, but mainly I added a stippled, rough 'ground' texture to the page, to illustrate that skating on rough ground is difficult to deal with as a beginner, and also general nerves. I also added a gradient to guide the eyes and add some more visual interest, since the background's pretty large - I think on retrospect I could've done without it, I'm worried the page gets too crowded.

The chalk skate tracks I made in my first visual diary got a lot of compliments, and I really liked them too - brought them into this page since it's the most direct 'skating flow' one. Again, I worry it suffers from having too many elements, and I think I could have been more structured and composed about it. I do really enjoy how the pink pastel background figures and the yellow skate marks came out, I think they add a lot and create nice colour combinations.

Examples of some of the oil pastel textures I made for these pages.

Also sketched & did oil pastel details for page 3 - the really abstract one. I wanted this one to be super feelingsy and sensory. Will put it together tomorrow. Thursday 2nd May

Scanned in panel elements for page 3, and drew background freehand with chalk, based on some sketches I'd already done, traced and added shading in another colour. I liked this illustration a lot when I did it - looking back, I think it's not as strong as some of the sketches I was referencing, and I probably could have scanned some of those, but I did like it in the moment. Debated a long time over the background elements - was going to do a fill, decided not to... I think I like how it reads.

Since I was getting short on time, and I had to print on Friday morning, I just scanned some visual diary drawings in for this page & fiddled with them a bit - the drawing of my character falling over was half from scratch, half from a drawing I scanned. I am incredibly proud of this page. I think it's the most evocative one in the zine. I do think I could have lead into it better, though - kept a more concrete panel format in the leadup so the change is more impactful - I was trying to lead from a more excited, happy emotional representation to a more negative one, but I don't think the transition is as smooth as I want it to be.

Also did the lines on the last page! Wahoo. Almost done. I want this page to feel like a calm respite and a moment of relaxation and connection with the environment.

Quickly finished off the last page in the morning. Really happy with the pastel effects in the top two panels - really feels like a 'frustration - release' moment to me, and I like that a lot. Also did the cover - it's a bit scrappy, I'd have liked to have been able to sit down properly and spend time on making it better. The title is a reference to things children (and sometimes adults) have shouted when I skate by - they get adorably excited by the presence of skaters.

Frustratingly, the risograph machine I booked was broken and nobody told me. I had to wait for hours and miss my tutorial, just in case someone else on another machine finished so I could snag the spot. When I did print, I was really happy with the outcome. However, with the two-drum machine, the colour mixing didn't come out as strong as I'd hoped. I don't know if that's just how the two-drum machine works - the yellow seemed to sometimes resist the pink instead of overlaying them, but I'd have liked to see more combining of colours. I probably could have used the colour combining better/more across the whole comic, to be fair. Also, the screentone picked up the pastel texture really well. I am incredibly happy about that.

I do just enjoy the process of risoprinting so much. I had a really wonderful time seeing my digital drawings turn into something! Also, cut everything down on the big guillotine, and got it creased in the middle, which is lifesaving.

Digital class, just continued work on printing stuff. I enjoyed the book cover discussion - I like book covers a lot. I knew a lot of the print & finishing stuff, but there were some names of paper types I didn't know, which is cool.

Bound my book together in a concertina format with bookbinding spine tape. I realised I'd forgotten to sign it in the actual drawings, so I editioned, signed & stamped my little psuedo-maker's mark dinosaur stamp on the other side of the start & end pages. It's a little touch, but I think this really makes the publication feel more professional. Made 5 copies, just in case one goes wrong or I need extra.

I am really damn happy with these. Some issues, but I went into this project trying to make a comic I enjoyed, and I did! A really fun end to the year.

Formative daaaaay! I was sat in a circle with Ren, Sophie, Yuxuan, Jocelyn, Olivia and Shan. I didn't know most of their work, so this was great.

Some notes I had on other people's zines and cool conversations we had:

• Jocelyn and Yuxuan both did one-page zines with a page of A3. They were small and very holdable. I made mine quite big, because I wanted it to be impressive, but I think I discounted the power of a tiny zine - I really enjoyed those little ones, they were so approachable, whereas I think mine might have been a bit intimidating at such a size.
• Sophie's zine used this really interesting psuedo-co llage techniqye - piecing together a narrative through related images and references to other artworks. I thought this was super effective, it had a great effect of inserting a bit of yourself into the story as you try and untangle what it's about. The book was also hand-bound in a Japanese stab binding technique, and contained various paper colours, reflecting this assemblage style.
• Shan's zine was a Portrait a4 folded in half, to create a little book, but then unfolded into a spread - I genuinely found this super charming, it felt like discovering something.
• I really enjoyed the mix of more direct and more atmospheric storytelling - so many clever techniques!

As for feedback i got from the others, here's my sheet! (mostly written by Olivia, I added some things I noticed when they looked at it or that didn't get written down.

People responded really well to the book, it seems - although they did tend to take a while to figure out how it was actually meant to be read. People complimented the signing & the stamp, saying it gave the book a really finished and well-presented feel. Some of the abstract stuff, namely Page 3, didn't really land. I do think it looks a bit better digitally than on print, but I agree it's not great. I was hoping that, as Eleni said a few weeks ago, establishing context means that the more abstract visuals are contexted and intelligible. I think these weren't clear enough anyway (yellow & pink on white is a rough combination for readability) and didn't have enough context and lead-in to make it make sense. The large size makes it feel very official and artistic, but perhaps less approachable.

I enjoyed seeing all of the classwork a lot and I'm really excited for the exhibition.