Acceptance of commission and invoice forms

When you take on a commission that you’re going to be paid for, or if there are going to be expenses its good to have commission and invoice forms.

Acceptance of commission forms show what the agreements are of the commission.  It includes whom the commission is for, the title of the work, the delivery dates of drafts, finals and expenses.  It also states the agreed terms of copyright e.g. How long the work can be used by the customer, in what way? Is it exclusive rights?  In some forms it’s a contract.

An invoice is for me to keep and have proof of my commissions. It is vital to make an invoice when taking on commissions.

With expenses I have to state the illustrator’s fee and also expenses for me to create the work, e.g. visits to a certain place, travel fare, material costs etc. all of the cost of this can be covered by the commissioner.

Inspiration

 

I filled a scrap book full of all the images I've collected over the years from magazines, packaging etc. -things I like looking at and inspire me. Most of the stuff I've put in my scrap book make me want to create things of my own like it. 

I've also filled a blog with the stuff I see online that inspire me in the same way. 

If you'd like to see it please visit. 

www.dokidokimyloveforyou.tumblr.com

I find having a area full of the things that influence you, helps productivity and styles your work in a more successful way. 

Website research

THE GOOD AND THE BAD


Design rules 
1) communicate- don't decorate
2) speak with visual icons
3) Use 2 type max including type size
4) pick a set colour scheme on purpose
5) if you can make it with less things, then do it.
6) negative space is your friend- Make more of it!
7) Treat type as a image, it is a important as a image.
8) Be universal, remember that the design is not just for my use.
9) Be decisive. Do what you do on purpose, or don't do it at all. 

Examples of good website designs 

These 4 websites are great examples of good web design. All of them have navigation bars in the same place, they're clean and simple to read. They're simple and have a small number of pages that have a different design. The things that they want to be noticed the most is quite bigger than the other things. The links are meaningful, relevant  and the terms are easy to understand. All the text and icons are readable so you know where the link leads.
 

 Apple.com 

 Meomi.com
I love this website! its fun, interactive and reflects on the artists style. Ideally I would like to create a site like this that reflects on me as a illustrator.

Themetrust.com have a vary of portfolio website themes for sale  here are 2 good examples.
both of these are the type of site that I could create with the time frame that I have. They also have create layouts for showcasing a artists work. 

REALLY BAD EXAMPLES 
All of these are horrible, insulting designs with clutter, sub links, navigation buttons, and blue links everywhere. Their colour and text choices are all over the place. Overall these designs create complete confusion for the user and hurts peoples eyes.

MY WIREFRAMES
Planning out my websites layout and design
from looking at other websites and following the design rules.

Mr Corgi

Preview of a little something I made, I thinking of making little postcards out of this maybe if I work on it a little more with colour.

Jack o Lantern

Every year I fail to make a decent jack o lantern, this year seemed to be a bit different. This is the little guy I made this Halloween.

Doodle box project.

When Tristan Manco visited we were told to make a entry for the doodle box project and he would judge it. I had a quick look here for inspiration http://www.boxdoodle.com/old_stuff/2005-2010/.
This is the guy I made, "Ryan Mcgreger" He's a cat that lives of cup a soups, hence why he's so thin.
When I showed him to Tristan Manco, I don't think he was too impressed, but advised that I could try make a family of these guys. My need for cute things pretty much over ruled what I was gunna make- whereas I think the project was supposed to make me see what was there and rebel and graffitti over it and turn it into a statement or make it look cool. Whereas what I did was modify a box and cut it to my liking into a springy toy like cat, which makes at least me happy.

Milky Blood Zine

The Tumblr http://milkybloodzine.tumblr.com/ opened up submissions for a zine project called Milkyblood. I made a piece hoping that it would get into the zine and at least get out there published in a zine format to buy. The theme behind it was to create a "CANDY" image that was in the guro style  roughly meaning cute but highly gory or dark.  I didn't get much of a feedback for this and didn't make it into the zine, but still it was good to try and get into a independant zine, it's something I'd like to try regulaurly.

Grayscale for print  and the colour version that i made first.

 Looking back on one of my trials, its not so bad and could of actually worked maybe. I like the watercolour texture.

The great Editorial race

Thought I would get final pieces for that project up here. I REALLY LOVED THAT PROJECT!! I've put my favourites in order beginning with first! I've created some of my best work up to date with this project.

NSS poster

Here's some of the outcomes I made for the NSS poster competion during summer. Since then I know that I didn't win or even come close, but it was fun playing around with this project anyhow. The main idea for this was to have the speech bubbles overlapping each other to make it seem that everyone has to speek their view, to create the thing that's is going to make a change. I thought that the design looked too much and  tried to limit the colour scheme to green for positivness and added a little scholar guy to get more attention and help relate that it's to do with uni. I response I got from that poster made me improve the little guy and clean him up and tidier (as you can see on the right) To be honest I think the first poster met the brief (simplistic)

Chance meeting with a illustrator

Recently I've been working as a seasonal sales assistant at my local Game. It's my first real job and I love it. The staff, work, product and customers you meet.

I'm writing this entry mostly because of a customer I met. Dec 2nd.

The wii U was released this week- as part of my job I try to sell Wii U to customers, by taking it out onto the shop floor. One customer I noticed looked vaguelly interested, we talked about the wii U, nintendo in general and our share of interest in Zelda Geekery. We moved onto talking about his career as a illustrator working with Disney/Marvel comics and game concept art. He happened to have also gone to Plymouth college of Art doing a Graphic Design course. I encouraged him to do some visiting lectures, as it was something that he had thought about doing, and would be really great for us illustrators to hear the view of someone that has started at the same point we are at and have ended up somewhere we may aspire to go.

Useful info that he told me was that:

- He started designing t-shirts for a local company, then got offered more work and gradually onto what he's doing now.
- From experience, game design work has lots of opportunities up country at the moment.
- 90% of his commissions and works are communicated through email and the internet. He barely meets the people in person that he is working for.
-Finds time to also do children books onside his other work.
-Because of the industry he's in, he has to keep up to date with games/technology. eg. he could request a new games console to be put on his invoices expensives. ( a very encouraging thought to get into the games design industry)

Stupidly I forgot to ask what his name was, I've had a search with the little facts that I know, but nothing matches. Hopefully I'll find out eventually.

ACID FRIENDS

During the Summer holdays I messed around with styles and digital colouring etc. This is a preview of one of the experiments Titled "ACID FRIENDS" -the result of what happens when you discuss with your friends what it would be like if you were super heroes.  It helped me feel a bit more confident with using digital painting and experimenting with my silly doodle-esque style.

MyPaint and portrait test

Trying out a free digital painting program called Mypaint and tried out observational sketching at the same time. This is a quick live portrait of my girlfriend, I'm not too happy with the result but I was more concerned with testing out the program. I found that its best mostly for sketching out stuff as the pencil tool is wonderful and acts like the real thing, plus the whloe screen is just a canvus. A great program to play around with if you've got the time.

Updated face icon

Every year I like to change my face icon to reflect on myself. If I was blogging on tumblr this would help get the attention of other followers and make posts more recognisable as my own, it also helps people imagine the persona of the artist they are following. (at least thats what i think in my view)

Here's the update. Its good to keep things fresh and new to keep people interested and you can see a general improvement on the artists style.  The year before on the left and current on the right. Much better in my opinion.

Summer show

Second part of the Make your Mark competion required for me to make a poster for the Summer Show. I wasn't as confident with this part as I was with the stencil. Here's my intial idea with the final image for the poster underneath. Artsy hands merging out of a painting frame holding creative equiptment. I think that the idea was great but the process of making it into a final piece was terrible and the end result doesn't work, if I could I would go back and redraw the hands and equiptment to be more refined and professional for a poster.

Make your Mark

 
 I entered into the colleges Make your Mark campaigns competions. This here is the developement of myy stencil design. I wanted something that looked clean and current with a feel of being in a creative atmosphere (the art equiptment spread out everywhere). I used pen tools in photoshop to make some vectors for extra sharpness and cleaness, which worked well to create a stencil design.  I don't normally work in this way, but it was well worth it as I made the shortlist and got feedback to improve it. You can see the before and after results below.  The first was my first submission, but they wanted me to balance it out a bit more with a paint tube and make it busier (which is the bottom image). I'm very happy with the result.