INTRODUCTION: For this project, the objective was to create a story about yourself regarding your personal creative journey. We were given the challenge to story board our ideas before hand and then tell our story through Adobe Spark video. This was challenging for me in particular because I've never really made any videos. Also, I hadn't fully reflected on my creative journey since I started at George Brown so that was a challenge as well.
MATERIALS:
Hardware: iPad, MacPro
Software: Illustrator Draw; Illustrator CC, Photoshop
Platforms: Creative Cloud, Behance
CREATIVE PROCESS:
Audience: 15-25
Purpose: To share with the young students how I came to being really into pursuing art and seeing that it can be a career. I also wanted to create this for myself to really document my journey to help put together how I got here in a way I can understand best, which is obviously visual. This story is important to me because it helps me fully visualize and understand my story and understanding this can help me not only understand my work better, but myself better. After reading this I want my audience to get me as not only a person, but a designer. And as many know, these two usually go hand in hand. The hook to my story would be that it has not always been smooth, and there was a long period of time where I didn't take art seriously. However, in the end I came back to my roots and original love. Like I said, there have been a few dramatic twists to my story and not all of it has been clean and smooth. For example, there was a point in time where I was trapped almost, feeling like since everyone went to university that that was definitely the path for me, even though I was un-happy there. How I will share this story with everyone is through a illustrated video made my me in Adobe Spark.
The style of how my story will be shown is like I said through rough illustrations changing (drawn by me) as my voice goes through the story. I'm going to make my illustrations rough, but keep them also clean. The tone of how I will speak to my audience will be very friendly and casual to keep it light. I want the mood of my story to obviously not all be happy since there are some twists and turns. However, over all it is a positive story.
QUESTION PROMPTS:
PAST:
My earliest memory of influence in terms of art would be my grandad. He always encouraged me to draw since he loved it himself. This was important to me because I could see how enjoyable it was, and how happy it made him, and eventually me too.
My earliest memory of art that I was actually proud of would be when I went to an art class when I was around 11 and I made a painting that I remember being so happy with. Looking back on it now, it was pretty dreadful, however at the time I felt encouraged enough to continue practising, and in the end that's the main thing.
What stood in the way of my creativity would be my high school not encouraging anyone to pursue anything other than university, which really limited my creative options and made me feel like creativity wasn't really important. This over all view point really got me down and for a couple of years I barely drew or focused on my creativity at all.
My area of interest was, and still is, drawing. I was drawn to it as I said because of my grandfather originally, then when I started to love it, I realized why. I love detail. I love it because detail makes everything individual and that's when I realized how much I love drawing people because there's nothing more individual then people. My grandmother really influenced me to pursue my ambitions. Last year when I was un-happy at U of T she asked me why not pursue something you've always loved for schooling and then eventually a career? I honestly hadn't thought about it until she put the idea in my head.
PRESENT:
I have the ambition to take creative influence from anything. Anything for me can be inspiration for a new creative project. This includes friends, family etc.
My design philosophy is everything and every day is an opportunity to make new things, and think of new ideas. Nothing is too set in stone that it can't be changed for the better and thought of in a new way to make people's lives more beautiful.
My work represents my design philosophy because by showing people in there form through my drawings, I always make sure there's additional detailing or abstract to them that adds an additional idea to them. They usually are realism based, however, I don't want them to look like photographs. I want to always add additional creative influence to each piece to make them individual.
My time at school here at George Brown has influenced me and my work by showing me that there are so many options and ways to go in terms of not only my creative style, but a career.
A time at school when I experienced an epic win would be last semester where our assignment was to create a poster for the ROM. I chose to represent a high contrast blue statue lady. She was very hard to represent in pencil crayon in terms of her intense blues, and blinding whites. However, through hours of work, I was able to get the results I wanted to represent her stature best.
An epic fail at school was trying to use gauche paint for an assignment in my colour class. The paint was very hard to work with, and my work soon became chunky and blotchy.I learned that each paint is different, and consistency is everything.
A piece of work I'm most proud of is a design I made for the Toronto Maple Leafs. I entered a design contest with them this past year, and I spent a couple months working on my design and idea for it. I ended up coming up with a logo, and a collection to put on t shirts. I'm very proud of it because I've never worked on and analyzed a piece of work of mine so much.
The biggest highlight in pursuing my interests would be finally feeling like myself and having my life come together in so many other ways just from knowing my career direction.
FUTURE:
In five years I want to have completed the three year Graphic Design program for Advertising, and following that, working at a Graphic Design firm in Toronto.
As a student this year I've learned that there are so many fields to go into in the arts, and everyone has a special talent following that idea that makes them special and needed. Also I've learned that time on a piece makes it. Whether you're happy with the over all results of a piece at the end or not, if you put time into it, people will see that and if anything, appreciate that.
Advice I would give to future creative students would be to not be afraid to specialize and know what you're good at. But also, to not be afraid to try many different things, because that's how you find new passions.
If I could have a wish come true it would be to create something in any form, in any part of my life that influenced someone (or people, hopefully) in an incredibly positive manner. So positive in fact, there life changed because of it.
ILLUSTRATIONS:
Production Methods and Workflow:
This piece was created by first me, the creator, thinking of what my journey actually has been. Then, analyzing the best way to tell the important parts and analyzing that on a personal level. Next, I typed out my story the best way I could and tried to narrow it down into Past, Present, and Future. Then, once I had a clear idea, I started my illustrations.
Then, after tweaking and really getting my illustrations down, I started on the voice. I recorded each part in sections and then added the image to go with it. Finally, I chose the theme to go with my piece.
Storyboard:
CONCLUSION:
Over all, I am happy with my work. I find it an odd dynamic however to analyze my own life, and have to represent that. Also, it was hard to show such personal information and then realizing and understanding more of who I am as a person. If I could change anything, I might go into a bit more detail in a few areas and make the video longer and more in-depth. I would've also have liked to have seen detailed drawings done by me to represent my creative journey in a different way. I am happy however with the over all content, I think the voice, the theme, the illustrations, they all go together well in terms of one piece. I find this to be a win. Over all, the hardest work I do as an artist is about me or has to do with me so I found that aspect difficult as usual, however I do believe this is a good piece of mine.
