Studio Brief 3 - Person's of note

My person's of note were :

MICHAEL JACKSON

JK ROWLING

ALBERT EINSTEIN 

Of which I collected some facts together and had to differentiate which I felt was the most interesting. From further research I decided to opt for Michael Jackson as I felt there were many sides to him that I could illustrate. I could approach it from various angles whether it be celebrating his musical talent, his work for the world and charity, to the more negative aspects like the bad press, child sexual abuse accusations, and how he was abused by his father growing up too fast pressured into the music scene.

Reference Imagery

I collected so much reference imagery, I have included a few examples here but I feel in order to draw something I have to really understand it first. Looking at it from all angles and really getting a sense of what it is. Because Michael is so unique; his body image changed so much over the years. Drawing this is difficult; especially drawing something that is going to be recognisable to people and sums him up. I was unsure whether to show him as a child as part of the Jackson 5 or older, whiter skin and more distinctive features.
I have look at the symbols that are associated with Michael because I feel when creating a character these recognisable symbols like the trilby hat, glove, white socks and shoes will be what makes the illustration recognisable as Michael Jackson even if i don't get the face right.

Connecting imagery - I came up with just simple drawings of symbols that sum up Michael, how we recognise him. 

CIRCUS THEME - One of my ideas was to present Michael Jackson's life like that of a celebrity, by including clown imagery. I thought about showing his father as the ringmaster whipping him into shape. I wanted to show him as a clown, crying. Clowns save face, tell jokes, entertain but we never know their true identity. In a circus all acts work so hard yet we never know anything about them, they are mobile entertainers.

I want to somehow show how he gets attacked by society, and the media, yet he gives back nothing but love in return through his kindness and donations, to his music. I was thinking of somehow showing how he has had to grow up too fast, and perhaps how he carries evil and forgives. 

Group interim crit 

Being Human - Acceptance

After speaking in my group crit I decided to change my ideas of the circus theme. I wish to create something more appealing with humour. I was thinking of how Michael only ever wanted to be accepted by society, and for people to understand him. The media often portray him as a freak, and show his unusual traits, many rumours have been spread about him sleeping in oxygen tanks and collecting bones amongst other weird actions. I wish to portray the side of him that he is only human like us, and that we should not attack him. In order to do this I thought of funny everyday circumstances I could put him in that we would find unusual.

Here's David Cameron eating a pasty.. you get the jist
It always fascinates me thinking about what celebrity and people in the public eye do behind closed doors that we don't see.

Reference Imagery of people doing day to day normal things 

Reading the paper

On the toilet

Hoovering

Eating a pot noodle

Taking a bath

I want to portray Michael as just being normal, and human, despite the media branding him a freak and all of the bad press.

He is really hard to draw, because he has such unusual facial features sometimes it feels as though I am drawing a woman due to his bone structure. It's quite frustrating trying to get it exact, so I think I will create a character with the Michael Jackson recognisable symbols (trilby, glove, sunglasses) rather than try make it look realistic. 

Drawing & Re-drawing

Here I took my inital sketches and re-drew them simplifying them down. For the picking his nose piece I felt with stamps being so small I needed to focus more on the shape and line rather than tone.

Colouring on Photoshop 

Eating quavers

Playing candy crush

Eating a muller corner

I used reference for this piece but I was more focusing on experimenting with colour, seeing whether or not I should add tone or just keep things simple. I think tone looks more realistic and effective, but do I want to create more of a character?

                                                                                                                                            

Re-drawing final designs for colour

I drew them out in a 0.1 fine line letraset pen rather than the 0.5 and 0.7 I was previously using in order to add more detail and create crisper lines. 

I added the muller corner label to this piece for more quirky details

Colouring on Photoshop

                                                                                         

A lot of my images were the wrong format so had to be redrawn.
Final drawings for colour

STAMPS 

I decided after the crit that my stamps dont match with the colour scheme of the rest of the work; and in order to make it look more of a series I needed to change the background to maybe a blue turquoise colour. 

Final Crit

Feedback sheets

I think this was a valid point about the colour in certain pieces which I later changed to more of a green so that everything worked as a series. I understand the comment about the hoover piece looking better portrait than landscape but I feel it is too late to change that now. Also, initially I was using the hoover design as my poster; which is why I drew it out landscape to include quirky symbols such as the Bubble's photograph in the frame. After the comment about more tone working better, I went back into my images and decided to add more tones because I agreed with this. I added more of a shadow to the furnature and skin tones and feel this looks much better and less flat.

STAMPS

POSTCARDS

I re-drew this piece and extended it in order to fit the format. For my final designs I also changed the colours because of the feedback given about things working as a series. Some of the proportions I was not happy with for example the photo frame being too slanted and lines on the wallpaper not being straight. It needed completely re-drawing out and corrected to something I was happier with in order to colour again. This was a shame because I had spent a fair bit of time colouring this piece but it also seemed too flat and needed more tone consideration. I am much happier with my final result.

Unfinished - needs a background and more tone 

Unfinished - needs more colour and tone

Unfinished - more colour needed

 POSTER - the wrong format

Re-drawn and extended to fit the A2 format

These were my deliverables for the crit and as you can see a lot of them are unfinished because of the time it takes to colour 12 pieces of work to the standard I would like. Maybe I should have considered a simpler approach in order to manage my time effectively and present work of the correct format, all coloured. However, despite being unfinished I thankfully managed to get some constructive feedback as to where I could go forward with the pieces and go back and edit them or consider colour more when beginning another piece. I spent a lot of time re-drawing images to fit the format, add more detail, change the composition, or I just simply wasn't happy with them. 

FINAL OUTCOMES

STAMPS

I do feel these work well in green, however overall I wish i chose a more intelligent colour pallette that reflects Michael Jackson more - the whole blue turquoise theme seems a little irrelevant. Maybe if i kept it all black and white to represent his beliefs? Especially after the group crit's where I noticed other people really researching colour palettes it made me re think how I could approach my next brief. I added more colour to the arms too I noticed they looked really pale before and did not match so I ensured the colours were the same on all of them. Looking at them now I could have gone around some of the areas that don't have line such as the arms and the hair of Michael to make them stand out more. 

POSTCARDS

                          

I am quite happy with these postcards I think they work the best compositionally within the frame and the little added details are really nice such as a pimped out diamante henry hoover, calvin klein boxers, a packet of quavers, and a rubber duck. Little elements that stand out as quirky and quite humorous. The format was good because it gave me the space to add detail but also room to make errors that would not be initially noticable. I could add tone but keep it simple at the same time.

However, looking at it now I should have made them all landscape rather than having one portrait of him on the toilet, this does not really work as a series. I feel my drawing style and colour palette and the use of character is what links them all together best. The quavers piece stands out from the rest too, too much red and bold colours, and the background does not really suit the piece. It maybe could have included a little bit more detail and been more of a situation; a narrative of him doing something with things in the background rather than just a close up of his face. 

POSTER

                                                         
When digitally printing my outcomes I felt the postcards worked well along with the stamps, but for the poster I think at such a large scale it is easier to pick up on the mistakes I have made colouring. Some things you don't initially notice when colouring on screen, printed out I have seen a lot of gaps and overlapping of some of my lines which is quite disappointing. I think perhaps I could have added more detail too. When cutting the postcard hoovering piece on the guilitine cut too much off the top and so it has cut out part of Bubble's face. I need to be more careful with this next time as it's lost out on quite an important part of the piece. I also think my original colour choices for the poster works better than this. I added the label 'Fishcotheque chippy' to make it a little more quirky and related to music; alongside some cd's for sale on the counter. I think the background could have had more work, more detail rather than solid blocks of colour and maybe just made the opacity less to create more of a foreground and background. Other than that concept wise I think this represents the norm, the local average working man.