Print research

In response to a recommendation in my progress tutorial, I looked at the Central Illustration Agency (CIA) in search of some more reputable practitioner research. 

Christopher Brown

Christopher Brown studied illustration at the Royal College of Art, and has since worked as an illustrator, printmaker, artist and lecturer. He has worked alongside Edward Bawden, 'the master of the linocut' and has exhibited his work at a number of prestigious places. 

I like the subtlety of the colours in the top print in particular - they are playful and unrealistic and the use of pink and orange in the top left contrasts subtly with the more dull grey and black in the bottom right. Playing with scale and positioning of the people in the image has been successful in my opinion as you don't notice them at first but they obviously have some significance in the surroundings to blend in so well. It is only after a while that I noticed the small dark blue figure by the blue building. Although small, this looks quite ominous which suggests something is not quite as it seems. 

This next print is clearly set at night time. The strong yellow light from the tower compliments the deep purple sky. The use of the red is something I am not sure about, I probably wouldn't have put red with purple in this way because I think it makes the tower stand out more than it should when it is existing in the background. Composition and foreground, mid ground and background is something which I haven't explored in great detail yet with this brief. I think I need to start thinking about composition and colour together in more depth and trying to understand how this partnership can be used to create deeper meaning.

Brian Grimwood

Print Magazine credits Brian Grimwood with 'changing the look of British illustration'. He is a very influential practitioner worldwide and is the founder of the Central Illustration Agency. 

I love working with ink and a brush so Brian Grimwood's work immediately appealed to me. I love the fluidity of his brush strokes and how little detail he includes in his figures an portraits but still manages to convey an atmosphere and character. I have been trying to stay away from using ink in this way because I wanted to push myself and see what else I could do in this project. At this point of exploration, I think going back to using ink and a brush might help me to think how I could push my current drawings and designs forward. It is a really quick and comfortable way for me to draw so I don't want to become too reliant on it. 

Working in this way will hopefully loosen my images and help me to get all my ideas out onto paper in a different way than to using a pencil. It will allow me to be more expressive with my mark making and maybe push my work in a more abstract direction which could lead to something interesting as I don't normally work in this way. These images below are very abstract, I can make out what some of the drawings are but there is no clear way to piece them together and think of a definite meaning. This might relate well to the theme of solving a mystery in Agatha Christie's work. 

Responsive - Brief Analysis Session

BBC BRIEF

The problems I aim to solve are...

• The BBC is losing viewers in the 15-24 age range.
• The BBC is not catering for all age groups even though there are so many platforms to view the BBC's programmes.
• Young people turning away from broadcasters in favour of online media.

In order to solve these problems I will...

• Research into YouTube and Buzzed and identify why they are successful with this age group. 
• Promote the BBC's online content more, maybe altering it so there is a channel where only highlights/snippets are shown.
• Make sure accessing online content is convenient for this age group - make it available across multiple device platforms. 

I will be aiming to communicate...

• The idea of a speedy and convenient way to watch TV to fit around their daily routines. 
• The user experience. 
• That this will enhance their lives. 

To an audience of...

• 15-24 year olds
• Both male and female
• Potentially students

WPP BRIEF

The problems I aim to solve are...

• Not enough girls across the world are learning through technology. 
• Too many girls are not in education or drop out before completing it. 
• Overcome the barriers that prevent girls from accessing education in the first place. 

In order to solve these problems I will...

• Create a brand that encompasses all existing organisations and campaigns with the same goals. 
• Create a brand which will encourage more companies to get involved and support. 
• Create a brand that inspired girls to use technology within their learning. 

I will be aiming to communicate...

• Inspiring prospects.
• A change in perception.
• A 'big' idea that can really change things. 

To an audience of...

• A global audience - must be able to be understood across the globe. 
• Companies, institutions and governments. 
• Girls. 

Sites to look at for briefs... graphiccompetitions.com, illustration friday, briefbox

(Check the small print!)

Print Workshop - Part 2

Looking specifically at creating spot colour positives. 

This is the way you usually work with screen printing, the CMYK method is not as relevant to the everyday screen printing method. 

How to access the Pantone colour reference system in Photoshop. 

Click on foreground colour because this is the active colour. 

Click on colour libraries to view the spot colour libraries. 

PANTONE solid uncoated.

You can type numbers to find a specific colour swatch you are searching for. 

Using Pantone colour in Photoshop and then printing it with a CMYK printer will mean that the colour will be mixed using CMYK, not using a spot ink. Therefore it will not look the same colour as the Pantone swatch. 

When using spot colours in Photoshop, we need to work in a different way to what we usually do. 

Channels

If we have channels for cyan, magenta, yellow and black then it is possible to have a channel specifically for a spot colour, so that it will be printed with its own ink. 

Everything is going to happen using channels instead of layers. 

A separate channel needs to be made for each colour. 

Channels -> Menu -> New spot channel 

Click on the colour square to select a colour. 

For digital print you could use the Pantone system. 

For screen print, the pantone system cannot be perfectly mixed with the inks in there so just use a colour close to what you are going to use so that it will help you visualise the image you will be producing. 

Make sure the layer is named so you can differentiate which colour it is. 

CMYK channels are in greyscale. 

So if we are using our spot colour channel we can use black and white.

D = shortcut to make black our foreground colour. 

Paint with black to act like you are painting with colour. 

Paint with white to act as an eraser. 

When you make the grey channel invisible then you can see the colour you have applied in black and white form. This will be your positive for screen print. 

Double click the spot channel to get spot channel options. 

You can then change the colour and the whole spot channel will change to that colour. 

This allows for quick colour experimentation. 

Remember to change the name of the spot channel so the colour label doesn't become confusing. 

How to separate the colours of the image using spot colour channels. 

Select -> Colour Range -> Select a colour 

Selection Preview -> White Matte (so you can view the colour that you have selected. 

Adjust fuzziness to select the amount of pixels you want to include. 

Create new spot colour channel.

You will then be viewing the spot channel and CMYK channels together which is misleading. 

Hide CMYK channels to view spot channel in isolation. 

When using channels you can use any photoshop told got clean up the image as you normally would. 

Repeat process for each different ink you will be using. 

Make sure the CMYK layers are selected when you make the colour selection.

When you have all of the spot channels, including black, you can easily play around with colour combinations. 

File -> Save As -> either TIFF or PSD files as these support spot colour files. 

Make sure spot colour box it ticked. 

Open a blank illustrator file. 

Place the image into the document. Ignore what the colours look like at this stage because they are misleading. 

Window -> Separations preview -> click overprint preview. 

Turn off CMYK and just leave the spot colour channels you have created. 

File -> Print -> Black and white laser printer

Output -> Mode -> Separations (host-based). 

Turn off CMYK to leave just spot colour channels. This means these are the only ones that will be printed. 

There are no tints or halftones so the angles of printing don't matter. We are only working with solid colour.

Thus method is good for…

Editing colour 

Experimenting with colour combinations

Being able to quickly go between colour and black and white positives

There is the option to 'split channels' if you need to use the larger scale printers and need the positives as separate files. It is best to save a copy of the original image before splitting the channels. 

Working with tints of a spot colour. 

Taking advantage of one colour being a lighter tint of another and thinking how we can use one ink to create this instead of two. 

Instead of using just black to paint onto the spot colour channel, use a range of greys to get different tints of the same colour. 

Create new spot channel for darkest tone (this will appear black).

Then select the lighter using colour range and then while the dark colour spot channel is selected, use a grey brush to paint in this selected area. 

The lighter colour must be converted into halftones for it to be able to work in screen print with only one ink.

When printing…

Black is a solid ink so halftones don't need to be considered. 

Overprinting and Knocking Out

How to manage these when working with spot colours. 

Overprinting is where the colours overlap and merge to make another colour. 

The image uses yellow and magenta but in their own spot colour, not using the CMYK channels. 

The default transparency is 0%. Changing the solidity accurately shows the transparency of actual printing ink because printing ink is not 100% opaque. This is how you get blending of colours in printing. Changing the solidity to 100% will make it opaque but this is not realistic to how it will be printed. Black is usually an opaque ink. 

As you go down the channels palette, this is the order in which inks will be printed. 

Changing the order will affect the image if some of the channels are opaque and some are transparent. 

This means we can print with two inks but by overprinting, we can create an additional colour during the printing process. 

Knocking out is the opposite of overprinting. There will be no mixing of the inks during the printing process because none of the colours actually overlap. But it means that the two colours would have to be very accurately registered to fit into its assigned space. 

Because you know black is going to be 100% opaque, you can take advantage of this and allow the colour to extend under the black to minimise any mis-registration. 

This is called trapping in commercial print. 

Storyboarding Workshop

Working for screen means you don't know what your plans for animations will actually look like. There will be onscreen development happening but you can't build your animation from start to finish on the computer. You need to have a plan of what you want to achieve, this will allow you to dictate what the software does for you rather than letting the software limit your possibilities. 

Composition, basic movements, visual thinking. 

Storyboards need to be seen for assessment. 

Think about plot, action, characters, setting. 

Remember to annotate storyboards to help explain what is happening. 

Plan sequences and shots and try to think outside the frame to make things more interesting and less static. 

Get ideas onto paper and help other people to understand what I mean with my drawings and writing. What am I trying to achieve with each scene?

Most of the work for the animation should be on paper, after effects should only be about 20% of the work. 

Animation wouldn't normally be the illustrator's job but and illustrator needs to know how an animator will be working with their materiel. It will make it easier to know what the animator needs and in what level of detail. 

In the contemporary world of illustration, motion graphics are becoming a more popular way of displaying work. 

SOUND

Timing

How can sound help what I am doing?

Think of simple imagery to work with the music - let the sound enhance the movement. 

3 dimensional space. 

Movement types: positional, pan, track, zoom. 

Screen grabbing

Like a mid-production storyboard. 

Capture the images on the monitor and use these for crits and tutorials to show what I mean when I am speaking about my animation. 

Think about presentation of work for submission. 

You only need one animated resolution to the problem but screenshots of other ideas can be submitted as alternative possibilities. 

TASK

These are my three storyboards from today's session. At first I felt quite daunted by the task of thinking of ideas for three storyboards on the spot but once I got started with one, lots of different ideas started coming to me. This was the image I chose to work with, focussing on the keyhole in the top left corner. 

Thinking about the different movement types was useful because it meant I could make the keyhole seem more three dimensional. Even though I was working with 2D images, the idea of zooming into the keyhole and seeing something behind it (or vice versa) immediately gave the impression that there was a three dimensional space that I could work with. 

The story board where I am looking at images appearing in the grain of the wooden door reminds me of things you see in title sequences or credits for films. I think if it was done properly then the actual animation sequence doesn't need to be too complicated. 

This workshop was really helpful to me because the animating part of this brief is something I have put on the back burner. I think I need to spend some more time storyboarding to get all my ideas out of my head and then maybe I can start to piece together a sequence of events. 

After Effects Tutorial 2

Shortcuts

Select layer first…

P = position property

A = anchor point property

R = rotation property

S = scale property

T = opacity property

(Press same letter again to hide)

If one property is already open, hold shift and press the shortcut for another property to open that one as well. 

Press any of them again to hide them all. 

Time ruler

In point - the frame where a layer becomes visible in the composition. 

Out point - the frame where a layer leaves the composition. 

I = the time marker will move tot he in point of the selected layer. 

O = the time marker will move to the out point of the selected layer. 

Work Area - the grey line sitting below the time ruler.

B = set the beginning of the work area to wherever the time marker is. 

N = set the end of the work area to wherever the time marker is. 

U = shows all of the animated properties for a selected layer. 

UU = shows all of the modified properties for  a selected layer (and changes since being added to composition, not necessarily animation)

Working with properties of multiple layers

Select all the layers you want to work with.

P - to work with position

Click on stopwatch icon on one layer to activate keyframe, this will automatically apply to all selected layers. 

Move time marker to show where the end of the movement will be.

Drag one of the position numbers to move the object - this will apply to all of the layers. 

Changing the rate of an animated sequence.

Select all layers.

U - show all animated properties. 

Select all of the key frames and move them to wherever you want. 

If you increase the distance between the keyframes, the action will happen at a slower rate. 

If you decrease the distance then it will happen faster. 

Shortcut for this...

Select keyframes. 

Hold alt and drag a first or last keyframe. The keyframes will space out but still relative to their initial placement to each other. 

Keyframe Interpolation 

When you specify the keyframes, aftereffects fills in the motion path between them. The part that aftereffects does is interpolation. 

Motion paths usually come as Bézier curves. 

To change this, select the pen tool from the tool bar at the top. 

Convert vertex tool.

Select the motion paths and they will change to a linear transformation.

Can be applied to any transformation but most visible in movement because you can see the path. 

Working with External Matierial

Preset -> Film and video 

Size -> PAL D1/DV Widescreen Square Pixel

Innermost rectangle - the title safe zone.

If you are working with text it is recommended that it is kept within this zone. 

Safe zones were established when old equipment for viewing moving pictures might crop the edges of a piece of film so the safe areas was the space which would definitely be viewed. 

Action safe zone is the outer rectangle. 

Keep anything significant within the action safe zone. 

You can use the whole frame for backgrounds, colour, etc but this may be cropped off. 

In AfterEffects...

Title action safe option will give you these guides as well. 

Saving Photoshop work for AfterEffects

Photoshop file, JPEG or TIFF.

Transparency will  be maintained in Photoshop files. 

When you make a new document, set the background to transparent. 

File -> Import -> Select file. 

'Import as' is faded out when importing a JPEG. 

A simple element (still image, video, audio) is referred to as footage and will be one layer. 

Drag image from project panel into composition panel. 

OR drag it into the timeline (this automatically places the image in the centre).

If you need to set something up that is bigger than the frame of the composition (like clouds that you want to move across in the background. 

Set up the photoshop document using the usual presets. 

The go to Image -> Canvas Size and alter the dimensions of the image. 

The guides will remain the same so you can see the area which is visible. 

Pan Behind / Anchor Point tool - allows you to position where the anchor point is of a certain object. 

Easiest to do this before applying any keyframe animation. 

This is my work from today's workshop. Overall, it looks a bit all over the place but making it helped me to understand the different options when it comes to animating with after effects. It's a lot more advanced than last week's attempt so things are slowly improving! I started using some keyboard shortcuts today, it will take a while to get used to them but they will definitely speed up the process when it comes to producing my animated sting. 

sunflowers from Naomi Smith on Vimeo.

Monoprint Experiments

It has been ages since I have done mono printing and I was really excited to get back into it because I used to really enjoy it. I took advice from Ben in my progress tutorial and used mono printing as a way to explore the clothing that people in Christie stories would have worn. I printed a few images out and used these as guides for my mono printing. Here are some of the outcomes I produced, there are more in my sketchbook.

I really like the patches of ink that are accidentally rubbed onto the images, it makes each print really individual and I think it adds an atmosphere to the image too. I also like when you draw over thicker patches of ink and the lines go really dark and thick - it all adds to the spontaneity of the image and not really knowing what to expect when you lift up the paper from the ink bed. 

Monoprinting is something I want to continue working with but I need to move away from using reference images in this way now I am past this stage of experimentation. I think I need to get back into my sketchbook now and think about new imagery to work with.