October Influences

Since I moved to the United-Kingdom, I decided to record my influences every month. I try to look at and attend events, talk and exhibition that are related to the field of illustration to grow my knowledge and network. Of course, these influences are not restricted to the illustration field but all aim to grow my knowledge in the art, design, entrepreneurship and brand fields.

Artist Talk Series

I became familiar with the event thanks to my classmate Rita who showed an interest in it on Facebook. I looked at what does this event have to offer. The Artist Talk Series is an event that is run once per month starting from October 2018 to March 2019, so a total of 6 months. Hosted at the Boileroom in Guilford, the money raised during these events are dedicated to the artist community of Guilford.

Guest Talk //01- Emmeline Pidgen

Photo credit: Emmeline Pidgen, 2018

Emmeline Pidgen was the artist to open up the event talk series. She is a freelance illustrator who focuses on narrative and sequential illustrations for both children and adults. She occasionally draws original characters.  She likes to combine traditional and digital drawing, but her first love remains ink and coral/teal colour palettes. I enjoy her work (drawing style) and I admire how she manages to keep this traditional look in her digital work.

Emmeline’s talk started with a presentation of her artist career supported by her work. She then moved on explaining her life as an entrepreneur/ freelancer. We were able to ask her questions and one of mine was concerned about her way to look for projects. She explained that it was coincidental, but most of them happened because of her proactive attitude on the internet with self-initiative projects like What Emmeline Wore In October, which led to a collaboration with brands like collaborations with brands like Oasis, Joules, Fat Face, White Stuff and People Tree. What I take from her talk is the importance to be active online and to keep producing on a daily basis.

Emmeline had a stand with her illustrations, books and booklets like Creative Tips For Your Fight Through The Freelance Jungle. I decided to purchase it to first support her work and get her insight as a freelancer. This is something that appeals to me, maybe not at this moment of my career but surely at a later stage.

Photo credit: Artist Talk Series, 2018

The talk was followed by a workshop organised by Emmeline. She proposed us to do a blind drawing, meaning looking at a photo or a person without looking at the paper. This is a great exercise to understand the coordination between what we see and what produce with our hands. This exercise produced some interesting results and is a great way to spark creativity.

[DRAWINGS coming soon]

MCM LONDON COMIC-CON 2018

MCM Comic-Con is a pop culture event celebrating the world popular culture. At this event, I could find gaming stands [(new) games, developers, talents showing their latest & upcoming releases], film exhibitors [DC Comics stand], Pop Asia stand [mangas, animes and cosplays], a special guests/ author corners, and a Comic Village.

Photo credit: Anime UK News, 2018

It was a great place to see the latest trend in the comic, gaming and animation industries. I had the chance to view a small exhibition of the latest movie from Mamoru Hosoda, Mirai, produced by the Studio Chizu (one of the oldest animation studios in the world). In this exhibit, I had the opportunity to see the storyboards and it evolved into one of the movie scenes. I look forward to watching this new animated movie.

Photo credit: Otaku Tale, 2014

Another booth/stand attracted my attention. It presented the electronic-pop music video ME!ME!ME! produced by Teddy Llyod with the lyrics from Daoko. The character designers of the video is a joined-effort between Shuichi Iseki and Hibiki Yoshizaki.

The animated video tells the story of an otaku (a person with obsessive tendencies like gaming, anime, manga and figurines), Shuu who lost his girlfriend, Anna, because of his addiction. Starting from Shuu’s room, he is thrust inside his fantasy world through his TV. It starts with the nice side otaku (bright and naive colours) and moves on to a darker side (bloody colours) representing the dark side with the degrading portrayal of the woman body from the otaku culture. The female character represents his girlfriend Anna. He wants to get back to the old Anna but the addiction is too strong, stuck into the otaku culture. To know more about the video content, check YouTube Explained‘s video. The video is a critique of the otaku culture, its negative side, and degrading the image of women portrayed in anime, gaming and all sorts of media.

Released in 2014, the video is intended for a mature audience, so to view the video, I had to show an ID. I am surprised that I haven’t heard of it before although it met with high acclaims from the viewers and critics for its high-quality animation and catchy-sounding composition. As I entered the viewing space, there was an opportunity to look at storyboards and character designs of the video clips. They were truly inspiring and disturbing at the same time, which makes Japan so special!

Photo credit: Otaku Tale, 2014

The Comic Village was a great place to meet publishers like Blue Fox Comics, illustrators to network and buy their merchandise. I would like to present you some of the following artists that I met and who particularly caught my attention.

Shanefaced

Photo credit: Shanefaced, 2018

Shanefaced is a comic artist based in North London, his drawings mix a dark and surreal twist to his everyday life. He is inspired by Gris Grimley, Jamie Hewlett, manga and various brands. I love the use of simple/ comic lines and the desaturated colour palette.

Sarah Tamat-Jones

Photo credit: Sarah Tamat-Jones, 2018

Sarah Tamat-Jones is an illustrator and illustrates based in London for editorial, publishing and advertising. She worked for The Guardian, ASOS, Unilever, Viacom,  Washington Post, Vanity Fair and many more. I really enjoy her hand-drawn lines and bold colour palettes.

Nathan Hillustration

Nathan Hill is an illustrator and comics creator. He particularly enjoys drawing monsters and creatures. I particularly enjoy going through his zines like Floaty Herbs Guide and Floaty Spice Guide that are showing a mixed approach, traditional (hand drawn strokes) and digital (colouring).

Sarah Jones

Photo credit: Girl in the Rain, 2018

AKA Girl in the Rain, Sarah is an illustrator and storyboard artist also based in London. She loves to tell stories, so she published several short comics like The Doll Maker. I love her use of watercolours and inks to create dramatical sceneries.

This ends the October influencers series. November influencers coming soon so, STAY TUNED!

Who am I? My Pedagogy!

International Pedagogy is the first assignment of my study as a master student in Design, Innovation and Brand Management. It consists of a presentation on our perspective on our home country through the design of a simple learning tool. It is important not to present a generic and touristic perspective. The core of the assignment is to teach my new classmates about where I come from a none touristic point of view.

BACKGROUND RESEARCH

Starting from September, I decided to spend more time and focus more on illustration. It is a method of communicating with images. It is also a good way to explain or clarify otherwise difficult or complicated ideas (Garner, 2017). According to Garner (2017), there are five different contexts for using an illustration: knowledge, persuasion, identity, fiction and commentary. For the assignment, I want my illustration to illustrate my identity and to convey my personality to my story. I like the human touch of this (visual) communication because it can help me to express a mood or emotion, which can be difficult in wording.

Illustrations and comics remain an ongoing trend to provide an “emotional cushion” between the subject and the viewer, by making difficult stories more digestible (Erdoğan, 2018). Not only, but it is also a great way to relay a personality, a brand identity, which help to convey unique stories in a cohesive and recognisable manner, as well as, simplifying complex and abstract concepts to the viewer/ reader (Lingo Team, 2016). Most of all, illustrations are known for illustrating and reinforcing a written story.

Through my research on story and illustration, I came across with ”narrative art”. It is referred to as a type of visual art that tells an ongoing story or as a sequence of events unfolding over time through imagery (Lee, 2016). Paintings and sculptures are the most common forms that embody narrative art by simplifying looking at the painting or sculpture to imagine the story. In today’s age, the art of transmitting a message has become increasingly more complex. According to Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (n.d.), ”the power of a story is in how and what it makes us feel! ”. Disclaimer, Georges Lucas plans on building Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles (USA) to celebrate the power of visual storytelling from his collection of various artefacts. Opening expected in 2022 (Cascone, 2018).

CONCEPT

Born and raised in France for 17 years, I moved 8 years ago with my family to the Netherlands where I continued my education. It was difficult for me to present France since I spent the past few years to the Netherlands. Therefore, I decided to present an expatriate point of view, meaning my experience as a French person living in the Netherlands.

To do so, I decided to compare key moments, which I believe, were showing the differences in term of culture. In my presentation, the following themes are explored:

• Dutch characteristic
  
• Lifestyle
• Culinary
• Workplace

Weems Scott, a cognitive scientist, explains the following “if you want to make a point, tell a story, and to make many points at once, tell a joke” (Weems, 2014). So, some humour should be included in the presentation because “good humour approaches truth from many angles” (Weems, 2014).

The presentation is wrapped around a story, my story. Who are you? Let me first tell you my story, and will you tell me yours?

FINAL RESULTS

The final presentation was presented in a PowerPoint presentation. It is now converted into a video to stream it in the future.

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CRITICAL REFLECTION

The presentation went within the time restriction or maybe a few seconds more than the expected 5-minutes. The audience was pleasantly surprised by the visuals and really enjoyed the story told behind each drawing. For this assignment, I was also expected to engage with the audience. It is a goal that I set to myself but, unfortunately, with the pressure, I did not succeed in interacting with the audience during the presentation. It is a point that I must improve if I want to catch the audience attention. I must remember this point for the upcoming presentation. To do so, I need to look more into documents and study on ”how to engage/ interact with an audience (during a presentation)?” and ”how to hook/captivate an audience?”.

After doing a quick research, I found out that to it is important to captivate the audience within the first minute, which can be done through humour, provocative questions and props (Neff, 2017). To interact with an audience, it is also necessary to use a story even if it is a dry topic. (Individual) Anecdotes can be powerful to make a point stronger, especially if it is reinforced by embodying the story’s character (Charisma on Command, 2015). These quick researches give me a raw idea on how to improve my interaction with an audience.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cascones, S. (2018, April 18). What are a ‘Narrative Art Museum? 6 Things to Expect From George Lucas’s New LA Museum [Online]. Available at:  https://tinyurl.com/yb8tcv7p (Accessed: 22 September 2018)

Charisma on Command. (2015, September 25). 6 Public Speaking Tips To Hook Any Audience [Online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8GvTgWtR7o (Accessed: 26 September 2018)

Erdoğan, M. (2018, April 30). 7 digital trends we need to embrace for the Global Goals [Online]. Available at: https://medium.com/@UNDPEurasia/7-digital-trends-we-need-to-embrace-for-the-global-goals-9bbcfe79c5f6?_lrsc=9d166ea0-e291-4a62-bf0f-e1b1929eb830 (Accessed: 22 September 2018)

Garner, C. (2017, November 26). The Power of Illustration to Communicate Complex Ideas [Online]. Available at: https://medium.com/the-art-squirrel/the-power-of-illustration-c81309187c78 (Accessed: 22 September 2018)

Lee, P. (2016, October 31). What is Narrative Art? [Online]. Available at: https://www.widewalls.ch/what-is-narrative-art/ (Accessed: 22 September 2018)

Lingo Team. (2016, September 28). The Power of Illustration in Brand Story and Identity [Online]. Available at: https://blog.lingoapp.com/the-power-of-illustration-in-brand-story-and-identity-d6adb8aa766 (Accessed: 22 September 2018)

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. (n.d.). What is Narrative Art? [Online]. Available at: https://lucasmuseum.org/about/what-is-narrative-art (Accessed: 22 September 2018)

Neff, D. (2017).  How To Interact With Audience Members During A Presentation [Online]. Available at: https://www.duarte.com/presentation-skills-resources/how-to-interact-with-audience-members-while-you-present/ (Accessed: 26 September 2018)

Weems, S. (2014, July 28). Why Humor Matters, Let’s give humour the respect it deserves [Online]. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-s-so-funny/201407/why-humor-matters (Accessed: 22 September 2018)