Kane WatsonOUIL603 – Project Report

The first project I got started on was SECRET 7, a competition where you get free reign to submit designs for album sleeves based on 7 songs, I chose to take on all 7 song to make this a significant brief. I didn’t blog much about this, if at all because I forgot all about it which I’m going to take a hit on marks for but that’s just how it is.

It wasn’t required but I decided to mock up all the designs onto album sleeves and also the vinyl design, I think it adds more weight to the designs and shows how succesful they would have been had I have won the competition.

The most important thing that came out of secret7 was allowing me freedom and time to play. Since the brief was so open and you could submit anything as long as it fit the specs it was so much fun. From it a developed this whole new process using acrylic paint. It added another string to my bow and added a lot more to my confidence and more power to my practice so even though it wasn’t my strongest brief I now know that wet media can fit in my practice and I don’t need to fear it, in fact I need to embrace it more and use it more in my practice.

The zine brief was born out of need, the need that I needed briefs. My sketchbook is the lifeblood of my practice, im always using it. Too much too the point where I’d prefer to draw in that that do anything refined. This brief allowed me to experiment with taking things straight out of my sketchbook and giving them a purpose and so people can actually see them. Like a lot of my briefs it is very process driven but with a set outcome that unlike sketchbook can be analysed with more scrutiny and criticism and so can be improved upon much more as a final product as opposed to an on going process of pencil to paper

When I first started the zines it was just pages ripped straight from my sketchbook and thrown into another book given the title of zine which became stale fast, they were like worse copies of my sketchbooks so I chose to refine the process. It would not long be about the anarchy of my work but what comes out of that chaos. Certain devils; demons and monsters were selected from pages and given more life within the zine, so now it became more about the monsters and the line work than simply just taking pages from a sketchbook and moving them somewhere else.

In the end I think the zines I’ve made have really come into their own, since the first one they have doubled in content and now have a much more interesting front cover. The cover is printed separately on thicker stock with a more interesting colour than white. This instantly makes the zine look more appealing and when picked up feels like a quality zine and not just something to be cast aside. This project has taught me the importance of stock and just because something like a zine is inherently throw away it doesn’t have to be slapped together and people will happily pay for something if you put the time into it. The first zine I made I think I wouldn’t of even wanted to give away but the new ZINES FOR FIENDS is something I’m happy to put my name on and price too.

The tattoo flash brief has been one of the best but strangest turn around of this whole year. It started as me wanting to make more tattoo based imagery which quickly got stale and then went onto me taking my work but cleaned it up for the guise of tattooing. From there it was decided that I was to do screen-print as to be improving a craft that I thought I enjoyed. Again the brief got side-lined, I wasn't interested in it at all and it kept been cast aside for other projects or for nothing, I was engaging with it at all.

It started to get interesting when I started working out of my sketchbook and working a little larger. I was also running out of time and I was still thinking I need to screen-print so I just though I’ll just draw 3 big flash drawings and screen print them and that’d count but then something better happens. I really enjoyed drawing again, I found a tool I loved the feel of in pencil crayon and applying it to a more pulpy stock just had me drawing for hours and I was just enjoying creating again. It was then I decided I was only thinking screen-print because I thought I had to and if I was going to improve any skill it should be my composition; creation and drawing abilities.

And so I just kept drawing larger scale and produced images other people really seemed to like, there’s something very captivating about larger work but with interesting things going on in and around it. So then it became how I could make these more interesting, Playing with colour was always fun, I think it adds a childish quality that masks the true intentions of my drawings, it makes and audience get close and invest themselves into analysing the work only to be struck with something they may not have first expected. This is where my practice will be going from this point.

The bar brief is the perfect example of something sounding good and having all the answers until you actually go to do it. I was convinced designing bar equipment would be up my street. I was wrong. The practically of making half of what I wanted was just foolish and mocking it up was equally as disinteresting, I almost fell into graphic design territory, my work was very dry to process was very dull. I just wasn’t doing MY work It felt like I’d been commissioned to do something I didn’t want to do as opposed to something I had set myself so I came to a stand still for a little while.

An epiphany came to me when I was at work, I work in a bar shock there no doubt. While mulling over the equipment I had begrudging grown to dislike I had overlooked the products we sell, now I don’t drink beer so maybe I had just plain ignored half of my stock but I never noticed how cool some beer cans where and when I saw one was designed by Ralph Steadman I was in a great mood to say I was at work, and that was it. I knew where my current bar brief had to go and what I had to do to start enjoying the brief again.

So I started playing around with the idea of beer cans. Mocking them up with some older work of mine. At first I was really pleased with it. The composition proved some difficulties but when over come the outcome was most pleasing. Slowly however I didn’t like that some of the work I had done was new work and then I wanted to designs to pop more so it wasn’t just about making a nice looking can. Since I knew I couldn’t afford to get these cans made it was how good and marketable I could make them look on screen or paper.

In the end I made a serious of fun quirky designs, almost posters based on the cans artwork. Each was made with unique imagery with the colour scheme and design helping to reflect the type of ale in the can, be it a light session ale of a much dark porter, or the intimidating percentage of a double IPA. I had lots of fun making this and it’s great too see another product my practice an be applied to successfully

My brand brief actually started life in PPP with PLAY NICE but it happened towards the of PPP so I decided to take it into a studio practice brief.

Starting life as just a simple t-shirt brief with a few labels attached to them it quickly became much more than with me using some skills I found in my COP module to do some more leather jackets them researching into skate culture and the brands within it and them focusing on the brands I thought related to me.

The t-shirts evolved in designs beyond PPP and then It wasn’t just about making the t-shirts but how a gimmick and USP could be added to the imagery itself just to make it stand out, that is where spaghetti comes in.

In a lot of my branding now, I use bright vivid colours and I’ve now started adding close up spaghetti behind a lot of my work, simply because it looks a little bit gross, it’s like a PG version of blood and guts, it really fits with my art work and I just think it works as whole for my branding and practice. It’s a lot better than just super imposing my design onto a t-shirt a model off google is wearing anyway.

From looking at skateboarding I was always going to mock up some skateboards, I looked at getting one printed but unfortunately money is an issue and I couldn’t afford to be getting skateboards made. I took my work and starting putting it on skate decks. It’s actually quite challenging, to compensate for the thin /long composition of a skate deck with a punchy

image but also not wanting it to be obscured by the trucks and wheels.

One that was overcome it was all about making it look like something of mine, making it a professional l mock up and then adding my trademark spaghetti to it all linked it with the

rest of my work.

I took the skills I learnt in COP to make these jackets for my brand, they worked so well the first time I thought why not.

Even though they look good I feel I did them because I knew I could and I knew I could make them look good as I did it mainly for self gratification over anything, and just for self gratification they took up a lot of time so I think If I

had thought about it a little more I could of used my time more wisely.

There’s that spaghetti again though.

The final part of my brand was an after thought but an interesting one, It was if my work was huge and in stores. So not only am I designing the t-shirts and the jumpers and the skateboards I’m designing the interior of the stores they’re sold in. I think my work works really well at a large scale its intimidating but also naïve enough to be fun.

I’ve learnt a lot in this module, there’s times I’ve not done work as intensely as I could and there’s only so much time in a day but what I have learnt from it all is that I'm a drawer. All my work comes from drawings and is just tweaked and turned to become something else. It’s the thing I love doing the most transferring what's in my head to what's in front of me and I just really want to getting better at that.

ILLUSTRTOR.MONSTER CREATOR.BAADLY DRAWN PICTURE MAKER.