Creating Invitations Illustration

Daniee had the brilliant idea of sending out personalized invitations to industry professionals to try to get them to come to see our exhibition. From here, a few of us had a discussion about who to invite and how to design the invitations, and we ended up coming up with the idea to draw our characters in graduation gowns and put a mix of characters on each invitation. Though I was really busy with work, I really wanted to get involved with this idea and help out more, so I used a previously drawn piece that I had of my son, Percy the Pterodactyl, and popped a graduation cap and gown on him! Katy and Daniee then compiled the art into full invitations...

Initial Thoughts on Exhibition Space

After my project was changed, I lost my idea for the exhibition, as my old idea was obviously unsuitable to my new project. But I really didn't want to settle for an exhibition layout that I didn't enjoy as much as my original one, so I really want to make the most of this module.

Last summer, I visited LA and New York and went to a few museums/galleries/exhibitions, so I hope to use that for inspiration. As well as this, I wanna work on some research of how educational works are presented, specifically. For this, I plan to research on museums as well as galleries and exhibitions, as that will give me an insight into the informative side of presenting work.

Fundraising Through a Jumble Sale

One of the ideas that was thrown out for fundraising was a jumble and art sale. I loved this idea, but as I was working on the zine and the page, I didn't have much time to help with the organisation. However, I had a lot of old clothing/wigs/nik naks that I donated. I had to consider the items I was donating, as I didn't wanna crowd the table with items that wouldn't sell. I tried to choose items that went well with the 'style' of our class - cosplay, wigs, 'nerdy' things - that people might ascociate with our course. It also meant there was more cohesion on the table (as it was more similar to the stuff other people donated). As well as this, I donated all my current self-published books and art prints/badges/stickers for the art table, as I don't plan to go to any more cons, so had no selling use for them anymore.

I helped out through the afternoon on the jumble sale table, and packed up the table at the end of the day. We raised about £230 - which we were super proud of considering that our target for the sale was only £40. When we got back to the studio, Gareth suggested keeping the items in the studio for the first and second years to look into, so we set the remaining jumble sale items up in a spare room in the studio and a couple of us helped out and set up a lil 'pay what you want' box. This earned us around another £60! We were super happy with the success of this day, as our full fundraising target was £300 and we almost reached that with the jumble/art sale alone!

Setting Up the Official Facebook Page

Throughout building the promotion of the degree show, I started feeling like we could be doing more. I felt we were covering promotion very well individually on our personal social media accounts really well, but we didn't have a central hub on social media.

Because of this, and the fact that I am looking into working in social media and community management in my career, I raised the idea of myself creating and managing a central Facebook page for the class.

Once I got the idea okay-ed by the class, I set up a page. With this, I had to create place-holder profile picture and cover photo. For the cover photo I just used a panoramic photo I took during the 24hr comic challenge in February. Then, for the profile picture, I tried to throw together a nice profile photo from a class selfie from our first year.

As this is only meant to be a placeholder, I'm pretty happy with it. I messed with the kerning of the text to make it a little more fitting, and framed it with a black shadow and white outline. I went for the final option and the class seemed pretty happy with it!

From here, I did a bit of maths and worked out how often posts would need to be uploaded to spread out up to the launch of the exhibition. This took a bit of time to sort out, as I initially planned the posting schedule alphabetically, as I already had a list that way from the zine organisation. But I'd talked to some people who said they were struggling, so moved people around so that they were more comfortable and had more time to gather data.

Below is how the table is looking as of today (12/4/19)...

As well as this, I also worked with the class to decide on how the posts would look. We discussed what our thoughts on this were in the group chat...

Below is an example of how the posts ended up looking...

Content for the Zine: Design Elements

As we neared the deadline date for content, we realised we didn't have any inside cover, contents page or back cover. I volunteered to help out with this, and ended up doing all three. This worked for me, as I am hoping to go into marketing, and graphic design is a big part of that. First, I drew up something for the back cover. To make sure the class was happy with my work, I put it in the class chat before uploading it. Below was the response...

From here, I altered my content to fit the theme more. I also completed the inside cover and contents page. Whilst creating the contents page I went through all the games/characters and spent a few hours checking accuracy, to make sure the zine is professional as possible. I also compiled everyone's social media contacts for this page. Final pages below...

Content for the Zine: Art

When choosing content for the zine, I wanted to approach it from a sale-centric perspective. I chose the games I drew content for based on the games that I thought were most relevant that hadn't already had pieces committed for them by the rest of the class. For this, I chose Overwatch and Apex Legends, both super popular, high-profile esports games.

I also wanted to do one male character and one female, to make the zine more accessible. I chose the characters based on their popularity within the fandom. All choices surrounding my content for this zine were made with the sales potential of the zine in mind.

Zine Progress Tracking

Tracking the progress of the pin-up zine was really awkward, but a few days into production of the zine it became evident how important it was to have everything laid out clearly. Below is how the table started, and how it is currently.

Planning the Games Zine

This is an element of fundraising that the planning for began last summer when a classmate suggested the idea in a chat...

From here, we brought up the idea again at the start of this semester and had a group discussion about the specifics of the idea. We decided it would good to do something move specific than just 'video games' as a theme. We came up with two themes - fashion or pin-up. To decide, a poll was set up in the class group chat, and we settled on pin-up.

From here, I raised a couple of points of consideration. Firstly, I encouraged the class to be aware of the age of the characters they were drawing, as pin-up style can be kind of sexual. Another element I highlighted was the importance of organisation, so that we didn't get doubles of games or have anyone run out of time. To fix this, I volunteered to create an excel document to note down everyone's plans and progress.

Planning the Promo Vlog

Due to the nature of my job, I have to discuss with my boss if I want to use the uni social media channels for personal promo. In a recent meeting, I discussed the mutual benefits of this vlog with my boss, and she agree to schedule it into my work. As well as this, she agreed for myself and another colleague to cover the exhibition setup and opening night on the uni social media channels!

Below are screenshots of conversations I had with a classmate on this subject...

Fundraising Ideas

Unfortunately, I missed the lecture on planning fundraising ideas, as I was attending a hospital appointment. To rectify this, I did my own note-taking on ideas for promotion and fundraising for the exhibition. You can find my initial ideas below...

- Vlog (through my job as a student communications ambassador, I can get a promotional vlog posted on official uni channels).
- Promotional social media coverage, as above.
- Independent social media promo (set up a specific page for our class).
- Zine (we discussed ideas for a video game zine last summer).
- Poster campaign (showing varying art styles and designs).
- Word of mouth.
- Try to get the other C&CA a little more involved this year (as it occurs whilst they're still at uni).
- If fundraising doesn't 100% cover intended expenses, class put £5 each into the pot.

Once I made my own notes, I contacted my class to get the lowdown on what they were thinking. I also checked out the notes made on the whiteboard in the studio. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they had pretty much exactly the same notes as me.

Initial Plan

My intention when starting this project was to work with a partner, as I did last semester. Unfortunately, this did not work out. But before the decision was made to work individually, I drew up a plan for my initial thoughts. I posted about this on my central blog, and that post can be found below...

"The degree show exhibition this semester is something Katy and I are really excited for! We already have a fully developed idea and can't wait to get started on it!

Basic idea:
The intention is so make a small 'room' from temporary walls (potentially using the real walls just left of the entrance to the 2nd year space?) that will give the feel of being in a spooky cave. We will paint the walls in a way that replicates stone, and try to shut out as much light as possible (we'll add a spooky curtain over the entrance to add to the mood). I will use my experience with LEDs that I have gained as a cosplayer to set red, yellow and orange LEDs around the walls in certain places, to imply fire. Then, on one wall, we will have an image of our dragon, printed about A1 and mounted on foam. On the adjacent wall, we will have a TV playing the animation through, with a shelf below that holds the printed comic.

As I'm not very good at explaining, I have attached a little floorplan I drew up, below..."