FinalMajorProject: Experiments with creating characters and artist research

Below are some rough ideas I have been experimenting with regarding character design. All of which have been created using watercolour and ink. The aim of these characters is for each of them to represent a certain aspect of mental health. Some work better than others. I'm not sure exactly what text I would use for each mental health issue and what will and wont work yet. I can use these as a starting point and see what people think of them and whether they convey the right message. I don't want any of the characters to appear to mock mental health. Hopefully I can create characters that simply convey a mental health condition, adequately, as a promotional tool for a mental health charity. I will also work on text, font and composition.

I quite like the style of these and they are eye catching. But I'm not sure how they really communicate my objectives. They are quirky but don't convey any advice or information. The idea was, if someone didn't know what they were suffering from, the cartoon may look familiar and help them. But I wouldn't want them come across as presumptuous.

Agoraphobic Tortoise

Alcoholic Fish

Anorexic Cow

Anxious Rabbit

Attention Deficit Cat

Depressed Chameleon

Hoarder Squirrel

Personality disorder Uran Utang

Bushbaby Insomniac

Narcisisstic budgie

OCD Dog

I used photoshop to enhance one of the above illustrations. I'm not sure I like it as much. It is more striking but I feel something is lost.

Artist Research

Victoria Ball

Examples of her work: http://www.victoria-ball.co.uk/2.html

Victoria Ball is an illustrator who's work I discovered a long time ago online. I think a lot of my illustrations of animals have been influenced by her illustration work for children. With their slightly human mannerisms yet still true to their animal form and drawn with a clean, simple line.

The piece below is similar to some of my animal illustrations. I like how she colours her work and try to get as neat an effect with my own work. Her children’s illustrations are quite traditional and sweet. A lot of illustrators try to push the boundaries now and a lot had changed. But I quite like traditional illustration. It is nice to look at and quite calming.

Victoria Ball

Rough draft of one of my pieces

Victoria Ball has worked for a broad range of clients. She enjoys illustrating for children’s books, magazines, merchandising, advertising and packaging.

Client List

•Scholastic

•Usborne

•Little Tiger Press

•Gullane

•Woman & Home

•The Children's Company for CITV

•The Sunday Times

•Hallmark, UKG, Paper House

•Museum of London

Victoria Ball - Childrens Illustration

Victoria Ball - The Owl and the Pussycat

Victoria’s aims are to produce pretty illustrations that can enhance a brand, be decorative or illustrate children’s books. Her illustrations are designed to be pretty. Her aims are similar to my aims for my leaflet illustrations in the sense that I’m using a delicate and gentle style to be decorative and enhance advice in a decorative but subtle way. Victoria's childrens illustration is aimed for a slightly younger age than my target audience. I like the way her work looks finished and she has a good use of background space.

Stephen Collins

http://www.stephencollinsillustration.com/

Stephen Collins is an illustrator who has done some work for the mental health charity ‘Time to Change’. Stephens’s style choice for his mental health illustrations is quite a simple style with bold outlines. You can tell straight away that his target audience are adults, probably around 25 – 50+. This is because of the age of his characters and the situations they are in – often office situations, showing examples of people talking at work. The cartoon style would also appeal to children but it is a very simplistic and clean-cut style, so children may lose interest quickly. I like the message in his work (not to be afraid to talk about mental health) and not to cut out those who may be suffering. His work isn’t in your face and is suitable for leaflets, hand-outs etc.

Stephen Collins

I like his use of colour and how the illustrations are split into two parts. The top panels are brighter or dark more intense colours and the bottom panels are calming pastel colours. This highlights the message he is trying to get across.

Stephens’s aims for his mental health illustrations are similar to my aims because the illustrations act as decorative ways to inform people about mental health. Although his target audience is those who may know someone suffering with a mental health issue and illustrating what it is they can do to help. My target audience is young children who may need help and advice themselves. My aims are the same as Stephens but for a different target audience so will have to be done in a different way. I want to encourage children to talk about how they feel and for them to feel motivated to try the advice that is available if they need to.

Current leaflets and handouts

The information and advice that is already out there mostly uses photographs as part of leaflets or handouts. They are also quite difficult to come across unless you know about them and where to find them. By using illustrations I hope to make the advice more available to children and more commonly around in everyday life. In order to do so I am using my work on things such as badges. I ran out of time to create badges but am continueing with this project and will be using badges and aim to get more posters promoting sources of help put up in schools. I got caught up in the illustrations themselves and wanted to make sure they suited my aims and communication objectives and only got so far with putting them into context. Below are examples of what some leaflets that are available are like. They look professional and neat but quite formal. I think hand drawn illustrations would be a nice touch and less formal, helping my target audience to relax and hopefully be a bit more taken in by the leaflets. As an experiment to see what was easily available when searching for help - I searched for leaflets and information online and below are some of the first results.