Over the past year I have learned quite a bit about how to become
an illustrator and how I could work within the industry. The different days of
work experience have taught me a lot and have helped me discover what type of
illustrator I would like to be. They have also taught me what I should expect
from the illustration industry from what would be expected from myself and how
I would need to even get a chance of getting the job. I had started off the
year by looking at multiple businesses I would like to go to and multiple
artists I would like to interview about their work and the art industry, what I
had learned from trying to get in contact with multiple artists is how busy the
lives of illustrators are and how little free time they actually have. I
unfortunately found this out the hard way by not getting any replies from
artists or if I did they said they were too busy to answer my questions. When I
first started the year I wanted to go into the comic book industry and I
hopefully still will by the end of next year, however I have found out that if
I do I need to seriously focus on the content and making it the best as I can
because trying to talking to these artists have proved to me that I won’t have
free time if I go into this business.
One thing I majorly learnt when it came to advertising my work was
to separate my projects for work with my personal projects for family or
friends. I found this out the hard way when it came to the Anime, Comic books
and Gaming society competition where I made to mistake of giving the group my
entire sketchbook and showed them what page it was one. This was a mistake
because since it was a double page spread and the members of the society voted
whereas the committee had to show of the work, the members didn't know which one
was the one I entered. That showed me how naïve I was in the work and made me
decide that from then on I would be careful with presenting my work so I
decided that in the future I would make sure to have all the images separate when
I presented it for competitions.
During my second day of work experience which was the Cheltenham
comic book festival, I was shown another major thing about the illustration
business which was that the illustrator needs to make sure to focus on what the
target audience would like as their artwork instead of what you might like
instead. I also learned this the hard way from that fact that I was unable to
sell any of my work. This taught me to research more into the target audience
and what they would like, as well as to make sure to plan ahead with the budget
in case I make a loss. When it came to the third day of work experience we had
to create cover designs for children’s poetry books. This day taught me to
listen more to the feedback to the customer so then you can have a good idea of
what you need to improve on, in my case since I didn't know the school I was
showing work to was an all girls school I had multiple cases of feedback asking
if I could change the main character on the image to a female instead of the
male it already was which I agreed I could do, however considering I wasn't
able to make it through to the final picks, this day taught me that I must make
sure to do all forms of research to make sure I would not make the same mistake
again.
On the fourth day of work experience I had to create an image for
a science and nature competition where we were only given a theme of an image based
around science or nature. Through this competition I was able to witness a
large variety of different artists’ work and the many forms of this broad
topic, I felt quite good about this competition because a spent a long time to
making sure it looked exactly how I wanted It to, the only thing I would do to
change my design would be to use a different technique such as etching which I have
grown really fond of recently. However because I didn't notice this competition
until just a few days before its deadline I did not have enough time to plan
out an etching. What this day has taught me is to make sure to keep my eyes out
and check every so often if there are any illustration competition that I would
enjoy doing that are maybe similar to that one. On the fifth and final day of
work experience I had to create an image for the Cheltenham illustration awards
competition, this unfortunately was my worst out of the days because I rushed
the drawing too quickly and even made a few mistakes within it. However I really
enjoyed the theme and how I worked with it, it created a fun challenge that
could lead to some artists having completely different illustrations because
they had to take the theme into their own form. If I could change anything here
I would definitely change the time I took to create the drawing so then it
would make me feel better about how I think it looks now.
Besides the work experience I have also learned many things from
artists that have visited and the group project we were given. With the
Risograph project it taught me more about copyright issues and about different
printing techniques so then if I wanted to try out anything knew there was now
a new technique I could try out. Whereas with the group presentation work it
had taught me some valuable information about how to work as a group and how we
could set up our own businesses as well as teaching how to be independent as
well by giving each other specific jobs to do for the group presentation. This
whole experience has helped me become independent as an illustrator and had
taught me the values of working with a group for our own businesses.
This year has shown me what I have done wrong so far with selling
my work and how I can improve for the future. It had also taught me new ways to
promote my work and where to look to find new experience within the industry I
would like to join. Overall this whole year has taught me what I would need to
know to become a better illustrator and what the illustration industry is
really like.
