Commercial Illustration Evaluation and SWOT Analysis

After a long and pretty strange year, I've finally reached the end of my last project for Year 2. Entitled Commercial Illustration Practice, this project enabled me to work with live briefs and tighter submission deadlines to get a feel for what agencies and publishers are looking for. After looking at all the competitions to work with, I was drawn to the Macmillan Prize for Illustration as I hadn't done a competition of this level and thought it was an opportunity to push myself to work on producing a children's book. The competition brief asked for all page sketches for a children's picture book, including text or a clear indication of the storyline with at least 3 finished spreads. By completing this almost contract-like brief, I feel I've challenged myself to work to a professional standard and achieved a lot in a short amount of time. 

In my first year of college, I came up with a concept for a story called 'A Hermit's Home'. The story focused on a hermit crabs struggles in finding a new shell once he grew out of his. Furthermore, he recruits some ants to help him find one which works out to be trickier than he anticipated. It also aims to teach children the importance of protecting our coastline, touching on environmental issues of coastal pollution- an important message for young children to learn. Over the past few years, I've always wanted the opportunity to work on it again as it has so much potential to be developed, both with character design and compositionally. Therefore, I planned to use the basis of this story and original narrative to work on improving the overall composition, taking more consideration over the proportions of the ant against the hermit crab and how the two characters would interact in the spreads to further showcase themes of friendship and teamwork.

This process began with research of agencies and children's book publishers to gauge where 'A Hermit's Home' would fit in the industry. This started with research of the AOI and agencies such as FolioArt and Central Illustration Agency, giving an insight into how artists create portfolios specific to the type of work they hope to get, whether it's editorial, advertising, children's publishing, to name a few specialisms. From this, I began looking at publishers such as Flying Eye Books, the children's imprint for Nobrow who had a huge range of books that interested me, both stylistically and thematically linking to the type of books I'd hope to be producing. The books were categorised by ages: 0-3, 3-5, 5-7, 7-11, giving me a good indication of where my book would fit. A goal of mine is for this book to appeal to children and parents as they are the ones reading and buying the books so adding elements or 'Easter eggs' as they're known for an older audience was something I wanted to include.

One of my main threats was time, I was working towards the Macmillan submission deadline on the 28th of April, so this only gave me about 4 weeks to produce at least 3 fully realised book pages, a cover design, and all page sketches. In order to achieve this, I made sure I had a detailed time plan and streamlined the project in the first few weeks, meaning I only produced research and development relevant to my final product. This meant the first few weeks were incredibly busy, figuring out colour schemes, refining compositions and deciding how I wanted to create the finals, all while maintaining a sketchbook, blog and other projects thrown my way! Through research and following illustrators on social media, I've noticed a shift in more people using traditional mediums with Oliver Jeffers and Jon Klassen, two illustrators working in children's publishing, utilising paints and traditionally made textures paired with digital enhancements. Working in this way enables you to keep the character and roughness captured in initial sketches which is something I wanted to maintain, keeping the style loose and playful.

In terms of strengths, I think I did well sticking to my action plan and using the last few weeks to go back and complete additional research, as well as trying different processes like riso to make a sort-of promotional poster for 'A Hermit's Home'. Thinking about commercial viability and how the consumer uses the product, it's good to see how my book and the characters can be adapted to merchandising for a possible book launch that you would see in Waterstones or an independent book shop. I'm glad I got to go to the rockpools at Whitburn to get primary imagery so I could capture different angles and see how the vegetation entangled the rocks. With this, I included more colourful vegetation in the illustrations and added mussels to the hermit crabs shell, bringing context to the fact it's old and in need of replacing. These contextual elements are something the previous book version lacked so I think this version is a lot more well-rounded in that respect.

Submitting to the competition and getting my work seen by publishers and illustrators is a huge opportunity with many winners and commended artists using it to kickstart their careers. It will also be good work to add to my website, building up a good portfolio of work for a publishing section.

Overall, I'm happy with the progress I've made through completing this project and competition. I think my skillset in using traditional and digital processes simultaneously have improved, through scanning and colour correcting the artwork in Photoshop and composing the book in InDesign. Looking back at the previous version, it has improved massively in terms of how the composition flows, colour scheme and character designs all working coherently to make for a well-rounded story. I think 'A Hermit's Home' has the potential to be developed into a series, with new character and adventures for the hermit crab; this could be something to look at in Level 6 and beyond when I hope to do a Masters in Children's Book Illustration. Progressing onto Level 6, I want to continue working on the narrative element while thinking about how my work can be translated into book concepts and other commercial options for the future. Although it will take a lot of hard work and motivation to keep working to a professional standard, I look forward to progressing into Level 6 and developing my skill set further.

SWOT Analysis:

Strengths-

• Good time management and motivation to work with the tight Macmillan deadline and submitting.
• Media testing showed through sketchbook development, utilising extra time to play around with Riso. I want to utilise this process more next year to make short picture books/zines to capture a journey or collaged photography.
• All research was relevant and responded to, it helped with figuring out compositions, proportions and correct demographic.

Weaknesses-

• Didn't get a chance to work on the Cheltenham brief as planned but I'm hoping to work on it over the summer to have the opportunity to get two submissions in the 2020/2021 Annual Exhibition.
• Less research than other projects and developmental work as I already had a clear idea of what I wanted to achieve. Could've looked at adding other characters and alternate story ideas.

Opportunities-

• Submitting to this competition is a huge opportunity as it is judged by Pan Macmillan publishers, editors and established illustrators. Awaiting feedback by the 28th of May! 
• Opportunity to explore alternative narratives and make a book series, characters have a lot of potentials.

Threats-

• Time was the biggest threat, it was tight in the first few weeks, especially since I went to the Lake District over Easter for a week and had to make a mobile studio there- actually very fun!
• Competitive industry, lots of people my age wanting to progress into similar careers.