Evaluation

                                        

The professional practice module has made me aware that there is a lot of work that goes into becoming an illustrator. Throughout the module when exploring the work of other artists and alongside the ongoing development of my personal style and practice I have realised that I want to become a graphic novelist or comic book writer and artist.

My work experience with True Believers helped me to understand how much effort people put into creating their personal comics books and stories and the best way of creating contacts and getting your work known is to create work attend these fairs meet people and exchange contacts. I very much enjoyed my work experience and felt encouraged when I showed my work to established artists and got tips from them. I will start producing work and get people interested with short books and narratives to show my style and approach before embarking on a big project such as the comic book I have planned ‘Remnants’.

Another way my practice has developed is by being more proactive in going out and collecting visual research. I will do a lot of this before properly starting ‘Remnants’ focusing on figure drawing to make sure the project will be to the highest standard I can make it.

I also need to start creating a presence for myself. I am glad I have got a small logo sorted now and I will develop and refine this as my practice develops, it will be a good way to link my work. I also need to create a website and/or online blog. I am not comfortable using social media and communicating with others over the internet but I know I will have to use it to put myself out there. I will make sure my work is good quality and that it speaks to people clearly so it will not be let down by my inexperience with technology.

My next step is to create work for next years True Believers for which I will share a stall. I will focus on having a varied body of work, prints, a few short narrative books and maybe some collaborative work. These I will be able to show to the publishers I met on my work experience and hopefully get them interested. Once I have an established presence online and have gotten people interested I will consider using a crowd funding method such as Patreon or Kickstarter to fund a longer comic book project.

The professional practice module has helped me to understand future career paths and I will maintain the contacts I have made and undertake more independent narrative work so that I have a good body of work to show potential publishers and customers.