OUIL501 - Summative Evaluation

I feel that COP, especially the essay side of the module, has been a struggle for me, as I find that I'm not the best at writing and articulating my ideas. However throughout this module I think I have vastly improved from Level 4 COP and my essay writing skills have moved along significantly. I think that this is mainly due to the fact that I enjoyed writing about this subject much more and it's something that I am quite passionate about. I have become much more aware of the context of my work, which helps me to synthesise both my essay and my practical work to create a successful project. I have improved my research skills, as I enjoyed researching my subject this year and it was much less of a boring task. I found it easier to collect a wide range of sources and to document them also. Last year I found it harder to translate my research into my essay but this year I can definitely tell how my research has informed both my essay and my practical work.

Thinking what context my work will exist in has definitely developed the way I approach image making. When my work has a distinct purpose I find it easier to evaluate the way I am working and make critical decisions about how I should approach a piece of work. There were many problems with the way I approached making a book during Level 4 COP, and I used what I had learned from my mistakes last year to vastly improve the way I approached image making this year. I chose to make my book digitally rather than using traditional techniques to give a much cleaner and more professional look. I also used an actual font rather than hand drawn type, which I used last year, which proved to be quite hard to read when printed out on a small scale.

The narrative of my work was a definite strength. In the feedback tutorials I was told that the story linked well with my essay title and that the contrast between the naive children's style illustrations and the honest and brutal narrative worked really well. I was quite organised with my time and didn't leave anything to the last minute, I worked hard on getting the book finished to a high standard with plenty of time left to finish other aspects of the module. At the start of the project I initially wanted to create 3 books, but it was suggested that this would be too much work, so I decided to create only 1 book, but to a very high standard, I think this was my main improvement from last year, where I gave myself too much work to do, so I wasn't happy with the quality of the finished work.

I think the main weakness within this module was definitely my essay. Although I enjoyed doing the research, as the meat industry is something I'm quite interested in, I still found it hard to actually write the essay to a standard that I was pleased with, so I think it will affect my overall grade. I also found the study tasks quite hard, because I didn't blog them straight away, as I find analysing images difficult, and I was struggling to get back into the flow of analysing things after the end of Level 4, so I ended coming back to the study tasks a while after we had been briefed them, so the information we were given to support the tasks wasn't fresh in my mind. In hindsight I should have just approached Richard and asked for help with them, but at the time I felt like I was too busy with others modules to do this, so throughout Level 6 I will ask for help more often rather than leaving it and struggling when I come back to it.

During Level 6 I intend to:

• Make sure that I am fully invested in whatever I choose to research, so that I can do my best both with the practical and essay side of the module.
• I will ask for help whenever I need it to avoid not doing something, coming back to it, and struggling more than I did in the first place.
• I will push myself to create as much work as possible to a high standard, now that I feel I have a better grasp of what my limits are, I can safely push them to challenge what I'm capable of.
• I will blog everything as I go along, and do a lot research into my Level 6 subject over the Summer so that I am well prepared for when we return.
• I want to try and gather more first hand research, rather than secondary, even if this is just photo reference imagery to help me with the practical tasks.

OUIL501 - Final Practical Response

I'm very pleased with the outcome of my final book, I received a lot of praise at the final crit on the impact of the story and the relationship that I created between image and text and I think that I used colour well to create a certain mood and to evoke an emotional response in the reader. I tried to make the story a little bit humorous as I was trying to mock the naivety of consumer's views towards the meat industry and the slaughter process. I think I got the balance between adult humour and the aesthetic of a children's book exactly right in order to fool the reader into believing this to be a real children's book, and to then be shocked by the narrative when they read it. I was very pleased with the print quality, as I decided to print the front pages on thicker paper and the inside ones on thinner stock, this gave it more of a realistic look. The next book that I create I want to properly bind it with a hardback cover.

OUIL501 - Final Essay Response

OUIL501 - Final Crit and Feedback

Although this final crit wasn't exactly useful, because I couldn't really change anything about my book at this stage, I did find the feedback to be really reassuring in that my book was successful. 

A few people mentioned that my book had a very clear and well executed concept, that the sarcasm and humour contrasted really well with the deep subject, also because of the way it was designed to appear to be a light hearted children's book. 

Through my feedback I can see that my work is obviously informed by contextual research and links well to my essay question. This was something that I was concerned about at first, that the practical element of my work didn't link directly to my essay question, but I feel much more confident that it does after this feedback.

Looking back on my work now I am happy that I decided to change my idea from simply creating a painting of layered farm animals to this children's book because it gives my project much more context and has given me ideas for future work. 

OUIL501 - Project Synthesis

My essay title was, How demand and growing consumerism has changed and developed the meat industry. I chose this title because I have always been interested in the industry and how consumers views of it are skewed by the media. My practical work was kind of a commentary on the naivety about the slaughter process, because many consumers don't consider the reality of the meat industry and believe the sugar coated image they are given by the media. As our consumerist society has grown the meat industry has grown with it and had to develop new ways of producing enough low cost meat to fulfill demand. Animal welfare isn't always a priority in these production methods but the way that we are fed a skewed view of factory farming leads people to believe a kind of fairy tale version of it. I wanted to illustrate the typical slaughter process under the disguise of a children's book, to show the juxtaposition between what actually happens when a cow is slaughter compared to the skewed image that people have in their minds.

OUIL501 - Book Development

I started making plan sketches for my book, I started researching the slaughter process, watching videos and reading articles. I wanted to keep the story quite short and simple, with a blunt narrative, which is often the tone of childrens books, so I kept the story to 8 pages long. I started out by planning each page and then painting it using water colour, but after I finished one I didn't think it looked clean and precise enough to be the final image, so I decided to finish them off digitally.

I first painted the front cover with watercolours rather than digital and I really liked the outcome, I think mainly because there was a lot less detail in the front cover than in the pages, so it was easier to create a nice image.

OUIL501 - Development Sketches

After I had done a bit more research into the aesthetic of my book, I began making sketches and playing around with different styles. I had a clear image in my head of how I wanted it to look. I wanted to portray the classic 1950's style childrens books, with bold shapes and muted, bold colours. A few artists that I had looked at inspired me to try and give my work a collage effect.

I first tried doing this digitally even though I had intended to create all images by hand using watercolour, as I thought it would be easier to create something a bit more professional, seeing as I hadn't really used watercolours to create a well put together image before.

In the image above I was trying to go for quite an abstract feel, but in the end I didn't think it really worked. To create more of an emotional bond with the reader I wanted it to be a bit more realistic but still child like.

I also decided that I would not mention anything about the book being set in a slaughter house, because I wanted to deceive the reader into thinking this was a classic children's book about a cow.

OUIL501 - Development sketches

After getting some feedback on my project I decided that I would create a childrens book looking at the slaughter process of animals. Although I didn't know what I wanted my book to look like. I went to a local farm and took some research imagery to help me come up with some ideas. I started doing some sketches using mark and line again to create texture. I was still pretty stuck on the aesthetic of my book, so I started researching childrens' books on pinterest.

This was one of my favourite images that I created. I tried to show tone using texture rather than block colour. I think the simple combination of two colours makes the image work really well aesthetically.