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Initial Sketch. 3 Colour Palette - Aqua Blue 312U / Yellow U / Fluro Orange 805 U.
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Initial Sketch. 3 Colour Palette - Green 354U / Yellow U / Fluro Orange 805 U.
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My Riso sample pack from Risotto Press arrived today. Colours! The pack includes a reference chart for layering swatches which should prove useful when it comes to narrowing down my designs to a two colour palette.
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I recorded my work in progress script to get a better idea of how long an animation would run based on my current narrative. At the moment it is running at just over 2 minutes, which is a little longer than I was expecting but still manageable I think. WhenI progress this on and make my first animatic I should have a clearer understanding of the amount of work involved.
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My first attempt at a simple hand drawn maquette for my proposed zine. With a 16pp A5 setup in mind, I laid out 4 double-sided A4 sheets, giving me 16 printed pages including covers (8 sheets of A5) to work with.
I’ve broken down my in progress script into 24 frames and have 2 frames per page. I’ve reserved the cover pages (inside and out) for full page illustrations.
28 illustrations in total.
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Ideally, I would like to experiment with a broad range of stocks and colour combinations during my riso exploration phase. However, I am conscious of cost restrictions and so have conducted some preliminary costing research in order to set some realistic expectations from the outset.
Risotto are a Glasgow based studio specialising in risograph printing. Besides their competitive rates I was impressed by the amount of advice and production guidance they supply on their website, including riso colour swatches which can be downloaded directly into Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop. They offer a range of competitively priced print bundles including a package of 50 copies of 16pp A5 zines for just under two hundred pounds. This would be the upper limit in terms of my available budget for this project. Fifty copies seems like a suitable quantity to allow me to participate in a local publishing fair, with some leftover to share amongst my existing creative and class network.
As I refine my narrative and start to consider my style frames I now have two set parameters to work within.
1. Communicate my story clearly within 16 pages (including front & back covers).
2. Explore the potential of a 2 colour palette drawn from a limited range of riso inks.
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One area which has caught my attention during my recent research studies is the resurgence of zine culture. In a similar way to how musicians have returned to vinyl formats, many contemporary illustrators are returning to independent publishing. There are strong parallels between the story of the Pilea and zine culture. The story of the Pilea centres on how it spread around the world by being passed from one person to another.
An illustrated zine seems like an appropriate way to tell this story as it is a very literal example of designers actively connecting with their audience by passing on a tangible artifact. Creating a physical illustrated piece is a departure from my previous practice which has been predominantly screen based.
For this project I will go through the full process of producing a Riso printed illustrated zine. I have chosen Riso because I think that its limited colour palette will work well with my preferred Mid-Century aesthetic and it is also an environmentally friendly process. I will then distribute my finished zine locally and internationally (using my class network) in an effort to continue the spread of the Pilea’s story.
For the second phase of this project I want to use the textures created through the Risograph process to bring my story to life digitally as an animated piece. Motion design is a key professional context in my practice and I am keen to see how learning more about traditional print and animation techniques can influence and improve my digital practice. The motion piece will treat the pages of the zine as style frames and its URL will be referenced on the back page of the zine to offer readers further context and the opportunity to share the story further.
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The subject of my next phase of work will be the Pilea Peperomioides plant. I received a cutting from a friend a couple of years ago and was immediately taken by its distinctive look. It has become a darling of lifestyle magazines and Pinterest boards in recent years and as I kept seeing it pop up over and over again I decided to do a little digging around its rise to internet stardom.
My curiosity was rewarded, as it turns out that Pilea Peperomioides (Missionary Plant / Pass It On / Chinese Money Plant) has a great modern folktale associated with it. The main narrative of my project will focus around an article on the subject I found in a 1984 edition of Kew Magazine.
Like my Major Project Proposal, this story focuses on the underlying folklore associated with a seemingly commonplace plant. While my main project focuses on ancient folklore, this story is very much a modern folk tale.
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I’ve decided to start keeping this blog to keep track of my progress while I work through the next phase of my MA Illustration practice. I have set myself a bit of an ambitious target for this module and will use this platform to record my research, inspiration, visual studies and experiments.
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