Responsive: Evaluation

My approach to Responsive was a bit of a mixed bag. Whilst I struggled somewhat with developing my work to a degree I was happy with and juggling briefs around my other modules I did however develop several skills such as how to effectively create boards for briefs, improve my presentational skills and collaborating with others. I feel I have particularly improved in regards to presentational skills due to the high number of peer reviews we had. I found the group sessions quite useful in Responsive, specifically the early sessions where we broke down the YCN briefs. This allowed me to understand that the big scary companies weren’t big and scary at all, they were actually somewhat in need of me.

However creating work for such companies, and these kinds of briefs in general didn’t and still doesn’t appeal to me. The idea of helping to reinvent a company just left me feeling cold and I feel that this attitude ultimately resulted in me not asserting myself as much as I could for the Propercorn brief and to a degree the Yorkshire Tea brief also. However briefs such as Filmdoo and Hyde Park Picture house where I was creating posters, or Off Life and Thought Bubble where I was creating narrative stories were quite different in many regards. Largely because this is the area of Illustration I see myself working towards post graduation. These were the briefs where I feel that most of my better work took place and where my approach to image making developed most. I pinpointed that collage, a technique I have dabbled in before, and watercolour use were areas where my work looked most interesting. Whilst I don’t think the work I produced using these methods was of a particularly exceptional standard, I feel that I have developed enough as a professional to notice that there is something to these methods that deserves my attention. Beyond water colouring and collage I can see that there is a marked improvement with my digital skills, especially over the past few months. When I compare my Offlife narrative to that of my final Propercorn outcomes the skill is drastically improved in my opinion.

However despite the positive points of Responsive there are still negative points to address such as my time management. I felt that I failed largely in this aspect of Responsive. This is both partially due to my busy schedule and other modules I was working on, but it is largely due to my lack of self-management. There were multiply occasions where I’ll openly admit I put off Responsive work in favour of another module, this had a detrimental effect on my ability to research and develop concept ideas to a degree that I know I’m capable of. For example, whilst I am happy with my ability to create presentation boards, I am aware that there is room for improvement. Maybe this improvement could have occurred during the Responsive module had I managed my time better. The same could be said for my research skills. Research was an area that I tripped up on several times, without a strong research based work is never as informed as it could be and this is quite apparent in several briefs that I took on, specifically the Propercorn and Yorkshire Tea briefs. Had more research been done early on, I believe I could have produced much strong ideas and developed worked that I could be truly proud of.

If I could go back again this is one area I would definitely improve upon. I would also spend more time to recognise what illustrative technique is needed for a specific brief. For example; I could easily have used collage for my Filmdoo and Guardian briefs to wield much more interesting responses in a much shorter amount of time. Finally I would have embraced my work in the collaborative brief more. I allowed Hollie to do most of illustrative side of things within this brief as my lack of confidence in my own skill won out. Had I been more assertive we could have produced a response that may have been a better amalgamation of our separate styles.

Going forward, I plan to make use of the acknowledgement that my time management and research abilities have been a bit lax. It is integral to my professional practise that these areas improve as they are effectively what can make or break an illustrator. That and whether my work is winning material.