Syllabus

Illustration is an art of visual communication. The combination of great artwork and wisely chosen ideas is the formula for an illustrator’s success in communicating with pictures. At NTU’s school of Art Design and Media, students become experts in creating and understanding pictures which inform, entertain and persuade their audiences. They develop not just their drawing, painting and media skills, but their creativity and imaginations too. The course is special in that it educates students as artists of visual communication. In a world where fine arts and communication arts are often separated, NTU’s school of Art Design and Media weaves them together. Students are encouraged to explore, innovate and express themselves personally, and uniquely, as artists do exploring the application of that art within communication projects. They ...

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Week 1

Welcome to the Illustration for Designers course. In the next few weeks we will be creating a body of illustrative work and here you will find numerous resources to help you on your creative journey. I look forward to seeing how you progress Lisa

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Week 2

This week we'll discuss the requirements of the fist assignment task. We will also review the work of various artists, designers and illustrators and how they approach the challenge of creating a self portrait which represents not only their physical appearance but also their emotional or social being. We will review the difference between realism and stylisation and which approach would be best suited to your sill level.

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Week 3

This week we will review your initial self portrait sketches by participating both one-on-one feedback and a group critique sessions. There will be a short review of the requirements of Assignment Task 1 - Self portrait with a Q&A session should there be any items that require clarification. You will continue to create development sketches for your self portrait and then begin transfer your ideas into final traditional media illustrations or digital drawing. Followed by a short instructional period of how to participate in a successful Critique: discussing how can work be improved.

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Week 4

This week we will continue where we left off with a group critique session of Assignment #1 Self portrait Followed by time to submit Assignment #1: self portrait – 10% I'll then Introduce the next Assignment: Editorial illustrations – 20% We will review the work of several editorial illustrators and their conceptual approach to illustration. You will then have time to conduct independent research into editorial illustration

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Week 5

Hello and welcome to week 5! In this week's class you will submit Assignment 1: self portrait and complete a self reflective review of how you think you did. We'll then move on to review to Assignment 2 : Editorial illustrations 5. Lecture Process and Planning overview This will include an Introduction to creating a target audience user persona and you will be encouraged to create your own to indicate Varoom's readership and give you a good indication of the type of audience your illustration will be aimed at. 6. Lecture: Mood boards how to create one and why - We will then take a look at why mood boards are so important as part of the creative process and you will be given time to generate your ...

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Week 6

This week we will begin to explore concepts for your chosen theme in more depth. What does Empathy, Style or Obsession mean to you? We'll take a look at strategies for divergent thinking, creating a word association chart to develop ideas and create conceptual links to your theme and we'll take this idea generation strategy and apply it to thumbnail sketches. You should have produced a target audience user persona and a moodboard at this stage to inform your creative choices and you should keep these at hand and continually refer back to them during your creative process.

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Week 7

Hello and welcome to week 7 This week we will begin to refine your editorial illustration ideas into 3 presentable pencil sketches. We will review several compositional strategies and how these can be applied to your illustrations. Building on last week's thumbnail sketches and ideation techniques we will narrow your ideas down to 3 options which will be presented to the class for critique after the recess period. Please review the video link and reading assignments for this week and I look forward to seeing your ideas develop into creative compositions!

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Week 8

Hello welcome back and I hope you have all had a good break :) Before we start I'd like you to take a few minutes to complete a short survey about this course. I am continually trying to improve both my teaching and the material covered so any suggestions for improvement in either area would be welcomed. Thanks! Please note: All responses are totally anonymous so please be as honest as possible. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3GKNRHJ This week we'll begin with a short warm up exercise to get back into 'the zone'! and then move on to work on our final illustration compositions. I'll also run a brief tutorial on creating photoshop mockups for presentation purposes, however the majority of today's class will be studio time for ...

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Week 9

Welcome to week 9 Firstly thank you for asking the time out to give me feedback last week. it's really invaluable and hopefully I can make some changes to improve the course better and work on the good stuff too! A few people commented on the classroom itself being inconducive to creativity so with this in mind for the warm up this session this week we're taking it outside! Please see the video and reading section for information as to why! This week we will explore the final project - Applied Illustrations We'll take a look at illustration for packaging and review some contemporary applications of illustration across a range of items If you do want to show me your work in progress for the editorial illustration please ...

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Week 10

Hello It's week 10 and submission week! We'll be taking a look at everyone's editorial illustrations and as a group offering constructive feedback on the work. You'll then submit the work for grading and we'll move on to our final project: Applied Illustration Hopefully by now you all have decided on an event and we can now investigate styles and techniques for applying your ideas to 5 items. We'll take a look at what creativity means and how the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking help engage your left and right brains in this short warm up activity.

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Week 11

Welcome to week 11! This semester is flying by! Based on feedback from the survey conducted a few weeks ago several of you have requested that I should offer some hands on tutorials. So this week we'll be utilising Adobe Illustrator to create a cubist inspired animal vector. We'll be spending most of our time working on the final project over the next few weeks but it's always good to keep up with current trends and contemporary practice so I've also decided to showcase several Illustrators each week. The first of which is Brian Yap and you can review his work in the featured illustrator tab. Happy Monday Lisa  

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Week 12

Hello Everyone Its week 12. This will be the last full studio class before our final critique session next week. Therefore I plan to give you most of the class time to work on your projects. I saw most of you for a review session last week and informed you that due to time constraints that I would reduce the required items down from 5 to 4 final pieces. One of which must still be 3 dimensional. We will have a short and hopefully fun warm up session today where we'll consider what it means to have a bad idea and how to reframe the context. Happy Monday Lisa

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Week 13

It's week 13 and you made it!  We're at the end of what seems like a super quick semester and it's submission day. I'll be taking your work for the final project today at the end of class following our final critique session. I've uploaded a reminder of conducting a good critique and I hope you all actively participate in sharing your thoughts and ideas on the work of others. I've seen some excellent work-in-progress for this project and I'm really looking forward to seeing the final results. Great work everyone, it's been really good to see you all develop your illustrations this semester. Happy Monday Lisa  

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