Reflecting on Final Major Project

As I am coming close to the end of my project, I am going to look back on my progression over these few months and review what has been both successful and unsuccessful in terms of development and end products.

   In regards to organisation, I think I have planned out what I had to do in the time I had fairly well, however there were a few things I felt I could have spent more time on and spent less on others. Whilst researching the text and characters at the beginning, I think it would have been more productive to have begun drawing straightaway even if I didn't know what I was doing, which I did do to an extent, but I realised that any image throughout the project can be a possible final image.

   In the beginning I also sketched a lot of thumbnails to see how each of the illustrations could look; I think that in the future, I will sketch each scene consecutively as well as focusing on one scene at a time as this would have aided me in seeing the progression of events in the narrative a bit more clearly. This didn't effect my creative process too much however.

   Overall, I have stuck to my timetable quite well, which I was surprised at. I was able to access some places to draw things such as woods, people and architecture as stated in my proposal, though with future projects I'm going to aim to find other areas to draw from life as I will have more time on my hands once I've finished uni.

   As for my images I am pleased with the atmosphere I have created in most of them and feel that I have managed to incorporate symbolism subtly and effectively. I'm also pleased with how some of my images have come out so you have to look more closely to see certain details in the picture, which can be quite nice as an additional feature. I think I could have varied the composition a bit more as a lot of the images are scenery-based but overall they've worked reasonably well. Although at first the colour palette was not what I had aimed towards I think the colours I have used has worked well as the dark colours contrast nicely with brighter colours, hinting at symbolism eg. Gerda's red shoes and it also lends towards the overall dark theme throughout the story.
I am now more confident of the style I want to work in, taking what I've learnt from previous projects. Painting quick ideas with a brush and ink have been really helpful with developing my images as well and this is something I'll be carrying on.

   All in all, I'm very proud of what I've achieved and it has definitely taught me a few things in terms of image making as well as the technical side of things like binding books and using Indesign which I did not know how to use previously. These have all prepared me for future work and commissions.