Illustrator in the process

3rd year Illustration and Visual Media student at the ~University of the Arts London~ {London College of Communication} sharing my project process and general uni life with youuus! 👹

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FMP - Mini Brief 1: Disseminating Research

Research Zine #2

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FMP - Mini Brief 1: Disseminating Research

Research Zine #1

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FMP - Mini Brief 2: Viable Practice

Wearable Cryptid Merchandise (T-shirts)

These are the final outcomes for the FMP Viable Practice - Cryptid T-shirts that would in theory be up for purchase on my website. I looked into outsourcing the printing of the tshirts and found a place in London I might consider if I was serious about launching this merchandise. I also looked into what goes into shipping and other expenses and used Chris Ratcliff's excel table to figure out the T-shirt price. All of this I cover in my submission PDF but won't go into detail about here.

About the process of making the mock-ups:

Fist I turned the line work of just the cryptids ( -background and color) into vectors using Adobe Illustrator. This enabled me to resize the cryptids however I wanted without losing resolution.

Then I did the same after turning the line work into white in Procreate. It took photoshop psd files and a lot of patience to do this. Then again I turned it into vectors.

From here I looked up stock images of models wearing plain black and white shirts. There were 3 things that I was looking for in the stock images:

1. A diverse cast of models in regards to race, gender and size

2. The cast should be in similar environments so that it's not just a mix-mash of random people wearing the shirts anywhere. Instead I was looking for a consistent background/lighting for all pieces that would connect them all

3. The cut of the t-shirt the models were wearing was supposed to be as close as possible to the cut I'd be aiming for in reality: a relaxed, unisex fit.

I believe the stock images I chose tick all my boxes. Next up was editing my line work onto the shirts while making it look real. On the matter I watched a YouTube tutorial but in the end I barely relied on it. I simply imported the line work, resized and warped it to match how the t-shirt shaped up; I added texture and transparency to the line work and it was done.

I like how the mock-up turned out and am proud of how good they look, still they are only serving the purpose of a mock-up and I might want to ask friends to model if I took actual images of the t-shirts for my online store.

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Outcome photoshoot set-up:

The above image shows the set-up I was working with to photograph all of my work. It was an unusually sunny day in London with medium winds that kept trying to swoop away my prints and kept pushing clouds in front of the sun.

I really had to time it right to take the best possible images in the most consistent lighting possible. What I shot that day were all final outcomes, apart from the Viable Practice Cryptid T-shirts, because they only exist as digital mock-ups.

For the background and ground I used black cardboard and sometimes I needed to use tape rolls to prep up the zine and booklet for pictures.

In the case of the mini posters of the Cryptids, I pinned those with the back to black cardboard and taped that cardboard to the fence. I did this because I wanted to avoid the shadow of the camera hovering above to be visible on the pictures. The sun shone weirdly on the posters when they were hung up like I described and I believe there must be a better way to photograph that work. Still, it did the trick.

The set-up was sub-optimal but it worked out fine.

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FMP - Mini Brief 2: Viable Practice

MoohMaid Tissue Paper

I printed the moohmaid tissue paper even before the MoohMade business cards although I seem to remember not documenting that process too much aside from in my Printer's Journal, which I posted before.

The tissue paper is around B1 in size, I think. It's hard to tell because it used to be waste paper that would come stuck in between litho plates. Tony let me have and repurpose it as tissue paper that I would use to wrap my work in for selling it. Due to the super large size of the tissue paper it was difficult to photograph on the same black background as the rest of my work. I eventually gave up on the black background because the tissue paper wouldn't be sold by itself anyway, so I instead focused on photographing it from different angles to show off it's size, the pattern and the amount I had printed.

The tissue paper is simple and pretty - perfect for packaging orders once my online store goes live!

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FMP Mini Brief 2: Viable Practice

Business Cards

I've documented the process of printing these cards with pictures and videos in earlier Tumblr posts but here is where I photographed the outcome properly.

All outcome images were taken on the same day and in the same or similar set-ups with black cardboard - more on the set-up in a later post.

I've gotten quite a few business cards out of that one day of printing (the amount shown in the images is only a small part of the total) and I love them all.

The thermo brought a nice texture to the card and I believe the design is simple and classy but also fun.

I'm really proud of these cards and can't wait to get an opportunity to hand them to people!

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Woops! Almost forgot to post the contact info page included on the very last page of the Cryptozoology Booklet!

For a better, holistic view of the booklet, check out my instagram @moohmade.illustrates it is a saved highlight there.

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Pictures of the inside of the Cryptozoology Booklet #2: Modern Cryptid Chapters + Quizzes + Contact Info

Now here are the different versions of the quizzes. First the one which fits on the page but is too dark in the bottom 2 rows of squares:

As you can see it's hard to read the text in the bottom row of boxes and the row above that is also rather dark. I fixed that and reprinted. It was just bad that I listened to the Digital Skills Team during the 2nd print and enlarged the images into the bleed.

Here is the outcome of the 2nd round of printing:

As you can see the text is now legible but the quizzes are too large now and were partially cut off in Print Finishing because of it.

Very sad how neither printing went perfectly but I guess it's a learning curve and I won't make the same mistakes again.

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Pictures of the inside of the Cryptozoology Booklet #1: Table of Contents + Key Terms Explained + Ancient Cryptid Chapters

This is the first half of the booklet. I'm happy with the colors and the binding, it all works very well. This is the issue printed WITHOUT expanding the page designs into the bleed though. The later issues I "corrected" that in, I'm less happy with, because all images were enlarged and partially cut off, like the hand of the Skinwalker (as you can see above).

Basically the first time around everything fit nicely in the booklet, but the color of the quizzes were off. The second time around the colors were perfect but everything got enlarged, which is why parts were cut off (the skinwalker's hand and part of the quizzes).

Very annoying but a learning experience and at least now I know how to properly print the booklet next time.

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Now to the photoshoot of the Cryptozoology zine. I did it outside in my backyard on a very sunny day. In future I will probably take pictures in a more controlled environment because the wind kept trying to blow my papers away and the clouds sweeping in front of the sun kept changing the light.

In the pictures there is basically no difference between the tree-free and the glossy paper copies. In reality the feel of the two are very different and personally I prefer glossy, while one of my friends said they like tree-free better. I guess it's just personal preference. In the images however - no difference. Only that when flipping through the pages, the sun would reflect more off the glossy pages.

It's really nice to finally hold the booklets. Now it feels real, well I guess because it is, haha!

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This last one actually captured the moment the technician accidentally double saddle stitched one of the booklets. It's barely noticable and no big deal though.

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This one is a close-up of the saddle stitch:

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Here is 1/3 videos I took of the saddle stitching progress. You will see it is quite repetitive and doesn't change with the issue, so I only filmed it for the Cryptozoology Booklet and not again for the Research Zine too.

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With all pieces of the booklet finished at last, it was time to print the thing. The date was booked and the Digital Print staff ran the Xerox printer for me. We figured out that 2 prints on each, the glossy and the matt paper, I described in an earlier post, would cost me £16. And that is after they gave me a special discount, because they were especially nice. That meant £4 per booklet when it originally would have been £8 per booklet. Quite steep prices. I have no video of the printing because it went to quickly, but I did record the process of cutting the SRA3 paper down to the right size, as well as the saddle-stitching of it all.

Above are the printed, uncut sheets.

Below is a close-up picture of the saddle stitch from the inside of the booklet:

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Last but not least the Cryptozoology Bookley needed a cover. Front and back. This proved to be trickier than I thought it would be.

I started with one waaaay too elaborate sketch that was meant to combine a pyramid with 3 eyes and a nose but the shape ended up looking like an A. Now the letter A bares no significance in this booklet, so the design needed to be redone but I will keep this one regardless, because it turned it quite interesting regardless:

It followed this far less elaborate design, which I thankfully scrapped before investing too much time into a doomed idea again:

Here are the final front and back of the cover, after I added the text in InDesign, as with everything else:

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Once the lion share of the pages were done, it was rather fast to finish the other pages of the booklet in the same style:

Towards the end of the booklet I added my professional contact info. It seemed like the proper thing to do:

The second element of the booklet was still missing - the 2 quizzes!

First I drew the flow-chart layout in Adobe Photoshop:

Blue-orange for the Modern Cryptid quiz, purple-yellow for the Ancient Modern quiz.

You might notice that the 2 bottom rows of squares of each quiz are way darker here than i the final outcome later. That is an edit I made after the first print, when I realized that the type on top of it was barely legible. The background was simply too dark.

Here are the final quizzes:

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With the illustrations all done it was time to think about the informative text pages to go alongside each of the creatures. Above is a fundamental mock-up page I drafted and used as a guide for the real ones.

Having researched plenty about each of the 8 specific cryptids, it was quite easy and quick to fill the pages in with all the necessary facts.

For the typeface I chose Nitty Typewriter in Adobe InDesign as it gives the feeling of a real document stemming from field research, in my opinion. Furthermore, the typewriter style makes it look old, mysterious, maybe a little like a Top Secret document.

Here are the final page outcome: