Keith Negley

There is so much incredible work being produced all over the place at the moment. One of the most interesting practitioners is Keith Negley. His portfolio is HERE.
I thought it would be a good idea to look at his process and copy/emulate his style. There are numerous reasons for this: he uses a combination of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, his illustration style is relatively simple and he imagines his subjects in a fun and unrealistic manner

Objective
To improve your mixed media and digital skills 
To proved a new, creative method of creating ideas.
To further develop your ideas in relation to your story

Task

Copy a Keith Negley piece from Tough Guys.

To get started, scrub though my example above!

• quickly but exactly, draw out the design - no rulers and spend no more that 10 mins. 
• scan or photograph it
• make 2 new A3 docs in Illustrator 
• Place your drawing on one
• Place the original on the other
• using the pen and shape tools tool

Etc :)

Expected time

4 hrs

Deadline

TBC

Pen Tool and Pathfinder

Pen tool exercises are HERE
Pathfinder help HERE
Bezier Game HERE

Illustration Videos

If they don't play well online, they deffo play better here:

Recycle your work - Independent study

Objective
To improve your mixed media and digital skills 
To proved a new, creative method of creating ideas.
To further develop your ideas in relation to your story

Task

Either scan or photocopy various pages from your sketchbook or presentation.

Using Photohotosshop or scissors and glue, recombine your pages into new images and ideas. 

Look to the presentation for inspiration.

In Photoshop, layer your pages over each other and set the blending mode to multiply - or experiment with other modes.

These could be finished artefacts or page backgrounds to create new work upon. 

Expected time

2 hrs

Deadline

The start of the lesson, Friday 17th Feb.

Photomontage - Independent study

Objective
To improve your photoshop and mixed-media skills
To further develop your ideas in relation to your story
To make paged and pages of sketchbook ideas

Task

You are to make 4+ examples of photomontage that relate to your story.

You may use analogue (photos, glue and scissors) or digital (Photoshop).

Start by gathering a collection of elements from your story. Maybe increase the amount of subject matter your have on your pinboards. 

Look at the examples within the presentation above. The finished images look best when the juxtaposition is startling or jolting.

Think creatively - we are just making interesting ideas and images. 

Expected time

2 hrs

Deadline

The start of the lesson, Friday 10th Feb.

Scamping existing work.

Objective

To get you to work fast prior to scamping your own work.
To further understand the part white space and layout plays in a graphic artefact.

To become aware of how designers balance elements on a page.

Task
Gather a range of similar artefacts. By 'similar artefacts' we mean book covers and internal book illustrations. This can be via Pinterest, Google or your own examples. 

Draw them in your sketchbook. NO rulers.
(It is customary for students to go for the more simple illustrations as this will be somewhat easier. Unfortunately, if you do this, you will undoubtedly end up with boring pages. Don't go for easy.)

Pay close attention to the light and dark tones—allow your brain to 'threshold' the greys in to either light or dark tones. See my measly example above.
The images above are of magazines - not book covers, or CD Digipaks or Children's book covers but you get the gist.

Remember, you can to look at my PINBOARDS if you are struggling for examples...

Presentation
See my example above.

Checklist for assessment
20 examples.

Time needed
Three hours.

Deadline
Start of lesson, Friday 10th Feb 2017

Aaron Reiner - Process