OUIL501 Evaluation

Strengths
I think a big strength here was the format and shape of the panels. I took the inspiration from Jesse Jacobs work and I've seen that it helps to keep looking at current work because it fuels my ideas. Another strength was the colour scheme, I spent quite a long time working on different colour pallets and using coolors to help me. Since I'd designed such full images with so much going on it became quite hard to put colour in without it looking over the top and loud. I decided then to colour all the characters/ objects in the boxes in one colour. The detail is too small to have individual colour and shadow and I want to be pushing the line work over the colouring because thats the element I've been working on.
I think that for once text didn't go horribly in my work, the writing is just my handwriting which I picked because I assumed it would work well with the drawing since shapes I draw will inherently be similar to the way I draw letters. But I think its the layout that has made it acceptable. It's well spaced and the whole thing is one thought split over lots of different characters. I think this showed that the issues are things that have affected many.
Normally when trying to name a comic, which is always the last thing I do, I struggle to think of a relevant title. But this time I think the title worked well because it gives a sense of condescending humour. It belittles and makes fun of the issues inside. Putting the lettering in little boxes really sewed the whole thing together, the continuity of the boxes made it work as a set otherwise I feel it would have looked like a mess of news stories and it wouldn't have the same affect. The uniformity is almost clinical.

The character I think I drew best is the spot illustration for female circumcision, the facial expressions worked really well. At first I was only going to draw her bottomless but the nudity adds an overwhelming sense of vulnerability. It makes the image more distressing to look at. I think that the head size to body ratio worked on showing that this is definitely a child. I felt the best way to play on peoples heart strings was to have a young girl rather than a teen/young adult. The instinct to protect plays up and the image is repulsive.


Weaknesses.
The female circumcision illustration is my favourite drawing but I feel that it was rushed because after printing I realised that all the other spot illustrations I pushed the line as texture to extenuate the gore.  But in this she's smooth, I think I just forgot and the image is the most horrifying which almost makes up for it but i wanted everything to have a strong sense of continuity since the subject spanned across so many different issues.

I think that one weakness was the saturation of my colours, the digital file had quite vibrant colours. But I picked a thick cotton paper to print on and it harshly reduced the saturation, but it looks so much better this way. I think that the brighter colours looked to gaudy mixed with the large amounts of line. So a happy accident has improved my work.

Blogging has been a weakness again in this module, and that is mainly down to time management of all the different projects I've been working on. If I was to take on this again I would not do as many projects at once because I think it has reduced the quality of my ideas and drawing.

In my process I feel like I jumped a bit from my beautiful gore to the million mouths panelling. I think that shows that the beautiful gore idea wasn't really going anywhere and I had reached a wall. I think in future when proposing an idea I need to be really specific with what I want it to do and say. Because otherwise I get lost just playing under the general theme of my idea and lose sight of the task at hand.

I think my essay was weaker than my visual, written work isn't usually my forte. I tried to do more research this year so that I could back up my ideas. But I think I went into it with pre decided ideas about my subject and when I was researching I wasn't just exploring the information, I was searching for information to specifically back up my ideas and intentions. I think for next year I need to fully get into the research process and stop myself thinking about the end before I've even started.