mikewestgate.

June 2, 2015
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Final Major Project: Evaluation and Reflection

1) Visual Communication:

In what ways does the visual communication/message of the piece meet the needs of the brief?

The final products meets the needs of the brief by introducing new promotional material for a new helmet design, as well as the helmet itself, to help increase Icon’s brand awareness as at the moment all the branding for the the UK market is online only.

In what ways does the visual communication/message of the piece fail to meet the needs of the brief?

The final products meet the brief in all the ways I set it out to do so, I would have liked to create promotional leaflets if I had time to further project, however when I conducted my primary research the shops I visited said that they would not consider having promotional leaflets in the store, so this is no major loss, and does not detract from the final outcome.

What are the strengths of the visual communication? Why?

The strengths lie in the illustrations, colour palette, and creating a physical object to enhance the idea of this being a real, new design for the Icon helmet. I also think that the strength lies in the projects deliverables as a complete package.

What are the weaknesses of the visual communication? Why?

The weaknesses could be a lack of information in the posters, or lack of information regarding the helmet functionality, however this is because this information is available on the website, which is referenced on the posters.

In what ways could the piece be mis-read or mis-understood by the audience? Be specific about who the audience is.

The design could be mis-read in that they could not relate with the designs I made, the design is targeted at a younger motorbiking audience, using loud and colourful visuals.

In what practical ways could the piece be developed or improved?

I could create another helmet with a new design, following up from my initial sketches I would create the Toad helmet. I think they would make a nice series.

2) Reflection of own working practices:

How was my time keeping?

I think my time keeping with this project was pretty good, It is better than I could have ever have hoped for and I had time to achieve everything I wanted to. I also had time to properly plan my designs and allowed time to think about how to correctly progress the project. Keeping myself constantly moving proved to be very helpful in the overall outcome of the project.

How was my analysis of the brief?

My analysis of the brief was good, as it was set by myself.

How was my research?

My research proved more invaluable than I thought it would, specifically in contacting 3M and boss dog, and collecting large image banks (something I had only done slightly in previous projects) meant I could quickly and easily draw upon visual references in order to give the visuals the look I wanted.

How did I draw conclusions from my research?

I drew conclusions from my research by writing about them in my blog, and by using them practically with in my project

How did I use research to generate and develop ideas?

I did this by reffering to the reference material and learning from it, I did primary research to see how I could create something that shops wanted and could raise the awareness of the Icon brand.

How did I use evaluations to help with my ideas generation and development?

I tried to look critically at what I was doing as often as possible, consulting with class mates and tutors about the designs which aided project development.

How did I use experimentation during the project? How can I make this more effective?

I did most of the experimentation early on in the project, before I committed to drawing particular illustrations. I could make this more effective by increasing the amount of experimentation, however I think this would have been unnecessary for this particular project.

What parts of the project did I enjoy most? Why was this the case?

The parts of the project I enjoyed most were the final stages of the project, It was incredibly rewarding to see the helmet coming together.

What parts of the project did I enjoy least? Why was this the case?

I enjoyed all of the project, however if I had to say what I enjoyed least, it would be the initial idea generation to come up with the brief, and trying to practically apply my colour theory, which proved time consuming and took a whole load of iterations before I was happy with the colours.

At what times did I work best? Why might this be the case? How can I ensure that I work well at all times?

I worked best in two scenarios. During idea generation and colour theory I worked best in class, having my course-mates there to bounce ideas off of was invaluable. Secondly I worked best at home during the drawing stages, as it is quite and I can work for hours at a time.

What areas inspired me? Why was this the case? How could I follow these up?

In regards to my own project, I don’t see how I could inspire myself, in terms of outside influences, my course-mates were a huge inspiration to me.

What areas were challenging or difficult? Why was this the case?

Fitting the vinyl was a very difficult task, this is primarily due to having never done it before, however as I laid down more pieces they got finished faster and more consistently, so this is just a case of time and practice.

Do I need to develop certain skills? Do I need these now? Or later?

I would like to improve on my colour theory, as I would not be able to pick the colours I did without having Jack Whiting and his knowledge of colour and artists. Hopefully this will develop in time.

Any other points?

I hope to contact Icon shortly about the work I have done.

June 1, 2015
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Final Major Project: Promotional Video

I decided to make a short teaser trailer of the helmet in action, for this I got my brother and his friend in a chase car, and used a private road to film on. This was just meant as a fun extra task to see what the helmet looked like.

I used Sony Vegas as this was the program I was most comfortable using, as I used it a lot when I was much younger. I added the ‘Westgate x Icon’ logo from the posters on a clear background to the bottom left of the video, and laid over the soundtrack I used for the Buddha speed drawing video. It was just a quick little edit but it turned out quite nicely.

Here is the teaser trailer (I recommend HD to see all of the details of the video).

June 1, 2015
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Final Major Project: Studio Quality Final Helmet Images

I had a free morning today just to tidy up some loose ends with the project, so I thought I would try and book a studio session in the photography department of the university. Luckily enough there was a free session and I could take some pictures. I had to set the studio up myself, so I decided to using a Bowens Lighting kit with an infinity curve as the background, I was using my own Canon 20D and a light meter to configure the manual settings for the camera.

The photos were then edited in Photoshop , where I did the levels, curves, and brightness/contrast settings. I also did the straightening, cropping, and used the burn tool on over exposed areas, as well as creating a perfect white background. The images were edited in a group setting to ensure uniformity in all the images.

I decided to do these images to properly show off the detail of the vinyl wrap, I had also applied some thin black line tape to the forehead piece to follow the lines of the air vents, which was a more recent update. These are the images of the helmet in it’s final finished form.

June 1, 2015
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Final Major Project: Making the Posters

The next step in the project was to create the posters, the main subject of the posters would be the illustrations from the helmet, in a much larger size. The reasoning behind this was purely to show off the detail of the illustrations and to push my poster further away from the current style of Icon posters, which mainly consisted of coloured backgrounds (example below) or photographic backgrounds.

I cropped the illustrations to an A2 format, before adding details. I wanted to add the company logos onto the posters for a more authentic feel.

You can see an example of the logos used running along the bottom of the above screenshot. Unfortunately these were the highest resolution versions of these logos, and I couldn’t find examples anywhere else of the logos.

I had to try and recreate the logos on illustrator, which was a difficult task to try and match up a similar font, in the end I opted for the Mohave font I used earlier for the ‘Westgate’ on the helmet. The font needed to be expanded, elongated and then squashed to roughly match the current logos. Fortunately this font came with a variety of thicknesses and italics to help better match my versions of the logos.

This is the text at the base of the poster, I tried to not detract from the poster as much as possible, I used a pure white with a 70% opacity to soften the text and logos. The ‘Lucky Series’ text is identical to the text on the back of the helmet, and the additional text is all done in Mohave, and slightly squashed and elongated.

The Buddha poster is the same as the Fu Dog, but with the colours inverted on the ‘Lucky Series’. This was for consistency reasons, and again not to detract from the poster subject.

This is the Fu Dog poster before cropping, I made the subject matter as large as possible to maximize the details. I also added the ‘Westgate x Icon’ in the top corner, and pushed the ‘x’ off to the left side. The idea of the placement with the text is to lead your eye from the top to the bottom of the poster, from left to right.

The poster set is a tryptic piece, with the focus on creating a balanced layout in order to make the illustrations stand out as much as possible.

I printed the posters in A2 format, on Lustre paper (semigloss) to give the poster some shine, whilst maintaining a poster look and feel. I also trimmed off the white posters as I felt this better complimented the design. This is the poster in the correct order, as it would be displayed behind the helmet stand.

June 1, 2015
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Final Major Project: Applying the Vinyl

Now that I had picked up the vinyl the last major step was to fit the vinyl to the helmet, I had some tools prepared to help me fit the vinyl in the best, most professional way possible. My list of tools is as follows:

Heat Gun
3M Vinyl Applicator Card
Flexible Plastic Card (like a debit card)
Paint Preperation Wipes
Scalpel and Fresh Blades
Knifeless Tape

I had never done vinyl wrapping before so I enlisted the help of my brother to help me, it came in very useful to have two people when initially fitting the vinyl and when applying heat and stretching the vinyl simultaneously.

I prepared a clean work space, with good lighting in order to do the fitting, I had a cushion to rest the helmet on to stop the helmet from moving while applying the vinyl. This is the vinyl before fitting.

This is the Knifeless tape, I took the opportunity to practice using the Knifeless tape before I had to use it for real, I knew that some people complained about not getting perfect cuts with the product, so I thought it would be best to test it. The Knifeless tape consists of a tape with a thin metal wire inside, which can be removed in order to cut the vinyl.

I had some offcuts of white vinyl to practice with, you can see here the texture of the vinyl underneath, it contains lots of air channels to help stop air bubbles from forming when applying the vinyl.

First practice attempt at laying down vinyl, this was an incredibly worthwhile step as I could start to put into practice what I had learnt during the research stages of this project. The material has a lot of stretch, and has to be worked a lot to get it to sit flush on a curved surface. It is also worth noting that the vinyl I will be applying had imagery printed onto it, so stretching the material will distort the pattern. I attempted to use the Knifeless tape, but the cut was pretty jagged, I attempted using the Knifeless tape two more times after this before deciding that it would be too much of a risk to use on the helmet, as it takes such a long time to lay down the vinyl, it would be wasted if the cut is not good. Instead I opted to use a scalpel.

I decided to start with the top pattern piece as there was not too much curvature to this piece. I prepared the surface with Paint Prep wipes to remove any grease left by finger marks, and any other contaminants such as dust.

Initial pattern testing, I wanted the pattern to be perfectly even, so this step took quite a bit of time.

About to apply the vinyl, I found the centreline of the pattern and smoothed it against the helmet, before working outwards.

Here you can see the vinyl being pushed into the creases using the heat gun and the applicator card.

I started to cut around the pattern with a scalpel, leaving a bit of overhang to push into the crease.

Initial scalpel cut, which came out reasonably even, all I had to do now is push the vinyl into the creases. With this top section I had the luxury of being able to tuck the pattern underneath the plastic ventilation section to hide the edges of the vinyl.

Initial pattern tuck, this vastly improved the edges, however this technique did not work for the front of the pattern piece, so this had to be cut as neatly as possible. It was a pretty steep learning curve, fortunately I had two sets of vinyl, but I still had to be careful how I went about cutting the vinyl.

Top section complete, I was pretty happy with this as the pattern turned out completely central and the image had not deformed, in this photo the front still needed a bit more tucking, but this was finished off at a later stage.

The next section was the Fu Dogs on either side of the helmet, these were the two largest pieces of vinyl, but they needed to be laid down first in order for the other pieces of vinyl to be laid. Fitting this piece to the curve was very time consuming, and required a lot of heating and stretching, I had to be careful not to overstretch the pattern as once it was over stretched it could not be put back. I also had to spend a lot of time working creases and bubbles out of the vinyl, again this was achieved with the heat gun, I also lifted the vinyl up and re-smoothed as another method of removing bubbles and creases.

The next step was to cut around the side pods, I had to keep the scalpel pretty even between the helmet and the side pod, in order to leave enough material to tuck around on both the sections. In the photo above you can see that I left excess vinyl on the visor, this is so I could tuck the excess around the side pod to get a neat fitment.

Once I removed the side pods from the visor it was a simple case of tucking the excess vinyl for a clean finish.

Trimming the edges of the Fu Dogs vinyl proved to be easier than the top piece, as the scalpel could sit in the channels much more comfortably in these particular sections as compared to the top section. This piece would need more trimming later before fitting the other vinyl pieces.

Just a quick tester shot to see how the vinyl was shaping up. The side pods matched perfectly with the side sections, which was a relief as I had no way of knowing if this technique would work before applying the vinyl.

The two pieces of vinyl together. You can also see here that the vinyl above the visor had to be trimmed to match the contours of the helmet, the was a particularly difficult line to cut, but came out pretty well, regularly changing the scalpel blade made this process a lot smoother.

Again, Paint Prepping the other side of the helmet in order to lay down the second Fu Dog.

In the initial stages of laying this Fu Dog down it took a lot longer, as I had to try and match this side with the other side as closely as possible. However the smoothing process was slightly quicker as I got to grips with the techniques. The photo above shows the applicator card being used, along with heat, to push the vinyl into the creases around the side pod.

You can see the kind of creases that needed to be slowly worked out of the vinyl, the side pieces were by far the most difficult and time consuming due to the large amount of curvature.

The second Fu Dog laid down and cut around the tops and bottoms. The front and back will be trimmed before laying down the other pieces of vinyl.

The two side pods turned how pretty much perfectly even, which is great as the face is a focal point of the design, and having both of these even on both sides was very important.

These are the cut lines for the front and the back of the Fu Dogs, the front cut lines follow the lines of the air vents on top of the helmet, and the rear lines follow the curve of the rubberised section at the base of the helmet, up to the tips of the air vents. I initially wanted the back section to be cut off by the cliffs, but as the pattern was stretch, this was have left the back of the helmet uneven.

Front section trimmed, lines came out very clean here, and follow the lines of the air vents well.

Back sections trimmed, the lines are very even and the cuts are smooth.

Next section to lay down was the rear section. This went on pretty quickly in comparison to the side pieces, once I had lined the pattern background up with the top section, and made sure the Bhudda fitted on without overlapping the cut lines, me and my brother stretched the vinyl, and smoothing from the middle, laid it out in one go, with a minimal amount of smoothing necessary.

You can just about see the exhaust vents underneath the vinyl, which needed to be trimmed. You can also very faintly see the bulge of were the Fu Dogs vinyl is underneath, this made the cut line which needed to be followed.

Once I had followed the cut lines, which required spot lamps shining directly onto the surface in order for the ridge to stay visible, I simply cut the exhaust vents in from edge to edge.

Both exhaust vents finished. These were easy to tuck the material into the vent, much like the technique used on the top of the helmet.

Next step was to create the cut lines for the chin piece, I cut around the Fu Dogs ball to help hide this cut line. The goal here was to create the illusion of one wrap around piece.

Initial fitting of the chin piece. This went on pretty smoothly, but did require a lot of stretching as my measurements were marginally off.

The forehead piece went on pretty hassle free, this was after all the smallest curvature piece on the helmet.

Initial cutting of the forehead piece, this was later cleaned up a bit. This proved to be pretty difficult as the vinyl had to tuck under a forehead vent that slid open and shut, eventually with some gentle persuasion the fit was pretty good.

Once the chin piece had been trimmed to match the cut lines around the ball the helmet was complete! The illusion of the front being one piece turned out pretty well, and the pattern and colour change is mimicked pretty exactly. Overall I am incredibly happy with the outcome of the helmet, I am very happy that the measurements were correct and that the vinyl went on first time.

Here is the helmet and stand together, it works quite nicely!

The helmet in some daylight with a better camera. I am very happy with the outcome of the vinyl fitting, and the designs utilize the space in a way that I had hoped they would. Overall a successful venture.

May 30, 2015
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Final Major Project: Picking Up the Vinyl

Today I went to Boss Dog (http://www.bossdog.co.uk/) to go and pick up the vinyl for the helmet, I had gone about three days prior to drop the files off by hand, Luca had kindly offered to print my vinyl for free so I bought him a case of cold ones to say thank you!

The shop is awesome and they have some in house designers who I spoke to about the format of my work and the scale etc.

This is me leaving with the vinyl, when I got home I checked it out in a lot closer detail, and the print quality is really good! The vinyl seems very high quality with air channels to help push out air bubbles when the vinyl is applied. Overall I’m very happy with the vinyl, fitting it will be the real challenge though.

May 30, 2015
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Final Major Project: Making the Display Stand

The next step I decided to work on was the display stand, as per the project proposal. I looked at various existing helmet stands but they all seemed to run along the same theme.

They were either glass boxes, floor stands or table stand which lacked any sort of presence, I could just buy a table stand but I wanted something a bit better than that. I spoke to one of my tutors about possible having the stand rotate so you could see all the details of the helmet, this would be particularly beneficial in the degree show.

Whilst I was researching into how I could make my own helmet stand I stumbled across a Star Wars forum (http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=2547) which explained how a lot of people use paper towel holders as the pole for the helmet to sit on, I found some basic measurements that showed that the pole for paper towel holders average about 33cm, which is just enough to hold the helmet up.

I did some research into various paper towel holder and decided on a stainless steel one as I wanted the helmet to spin, I wanted to give an illusion that the pole itself wasn’t moving. I ended up buying this one from John Lewis.

I also managed to get hold of this wall shelf from Tiger (http://www.tigerstores.co.uk/) which fitted what I wanted exactly, I needed a space to put in a turntable, and this would work perfectly. The box measuered 27cm across.

The next step was to order the turn table, I found this heavy duty item which measured 25cm across, which would fit perfectly inside the base.

The first step was to modify the base, so the kitchen roll holder could poke through the top, and the turn table (which sits under the kitchen role holder) could fit its power cable through one of the side panels.

I had this hole saw drill bit that was only 5mm smaller than the kitchen roll holder diameter. I decided to use this as it was the closest fit, and I could simply use a Dremel with a sander head to make the fit perfect.

Once I had found the centre point I used the Dremel with a small drill bit to make a pilot hole for the hole saw drill bit.

Initial pilot hole drilled.

I had to use a much larger drill to accommodate the hole saw drill bit.

Hole cut, it went suprisingly smoothly given that the wood is very thin, I used the weight of the drill and didn’t apply any extra pressure.

I then drilled a small hole in the side of the box for the turntables power cable, which I then sanded out using the Dremel.

This is the small sanding piece I used to sand out the power cable slot and make the hole for the paper towel holder the correct size.

Test fitting the pole into the base.

The fit turned out very well and looks pretty professional.

Initial test of the helmet stand, with the turntable in place.

The next step was to skin the box, I started with what colour I wanted, you can see the progress from left to right. The middle colour palette was printed on lustre to see the colour in real life, and the colour on the right was the final colour I picked, it is a combination of middle and bottom colours of the middle palette. This solid colour was then printed onto A3 Lustre.

I cut the shape out by tracing the box onto the paper and then using a scalpel to cut the paper to shape and make the folds.

I made this wrap around on Illustrator using the measuring tool and matching the size to that of the base. I had to print it A2 to fit the length of it on, so I just put two identical copies of the wrap around on one page just in case of any mistakes during the cutting process. The text is identical to what I had produced in the ‘Pattern Pieces, Chinese Texts, and Fonts’ post. These are spread on the front three panels of the base.

Test fitting the wrap around printed on the laser printer. I was pretty happy with the measurements at this point.

I cut the hole in the top layer of the skin to match the drilled hole underneath. This is the stand in its finished form. I used spray mount to glue the pieces to the base, I’m very happy with the overall look of the stand.

The stand with the helmet in situ.

May 29, 2015
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Final Major Project: Buddha Process and Development to Final Illustration

Instead of doing another long post for the development of the Buddha, like I did with the Fu Dog, I decided to do something a bit different. I did a full screen capture of the entire drawing process from start to finish using a program called Chronolapse. This took a picture of my screen every five seconds, and then stitched the frames together at 30 frames per second (all these variables are adjustable). I felt like this was more appropriate for the Buddha as all the colour theory and remained the same, even the skin tone is based on the exact some colours, opacities, and textures. The background for the Buddha is another version of the pattern piece that I created.

The piece comprises of black line drawing, base colour, two tones of shading (just like the Fu Dog) and one layer of highlights. The background of the Buddha is the pattern piece and a Gaussian blur shadow for the Buddha. The type again, was created previously to this drawing and was added in at the end. The music I chose for the video is based on the kind of thing I listen to when I draw, but with a bit of an Asian twist. Please watch on YouTube by clicking the YouTube button on the bottom right of the player to get a full size video player.

May 29, 2015
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Final Major Project: Ladybird By Design Exhibition

We went to go and view the Ladybird by Design exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion. The exhibition consisted of 200 different illustrations, primarily spanning the years 1950 to 1970. These books are incredibly well known and held dearly to the people who grew up reading them, this is all before the internet so a lot of people learnt through these books. The books illustrations show an idealistic view on society, in a time of instability in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The books show an idealistic middle-class and sometimes very un-politically correct stand point, by today’s standards. We weren’t aloud to take pictures in the exhibition, but I found a few of my favorite images and posted them below.

From an illustration stand point the work surprised me in its style and use of colour, I have no recollection of reading Ladybird books as a child (although I am sure I have read a few). The use of subtly black lines and colour was quite extraordinary, as it seemed to be so delicately and painstakingly rendered by hand, particularly in the last piece (shown above). This helped me to look more critically at the use of colour in my work, how the small changes in colour, and how objects interact with light and dark, can be very subtle, and so critical at the same time. I particularly like the contrasting school of fish in red, the extra colours helps bring the image to life.

May 29, 2015
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Final Major Project: Pick Me Up Exhibition

We went to the Pick Me Up Exhibition at Somerset House, which is a graphic arts festival, which comprises of ‘new illustration, graphic design and related disciplines to inspire and delight’. Below are a few of my favorite pieces from the exhibition.

Me and Jack Whiting got to speak to Moth Collective (http://mothcollective.co.uk/) a London based animation collective who were running there studio from Pick Me Up.

We spoke to them about their animation process, and the equipment they use to achieve the desired design style, a surprisingly large amount of the animation was done in Photoshop, with some finishing effects added in Adobe After Effects. Although I didnt directly record the conversation, we chatted for approximately 15 minutes as their studio was right in the corner of Pick Me Up and not overly busy. The animator who I spoke to, Daniel Chester, talked me through the Wacom Cintiq 22HD he was using to draw some of the characters, and how he combines this with hand drawn techniques. It was incredibly interesting to see how their studio functioned. We also talked about how the studio had just become a full time job. The three designer who left University five years ago, formed the collective and took on freelance jobs in their spare time, and the work gained steadily till the point that the studio went full time. It was great to see how much time and effort they put into making a career out of the studio and working for themselves.