contextawareness

In CA2 my teachers told me it was good that I did research on theatre in my plusplan, because this was a field I wanted to explore and eventually find an internship in. Now I have broadened my vision on possibilities within the professional field, because I have also focussed on other fields than theatre. When looking for an internship I was diving deeply into the world of animation. I had contact with some companies and got an idea of what it's like to be working in that field. I also did several comissions that were illustration focussed, which gave me a better idea of what it would be like to work as an actual illustrator.

IFFR exists 50 years in 2021, so they wanted to have 50 posters be made for the next 50 years and exhibit them in an exhibition. The assignment was to make a poster for a year in the future. It could be anything and you were even allowed to change the logo.

For the IFFR poster I was very aware of who they were, what they have been representing in the last years and what they want to continue to be.
I immediatly had the words 'perspective' and 'reflection' in my mind when working on this. I imagined how the festival always shows you different perspectives in the movies, by showing different cultures, people and movies from all over the world. The movies seem refreshing and educational, because it makes you reflect on who you are in this world. I wanted to represent these two terms into an image. I looked at their previous posters. Lately the posters give of a 'digital' vibe. I wanted to incorporate this in my design.

I chose to go for the digital tiger, who walks on water. Not only does the water reflect the tiger, it shows a different version of him where he looks at you instead of away. He is looking from different perspectives.

I was asked to make drawings on the so called 'spatschermen' (spittingscreens) in the restaurant De Zeeuwse Hemel. They invited illustrators from the whole country to draw on the screens, so the screens would not only be practical for corona, but also look like an exhibition. The exhibition was called 'from two sides'.

I couldn't make explicit works, because it was going to hang in a restaurant. Even works that could be considered not explicit, but still show nipples, were not okay. The owners told me it had to be nice for the costumers to look at while they were eating.

I ended up making two nice works, which I was super happy about. Not only did I get to hang my work among other Dutch illustrators, I also got to work with Rogier Roeters and Samantha Williams, because they were invited on the same day. It was nice to be able to have conversations with them about being an illustrator and exchanging our work. This was a very insightful experience.

For my t-shirt project I had to keep in mind who my audience was, whether they were going to buy it, what they liked and where they would buy it from. I put a lot of research in this project. I thought of first producing the shirts myself by screenprinting.

I got the advice to do it on everpress.com, a company that produces and sends the shirts to the buyer. It is a website that focusses especially on artists like me.They work with campaigns. This means you can start a campaign for your design that lasts for a certain amount of time. During this time people can pre-order the shirts. After the campaign ends the shirts will be produced and send. This seemed like a much better idea, because it was way less time consuming for me. I wouldn't have to do administration, producing and sending the packages. The one thing that was a downside was that I was limited in how personalized I could make the shirts. I could for example not print in the neck of the t-shirt, I couldn't add a label and not put it in nice packaging. Regardless, I thought using Everpress would be a good start.

I want to see how the campaign will go once I launch it. If it is succesful, I'll consider using Everpress again. I do want to try in the plusweeks to see what it's like to produce my own t-shirts.