I was sitting in my Illustration 460 class with professor Casey Nelson when she announced an event happening in our department. Art Director Mark Holmes was going to present, and we could submit our portfolios with the chance of being selected for a review.
When I heard this I thought "Why not?"
As the deadline to submit grew closer, I spent hours formatting my PDF. The next day I got an email in my inbox that looked like this:
I felt ecstatic. I was one of the lucky 20.
When January 29th arrived I moved my desk to face the only blank wall in my room, logged into zoom and turned on my camera. I only had 5 minutes with Mark Holmes, and I wanted to make it count. Turns out five minutes goes by pretty fast, but it went great.
Mark gave me valuable insights about my work and how to improve it. I just sat, wrote notes, and let the expert do the talking. It was an eye-opening experience.
At the end of the review all of the selected students and I received an assignment from Mark: To make an environment illustration of a character’s room (one existing or our own) with a list of steps to take during the process. In essence, this was a visual development assignment. The assignment was optional…but how could I turn it up?
Mark reminded us that"
“Visual development is about solving problems.” and to “EXPLORE ALL OPTIONS.”
SI set out to work, and with it came new discoveries.
First, I discovered the importance of research. I couldn’t JUST draw a kitchen. I had to ask myself: What type of kitchen is it? Who lives here? What type of cabinets? What type of stove? and so on…
I also had to think about what angle would yield the most storytelling opportunity in my scene, how the floorplan would effect the visual elements of my illustration, and more. I’ve never spent so much time looking up apartment floorplans.
Needless to say this was a much-needed learning experience.
On February 11th I finished up my PowerPoint, final image (which I was working on when I received the MVP award for StartUp week) and sent it into the ether! The next day at 1pm I moved my desk again, logged into zoom, and waited eagerly for the review to start.
The Review
Fourteen students (including myself) submitted the environment drawing. Mark generously donated 3 hours of his time reviewing each of our pieces and giving feedback. First, he pulled up an image, and for 5 minutes we guessed based off context clues what we could infer about the character who lived there. Then, the character was revealed and the artist spoke.
There were so many amazing pieces. I’m so proud of my peers.
Naturally my piece was last. There were comments about how the work could be improved, and I was relieved that most of the key traits of my character were inferred through the image. While going over my process work, Mark gave me the advice to present 3-4 pages of process so people could look through it quickly (meanwhile I had about 30 pages…whoops XD). I felt happy when he said:
“Fantastic presentation of work!”
After the zoom ended, I bought myself a well deserved bubble tea and slept for 10 hours.
You can find my final image and process below:
