Victo Ngai

Dear John, The Victo Ngai talk was really good so I tried applying somethings that she does to her work (and things I'd like to explore myself) to mine. for a while now I've been thinking that I need to explore texture and that my black lines are too harsh for al of the illustration but even after playing with it I'm not really sure what I'm doing. I think I need the contrast to be stronger because I just went from it being really harsh to being really soft. I think I should play with texture too as I think it adds a bit of depth. However I think its going to take a bit of work before it looks decent. Notes from the talk: ...Make the most of your limitations - use the space you have effectively ...How to pick the right moment in the story - how to plan the right composition ...Capture the concept of the story and foreshadow the ending without giving it away ...Use the cropped space to reinforce the idea of size ...Size of the character/object reflecting the emotion or their role in the story ...Fit the structure of the story ...More money for a job tends to mean less freedom -big corps. are less artistic and give more instructions - less appreciation than from an art director ...They can demand all sorts of things like how all the men have to wear long sleeves ...Advertisement will buy the rights to your drawing for a certain amount of time (3 months etc.) and they can use it on everything ...When given something vague, make your own narrative ...The way you grew up may be visible in your work, Victo Ngai said that she draws busy scenes because she grow up in Hong Kong ...Make textures ...As long as its consistent within your drawing its fine not to be literal ...A good illustration (balance structures) should work in black and white as well as in colour ...higher contrast lines for closer and fading ones for background ..."obstacles are for eliminating the ones who don't want it enough"