Colin McHenry and self promotion

Recently we had been set a goal to create a piece of self promotion; something we could send to possible clients to promote our artwork. It is something that has to be eye catching and interesting, something a client will want to keep.

At first my initial idea was to make a small comic pack titled 'how to be a hipster illustrator' it would include a mocking comic in which aspects such as logo and appearance (big black framed glasses are very important, if you don't need glasses, poke yourself in the eye til you do) outweigh the importance of the art being made (because as a hipster illustrator, you'll copy your favourite artists) it would include badges, a colouring- page postcard (don't conform to society's rules by staying in the lines!)

However, for the best this idea was dismissed by Pete. He felt it wouldn't be a good idea to potentilly take the piss out of a potential clients other artists. Not to mention that i seemed to fall into a lot of the hipster appearance tick boxes, which obviously means that hipsters are copying me.

Another idea I had was for a small comic of dialogue between a man and cat, ultimately it was funny, but too long without much going on. If it were an animation, it would be perfect, but as a comic it was too drawn out.



It was a poor comic idea BUT, as I made a mock up comic it meant I could sort out the page configurations for comics (which page would go behind or
Next to which etc) so that in itself was a good learning experience.

It was finally decided my self promotion should be a observational comic about food, either sushi or fast food burgers. Excited, I set about making drawings for it








Soon I started drawing a little bread character, and a spontaneous comic emerged







I decided this is what I wanted my self promotion to be. The next step was to scan it in, clean it up, and lay it out on 2 A4 pages in a comic format.




This was the end result. I'm pretty pleased with it.

Through the week I made more comics,


Biscuits




Eggplant. Which I coloured in Photoshop to give a screenprintesque effect.




I also made some stickers!




And some badges! I ordered them from ka-pow badges and they were so fantastic!




This was my final self promotion piece (stickers are in the back)

We had a talk from Colin McHenry, who has worked in magazines for a long long time. His talk was good and went over some things that previous lecturers such as Fig Taylor had said, such as find obscure magazines in WHSmith that you could work for.

In the afternoon was judgement time. Colin McHenry and the tutors would judge the third years self promotion pieces and pit them either in the good bin, or bad bin.




It was all very tense.




Everyone was on tenterhooks.

The judging was somewhat haphazard, possibly because there were 6 judges!! Some times things would be commented upon, but other times ignored. It even went as far to judge the envelope and decoration, sometimes even the stamps used. It was an incredibly long afternoon. Ultimately, I can say my piece went in the good bin, so that's good