Poster Design.

I am designing a poster fo a charity ( in my language). Images above are reference images. I like how each posters use several typeface and they look amazing and professional. . White colour type and dark background colour will make the type stand out. 

Having an illustrative background and a limited colour pallet are good as well but I don't think I will have enough time for it. I just want to create  simple poster, maximum 2 hours. 

Image above is my outcome. I used one of scanned texture from my texture folder that I saved.I like the subtle textured background which make my typography bolder. I had had to download few new fonts for example 'EverAfter' and 'Tall Dark and Handsome'.

I really enjoy making posters for events especially it allow me to use different fonts. 

Animation skill.

Animation Icon Pack from Miguel D'Errico on Vimeo.

This animation is so cool !! I bet I can make something like this either for my cop or 603. I like the smoothness of each thing that appear on the animation. I also like the colour scheme.

Improving my animation skills is one of the thing that I really need to work on and excite me a lot ! Okay I'm going to go back to my research for 603.

Scholarship.

I just submitted a Commonwealth scholarship application yesterday. I don't think I did it so well because I was rushing as the deadline was approaching but anyway, I submitted anyway. I was long for  another scholarship, and I found this :-

Turkey International Scholarship - Website
The applications open from 25th February to the 31th March. I will probably going to apply this for sure as I went to Turkey and I love their arts and culture. It informed my practice a lot. I already put a reminder on my phone so i won't miss this! I will do my best to not rush when I apply this scholarship like I did for Commonwealth.

K-Arts Art Major Asian Scholarship Program in Korea, 2016 - Website  and Okazaki Kaheita International Scholarship for Master’s Students in Japan, 2016 - Website. I will miss this two applications because they academic year for Japan and Korea is in April and June. So, I might try to apply the 2017 academic year because April and June 2016, I will still be in the UK.

I might look at other scholarships so back up.

Basically I am not ready to go back to my country, so I need to find something to allow me to stay abroad either working or studying abroad. I prefer to work rather than studying because I think I am ready for it but doing an MA is my 2nd choice. I need an MA anyway if I want to be a lecturer. 

Internship at Hallmark

I sent an email to Laura, a lady that wring at Hallmark (I met her before) but she haven't replied. I attached my portfolio and CV as well.

My email to her :-

"Hi Laura!

My name is Zatul, final year BA(Hons) in illustration. Two weeks ago, Kelly Jones and you ( I believe) visited my college, Leeds College of Art. She talked about internship and I would like to intern at your company.

I did some internships at two companies before so I have some experience in working at real company but it will be amazing if I can intern at a card company as I bet the atmosphere will be different. 

I have been selling my artwork across events in the UK but recently I got a table at Thought Bubble festival, the biggest comic art festival in the UK and based in Leeds which have gained my confidence on my work and my communication skill. 

Here are link online links:- https://www.behance.net/ZatulArts, https://www.instagram.com/zatul_iffah/ and here I attached my CV and my portfolio.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Zatul."

I bet I got some grammatical errors, if so I think it is my fault because I was rushing with this internship thing. Okay, next time, I need to calm down,stop rushing and think about stuff that I want to include on the email.

My Portfolio and CV that I attached:-

http://issuu.com/zf94759/docs/zatul_iffah_portfolio1_cc3339fd0b926c

I hope I do everything right, Well I included some of my work on the pdf and reduced the size so it less that 2M.

Next plan : I might trying to talk to a girl from BBC on my Linkedin, asking about the internship. But how shall I start the conversation?

Owen Davey.

Last year Owen Davey added me on LinkedIn. Owen Davey is a well known illustrator and he did BigHeads with us last year. He is one busy illustrator as sometimes he really took his time to reply my message, but I don't mind since his work is amazing.

There are a lot of good advices that he gave me. Such as :-

• Keep making GOOD work
• Contact a lot of people that I want to work with such as Art directors.
• Start with Editorial work is a good idea
• Email and add some images on the emil with a low resolution (but not attached)

I like it when he advised me that 'No need to be scared though. People are mostly friendly'. 

I think the final bullet point is interesting. I think what he meant is something like this:-

At the end of my email contain this little image (as a signature) that contain my contact detail and some example of my work. I think I need to explore more bout this as I am not so sure how to do this thing on gmail.

My lovely wish list.

My wishes before Christmas holiday:-

1. To apply some internships at a card companies/tv stations 
2. To get a secure place to intern after I submit my COP which is after the 15th January 2016.
3. Come out with a set of questions that I want to as professionals
4. Build some strong body of work so I can build my website after new year. 
5. Email images to illustrators that I took pictures with at Thought Bubble
6. Email other designers that I bought their stuff from Thought Bubble. 

Katy Halford

I've been following Katy Halford on Instagram. I like the fact that she doodle a lot using a black fine-liner which I do that a lot. Her work are really colourful and charming. 

Then I decided to add her on linked in, I thought she going to ignore my request but she accepted which did made my day. Within a second, I sent her a message saying that how much I love her work and she replied 'Thank you very much :) I hope your final year of studies goes well!'

Okay, I haven't not reply anything ever since and I don't know what to ask. I don't feel like myself whenever I am contacting professionals. I feel awkward and dishonest. Maybe I need to make a list of questions that I need (extremely) want to know then ask he/she/them?

Being apart of Thought Bubble festival was amazing yet hectic. I had to force myself to do fan art which is completely outside my comfort zone. I was enjoy the money but not making itself.  I made £170 during the festival which have covered my printing and table cost.

I don't think fan art is my sort of thing that I want to do for the rest of my life. Having Thought Bubble visitors saying that they love my work have slowly increase my confident which is good. talking to strangers also slowly decreased my stress that I was having for the pass weeks and weeks before the festival.


Next year, if I'm still in the UK I would like to have a table again, but this time I would like to do more about my stuff instead of fan art.  I was amazed that some designers that I met last year during the festival remembered me and we managed to take photos together. They keep telling me to keep in touch and wish me luck.

Overall, I would like to join some other festival if there are more opportunities.

Thursday After School Club

I am thinking that my long term career is to be a lecturer. So since last year, I decided to do a weekly student ambassador with the Progression Team at LCA. This weekly ambassador work is called 'Thursday After School Club'.

Recently, Thursday After School Club have contributed with making probe for Thought Bubble. Well overall I really enjoy working with them. This work helping me to gain a lot of my skills such as communication, confidence, working in a group skills. But the most skill that this ambassador work teaching me is patience skill. I realised that I need a lot of patient working with younger people. But they are alway make me happy. 

I hope by doing this ambassador work will slowly shape my personality to be a good lecturer. 

CV Updated !

Ok I updated my CV, I will show to John tomorrow for his feedback then will send this to Hallmark. Hopefully I'll get a chance to do an internship for 2 weeks.

I still need to choose some of my work to them and some of my online present.

Oh god god god, my dear god. I am applying scholarship for my master. I started last week then I want to finish it off today then I went to the website then this appeared

Hmm. no comment.

Career Track Tuesday workshop

I went to Career Track Tuesday workshop, and there was three different speakers talking about internship, volunteering etc. One of the speaker caught my eyes, she's from Hallmark her name is Kelly Jones, the card company. After the talk, I ask her how do I apply for it then she told me to go on the Hallmark blog.

At the end of the session, I went at the back to ask her more question. But you know what ! I realised that I always talk very super duper fast whenever I'm nervous ! Arghh. I need to calm down more. I also forgotten to introduce myself !!!!! god.

I asked if I can do a studio, but then she said, I need to send an email to them first then they'll keep in touch.

So now, First, I want to edit my Cv. Second, I want to add her at Linkedin but I need to complete my profile and finally send an email to them so I can do two weeks internship at Hallmark.

Let's do this thing !!!!!!

Studio Visit : Astro Awani

I went to a studio visit yesterday at a tv station called Astro Awani. This was a last minute visit as my mum was called my the tv station to do some recording and without thinking twice I want to join my mum to the studio. My flight to the United Kingdom is tomorrow anyway so this was a proper last minute studio visit.

Cameramen preparing the cameras for the shoot.

I think a tv station's studio is completely different than any other studios that I went.  There are so many cameras and lights in the recording studio. When we arrived at the studio, we went to a guess room and they provided us some soft drinks, then my mum went to a make up room then we went to the studio for recording. The presenter did not do any rehearsal which is quite amazing because I need to rehearse a lot if I presenting to someone. 

Pink circle : Was live on TV.

Green circle : The news presenter will be on air and live in 5 minutes.

It was interesting to see news presenter present the news live on the studio. He looks serious during presenting the news but relax during advert or clips on tv. There was a tv on the studio; it was amazing to see he live on tv and live in front of my eyes. 

Overall this was an good experience and I am looking forward to visit more studios and meet more professionals in the future. 

Studio Visit : Infinite Motion 3D Animation Studio

Me with animators at the company.

I went to a studio visit yesterday at an animation company in Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. I met the CEO in Limkokwing London then keep in touch until now. I emailed the company early summer to intern but they did not reply so I decided to send again an email to do a studio visit and they welcomed me to visit their studio on Monday the 14th of September 2015. This company creates a lot of 3D animation for Malaysian TV stations also create Malaysian 3D movies.

There are few things that I learnt:-
1. 3D cartoon can edit to 2D cartoon.
2. Women's voice use for children's voice in cartoon as they have soother voices compared to man.
3. Each character they created need to register at a copyright company which means they own the character so nobody can copy the character that they created. If someone copied it and commercialise it, they can sue them.
4.  To register the character, you need to pay them each one of them.

I was so nervous at first because most of the staffs are males and they look busy animating characters but then the CEO introduced me to their staffs then i got to talk to every single animators at the studio and I managed to give out my promo pack to most of them. They are friendly and welcomed me well. I did not ask many questions as I did not prepare any but overall, I enjoy studio visit and meeting new designers all over places !

I think going to conference really help me because I don't think I will do internships and studio visit if I hadn't go to the conference. As at the conference I met professionals and able to know and talk to them.

Internship at Malaysia : Day 5

My cars to get in the building and the office.

Yesterday was my final day internship at Megasap. The CEO gave me few things that need to be complete before I leave the company.
1. Design a compass for SurvivalTravel apps. (Mandatory)
2. A Logo for their 3D game called 'Pixel Racer' (Mandatory)
3. Create following and follower logos. (Optional)

I manages to finish off the 1st and 2nd tasks but not the third task. I also had had to teach the whole office staff (around 8 people) the basic of  After Effects. It was spontaneous as the CEO told me to teach them in the morning. I was a bit nervous but I manages to do everything in one go without rehearsal and managed to answers all the questions.

I think internship at Megasap was so much fun but so challenging as there was no senior designer and  the CEO depending on me to lead some other young internship students on their simple animations by using Ai and Ps.  The CEO also asked me a lot of question whenever it comes to design e.g layout, editing and tutorial of Ai,Ps,Ae or Pr.

I stared working on Thursday the 3rd to Friday the 11 September 2015. However, I start coming to the office on the 11th Sept because I live quite far from the capital city. In total I made Rm180 = £30.

As a designer, this was my first ever pay job. I am one happy girl.

Our final portrait together.

Designs from the internship at Megasap.

These are my main work when I did at my internship.

1. Opening animation for a mobile apps called SurvivalTravel.

Took me 3 days to animate this 3 seconds animation as I need to edit and redo, edit and redo a lot! go knows how many times I've watch this animation. 

2. Pixel drawings for 3D gam

Image on top left is designs that I did for the client, which is the company. Then they hired a 3D game designer to use my design for their objects such as aircraft, ground etc as shown on the image (top right)

I had a chance to mess around with the 3D game before I finished my internship. That proud feeling to see that they use your design for gaming. This made me realise that an illustrator can also work and contribute with 3D game.

3. Logo for 3D game called Racer Pixel

I personally doesn't like the logo but the client likes it. However the client changed the shadow to darker colours to fit with their dark background.

4. Design a compass for their mobile apps called SurvivalTravel.

Internship at Malaysia : Day 3 and 4

Me working hard on my animation. First time in my life working with more than 50 frames on Ae !

Day 3 :
The boss decided to ale the 5 seconds animation to 3 seconds long as 5 seconds is too long for an opening apps animation. This is an easy task because I can just move the stuff on the 'position'.

When I was in the early second year of BAIL, I was so scared of industry but now I think I am ready to face the art industry as I already went to three different companies during this summer holiday and hopefully will do some studio visits next week.

Day 4 :
I had to help my friends with some weather gif by using Ai and Ps. This task is harder than my 3 animation that I did on the 1-3rd day. This is because the animation leave some white stuff at the edge of the illustration and limited to 6 frames.

Working with Megasap company is a whole new experience as now we are facing three different projects. First is a 3D game called Pixel Racer, and apps called SurvivalTravel and SurvivalLanguage. Watching people making the game and apps is like a new language to me. I understand nothing and made me realised that art department is really broad.

I work with developers and  a game designer which they coding the apps and 3D games. I realised that making apps/ game can take so much time as you need to do a lot of coding which completely I don't know how to.

Tomorrow is my last day. Arghhh I don't want to leave this people and company !

Internship at Malaysia : Day 2

Day 2 :

Today I am still finishing off my 5 seconds animation. I think it is easy because I work at the company, the same office as my boss so if he want me to change any design then I can redo it straight away in front of him.I spending most of time with editing the video as the other keep commenting and advising. I am okay with this as I got pay for this. hahahaha. This is first ever pay job ! yey

Internship at Malaysia : Day 1

Today was my first day internship at a company called Megasap, a company that produced a lot of applications from variety clients all over the world. I had to singed a contract agreement on my first day which was on the 7th Sep 2015. I work here until the 11th September 2015. There are a lot of rules on the agreement for example, I need to work 37.5 hours a week, need to be punctual and not allowed to share any finish work on social medias.

I had had to produce a 5 seconds opening animation for a travel application. Even though it is only 5 seconds long, it took longer that I thought as there are a lot of animation that animating within those seconds. I leant a new whole technique in Ae which is called ‘CC Sphere’ - making a globe spin on Ae which is apart of the opening animation.

There was another design task that need to be done by tomorrow which will be done by other engineering intern students. Because there were no senior designer and I have to be the leader, they asked me a lot of advices on their animation and helped them with illustrator. I was not so confident at first but then my confidence started to build and managed to help them all along.

I had so much fun and looking forward to finish off my 5 seconds animation by tomorrow.

I contacted 'Annjfr', she is a freelance illustrator from Malaysia. She studied social science in a university.  I am not so sure what her real job is but I contacted her throughout Instagram as I've been following her since early this year.

My message to her. There are some Malaysian language btw.

Below are example of her work. She also do stop motion animation. I contacted her because I like her tone of voice especially when she use a black fine-liner when she doodle same as myself).

But at the end I did not meet her as she seems busy. I think it is interesting and to be honest I did not expect that she will reply my message but she did as usually famous people will not reply message to strangers. I just realised that I can contact professionals not only by email or phone call but on their official facbeook, Instagram or twitter.

Emailing...

Below are some companies that I contacted through email/facebook/instagram/behance:-

Kotak Hitam Art Studio - A printing company
Megasap - Mobile apps and gaming company
Frogtale Animation company - Animation company
Kasradesign - Animation company specialise in production
Annjfr - A Malaysian freelancer
Amin Daud - An illustrator from Tudidut design company.

Image above is one of my email to the company. Some company might be slightly different as I met the CEO before.

Internship day 3,4 and 5

Our last portrait together. From left, Alice Rusell, Jane, Tom (an Intern student), Dabie and me.

Overall working with Secret Harbour Ltd is a new whole world to me as I never working with film company before and this was my first time do this internship stuff. Over all I learnt a lot as I have to do things that I never tried before or good at e.g. using a typewriter, technical drawings of planes, boats. This environment has forced me to give it a go even though I made lot of mistakes during first few trials. However, I did not enjoy it much because I have got no chance to do what I want to do e.g. animation or illustration. 

Working with a film industry have broaden my knowledge and my mind. For example I learnt the rules of making a film, their strategies, borrowing items from companies for their film sets.

Internship day 2

Jane told us that we were lacking of technical drawing for the scene, so all I did today was technical drawings. I never did this style of drawing before. I was struggling at first then Jane came and helped me. That was useful. She told me to just 'fake it'. It doesn't have to be very detail as the camera will not zoom into the drawings. 

I did 17 sheets of technical drawings in total today. I realised that my drawings slowing changing into my tone of voice of illustration which is a bit funny but I managed to avoid that. 

I met a person who worked with Shaun the Sheep. He was a 'leg designer', he had to create a lot of characters' legs to use in their stop motion.

I realised that there are a lot of departments in making this film. I am working in art department, there is a accountant department, producer department etc.

There is this thing called 'Clearance summary' where the crews need to make sure that they do not use any existence brands, if they do then they need to tell the company or change it into something else.

The crews hire most of the equipments because it is cheaper than buying them. 

Internship day 1

5 days of internship at Secret Harbour Films Ltd, helping them with a movie called Swallows and Amazons for the BBC.

Monday , 3 August 2015
I was a bit nervous because I do not know what to expect.

Our door bell.

After I rang the bell, a lady called Jane collected me from the reception. She is so friendly and helpful. She explained about the task, showed me the kitchen and toilet and showed me the studios, where they do shootings.

The task was we have to create some drawing plans, sheets of paper with typewrite font and hand writing font including the main characters name on the letters.

I experimented with the old font because I need to create some letters to place for the background scenes. It was difficult at first but then I get so into it. I thought I cannot achieve the font but I did was I let myself some times to familiarise and create some mistakes.

I also used an old type writer machine. It was fun and it made a lot of noise. One thing about the machine is I cannot erase anything if I spell it wrong or something. 

There was other two interns student called Sunny and Tom. They were with me all day long. I think it is interesting to meet other art students from different art backgrounds and institutes.

Jane showed me a plane for a scene in a movie. They actually rent it from a high specialist plane company which the company specialise in hiring plane for movies. They used an actual plane for the movie and the plane was made from a crushed plane.

Nandos Design

Nandos' menu booklet

I like the pattern and the colour scheme for these booklets. They are so colourful yet block colour scheme. I think some of the shapes are made out of traditional collage rather than digitally painted which added a outlined shadow at the background.

30 Days Project

I was so scared if I stop drawing during summer. So I decided to look at some inspirations on instagram.  I found few illustrators and these two illustrators inspired me a lot for now. 

Gina Perry - A children's book author and illustrator.

Drawing an object differently 10 (or less) times by using the same media. 

Liz Nugent - an illustrator from Washington

Drawing an item with 5 different styles/medias/scales.

They gave me an idea to do a '30 days project' which I have to post a drawing per day on Instagram. This will push me to draw everyday. I wanted to explore new medias so I started off by exploring ink and watercolour for my '30 days project'. 

Wedding card

Now happening. 

Designing a wedding card for a friend. She wanted her wedding card simple that contains roses and watercolours style. Imagbe below are some inspirations that she gave me:-

She wanted text centred and using several font. The colour scheme is peach and gold.

Above are the final result

End of Year Show

I went to the End of Year Show and these illustrations caught my heart.

Malaysia Creatice Showcase

Malaysia Creative Tech Showcase in LimKokWing London. I was a bit nervous as this was my first time joining a conference. I did not know what to expect and I went there by myself. I was so scared if professionals doesn't want to  talk to me then what should I do.. but I was wrong all along.

During lunch break, I went to booths. There were around 10 booth but I went to an animation company booth called Infinite Motion and start taking to their CEO called DAto' Abdul Rahman. I was shaking god knows. But after awhile, I got hang of it, I started to show my work but I forgotten to give my promo pack !!! I also accidentally show my sketchbook, I should have shown my instagram or my behance as they contain more of my final work! anyway but the CEO from this company bought me lunch.

 I told him That I'm scared of my future, what if I can't get any job as earlier during a press conference I asked the speaker 'What can Malaysia provide me after I graduate?' and he gave me a lot of advice and the most important advice that he told me 'You are just like a baby duck. Baby duck scared to swim but once the mother duck push the baby duck at the river, they can swim. Same as you, you just need to go into the industry then you know what to do.'

Dato' giving his lecture.

I also met other professionals from different company called Megasap, an application company. The CEO added me on Facebook, we exchanged business card/promo pack and planning to visit his company in Malaysia in august !

I was shocked as on the 1st day I was the only student there and the rest was professionals. I talked to many professionals and they were expecting more students. But anyway, the professionals are really interesting people to talk to as they have a lot of experience and knowledge in the industries.

There were another staff from Megasap company suggested me to work with a company first so I can build my partnership then open my own company. She also told me that Malaysia lack of 40% designers and advised me to not so worried about my future and just follow the flow and apply jobs within my area of interest.

The Art Market.

 The Art Market is an opportunity for you to sell your work to visitors who come to the College during the End of Year Show. The Show takes place from Friday 12 June – Thursday 18 June and there are a number of extra events happening that week that will attract visitors, including the Private View, Open Days, and Taster Days.

Below are some of my work that ready to sell.

 In total, I made £74. I sold a lot of my sketchbook especially the coloured one, some of my birds screen print and bags. I was shocked because I did not expect that people would buy my stuff as I do not think I am good enough = pact of confident. The fact that I made a lot of money boosted my confidence in making more arty stuff. I think in the future, I will try to use more colours as all my colourful arty stuff were sold out !

We also had a rotation (incase if anyone want to buy our work and to keep an eye to the art stuff incase if people might steal them) because there were almost 30 students who sold their stuff and we have to hang our work together. 

Creative Strategy : Presentation

MY ONLINE PRESENCE.

I have four online presences.

Instagram

Vimeo

Likedin

Computer

Something happened to my laptop and it came out like this but it looks attractive though. I can make patterns out of this, print it onto a piece of fabric and sew it into a skirt but the colours are too bright maybe I need to tone it down a bit.. Fancy.