Introduction
Over the past 15 years my 'day job' has been working with teams and organisations to manage and improve delivery and effectiveness. When I started my studies, I tried to bring aspects of that world into my coursework. I have come to realise that my focus on this area in my professional life was a way to combat my neurodiverse brain's deficits in executive functioning.
When I get a new unit, I break down the work into exercises, research tasks and other supplementary work and visualise them in a digital tool. At this stage of my practice, I only visualise a simple workflow to manage what is (or isn't) done to help me track progress. When things are moving 'normally' it also helps me predict my work's completion date. This tends not to be practical with big variations, like the unexpected impacts of my mental health and employment over this year.
Looking through this exercise, I realised that looking at the steps of my process in more detail was similar in some ways to the process of Value Stream Mapping. Now that there is a necessity to try and take my creative work in a more professional direction, doing this exercise is a useful step as it will allow me to visualise my working process in more detail, and flesh out a value stream map of my creative services.
My Working Process
I spent some time thinking about my overall creative process. I realised after researching self-directed projects that my creative process differed based on the context in which I was working. I identified three main inputs to the process, and then mapped them out before turning them into the following workflow diagram:
The full creative process is broader than just the diagram above, which focuses mainly on the middle 'creation' part. In reality, the creative process also has a commercial practice aspect, and as such would have additional steps before and after this. This would have similarities with a sales or marketing funnel. I am pleased with this initial work, however, and it will be very useful when constructing a value stream when moving into more professional territory.
Research
While I don't love the research steps, I do seem to have a knack for it. There is a tension between the part that I enjoy: getting into the nooks and crannies to find information and links that others might miss and the risk of going too deep or off onto a research tangent. The latter is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a distraction from the brief. I have found over the years of doing my degree that I have become much better at noticing when this is happening and bringing myself back to the problem at hand.
How and when do you critique your work and what questions do you ask yourself?
I have noted specific points in my workflow where I inspect and adapt my work. The truth is that I tend to be quite self-critical, so I am appraising my work more often than these specific points. I try my best these days for this to be as constructive as possible, however, I acknowledge that I still have a strong inner critic.
I try to ask myself different questions depending on the progress I have made through the process. Earlier on, I try to look at shape and composition, as well as challenge myself to think about more lateral approaches to the brief. When I create roughs, I try to ask myself if a composition, design or arrangement can be 'pushed' more. This has helped my work to gradually become less wooden. It's not until the end that I critique the overall execution of the work. Often I need time away from the work to notice aspects that I have missed, and opportunities to make an image better. This has been very useful when it comes to assessment time, and my submission pieces have benefited from the combination of a fresh perspective and my tutors' feedback.
One thing I have tried to embrace (and therefore called out specifically on the workflow) was the benefit I gain from letting ideas 'percolate'. Looking back over my years of studies so far, it's easy to see in hindsight the number of times that I have become locked up because
I have had too many options,
I can't seem to work out how to solve a problem, or
I can't make a particular approach click into place.
At the other end of that scale, I run the risk of becoming fixated on an early idea, and not exploring different approaches because my brain is convinced one is better than any others. Stepping away from work for a short while seems to let my subconscious sort things out; when I come back to the drawing board I tend to see things more clearly. I used to see this as a mark of failure (and so resisted it), but now I trust in my intuition a lot more and give myself the space to percolate everything in my head.
How do you manage your time?
By visualising my tasks, I can anticipate the rate at which I need to complete things against a given deadline. It also allows me to see the current progress against any due dates. Right now I can put the time in during the day, which is helping me to get back on course, however for the majority of my studies so far I typically can only work in the evenings. This makes it important to know the throughput rate for my tasks so I know how many tasks I need to get done week-on-week. I have not been exceptionally rigid with this, as work and family commitments can make my diary (let alone my energy!) a little unpredictable.
As I have been spending more time working on things during the day, I have noticed a certain amount of 'institutionalisation' in my habits - I feel compelled to be at my desk during 'office hours' without any acknowledgement of my energy levels or focus. This has led to me ignoring other needs like movement, fresh air, and socialisation. I don't think this is a positive approach, so I intend to reflect on this ahead of trying to get more work so that I can create working conditions that allow me to do my best work and be healthy. This is not going to be easy, as I will need to detach myself from feelings of guilt for taking time to do other activities during 'office hours'. My evenings are still going to be my most productive, and there is also an opportunity to make those healthy rather than excessive (which impacts my sleep).
Where are the sticking points?
The biggest sticking points throughout the workflow are those that require more executive functioning or are susceptible to poor mental health. Additionally, when something loses its novelty or urgency I run the risk of becoming stuck, especially if other aspects are in play at the same time. These seem to be exacerbated when looked at from the perspective of my studies; they have been concurrent with my day job which can sap my energy and focus. I hope that if I can give more of my time for illustration to be my 'job' the sense of urgency will combat the more challenging steps of my process.
What do you think are your strengths and where do you need to develop further?
I think putting structure into what I do is a strength that I bring from my 'day job'. I also have a strength in conducting research that can be both broad and deep. I do have a blind spot when I have to cover a lot of bases in my research where the options feel boring.
The area I think I need to develop most is my technical execution. I need to invest time in drawing from life a lot more. This means I need to bake it into the process and specifically allot time to improve those skills. This could look like
scheduling time to go on location to draw people and places,
timeboxing time to work on fundamental drawing exercises (a page of hands, learning aspects of anatomy, drawing a bike 100 different ways etc.)
life drawing
Taking courses that cover fundamentals once my budget allows
I would also like to improve my execution skills using applications which are commonly used in creative industries, particularly 3D programs like Blender. Given I would like to work on tabletop game illustrations, I need to develop my skills in character design and rendering scenes digitally. I feel comfortable in drawing things out, but then get lost trying to bring them to life at the rendering stage. It makes me frustrated and disheartened.
Also, while I am not doing a graphic design degree, I believe that my love of tabletop games and comics necessitates that I have good skills in typography, layout and book design. This is an area I need to go out of my way to keep improving. Not only will it make my intended work better, but I believe that it will make me more marketable if I can apply my skills to broader areas of visual communication.
What’s the process of finishing your work?
I feel confident preparing my work and have learned a lot already about the impact of digital colour management, colour profiles, margins and bleeds. This started way back in Key Steps in Illustration, when assessment was still conducted with physical copies of work. This meant I had to learn very quickly how to try and achieve good prints. I produced my work as glicée prints, and so took the time to use my research strength to find out what I needed. The print company I used had a lot of useful information which made learning a lot easier. My last assignment got me looking at Risograph printing, and this meant I spent time learning how it works - it was very interesting and only makes me want to do more Risograph work in the future.
Bleeds and colour modes can be confusing elements, even after reading and researching things. These explanations from cartoonist Dan Berry (who used to run a higher education programme in comics and illustration) are brilliant and based on questions his students typically used to ask him. For any students reading this, I hope they help!
References
ASQ (2006) Value stream mapping tutorial - what is VSM?, ASQ. Available at: https://asq.org/quality-resources/lean/value-stream-mapping (Accessed: 24 November 2024).
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