ITAP:6 Testing and Interpretation

 Being illustrators we have to make sure we are constantly testing our work and getting it out to the audience but how do we do that? One way is blogging our work but you can't just make a blog and expect it to be an instant hit, you have to circulate it and get people to look at it. To do this you also need to be looking at other artists blogs and leaving feedback in doing so you'll be leaving your mark on there page and hopefully they will look at yours also leaving feedback. Choosing which website to blog on is very important as some are better than others. Look at the site out there and what people are blogging about you don't want to put your work up on a site it 90% of the people just use it for venting, you need ones with other artists on as well. When posting up on your blog you need to know whats popular and whats not and what's going on in the world as when people are searching through blogs the thing that makes them stop is something they can relate too. This doesn't mean that you have to post illustrations up of the recent news (unless that's what you do) you just need to make sure your work reflects what is going on around you. A good example of this would be Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

 

As you can see the images are very dark and Alice isn't portrayed as a young sweet girl as it is in Disneys 1951 version as shown below.

 

And then again with Tim Burton's 2010 version.

 

They all portray the same story but they are different because they reflect the era they were created in. Lewis Carroll was around from 1832 –1898 which was quite a dark era as we can see in his style. When creating this he was also under the influence of opium which again is reflect in the story line.

Then We look at the Disney verion and suddenly everything is bright and happy, Alice is now the happy young girl that we all know just by looking at it it's clear to see how the "hippie era" influences this. We then look at Tim Burton's 2010 version , This movie has be grately affected by the technology that surrounds us today.

If someone was to try and publish some illustration in Lewis Carroll's style today it most likely wouldn't go very far as it not what the generation today can relate with. All the factors above are something to think about when creating your illustrations and trying to get them to your audience.