Week 18: Underwhelming approval

So this week we got some feedback and approval/disapproval of our characters, as I mentioned in last week's blog post I'd really been enjoying the project so far and felt like I'd responded to my house feedback really well and done loads more concepting than I had previously done before.

Some very late stage colour concepts

Since last week I did a lot more colour variations and also changed my dress slightly to fit better with the style guide. I was really happy with the amount of work I was submitting and although I hadn't done any photobashing I felt that I had achieved what I wanted regardless. The only things I hadn't really done much work on were the face and hair- I was a little unsure on how far to take the face as we were told it would be after our own likeness.

So when we got feedback I was pretty disappointed. I scored 'adequate' across the board, which to me says 'yeah I guess you tried'. I am very aware that we're not meant to take any feedback/critique to heart but when I felt really confident with my work it was a bit of a slap in the face.

I'll try and pick apart my feedback and hopefully address what I think I can improve on:

-Research/Mood boards

My mood board

Is it the best mood board in the world? Probably not, but I felt that I got a wide variety of good quality sources that I knew would be relevant for the character I had in mind so I didn't have to extend my search incredibly far. I had written a few little annotations on some photos but I think they were actually hidden in the PSD file I submitted which is probably my fault for carelessness. In the additional comments it was mentioned that my mood board 'should be organised and annotated to clearly show your idea generation and development'. I think perhaps I should have started on a broader scale perhaps? Rather than picking a 'Mayor's wife' straight away.

-Conforms with style guide

An example of one of my colour variations.

I felt that I had worked very much with the style guide in mind which is why I made a few changes to the dress quite later on. I'm aware that the costume and the model aren't stylised but we were advised to work realistically first and then stylise. I think this is certainly one of the parts of the feedback I'm most confused about as I'm not sure what I could change to make it conform any more with the style guide. Since I had chosen to do a slightly richer character than a lot of the 'peasants' the dress was going to naturally be a bit more glamorous but I felt like I was giving information about the character through the clothes she wears.

-Idea generation

In my previous blog post I posted just a few examples of my idea generations and felt that I'd actually done a better variety/quality than I had for previous projects. Part of my feedback said that I 'could afford to be more exploratory at this stage, you seem to have settled for one idea very quickly with nothing to compare and contrast it against.'
I wasn't 100% sure on what this could mean at first but after looking at a few of my peers photobashing I saw that they had done a wide variety of hoods, cloaks, trousers, equipment, jackets, hair etc etc and I found that I had been quite refined in my initial idea generation; I jumped straight to the dress as I knew that would be the most important part of my character considering I didn't think we had to do much else to our faces/bodies. Since I had picked my type of character before I started concepting I knew that she had to be wearing a nice dress to put it simply; I didn't see the point in adding any cloaks, overcoats, hats, hoods, aprons or anything simply because of the restrictions of the character type and the village scene she was supposed to be going into. I wonder whether I should have concepted these anyway JUST IN CASE, even though I knew they weren't going to be relevant? In terms of just the dress design though I thought that I had done quite a wide variety of different dress types from different time periods just to explore any features that I might like.
I disagree that I settled with one idea quickly as I explored 3/4 dresses further before picking one and then refining that one down too.

-Anatomy

Unfortunately I'm not quite sure what exactly I or anyone else was being marked on here; a lot of people used photobashing and their own orthographic photos of themselves to bash over the top of. I decided to draw out my own pose just to model dresses on and so referenced a stock image from the internet. I don't think anything is dramatically out of proportion in my drawing so I will definitely need to try and find out more information on what this section covered and therefore how else I can improve.

-Aesthetic quality of work

Down to personal preference I suppose? I hadn't spent long on my initial concepts as I was keen to get them down on canvas but when I started refining my ideas I made sure they looked good. So again, something I need to find out more about before I can work out how to improve.

I am well aware that I sound like a whiny student because they didn't score very well in their feedback but it certainly came as a bit of a shock when I thought I'd been doing okay. After speaking to a few of my peers I still can't quite establish exactly where I went 'wrong' or just 'didn't do as well' but I thought it was important to try and break down my feedback.

I'm definitely going to speak to tutors about this feedback and try and work out how I can improve on this or improve next time because I'm still pretty lost in where I go from here unfortunately! Any insights into my feedback/my response to it is welcome!