That's Pants

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.” ― Harlan Ellison

For this brief we have been placed into groups which will be an interesting experience to see how individual illustrators can work together to make a collaboration to convey one message. Our message was based on a subject the group believed was 'pants'. We were to take a satirical approach on modern day living and visually communicate our opinions in order to promote, prevent or comment on something that we think is pants. After brain storming we decided on 3 main ideas:

• Inappropriate clothes
• Pervy men
• PDA

Below are some photographs of our written exploration of this project:

Above shows some of our ideas once we decided to follow the theme of inappropriate clothing. We had lots of ideas for this however given our time restraints some of them would be more practical than others. Below are some location ideas; we thought that clubs would be good however inappropriate clothes are worn in clubs anyway and it is more so the getting to the clubs and back in the clothes that makes them inappropriate - trying to walk in heels/ being freezing with no coat. So we decided just having the location outside in the evening in the middle of Leeds would be more appropriate to the message we are trying to convey. 

Above are some of our sticker format ideas, we are all going to create stickers so it is essential we decide on a clear format, colour scheme and size so that they all can appear as part of a set.

We brainstormed a range of inappropriate clothing (above) and then narrowed them down to five. We decided on five which were inappropriate for wet or cold weather as this is the most true of leeds weather and means that our message and photographs/gif will be more believable.

Below are some of my own sketches exploring our subject of inappropriate clothing: 

Above - our asterisks highlight the main ideas we wanted to concentrate on.
Below - as a class we came up with the key points and potential problems of this task. I think for our group it was organisation and time restraints that were the main problem areas; it was hard to find dates and times that everyone could meet up together to think about our project, many times we met up but not as a full group. Instead we used a group message on social media to convey ideas and fill in any of those who had missed the meetings. This group message was crucial for our group, especially since we could share images of our work and ideas and share the colours and layouts for our stickers which allowed us to be able to create a succinct collection of work.

So as a group we had narrowed down our options to five: 

• Booty shorts with rips in
• Short skirts (wind) 
• Shit shoes (rain) 
• Vests (boys - Geordie shore esque) 
• Bandeau tops 

Which we all worked on separately but consistently conferred and shared ideas with each other in order to have the entire groups input whilst still maintaining our own tone of voice into the pieces. I think this was essential as although we were working as a group, we all still wanted to pursue our own interests in forming the illustration e.g. character design, however most of the image had strict guidelines for us all to follow. 

My initial ideas: 

Vests: 

Booty shorts:

Bandeau top:

Shit shoes:

Short skirt:

After discussing with our group the appearance of the final sticker, I created some final ideas.

We decided that the shape was to be a triangle because it resembles the road sign warning symbol; we are warning against the cold/inappropriate weather. We decided to use a blue back ground to enforce the theme of cold temperatures. We also decided to keep the stickers simple with just black, white and blue as a colour scheme and clear lines, with some patterns, to be simple and effective and catch the public's attention and to be easy to decipher and understand. 

As we are concerned of breaching laws we will be taking the photo as soon as the sticker goes up and taking it down after. 

My final sketches: 

I then added a blue triangle background that we had decided on as a group to be a constant throughout the stickers:

I used paint to make sure that the illustration and the background were the same size. I then edited them on Photoshop. I used levels to make it more contrasted and remove specks and then separated the illustration as a top layer and set it as multiply. I used the paint tool to remove and add some lines. I removed the border as we agreed as a group to just have the blue triangle as a background and border. 

I am pleased with my final pieces as I think the bold outline and simple colour scheme works well together. Adding white to the image made it stand out to the audience more and attracted attention to the 'problem area'. I did find it hard to get all my illustrations to work in a triangle shape, however after experimenting with my initial sketches I think I managed to create some designs that do work well with the format. 

After we all had created our stickers we began to plan our photoshoot. We decided on our location as the middle of leeds in the evening as this is when it is the coldest and darkest. We also decided on an open space so that there was more chance of it being wet with rain/exposed to the weather. We wanted to use an urban environment too as it is often on the way to and back from clubs that people suffer in inappropriate clothing!

We all decided to portray one of our 'inappropriate clothing' ideas. I was given short shorts which was an interesting experience in the freezing cold! Below are some of our photographs: 

Below is our poster which has a range of our best stickers based on the groups decision. We stuck them all on a board where other posters were being displayed too; both in order to make it more valid and also so that we weren't obstructing any public 'decor'.

We used our photographs to make a GIF. I think it could have been improved if we had been able to have more time setting up the photographs properly however we were rushed when creating this as it was freezing in these clothes and as some members of the group could only do a small amount of specific time. Working as a group was definitely much more of a struggle than working alone however I think our final outcomes were successful and portray our message appropriately. It is clear from this GIF that these clothes are inappropriate. If we were to do this again I think we should have followed a satirical perspective much more as this would have had more of a lasting impact and created a more entertaining collection of work.