One of my latest commissions is illustrating a wellbeing walks brochure; this will demonstrate a range of cycling /walking routes from Manchester Airport through to Northenden. The aim of this project is to enoucrage everyone to benefit mentally and physically from the wonderland of walks around the local area, while celebrating its variety of greenspaces, bio-diversity and local assets. This project is funded and commissioned by Thrive Manchester and partnered with Wythenshawe Waste Warriors, I am thrilled to be the affilated designer on such an uplifting, positive project.
Map Design
To begin map design, I began by drawing up the roads, Motorway, and River Mersey using satellite’s /google maps for reference. I was provided helpful material for placing in walking routes to begin laying a pre-liminary foundation. To keep my document in order, I have groups for all catogories of layers, e.g. zones, roads, symbols. The process is quite tricky and meticulous but I enjoy the challenge. I have great feedback and help on the progress from John-Paul Coe which keeps the work running smoothly.
Symbol Design
Once I had a base map and routes in place, I was provided with lists of landmarks for each walk, including parks, pubs, transport etc. To make symbols for these, I have been producing a range of illustrations and key features. There will be an estimated 50 symbols to illustrate so theres lots to consider in ensuring everything is legible.
Brochure pages
Before I thought about producing the map, I considered the reverse side, and how this would fold and be divided up. I mocked up a few basic outlines for printing and folding; this helped me trial and error sizes and provided an indication on how to scale content within the stages. Once I had a general idea of how to produce the brochure itself, I began mocking up the map and content for exploration. Myself and the funders are pleased with the progress so far and I am looking forward to furthering its development.
My client had kindly provided me with some very helpful material to get drafting issue 1. These were storey boards accompanied by written plans consisting of 202 scenes. Getting started was the hard part, but once I got going it came together quickly. I am excited to continue producing issue 1, there is nothing better than enabling the clients imagination on paper; sending my designs over is always something to look forward to.
To begin, I correlated the storey boards with written plans to understand the depth and details at play, then started imagining the first few on paper. Using a range of pencils I drafted a rough outline of what I had visioned, once Mark and I were happy enough with the illustrations, I began developing it photoshop.
Since I have never worked on a comic before, I started to research the fundamentals and how to go about them. To neaten up the drawings, I used the digital eraser and exposure settings in order to brighten up/clean illustrations. When framing the scenes, I placed a white layer over my page and set it to 50/50 transparency. I could then cut out a perfect window for the illustrations, which helped clean up the sketchy lines. Next I developed a range of speech bubbles and text in order to bring the first few scenes to life.
Its been exciting bringing it together, I look forward to learning more and developing the style, format and identity of the comic at a high standard.
This time last year I had the pleasure of designing a company logo for Tidy Construction. It is always a wonderful experience meeting a new client and working to visualise their company identity.
After a couple months in October, I was delighted the client got back in touch to request business cards featuring their new company logo. It was a joy to work with the company and even better to be thought of twice, I hope to be the first choice again for any design projects with Tidy Construction.
It has been amazing resuming the role of illustrator for this years School Mapping Project 2021, illustrating all educational buildings of Wythenshawe (up to 50 buildings! past and present). It has been an exciting challenge and I am elated to put these on the map and launch our material.
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We are proud to announce the launch of our Wythenshawe School image project in partnership with artist Faye Tikic the Neighbourhood Investment Fund, Archives + local schools. Faye is drawing every school in Wythenshawe and will include some no longer standing. This exciting project raises awareness of the history of our Town and will promote the buildings and involvement from all. We’d like pupils and students to think about their own building, draw them, take photographs alongside teachers and send to us to really shine a light on these places of learning. I will create albums for each school with Faye’s art as the cover image. We look forward to sharing your work as part of the Wythenshawe Wide School Mapping Project! Here’s a link to Faye’s page, check out her portfolio and we hope aspiring artists in our schools can get creative – John-Paul Coe
Wythenshawe’s schools and colleges past and present– John-Paul Coe
“It is a real honour to be able to partner fantastic artist Faye Tikic on this project. Faye not only produces wonderful images for those of all ages to enjoy but engages the local community and our schools during and after the creative process.
Via funding kindly provided by the Neighbourhood Investment Fund, Faye has undertaken the challenge to produce illustrations of Wythenshawe’s schools, colleges and some nurseries too after their response to be included. These images will sit on a map to give students and idea of local partners in education, which is vital as many do partner for important projects such as Rights Respecting events, Clean Air Day, Parliament Day and more.
This project aims to have student involvement in 2022 for them to share their images and illustrations of their schools and to share what they like about the buildings, grounds and more. We try to help to sign-post local community groups, businesses and support depending on local needs and greater knowledge helps massively as does highlighting the huge network of our educational facilities.
An exciting aspect of this project is the schools no longer with us. Faye has worked alongside the amazing staff at Manchester Archives + and local residents to discover lost schools and to illustrate those also.
This project helps students with their history with local knowledge of the past, geography with locations within our five wards and many more aspects of learning include art and design with architectural topics.
We at Wythenshawe Waste Warriors will help to build a body of work, history and evidence for each school and college here in Wythenshawe. From past pupil’s photographs and memories to present day projects, we believe all are important to the community fabric of this great town.
We can’t thank Faye enough for the work produced in partnership and are looking forward to 2022 when we can visit some of our schools to workshop and to collate their contributions. Due to the many lockdowns and the recent pandemic, we will now exhibit Faye’s work alongside Wythenshawe’s student’s next year. This will be a wonderful event to look forward to for all involved in the process. Thanks Faye, NIF, Local Archive Team, The School Mapping Project, Your Local Voice and to all our Wythenshawe students and educators.”
– John-Paul Coe Founder and Chairman of Wythenshawe Waste Warriors and the School Mapping Project
Over March 2021, I had the pleasure of working with Mark Storey to begin visualising key characters involved in the first issue of his comic novel , The Metahumans.
With great communication, collaborative pinterest board’s and the help of Mark’s great character dynamic worksheet, I was able to illustrate the first 5 main characters of issue 1 within a matter of weeks. I cant wait to recieve the script of issue 1 and begin full development of the first draft.
– John-Paul Coe
FAYE TIKIC 