Poster for a one of the Film Student Films IPP

 At the start of the year, me and Helena signed up to help some of the student film crews. The students doing a film called 'Lost At Sea' finally approached us near the end of the year asking for our help. 

So we set up a meeting with them and discussed what they were expecting and our turns (because it would be for free). We then went away and made some sketches that they could choose from, after a bit of back and forth and showing them some prototypes they picked one. We wanted to do a layered paper cut technique that would make a tunnel affect as we thought it fit the middle road approach they wanted. So I mapped out the layers and we cut out each part by hand. We stuck it down and booked in for a photography session so that we would get a high enough quality to blow it up to A0. We then had to edit it and add all the names and logos. 

This was a great experience to learn what working with a client would be like. We had to keep reminding ourselves that we weren't getting payed to make it so that we wouldn't get too hung up on the details.

John Hansard Gallery IPP

 We got approached by a woman from the John Hansard Gallery through our Instagram dms. She had seen our zines at the Into The Fold Event in Winchester and wanted to stock some of our zines in the gallery shop. WOW!

We asked a few questions and talked a bit over dms and then turned our conversation over to emails, where she asked us to visit the gallery so we could meet and talk about 'business'. So we decided to meet on the 15th at 11am.

Neither of us had been to the gallery and had no idea what to expect but it turned out to be a lovely meeting. The woman was very understanding and talked us through everything, and she was also very interested in our work and us in general. She asked a lot about our methods of making, the materials we use, how much we've made, why we make what we do and our overall journey of being illustrators. It was a very relaxed conversation (which we were very glad about!) and she was very honest about the pricing and what would be best for us. 

We decided on a flexible offer that would allow them to return items to us if they didn't sell or swap them for other stuff (and on the flip side give them more of something if it sells well). They will hold our stuff for 6 months, which is two exhibition terms. wThey wanted 5 of each of the zines and a few A3 risograph prints, which is less than we thought they would take but we are thankful because it gives us less pressure (we don't have to worry about big money stuff). 

They will email us with contracts and things and then we will go back and forth with them about prices, and then we can drop off all our stock there when everything is sorted out. We also asked a lot of stuff about packaging and ended up looking in the shop to give us ideas of what to have ready (signing and numbering them on the front of prints, board backing, business card in with the print).

Its a lot of work but it is such a big step for us that we'd be fools not to take the offer. And hopefully we'll be able to keep a dialogue with them in the future.

Examples of the work in the shop:

 

The Zines we made on the train to Southhampton and on the way back to Portsmouth. v