Alva Skog

0:00 [Applause]

0:08 so like just said my name is Alva skog I'm so excited to be here I can't see you now because it's a very strong light in my face but thank you all for coming I'm so excited to hear the other speakers tonight as well.

0:24 So I'm an illustrator and I've been freelancing since 2018 I'm from Stockholm Sweden and that is where I'm currently based since the pandemic I identify as non-binary and I mention this because it affects how I view the world. And in turn how I create my work in today's talk I'd like to show you some of my favorite pieces of work that I've done the last couple of years and and the process a little bit about the process behind them.

1:05 But I'll start here.

1:10 So I did my BA at sent of St Martins here in London graduated in 2018 and I've also recently finished an MA at this university called conac in Stockholm Sweden that was focused on norm criticality and Norm creativity and I'll talk more about that later in the presentation but when I finished my ba and started off as an illustrator I signed with the illustration agency jelly shout out to jelly and I've worked with them since the first project I'd like to show you tonight is this called future identities that I did a while ago it was in 2018 and for this project I was inspired by feminist science fiction.

1:59 And I drew these characters in a science fictional future depicting them without assigning them a gender I didn't want the viewer to be able to gender them. And I show you this project even though I find that my style has changed a bit since this the concept is still something that is that I continue using in my work so with every commission I do I try to draw my characters as gender ambiguous as possible I try to avoid gender and race stereotypes and it is very important to me who I represent and how it is done it might might not be visible to everyone and it changes from Project to project of course.

2:46 But that is always at the core of my design process the style that I have developed changes constantly I feel but the big hands and feet feet initially comes from wanting to represent the female body differently I also find the hands and feet are very expressive and the play with perspective can be a way to empower my characters but also communicate certain feelings one of the first clients I worked with out of University was the guardian and it was a dream come true and since since then I've worked with them a number of times so I'd like to show you some of the commissions I've done with them this I did in 2020 I got to illustrate for an article written by the formerly Eve ensler about how important physical touch is and it was published during the pandemic this is also an article reflecting on the pandemic I really love doing editorials because it's a very fast process and you kind of have to go with the initial idea you get but you also get to work with great articles written articles and sometimes you get to see the results the next day in the paper which is an amazing feeling the next project I would like to show you is something I did for the Met Museum in New York City it's a commission to make illustrations to be part of the visual identity for their upcoming event called The Met Fest the in the event is inspired by New York New York City block parties and they wanted to include many different elements H and characters in the same image so this is a picture from my Sketchbook.

4:53 So I started drawing in my Sketchbook. And then.

5:01 So I just drew all the different things they wanted to include dancers musicians kids playing rollerblading and then I move on to my to sketching on my iPad so this is the refined sketch I then sent to the client this was one of many but this is the one they approved and then I usually move on I usually move on to color RS and this is also one of many and this is what the final outcome became.

5:34 So I animated this together with the animation team at jelli so my illustration agency is also a production company that have in-house animators so I usually when I need to animate why work I work together with them.

5:55 And that's the work out in the wild in New York City a friend sent me this another us client but different project that I wanted to show you is this commission I did for the New York Times book review holiday package I was commissioned to make a cover and a number of spot illustrations for the different categories of books that they were writing about after a lot of back and forth the art director and me decided on this being the cover and I was happy that I was able to put a queer couple on the holiday books cover and then we animated it together jelly I also did several spots this is one I think this was just a regular spot and these were for cooking books about cooking kids books music and books Sports and books horror and book books movies traveling science fiction and two more regular spots moving on to a commission that is quite different but just as exciting to make was this commission I was say I was commissioned to make animated spots for Wei transfer I don't know if you use Wei transfer but it's a file transferring service so they commissioned me to make a little animated spots that would appear when You' sent the file or when you open a link so what was really fun with this one that they gave me so much freedom and they just wanted me to explore loads of different ideas for how to depict success in sending a file or password protected my favorite is the one the person. That's locked in a little box for password protection.

7:56 But that wasn't used unfortunately and these were the final animated spots so this is for expired link expired milk and that's for oops something went wrong and this is actually was an idea from one of the team team members of we transfer so this is for password protection I wasn't sure we were able to put gandal there but apparently it worked out fine and success when you've sent a file so that feeling of finish the project sent it off to the client and that's also so the last three ones are success and that's what they look like on the the website when you've sent a file so they would pop up another commission one of my most recent commissions I've done is this one for Apple that you might have seen in London and other cities I was commissioned to make illustrations for their hello yellow campaign where they were um yeah showing their new yellow iPhone so I had the honor of illustrating for this it's I when I did the the work I wasn't allowed to see the yellow iPhone so that's why there's a there's a white iPhone there cuz yeah it was very secret everything I'm not really even sure I can show you this but don't post it online but yeah it was really fun and working with apple is is actually quite a nice experience because they are so efficient and they send me sketches that I then base my sketches on.

10:06 So they know exactly what they want which is quite nice because it's hard to work with a client that doesn't know what they want anyway.

10:23 This is what some of it looked out in the city in London so unfortunately I couldn't see this in Sweden I don't know why but I've I was sent all these pictures from my friends here in London which was very exciting so it felt like I was I was present yeah sorry for the bad quality of the images but working with clients like apple allows me the time and money to do personal projects and take on passion projects with little or no budget at all.

11:00 So the last piece of work I'd like to show you is this for the Trans Safety emergency fund that I did it's an organization based in Switzerland and they commission me to make portrait illustrations of five trans activists that will be published alongside texts by them in a book called Trans on trans that will be sold to raise funds for the organization.

11:27 So it was such honor to illustrate these amazing trans activists and also I think when I do projects like this. That's more passion project or when they don't have a lot of budget they gave me aot they give me a lot of freedom and then I can kind of explore my own style a bit.

11:48 So I worked with Inc lines and then I colored it in digitally but yeah.

12:00 I just wanted to show you this because it's very recent and it's something that I'm very proud of and to finish like I mentioned earlier in this talk I recently finished an MA in visual Communication in Sweden at the university called kvak and the course was Norm critical slorm creative I think they actually made up the word Norm creative ative but this means we got to challenge and deepen our practice in relation to a broader social cultural and economic contexts and we studied how identity norms and borders are formed through the landscape of isual communication and how our process and methods can be developed to expand our own practice as well as the field at this course I worked on a graphic novel for two years. And I won't have time to show it to you but hopefully I will in the near future so thank [Applause]