Roderick Mills

Abstract:
Illustration Within an Expanded Field of Practice

“Illustration can no longer afford to be parochial. The days are over when the beautiful crafted picture was the quintessential virtue. Illustrators have branched out into animated film, graphic novels, Web and exhibition displays, to name a few options.”
- Steven Heller

In the advent of globalisation, digital technology, the Internet, hybridity, ever-changing economic forces, in an age when the image is all-pervasive, when globally notions of super-hybridity are blurring cultural reference points in the click of a mouse, the definition of illustration, this paper will argue, is at a time of change.

Whilst it is accepted that contemporary illustration practice requires self-authoring, the potential for illustrators to embrace new technology is paramount to express ideas and to explore issues, rather than the reduction of illustration as merely decorative and the manufacturing of ‘product’.

A contemporary illustration practice is not merely confined to the use of different media, of working across varying platforms, but is a signifier of illustration being defined within an expanded field of practice. The illustrator is a wanderer, not just in terms of the physical, the media being employed but as boundaries between disciplines are rapidly blurring illustration is being seen as a conduit for many into the wider area of graphic design and visual communication, demonstrating transferable skills and a way of thinking. Going beyond simply the skill of producing images to applications of illustration including 3-D spaces, data visualization, moving image, and visual storytelling with potential impact for both communities and commercial brands. The illustrator is both commercially applied and has a growing role for research and development, and as performance in workshops for wider educational uses.

The paper will explore what new technologies can facilitate for illustrator; changing habits caused by touch screens; how economic and technological changes are encouraging an interdisciplinary/hybrid practice for illustrators, and how illustration sits within a wider visual culture.

Collaboration and interconnectivity is emerging to place the illustrator away from sole practitioner, to explore, invent new markets, rather than perpetuating a possibly outmoded economic system of client and commissioner, illustrator and artists’ agent? As the consumption of imagery is quickened via the internet, with the dangers of a generation scanning and grazing information, not only is it necessary to adapt to this ever changing market to sustain a career, it would seem vital these days to have a point of view, something to say, the generator of content as a pre-requisite to having a sustainable practice.

“Why do I need a definition? When I can films I will make film, otherwise I will make comics… We are in a time without definition.”
- Alejandro Jodorowsky