Q10, Update 27.

The event was a great succes, it was better than I had even imagined. More than fifty people showed up and every body was enthusiastic about my work. For me personally this was the best result possible.

To be honest I think this was my most succesfull assignment I Have done as an illustrator. Literally every goal I had set for myself in the beginning of the project was reached. I did everything I wanted to do. And this was a completely new type of illustration work for me. You know what I usually make. Small little line illustrations, made behind my desk sitting on my laptop. Don’t get me wrong, I love doing that, I love it. But this time I did something completely different. My work field as an illustrator has expanded so much during this particular assignment. I did so many new things, I learned so many new and different sides of illustration in these last few weeks. Putting on an entire event, organizing everything. Building something which is bigger than an A4 paper, which is bigger than three meters in fact. Working on full scale. Working with partners. Working with wood shops, working with skate shops, working with magazines. Working with all these different people. I have had contact with over ten people outside of the academy, outside of my comfort zone and outside of what I know and what I’m used too. All for this one assignment. I have worked with new materials, I have worked with new techniques. I have created my own clients. I proposed an idea, I made my own assignment, instead of doing something that somebody asked me to do. I did something myself and got people to like it. I created my own market. And this is a great step for me as an illustrator.

I promoted myself in the world that I want to work in when I leave the academy. People now know who I am, and what I do. This assignment helped my company grow. People know about it now, people have showed there support to my company by showing up to my event. I grew as an illustrator, I grew as a business person and I grew as a person who is trying to fulfill his dreams. Making a living combining the two things I love. I’ve reached all my goals with this assignment, and I am more than happy with it.

These are the goals I had set for myself at the beginning of the assignment:

1. Combining my illustration with a company and skateboarding is something I have always wanted to do.
2. This is a completely different way of working for me, I usually sit behind a desk. And now will I not be only designing an illustration and painting and making it into a full scale art piece and a skate obstacle. I will also be hosting an event, promoting the vent, organising the vent, finding the right people, finding the right location, etc. etc.
3. This is something that will also help me outside of school. People that don’t know anything about illustration will get to see it as well and skateboard events like this often get big media attention in Rotterdam. This is also a great opportunity to use a school assignment to promote my company that I run outside of school.
4. It is something which is completely out of my comfort zone, So I’ll definitely have to make big steps as an illustrator. Broadening my horizon. Working in a completely different surrounding and with a completely different mindset than I usually do.
5. Something that will most definitely look good in my portfolio.
6. Something that isn’t only supporting my illustration, but also advertising for my product and passion at the same time.
7. Something that helps me grow as an illustrator. Not only skill wise but it will also teach a lot of people about my name that didn’t even know I was an illustrator. And also people that are not interested in what I do as an illustrator but just show up because there is a skateboard event will get to see and know my work.
8. It is a project that results into a lot of products. The obstacle, skate video’s and photo’s etc. etc. So I won’t be just hanging a few drawing on the wall but I will actually be making a lot of products that I can later use for personal promotion for both my skateboard company as my illustration work.
9. And last but not least. It’s something that completely suits me. I love it!

EACH AND EVERY GOAL ON THIS LIST WAS ACHIEVED WITH THIS ASSIGNMENT. And even more. I learned so much these last few weeks. I have worked so hard. I have enjoyed it so much. I literally pored my sweat into designing, illustrating, painting, building, moving, organizing, promoting this thing. And it was all worth it. It is hard to describe how well it went, because the teachers weren’t there. I will never be able to describe the feeling and the atmosphere of the event on this blog, or via photo’s, or via the work I will end up hanging in the SLASH gallery. It just won’t be good enough. But even though I can’t show you guys how much of a succes it really was for me. I still feel like this is the best assignment I have ever done. I don’t even care about the grade I get anymore. My personal goals have been reached, And my wildest dreams about this project have come true. To me this was an amazing experience which helped me grow as an illustrator in an undescribeble way. I have succeeded, and I am very proud of myself!

Q10, update 26.

I arrived at the location at 19:00. It was completely empty of course, It’s not like I expected people to be there already but seeing the place completely empty was bringing my mood down quick and my nervousness up quick. But literally the second I got out of the car five skaters rolled up to the spot. They saw me at the car and instantly came to check out the obstacle, and the very first thing I heard someone say was, Damn Thijmen that looks so sick, my compliments to you!!! And after that they helped me out with unloading the thing and setting everything up. That made my nervousness go away within seconds. I was really happy and excited. People showed up and people were hyped on my work. My night was already a succes in my head. But it got so much better. While I was setting the obstacle up another group of skaters pulled up. This time there were more than five, it were around ten of them, and some of them even brought there girlfriends to the event with them. The event hadn’t even started yet and there were already 15 people there having a good time and laughing and talking to each other. During this time I finished setting up the obstacle and people started to skate it. Now I knew my obstacle was kind of sturdy and professionally build, but still seeing people skate it was scary. The way they were skating the thing was so intense. I expected them to mostly grind on the edges, but instead of that they used it as a sort of jump ramp. Landing right in the middle of the obstacle, the weakest point. And putting so much pressure and force onto the thing that I was literally scared the thing was going to break before the event even started. But is held up fine. I am really glad I put so much time and effort into making this a very safe and professional obstacle. It was really good. And people were skating it really good as well. It was an obstacle that you never see in a skatepark or something. Nobody that was at the event had ever seen or skated something like this, but the tricks they were doing were insane, they were extremely good and I was really surprised by how god people were skating this thing. I was so focussed on the skating and the obstacle that I barely realized that a lot more people had showed up to the event. There were at least thirty people by now, and it was still 20 minutes before the event was even suppost to start. I was so happy and so amazed. I saw a lot of people I had never ever seen before. So many new faces. There were a lot of international there people as well. And people kept showing up, bringing friends that don’t even skate, class mates showed up. People brought all there friends allong. Not only skaters were coming to skate and see but also a lot of pedestrians stopped in the streets to come and see what was going on. They all stopped there and some of them stood and watched for over thirty minutes even though it was extremely cold. And by the time it was 19:30 there were more than 50 people at the event. I am not kidding, over fifty people.
I picked up the megaphone and said the contest was about to start and I instantly got comments saying that I had to wait just ten more minutes because some friends were still on there way and that I had to wait for this person and this person and bla bla bla. People were so enthusiastic and happy. And by this time people were also finding out how to skate the obstacle. They started to realize what the options were and how they could skate the thing. Meaning that the tricks they were doing were getting better and better. There were at least 25 people skating the thing and there were at least thirty people there watching and talking to each other having a good time. But then it was eight o’clock and it was time for the contest to start. I picked up the megaphone and got on top of the obstacle while being helped out by an applause of the people there. They cheered me on as I got on top of the thing, I loved it. I thanked everybody for showing up and showing support and explained the rules of the event. And then the contest started.
More than thirty skaters started to try their best tricks, more than 20 people sat there watching and cheering them on. They all had 25 minutes to show what they can do, it was insane. People were skating so hard, trying to win one of my boards. They were trying insane tricks, they all charged at the thing. We saw collisions when people decided to go at the same time, we saw people fall really hard on the thing, we saw people land insane tricks. But most of all I saw people skating something that I build myself, I saw people enjoying the event I organized, I saw people having fun. And I realized my goals were accomplished. I did it. I put together a great event, with a lot of guests and you could just literally see the people enjoying themselves. I was so proud of myself, and I was so happy. It was hard to describe.

The twenty five minutes went by so fast that at the end of the contest people were still skating the obstacle really hard. People were still going at it and trying to land their tricks. I didn’t want to end the contest while people were still enjoying themselves so much so I decided to add another thing to the contest. I came up with a really hard trick, a kickflip bump to bump, and said that the first person to land this would get a price anyways. And people went crazy. At least five people that were sitting down and watching instantly grabbed their boards and started trying, and within two minutes somebody managed to do it and received his price while being loudly cheered on by me and the rest of the crowd and skaters. The contest was really alive still and people were still trying. But since it is still a contest I had to stick to the rules and call it time. Otherwise it would have gone on for hours. But there were two definite winners. Rachid Addou won the second price, and Berry Hayze won the first price. He was the lucky one to go home with a brand new LOOSE skateboard and both him and Rachid got a fresh sheet of LOOSE griptape together with a copy of ESSAY ZINE issue two with my interview in it.

Another cool thing that happened during the contest was an international guy tapping me on my shoulder and saying that he found my company and event on Instagram and asking if he could buy one of my boards. That made me so happy, it meant that people from outside our country also know about my company and like my illustrations. He came to the event just to buy the board from me. Which was a complete honor to me.

After I told the crowd who had won the contest and after handing them out there well deserved prices two more people had asked me if they could buy a board.  And of course they could 🙂

After that I wanted to go home, pick the obstacle up and call it a day and go to bed felling as happy as I was feeling at that moment. But so many people were coming up to me shaking my hand and giving me hugs and telling me how much and enjoyed it and thanking me for putting on this event that I literally had to stand there for twenty more minutes talking to every body. After that i literally had to kick people of the obstacle because they were still skating it. We loaded the thing back on the trailer and once again a lot of skaters helped me with picking everything up and moving all my stuff. I cleaned up all the mess the event had left and drove off. I was so happy, my event was a great succes. People loved it. I was proud of my myself. My hard work payed off. I couldn’t be more satisfied, and I couldn’t be happier. It was EPIC!

Q10, update 25.

The photos from the last post were posted on the 28th of december, the day of the event itself. And they got over 250 likes within a few hours. And after that it was time for the event. I was really nervous all day. I spent the entire day fixing up all the final details for the evening. Starting out with driving to the city to get a megaphone. I contacted my boss at skatestore because I knew they had one, and they send it over to Rotterdam for me to use it at the event, after picking that up I drove to the supermarket. I bought a lot of drinks for the people that come to the event. I bought Coca Cola and Orange soda, I didn’t buy any alcohol on purpose because I was sure that if the police saw me hand out alcohol on the street and without knowing if all my visitors are older than 18 that the event would be shut down really quick.
After buying the drinks I drove back to the car garage where the obstacle was stored because I still had to make it skate ready. I still had to sand down the metal edges and put wax on them. I am really glad I decided to test this out before the event started. Because the metal was extremely rough and didn’t grind at all. So I sanded the edges down and put a lot of wax on them so they were skate-able. Then when the edges finally grinded well I realized that the obstacle still wasn’t heavy enough. After testing it out a few times I noticed that the obstacle moved every time you jumped on it, and since the floor at the Maritiem museum was made out of marble I was pretty sure the obstacle was going to move there as well. Which is dangerous and also not nice for the contest because then you have to put it back in place after every attempt taking the flow out of the skaters because they have to wait every time. So then I drove to the Karwei and got a few of those very thick bags they use to transport gravel and sand. Then I drove back home to grab a shovel, and then I drove to a construction place close to my home and asked the construction worker if he could lend me some sand. He said it was fine and that I could take some. So after filling the bags with sand and driving those back to where the obstacle was to test out if they were heavy enough (which they were) I drove back home and finally thought I could chill out for a second. But then I realized that it was already 17:30, and the event started at 19:30. Meaning that I had only two hours to have dinner, load the obstacle onto a trailer, drive to the city centre with this huge thing, unload the obstacle in the middle of a busy street, set up the entire course for the obstacle and finish all the final preparations at the location. So that meant that there was no time to chill out. I had to work really really hard.
But everything went really really well, I managed to get it all done in time. And after this long exhausting day it was finally time for the event to start, and I was extremely nervous, but also extremely excited!! It was time to start!!

Q10, update 24.

After finally getting done with the process of building the obstacle it was time for some promotion. Since this celebration was not only for school, but also for the one year anniversary of my company I decided to do the promotion with a party themed photo shoot. Of course I really wanted to do this with an illustration but due to time limits photo’s would be a lot easier and quicker. So I contacted my photographer friend Max Morel, and got us a great indoor location in Rotterdam to do the photo-shoot. I bought a few party items and turned the obstacle into a typical dutch birthday party. I had a lot of fun doing this shoot, and I also took advantage of the situation and asked Max if he could also take some good photo’s of the obstacle itself for me, I knew the obstacle would be thrashed after the event so having nice photo’s of the thing before the destruction was a great idea.

We did the shoot and I posted the photo’s on my Instagram and Facebook event, and the photo’s got over 250 likes. People even reposted these photo’s to their own timeline, and the photographs were seen by a lot of people. Meaning that they played their role as promotion work very very well 🙂

Q10, update 23.

And then I had to start building the actual thing. And I must say, I completely under estimated this process. I thought this would be easily done within a day. Put a few screws in and go. But no, this was not true.

When making a skate obstacle you have to of course keep a few things in mind, and the most important part is safety. People are going to crash into this thing, jump into it. Land on it, stand on it, grind on it etc. etc. This thing should be extremely sturdy and should be able to take on a lot of big blows and punches. So safety was something that made the process of putting this thing together a lot slower. Having to thing about extra support for the wood, having to thing about pre drilling holes before putting the screws in, having to think about breaking points of the wood, having to think about measuring all the corners and edges right. All these things were completely new to me. I had never made something so solid and big, and especially never something in which being precise about your wood work is so crucial. So building this was a completely new thing for me. And then we were only talking about just putting the wooden boxes together. This was already quit the challenge, but after that the even worse part came, and that was attaching the two wooden boxes in just the right angle, and then applying the metal edges. This was the hardest part out of all of this process so far.

First I had to go on an adventure to find metal, because I needed about six meters of metal in total. And where do you find six meters of metal. But luckily the car garage knew a place I could go, which also happened to be at walking distance from the car garage. Which made it a lot easier for me to carry back six meters of metal (which is very heavy).

And then the difficult part started, we had to cut put the six meters of metal into pieces that fitted perfectly on to the obstacle. Then we had to measure out how to perfectly cut the edges of the metal so everything could fit onto each other, and then we had to weld the pieces back together. But I had never welded anything in my life before. I never knew it was that hard, but one important thing I should have known before building this thing is that you can’t weld on top of would. The wood will instantly burn. But because I didn’t know this I was stuck with a problem. I had to weld the metal together in exactly the right angle, but without placing in on the object it had to fit onto in the end. So we kind of had to guess the angle. Which ended up not working at all and resulted into us welding and cutting and welding and cutting the metal several times. Making this into a very very long process. And after finally getting the angle right, we had to weld it all the way. But since people are going to skate on it the metal had to be smooth, meaning that we had to cut off all of the uneven parts again, and that we had to sand down all of the bumps and edges. And after finally getting the metal into a decent shape which was also skate-able (which took us hours and hours) we had to attach it to the wooden obstacle. And do this without damaging the paint, without weakening the wood, without bending the wood, without messing up the angle in which the wooden boxes should be attached, without hurting ourselves, without damaging both the metal and the wood. I hope I am making clear how much of a hassle this was. This was so intensely difficult. It was insane. It is hard to describe how hard it was, and ho much time and work went into building this obstacle.

This was something completely new for me. Never before was building something so difficult. Working with new and difficult materials, working on a very big scale and always having to keep safety in the back of my mind. Everything is so intensely precise and every tiny little detail is extremely important. This was something an illustrator usually wouldn’t be too much involved in. Making this project something that grew my vision on the craft of an illustrator into something completely different from what it was before starting this project. Making this one of the projects I learned the most in out of almost all the projects I had done at the WdKA so far.

Q10, Update 22.

The rest of the week consisted out of production and organizing. I finished the painting of the boards within one week. It was a lot of very hard and very precise work. And I have spent several days painting from 8 till 6 at the car garage. But at the end I really liked the result. The paint was very thick and stayed on there very well. And it made the paintings look like an actual solid piece, which was really lovely.

After that I was finally done painting all the boards, and that’s when another really fun part came along, now I finally got to see what the hard work was for. I got to lay out all of the paintings next to each other, to finally see what the end result would look like. This was a great moment. Because this is when you finally get to see what the end result is going to be like, and that was a very big motivation for me to keep going.

After this I had to put a coating over the paint. My normal illustration work doesn’t have this but this painting was going to be destroyed. Loads and loads of skateboards were going to crash into this painting. Riding over it and destroying it. This was already kind of pain full due to the fact that I spent so much time doing my best to paint this as nice as possible. So that was also the reason I wanted a really thick clear coat. But after getting some help from my lovely girlfriend the clear coat was thickly applied within a few hours.

Which took us to the next step, building the actual obstacle.

Q10, update 21.

Now this week is was time for the most fun part, and that was turning my ideas and concepts into actual products. It was time for me to start the production of the obstacle.
Now right away I got into a problem, where am I going to work on this thing? The boards I have to paint are 1,5 meters long. I don’t have space in my house to paint four of these things, and unfortunately I also don’t have a painting studio in which I can work on my stuff.  So I had to look for a place to work.
After thinking for a while I remembered where I made the migration project box and thought of going there again, but the car garage that allowed me to work in his place has moved since then.  So I went to the new location and I was allowed to work there as well. They have a few rooms they don’t really use up stairs and I was told that if I cleaned one room up I was allowed to paint over there. So I did. I have spent of my first day there moving boxes of car parts and even entire front windows and car doors out of this room. And then I spent the second part of the day building up my painting place. I brought an easel but the wooden boards were so big and heavy they wouldn’t stay on there so I had to build around my easel with boxes and car parts. The wooden boards were resting on both the easel and the boxes now so I was finally able to start painting.

I rarely ever paint, and when I do it is always only on a very small scale. Making it on a small canvas or on paper. But almost never on wood and especially not on a large scale. So this was again a completely different and weird experience for me. I started this painting session out by mixing my two colors I was going to use. I remember dat when I painted my PROFIELEN box the paint wouldn’t really stick and wasn’t very thick. Meaning that it became kind of transparent. So this time I kept that in mind while mixing the paint by using different paint than before. When mixing the colors I used white wall paint, instead of normal white paint. Making the paint a lot more solid and thick, making it very easy to paint thin lines. Going over there once was already enough, making all the thin lines really easy to keep thin. Usually I would have to go over them three times making the thin lines look very thick. But now with the solid wall paint in the mix painting was a lot more comfortable. Another thing is that I made a lot of paint this time. Instead of mixing a small amount of the colors I needed I made very big jars full of them. I even went to the store to buy containers with a lit that you can fully close. Making it very easy to lock your paint away and use it the next day.

After that I applied the first color to all the boards and then I sketched out the lines onto the wood. And the next step was painting the drawings onto the wood. This took me a few days. I would just go there everyday at nine, and work there till five. And on days I had classes I would just go there after the classes. Painting everyday and within four of five painting sessions I managed to finish the boards. When I actually was painting I realized that my idea of using wall paint as a base for my colors was a great idea. The paint worked really well. And working on a big scale was actually very comfortable compared to working on a small detailed canvas. And the most comfortable part was that I had so many paint. Every time a spot would get dirty or I would smear my hand over my painting or something I could just repaint it using the exact colors. Which made the process a lot more easy for me and my unexperienced painting haha.

Here are some photo’s I took during the process of painting. 

Q10, update 20.

There is one thing that I keep forgetting and i is something that is very new for me to think about as an illustrator. And that is promotion.

I promoted my event on both Instagram and Facebook, I even made a Facebook event. But posting it once is not enough of course. I should keep the people updated. Keep posting about it. Keep making people interested and curious. Keep them up to date and let them know that I am working on the project really hard. I haven’t done that too much so far so it is really important that I find a good way to professionally promote the event without spoiling too much.

That is a completely new thing and I never new how this would effect an illustrator this much. But that is the interesting thing about trying new things you have never done before. You discover different things then you already knew and you learn. And since tat is the goal of school of course it makes me feel like I am really doing a good thing with this assignment and it motivates me even more as an illustrator.

Q10, update 19.

After getting done with all the sketching I used photoshop to decide the colors I wanted to use, and to turn the lines drawing I had made into full two color designs which were going to be on the obstacle. I even already adjusted the designs to the actual size and shape they were going to have on the obstacles. Making every design the exact size they were going to be when painted on the obstacle. I made these drawing in photoshop so I would have a better idea of how I wanted to paint them. Knowing what I wanted my design to look like.
If I would have stared painting the obstacle from just the line sketches I had made I was risking it not turning out the way I had hoped it to and that would be very bad because I have very limited time to finish this project. So that is why I made the final design in photoshop. This was my way of quickly getting rid of the huge risk painting has.

These were the final results of my photoshop sessions, after this I had to start painting the designs onto the wood, that was going to be the real challenge.

The colors in these images are not the same due to CMYK and RGB color settings in photoshop, I was to lazy to change that for this update haha. But in the actual painted obstacle the colors will be the same of course.