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Illustration & Visual Narrative / Task 1: Exercises

26.08.2021 - 23.09.2021 (Week 1 - Week 5)
Lulu Luisa Linardi / 0349358 / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Illustration & Visual Narrative
Task 1: Exercises

LECTURES

Fig 1.0: Thumbnail, 05.09.2021

WEEK 2: Introduction to Character Design

Stylized designs are what stands out most.
- Iconic
- Created easily
- Profitable

Principles of Character Design

1. Shapes
- Define a character's silhouette
- Create the iconic look from different shapes which can show contrast, i.e. two monsters, make it one tall and big with rectangular or triangular shapes, and the other one small and short with circle
- Discover new shapes by combining/distorting the original shape

Fig 1.1.1: Disney Aladdin Shapes

2. Color
- Plays an important role at determining who are the heroes/protagonist and villains/antagonist, i.e. bright or nice color for protagonist and dark or bad color for antagonist
- Use more powerful and stand out color for the main character
- Try using color palette (color schemes) from Adobe: color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel

Fig 1.1.2: Example of Color Palette

Fig 1.1.3: Color Study

3. Emphasis & Gestalt
- Pick one visual element in a character and exaggerate it to make the character outstanding and memorable
- Sometimes picking a cultural element and adding it to a design makes it uniquely authentic

Fig 1.1.4: Disney's Hercules

4. Harmony
- Put all shapes, lines, colour, motifs, and patterns together in a tasteful manner
- Make sure the character is well-blend and has a great balance which has visual hierarchy

Fig 1.1.5: Example of game character with harmony

5. Expression/Poses
- To make the character win the heart of an audience, we need their behaviour/quirks/personalities to be visually shown

Fig 1.1.6: Disney character showing its expression


WEEK 3: Composition

Composition is the way you position and design the elements of your illustrations, which can be as pivotal to making a piece look good as any technical aspect like anatomy, color, or perspective. It also refers to how your image is put together.


Types of Shots/Compositions
- Establishing
- Bird's Eyeview
- Framing
- Medium Shot
- Close-up
- Worm's Eyeview

Fig 1.2.1: Types of Shots/Compositions


Positive vs. Negative Spaces

Fig 1.2.2: Examples of Positive vs. Negative Spaces #1

Fig 1.2.3: Examples of Positive vs. Negative Spaces #2


The Rule of Thirds
- A guideline artists use to compose imagery, the aim being to ensure a piece is visually appealing and balanced
- Since people view images from top to bottom, left to right, the top left intersection is considered primary and the bottom right is secondary

Fig 1.2.4: Application of the Rule of Thirds


Background, Midground, & Foreground
- The subject matter is often in the foreground or midground, while the world setting is often in the background of the setting the subject matter is inhabiting

Fig 1.2.5: Foreground, Midground, Background

Fig 1.2.6: Environment Art


Contrast
- Using a dramatic shift or change of aspects of the visuals to guide the viewer's eyes through the piece
- Image without contrast often looks either boring or confusing

Fig 1.2.7: Application of Contrast


Detail
- Works best to pick between one to three areas of interest and freely add detail to those areas

Fig 1.2.8: Application of Detail


Symmetry vs. Asymmetry
- To have our art to be immediately aesthetically pleasing to people, keep things fairly balanced and predictable because human brain likes symmetry
- The sense of usease a viewer gets by seeing something off center or on an uncomfortable angle can be an effective way to elicit the audience's discomfort, fear, or alarm

Fig 1.2.9: Symmetry vs. Asymmetry


WEEK 4: Perspectives

Perspective is the method of representing the illusion of depth, size, and tangibility in illustrations. It can create a sense of realism or it can be manipulated to make images more dynamic and interesting.


INSTRUCTIONS

Task 1: Exercises 1

We were given a task to do Vormator Challenge by creating our own unique character using the vormator shapes as seen below. Ms Anis also told us to name the character and give it a short story. I started to do the task by exploring some ideas.

Fig 2.1.1: Vormator shapes


This is actually my second character. I did the sketch before, but I didn't think it works, so I just started to create a new one. I searched for cute monster from google, and got the inspo, so I made a sketch of him.

Fig 2.1.2: Rough Sketch, 31.08.2021

I created this character from the inspo I got, but I didn't feel satisfied with the result, so I asked Ms Anis to give me some feedback. After giving the feedback, she also fixed some parts of my character. Therefore, I tried to fix my character with the feedback I got.

Fig 2.1.3: Rough sketch (fixed by Ms Anis), 05.09.2021

What I did next is tracing the vormator shapes in Adobe Illustrator. It was quite hard, but I really enjoyed doing this. Afterwards, I moved my sketch into Illustrator, and started to color him. At first, I gave him different eyes and mouth from my sketch. But when I asked Ms Anis, she said that she prefer that silly eyes and quirky mouth, so I changed it back to the original one.

Fig 2.1.4: Tracing the Vormator Shapes, 07.09.2021

Fig 2.1.5: First Attempt, 07.09.2021

Fig 2.1.6: Second Attempt, 08.09.2021


Later on, I was told to try different color scheme. I explored new color by playing with the blue and green color palette for the head, body, arms, legs, and tail. For the hands, toe nails and thorns on his tail, I tried very different color from the previous one. Also changed the lip color to shocking pink so it stands out more. Lastly, I added some gradients so it doesn't look so flat.

Fig 2.1.7: Prototype, 08.09.2021

Fig 2.1.8: Final Outcome of Eggryo, 09.09.2021

Long short story, I named this character 'Eggryo' because his body looks similar to an egg, and the 'gry' comes from hungry. It is because despite the fat body he has, he always looks hungry and craving for fried chicken everytime. Also add the 'o' letter after 'gry' to indicate that he's a male monster. 

Next, I tried drawing the background for the character. My friend got me an idea to draw a park for it, and I suddenly thought of the background of Shopee Tanam's page. It's a minigame in the e-commerce app (only for Indonesia). So I tried to recreate it to make it suitable with my character and finally I got what I wanted.

Fig 2.1.9: Shopee Tanam's page, 19.09.2021

Fig 2.1.8: Eggryo with background, 19.09.2021


Task 1: Exercises 2

In week 3, we were told to start making the playing card of our own character. The playing card itself must have both front and back side. Students are allowed to use any shapes, not only the vormator one. It should be done in tarot card size, which is 897 x 1479 pix. I have no idea about how my playing card will come out later, so I did many researches to get some references from Google and Pinterest.

Fig 2.2.1: Playing card references, 14.09.2021

First attempt, I recreated the layout below using brown color scheme. But I wasn't satisfied with the appereance. Therefore, I left out the design and tried thinking for another more interesting layout.

Fig 2.2.2: Reference for playing card, 21.09.2021

Fig 2.2.3: First attempt on designing card layout, 21.09.2021

Because the first attempt was quite disappointing, I did exploration again. Suddenly I thought of making the border looks like an egg (ellipse shape), so I did another attempt but it just turns out interesting. The ellipse was put not in the middle. I actually didn't do it on purpose but while experimenting, I found it more appealing.

Fig 2.2.4: Second attempt on designing card layout, 21.09.2021

Moving onto next part, I got an idea to make the character's name also looks like the egg shape. So I tried to distort some typefaces with the shape of egg. However, the attempts didn't turn out well so I kept testing on other fonts and finally got what I want. p.s. I gave texture for the card background so it doesn't look too plain.

Fig 2.2.5: First attempt on character name, 21.09.2021

Fig 2.2.6: The ??? attempt on character name, 21.09.2021

Although it has met my expectation, I still found something odd on it. Therefore, I explored another color and put a drop shadow effect on it and now it looks better. Also add some elements such as the character's abilities and its level. For the background of the character's abilities, I made something like a nest by using brush. To make the level visible, I tried to create an egg shape again but it turns out nicely, so I just go with that.

Fig 2.2.7: Adding more elements, 21.09.2021

Next, I went for the back side of playing card. Using almost the same elements, I tried to modified it a little. I placed the nest in the middle of the card, and increase the size of the egg. Later I also placed three fried chickens with different sizing. Lastly, I put some details on it. I created color gradient for the center part to make the egg looks glowing and more stand out.

Fig 2.2.8: Adding color gradient, 21.09.2021

So these are the final looks of the Eggryo playing card, both front and back side.

Fig 2.2.9: Final Outcome of Playing Card (front), 22.09.2021

Fig 2.2.10: Final Outcome of Playing Card (back), 22.09.2021

FEEDBACK

Week 1

General Feedback:
Create a folder for IVN class as instructed

Week 2

General Feedback:
Use more powerful color to make the character stands out and make sure the character has great balance.

Specific Feedback:
The character was very unsettling, it didn't have much proportion and balance, try fixing it. Add patterns on his bed and play around with different colour and shading.

Week 3

Specific Feedback:
Try different color scheme. Exercise your own observation skill to find which one is more appealing to choose.

Week 4

Public holiday no class

Week 5

Specific Feedback:
Nice work, you did really well. Looks like children's storybook. For the character and its background, no drop shadow works best.


REFLECTIONS

Experience
The IVN class never gets me bored because both of the lecturers always bring positive vibes to us and they both are super friendly and kind. As the beginner in this kind of industry, I don't have much worries because the lecturers are so helpful. Not only the explanation during the lecture class by Ms Anis but also the tutorial class by Ms Jennifer is really helpful because they explain everything very clearly and detailing. The feedback they gave helps me to improve my works and to explore more ideas so I can finish my exercises smoothly.

Observations
Illustration and Visual Narrative is quite new to me because I'm actually poor at drawing. Still, I tried to overcome it by following the lectures and tutorials well, and also hear feedbacks from everyone as well. It is quite difficult at first to get any ideas for my works but then I realized that we only have to do our own experiment. So just try, try, and try to gain our expectation, and if still cannot, go ask anyone for their feedback and suggestion. Learning new things isn't bad for us.

Findings
The class will use Adobe Illustrator the most, I'm kinda afraid because I'm a quite beginner to it. However I think I still can handle the most used tools, the pen tool to trace the vormator shapes. Found that I'm still a bit lack of exploring multiple color schemes, so I guess I need to explore and learn more on it. Also get to know why creativity is one of the most important thing for designer. It is because it will really help us to get through our works in the future since people's feedback can't help us forever.