ILLUSTRATION & VISUAL NARRATIVE - TASK 1

26.08.2021 - 23.09.2021 (Week 1 - Week 5)
Christie Angelica Bakhary (0350655)
Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media / Illustration & Visual Narrative

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INTRODUCTION

Week 1 : Introduction & Briefing 
In the first week, Ms. Noranis and Ms. Jennifer welcome us with a very friendly and fun vibes. Then, they introduced us to the subject and briefed us about what projects are we all going to work with. The first task that were given to us was to do character design sketches for the vormator challenge that will be briefed on the next week.

Week 2
This week, Ms. Anis introduced us to the basic principles of illustration and gave some movie character examples from it, as well as several ways on how to make a good character design. After that, some of our sketches were given feedbacks and tips of how to improve the designs. In the end, Ms. Jennifer taught us about the basic things on illustrator like layers, etc. and give us tutorial about how to trace the vormator shapes using pen tool.

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LECTURE NOTES

Week 2 - Character Design Basics
Design principle is a base of all type of designs, including in Illustration. Principles of character design are as follow :

1. Shapes
   Define a character's silhouette. Before designing a character, we must surely 
   think of how the character's silhouette/shadow will look like. 
   Example below shows the use of different shapes in Aladdin the movie characters :

Fig. 1.1 : Examples of basic shapes of characters

2. Color
    Play an important rule and determine whether the character is good/bad. Colors have  
    qualities that can cause certain emotions in people.

Fig. 1.2 : Color study

3. Emphasis & Contrast
    To be able to make a good character design, we should choose a visual element in a 
    character to make it more memorable. For example picking something with cultural 
    elements.

4. Harmony
    All elements in design must work and compliment to each other. A balance visual 
    elements are the one that has a visual hierarchy.

5. Expressions / Poses
    This is what make your character have personality.

Week 3 - Composition
Composition is the way we place and design the elements of our illustrations 

• Types of shots / compositions :

Fig. 1.3 : Types of shots / compositions

       - Establishing
          Is a wide view

       - Birds eyeview
          A view where we are like looking down from the sky. It tends to be more dynamic   
          and gives the sense of height and movement.

       - Worm's eyeview
          Shots from the ground and tend to make the audiences to see the close up.

       - Medium shot
          Used to focus on a singular character.

       - Framing

       - Close up

Fig. 1.4 : Positive and negative spaces

2. Industry technique
Find balance of positives and negatives space

Fig. 1.5 : Takeaways massage about composition

Week 4 - Perspectives

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

Types of Perspective :

• 1 point
• 2 point
• 3 point
• 4-5 points (fisheye)

Figure 1.6: Types of perspectives

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INSTRUCTION

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PRACTICAL

EXERCISE 1 : VORMATOR CHALLENGE 
The first task is vormator challenge, where we were required to make a character design by only using the 8 given shapes. There are some rules for this exercise ,such as we are not allowed to stretch the shapes, etc. 

Sketch :

Fig. 2.1 : Vormator character design sketch 

The first thing that I thought when seeing these shapes were to make a cute and lovely teddy bear. So, I started by sketching out my ideas on Procreate and added some name ideas on it. Actually, I'm not that satisfied with my sketches because it is too simple, whereas the other classmates sketches were all really good. I also quite confuse on which character I should go for this task. Unfortunately, in the class meeting I didn't get a chance to receive feedback from both Ms. Anis & Ms. Jennifer, but then I contacted Ms. Anis to get a feedback on my sketches and she kindly accepted it. Apparently, she likes my second sketch the most and said that it just need to be improved more or else it will become too flat.

Progress :
I started out by tracing all the vormator shapes using pen tool as what Ms. Jennifer had teach us on the tutorial session (Week 2).

Fig. 2.2 : Tracing vormator shapes with pen tool

Then I made the silhouette of my character on AI with the shapes I've traced to know what it will look like with the black and white color.

Fig. 2.2 : Vormator character design silhouette 

Because I was confused on which one to choose, I made 2 bear with different color and design choices. I asked my friends and my sister on which one from this both to proceed with. Apparently, most of them prefer the pink one, one of them even said that it is more cuter because it looks like a pig color.

Fig. 2.x : First draft of vormator character design 

The final color palette I used for Mogu
was a monochromatic peachy/orange pink (#fec0b3) palette.

I didn't really like the wings color so I tried several gradient color that will match Mogu's body.

Fig. 2.x : Experimenting with wings color

Fig. 2.x : Second draft of vormator character design 

Final Result

Mogu background story :

She is a sugar fairy that lived in a dreamy island. Sweet foods are her favorite She is very famous among the others fairy but she has 1 problem that give he

EXERCISE 2 - GAME CARD DESIGN 

Idea Exploration 

For the background I wanted to achieve a sweet candy land look like in the Candy Crush game. 

While for the color palette, I was inspired by this Little Twin Star image where it used beautiful rainbow pastel colors.

Fig. 2.x : Card game color palette inspiration 

Sketch

Inspired by cards from a game I've played before, which is "Superstar SmTown", I sketched out the composition on Procreate.

Fig. 2.x : Card design inspo (Source : Pinterest)

Progression

Rather than using the gradient tool,  I tried experimenting and play around with mesh tool for the cloud color to achieve a softer gradient look. I am actually kind of confused when using it because I've never used this before and that's why it still look very messy.

Fig. 2.x : Coloring the cloud using mesh tool

For the background I try to add a grain effect to it to make it more textured. I chose the soft grain so that it doesn't give too much noise but still give some slight grain to it.

Fig. 2.x : Applying grain effect for the card back side

Fig. 2.x : Card game design (first draft)

Fig. 2.x : Card game (second draft)

I didn't really like how I designed the front card, so I changed it to a more simpler look with just the character's name in it and the 'Rare' symbol at the upper side. Then I also change the color of 'R' word to a rainbow hologram color so it looks like it is shining, following with the color of Mogu's name with a rainbow pastel color. I chose to use the donut symbol typeface for Mogu's name to express more that Mogu is a sugar fairy that loves sweet foods.

Fig. 2.x : Card game design (third draft)

Final Result

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FEEDBACKS

Week 1 : Introduction
General feedback : Learn about Adobe Illustrator more because it will be use for this whole course semester.

Week 2 : Character sketches
General feedback : 
Personal feedback : Make sure to properly lay the shapes to get the depth of the design or otherwise the character will be just flat.

Week 3 
General feedback :
Personal feedback :

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REFLECTION

This task was exciting but also quite challenging because of the limited shapes that were given. But I personally happy with it because I got to explored and learn more about making character design as well as Adobe Illustrator, as I am not quite familiar with it.