Project #5 and #4 (Complete)

 

Well, this project is finally done! I don't have much to say that I haven't already, but everything was a lot of fun to sketch and put together. The newest things are the start and end cards which feature little vectored illustrations of the main characters. This is supposed to be cute but doubles as showing the viewer what their designs look like in normal light since every panel has a different tint. Overall I loved this project, and I'm really looking forward to printing it out. I stayed up until 6 am to finish this, and it was worth every bit of time! 

Assignment #3 - Second Cover Upload + First Cover Edit

     This first one is the cover I decided to go with. I made some minor tweaks to it based on criticisms I received during the critique for it. Mainly the border being white and a big sticker on the bottom that didn't need to be there. I also tried experimenting with another pink flower in the top right, but everything ended up looking awkward. For the second cover, I just wanted to throw around an idea of what else I could do. I didn't edit the back cover very much, but I tried using a shot from another page featuring a crystal cave for the front. I don't think this represents the whole thing quite as much, but I think it looks nice. Either way, it'll be somewhere in the graphic novel. 

Grid System: Response

     This was an interesting read despite not being the most relevant to the method I went with for my project. I ended up using much bigger grid boxes since I went with the large-panel graphic novel approach. I also learned a lot about how magazine and book interiors work and how different grid approaches can completely change the fluidity and composition of the text. This seems most applicable to extremely wordy text where someone will be spending a lot of time on each page just getting through it. In those circumstances, it makes a lot of sense to have some visuals balancing out that text. Still, it is definitely also difficult to not hinder the text's readability in the process. If I mess more with detailed text layouts in the future, this is definitely something I'll want to look back on and see if I can utilize the advice. 

Assignment 4 (WIP)

    This is still a work in progress! As for what is done, most of the dragon/creature line art is final. It may seem sketchy, but I've made this choice to emphasize shading. The frames are finalized, and so are the dialogue/color schemes of each spot. The page closest to completion is the fight scene, and the page furthest from completion is the gemstone cave. The dialogue text is a placeholder and is just my handwriting to know how big to make the bubbles. The font I'm using is going in last to take into account everything else before deciding on a type. The idea I've gone with here is four highlights from the first chapter of a story. Due to the amount of work that goes into drawing everything myself, I knew I couldn't make an entire graphic novel successfully within this time frame. At the same time, I wanted to challenge myself with vastly different kinds of tone and environment. 

    The first challenge I wanted was an incredibly dynamic scene. Fight scenes are pretty dramatic and require a lot of crazy angles that most other settings don't. I did this page last since it took the most planning and practice in the graphic novel format (I've never made a comic before.) I'm also by far the proudest of this one. That being said, I kind of want to go back and redraw some things with what I learned doing the most complicated page. For example, the panel with Percy eating a fruit looks very awkward, and I think I could stand to remake it. The other thing I experimented with a lot is how many panels each page has and how dialogue-heavy they are based on the scene I want to depict. The dialogue scene didn't require a lot of panels but did require a lot of dialogue bubbles. Lots of closeups of faces since the point is talking. 

    The rainforest page is working with establishing shots. I'm not entirely set where this text square should go, but almost in the middle is where it goes for now. I want to get across that these characters live their lives normally and get a feel for what their lives are like. The long panels really worked for this because it gives a sense of fast-paced movement, like a flash between different times of the day. With the fight scene page, I used a diagonal to help insinuate the fast movement of Soot coming to the rescue and have contrasted this with a much larger panel to sort of slow things down when she hits the drake. I kept the dialogue-heavy page very consistent to visually speed up their conversation and give more room for text. The crystal cave is trying to set up a purely visual shot of a new environment. Basically, I'm dabbling in different storytelling types within different scenes to see how these things interact with each other. 

Assignment 3

 

    For this project, the idea was to design a set of covers for a "hypothetical" graphic novel. I easily spent more time on the front cover, partially due to time issues and partially because what people see first tends to be the most important to draw them in with. I worked with font a lot here - more so than I will need to in my interior for it, I think. It was challenging to make the title look natural but still bold. The first five blues I used were not easy on the eyes, is all I'll say. Some criticisms I need to take into account are that I need some more pink somewhere. Perhaps in the top right corner? The graphic novel text is also a big offputting due to its angularity which I also intend to fix. 

    Working on the back cover was a lot more mathematical, I guess. Quote, summary, credits: it's just a matter of how I organize them. I have chosen a quote to draw in a reader and then the summary under that—some flavoring to give someone an idea of what they're picking up. I have a semi-transparent back to this text to make it easier to read, and for aesthetics, I picked a dark sky to match the front cover. I need to extend the bar code on the back to be more realistic, and actually, both of these should have a white border and not a black border. Hopefully, I'll be able to address all of this soon. 

Black and White Poster Exercise

For this exercise, I mostly played with fonts rather than the positioning of the letters. This is because I chose a pretty simple premise that didn't require paragraphs of information, and when that happens, it's hard to create an empty space without it feeling awkward. What I've picked up from this is that different fonts give off entirely different tones. These are both book fairs, but the first one gives off the impression of being more formal, whereas the second one, with its big goofy lettering, seems like it would either be less formal or more kid-oriented. I also used two different fonts with the second one until I found two that looked good together. I chose to do this for the tiny bit of challenge and experimentation. I also thought it might be funny to make the "payment" statement small for a bit of comedic effect but maybe realism. 

 

Typography Matters - Response

     This was a very informative little article, and overall it highlights how legibility is the most important aspect of text. Functionality comes before aesthetics every time. I remember this incident, and I remember how everyone made fun of the woman who announced the wrong winner and acted like she had done something stupid. I never knew it was the fault of whoever designed the card. It's nice to see this highlighted and will absolutely add to my perspective on situations like this in the future. 

    The most important things being the largest and the things that should be read first being at the top makes perfect sense. I can't imagine how annoying it would be to read a book where the body text was huge and tiny headers. It feels uncanny just thinking about it. 

    I actually found an example of typography mattering on my own this weekend by chance. I was scrolling through Reddit, and a Doctor Who quote list popped up. It had pictures of each "Doctor" in the background and whatever their best quote was. The issue was that the text was pure white on top of these images and blended into the background constantly. They also used a really stylized cursive font for these fairly lengthy quotes. I almost got a headache trying to interpret them.

Overall, highlighting the most important quality of text - legibility - is important to focus on. It's a bit unappreciated by the average person compared to things like style and color but is the foundation for actually reading something. 

InDesign Grid Practice - Patterns and Text

 

For my text, I used several different fonts for the first one, different "weights" by using italics and bold, and changed size and font for the third. This created a lot of different effects. The most noticeable thing was that bigger and bolder text seems to indicate importance. As for the color grids, I just had fun with them. I messed with them until they felt right. The grid really helped with organization mostly. 

Sketch Pages

 

The cover I chose is pretty fairly set in stone so it has a bit more detail than the page concept sketches I have above it. To be honest this is probably going to take a lot of time due to how the background and art-centric it is but I'm up to the challenge. It'll be fun to incorporate Illustrator in some ways although it's going to be more grid and photoshop-centric. 

Fear Them

This is a fun exercise overall! I think I like frames, haha. Thinking about colors and how they interact is fairly challenging, and I imagine I'll want to extend my color palette options in the future as well. 

Assignment #2 - Modularity

This project was a lot of fun but very difficult for me personally. Being limited to using shapes drives my brain up the wall, but the challenge is worth it, I think. I really struggle with the modular process, it would seem. As far as things I did like, my individual modules were exciting to make, and I'm happy with those results. I just wish they looked better when they were connected or grouped together. If I had to change anything in particular, it would be the red triangles in my triangle module. The red looked okay at first but is a lot more vivid than I realized after exporting it and looking at it on other screens. My concepts were jewelry, bowling alley carpets, and quilts! There are varying levels of chaos, and the word "quiet" is either representational or a misnomer, depending on the design. 

Color Pattern Examples

 Triangle

Square

Circle

I had a lot of fun using gradients and interesting color palettes for this exercise! With the circle I also figured out how to overlay my other pattern inside of another pattern. I don't know if my method was the normal way to do it, but for now I'm happy with what I got! I found a tool that allows me to create perfect gradients which I was very excited about. I would pick five or so colors that I thought worked well together and from there it was seeing what kind of interesting transitions I could get. 

Same Letter Made Two Different Ways

 

If this exercise has taught me anything, it's that more rigid and connected shapes are far more restrictive and time consuming to put together. The one made of triangles took four times as long to make as the one made of stars! I used pretty generic color palettes for this one just because I was learning how to color - so you've definitely seen these before. 

How to Choose a Typeface - Response

 This text was extremely informative and I'm glad we read through it. I don't tend to consider font style very much, so it's very eye opening for me. I will say, though, that there were some things that are fairly straightforward. Don't use font colors that are too dim or too light for the page, some fonts are harder to read than others, and comprehension comes before aesthetics - this is along the lines of what I've already been taught but it's nice to have these ideas reinforced by a professional! The four aspects of appropriateness stuck out to me as the most useful for future projects. It's just really nice to have tips and tricks organized into neat little bundles like this. I was surprised to find out that fonts have stuff typed up to categorize them for certain uses. I knew that different fonts were better for different things such as headers or signatures, but I didn't know that there was such widely available information about them. Overall I'm excited to start applying this new knowledge. 

Artwork Adjective Exercise

 For this exercise, I went with the word "Magical." I like fantasy art and when I create things I like them to be bright, colorful, and fun. The most appealing thing about art to me is creating a physical representation of things that do not exist. 

Print Resolution

Web Resolution

Assignment #1 - Alphabet

 

For this project I decided to go with a soft texture theme. I like soft things and thought I could do something fun and creative with it. Font wise I just created letters in the way that I write them on paper which is more rounded. I constructed the letters out of worm-on-a-strings which are just some cute, fluffy toys. They're very wiggly and add an extra layer of uniqueness to the letters making them look almost scribbly. There's no organization with the color - I like it unpredictable granted the materials I used. The next trick was a background and I went with the fluffiest blanket I had to match the fluffiness of the letters. 

The most fun part was also the most difficult part - arranging the letters. The colors are random, but there are actually about 20 different colors of "worm" I used in total - about 5 colors per letter. To make this as even as possible I had this system of pulling five random ones from a bag for each letter. The trouble is getting them to stay still enough to look like letters. They're very bendy and don't like conforming to shapes so I had to really think about how I arranged them to account for their need to escape. While this was difficult and led to some cropping issues later, the advantage is that most of the letters feel like they're moving! 

Another issue is that my camera kept changing the kind of lighting it preferred for every single letter. I gave up on trying to fix this because it matches the chaotic setup everything else has, but I could see this becoming a future problem that I need to figure out how to fix. My best solution to this was warming up the whole image to make the more cool backgrounds still feel cohesive with the rest of it. 

Letter Excercise

 For this project we had to create an upper and lower case letter. I chose an upper case C and a lower case r. The top picture is several photos of cats edited together and the bottom is an edited picture of one cat. I used masking and cropping for this mostly! 

Selfie Making Exercise

 

Normally I wouldn't use black and white because it makes lighting issues so apparent, but I liked this idea a lot. I basically took a painting I made for another class and edited myself into it. I have one me in the shoe and one me in the bottle. I also balanced the image out with a larger blended in me to make it look less unbalanced. As per usual I like to add a frame around the edge. 

Masking Assignment

So! For this assignment I chose to photoshop a picture of my cat onto a log. In the original picture she's resting on the edge of a bed with her little paws hanging off. I masked the layer and placed her on the edge of a log to make the hanging paws do something convincing. Additionally I added a butterfly just because I wanted to give her something to look at. These are all masked and edited together, but I have also altered the lighting. I changed the hue to be more blue and added some light green gradient lighting to make my cat, the butterfly, and the background more cohesive with each other. I also added some shadow under my cat for the same reason. After that I just selected the entire image, contracted it, and then inverted it to color in the black frame. I just thought it would look nice! I think it's convincing, but the butterfly still looks a little bit awkward. I think it's too big perhaps? 

3 Artists Who Use Text

 Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer utilizes powerful phrases using all caps out of fairly normal objects. The LED lights she uses gives a unique intimidating effect and really brings your focus to the words themselves rather than the objects they're put on. Really the appeal for me is how bright and beautiful this art is, but the meaning has power too. 

John Andrew Perello

John Andrew Perello's text art is a lot more graffiti-like and abstract. He uses calligraphy to create paintings from the letters which in some bases create phrases and in others merely turn the shapes into art. Either way, it's amazing to look at. 

Adam Pendleton

Creating his art through collage and screens, Adam Pendleton sticks to black and white giving his art a certain unique atmosphere. The words are the focal point yet blend into their background making a cohesive piece. Everything he creates is monochromatic.