Illustration & Visual Narrative Task 1

03.10.2024 - 11.10.2024 ( Week 2- Week 3 )

Shubashini a/p Subramaniam / 0367697 / Bachelor of Creative Media

Illustrator & Visual Narrative (COM61340)

Lectures :

 Week 2 : This lecture was about basic character designs. It discussed 6 principles of character designs like shapes, colour, harmony, exspressions, and poses. The one that stuck with me the most was shapes because I too believe it adds weight to a character. If I were to think of morally good characters most of them were more on the the rounded shape but if I think about morally challenged characters they were often more triangular. It helped built a part of their character.

Week 3 : The word Chiarosuro, an Italian term meaning from light to dark, was used in art by creating illusion of a 3 dimensional volume in a flat surface. Its purpose was to increase a scenes dramaticness and it helps focusing on a central point by darkening the background. It also is used in Visual Narrative by increasing dramatic tension , creating sensational effects, attracting attention and making a tasteful comparison. All this because it dramatically shows the different in positive and negative space.

Task 1 : Vormator Challenge
In this task, I took part in creative exercises aimed at teaching the fundamentals of vector illustration and character design using Adobe Illustrator. The challenge limited me to a set of pre-defined shapes, and my goal was to create a unique character by combining and manipulating these shapes while adhering to specific rules. This helped me develop my skills in proportion, balance, color, and composition, as well as master a few tools in Illustrator .

Week 2 

Our lecturer helped and guided through using the Illustrator tool by giving us a simple exercise to get use to drawing lines using a computer mouse. He introduced us to a webpage called " The Bezier Game", that helped us in learning how to create lines and shapes.

                            

Exercise One : We were tasked to replicate the shapes given in Illustrator to increase our proficiency.

Next , I tried replicating several cartoon characters.

Week 3 

Our lecturer talked about shapes in a character by showing us examples from Monsters Inc. We could see how the rounder characters was often good , the rectangular character was reliable and dependent and triangular characters were often sneaky. He also mention about the golden ration and chibi characters and the importance of having rations when creating a character.

Using Pathfinder

 

Using Shape Builder 

Creating A Character Using Vormator Shapes

I was actually inspired by " The Magician ", from Tarot Cards. From the sketch I was heavily inspired by Adventure Time when drawing the characters as I didn't want to put too much detail  into it and wanted to keep it simplistic. I also didn't want this character to be morally good , thus I made it so she has a triangular figure making her morality more complex as the magician is neither good nor bad. ,I used pink and green mostly for her design as both are complimentary colours and works well with each other.

Freya Comwell

A princess rebelling from a corrupted kingdom working as a magician for the rebellion army. A character inspired by the magician card from tarot cads. It defines making your dream come true and feeling a special bond with a certain thing. The magician holds the power make dreams come true and create miracles.

Self-Reflection :

Experience : I feel more experienced in using the Illustrator App compared to before. I am tremendously a bit more confident in creating art using it. I also learned the great value of not procastinating as I had time to redesign my character and really put in effort to get it done. I am more used to the pen tool as I try my best to practise using it in my free time.

Observation : I find more importance of being present in class to learn face to face how to do things as I know that If I were to learn it online by myself it would have taken way longer for me to get it into my head. Besides that I find the attention to detail needed to design a character is heavy as I had to recheck my character multiple times to make sure nothing was sticking out of place. 

Findings : Skills in Illustrator App / Knowledge in Character Building