Studio Brief 2 - Greeting's from..

Illustrator Workshops

Notes

Grids

Shape. Fill. Pathfinder. Pen Tool

Line. Dashed line. Thickness

Perspective grid tool

Experimentation

Use pen tool to draw over the image then on the layers pallette press the eye of the original image to see just the line work

THUMBS

Ideas for NYC

Reference imagery

After visiting New York this year I have experienced what it is to be a tourist there and all of the attractions, the sounds, the smells, and the people. This has gave me a good insight into how I would like to represent the city. Rather than the typical landmarks we see all of the time I want to pin point characters and symbols within the city that also sum it up to me. 

Some of my photographs : 

Thumbnailing ideas 

Combining my own ideas into one. Using my own original photographs taken of New York and putting a spin to it to create something more humorous. I think in order to capture the essence of New York it would be best to concentrate on the people rather than the typical skylines. I think using character makes my work more humorous and this would work better as a set. I don't want to create a typical postcard, I want to make work that would still be recognisable as a city, but through character. I get quite bored of drawing very accurate skylines on Illustrator. I want to create something with a bit more vibrance.

Images for influence - reference

PARIS

This type of stereotype I think is more sucessful in summing up a country, in a postcard that you wouldn't usually see.

LAS VEGAS

AMSTERDAM

NEW ORLEANS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Influence

Looking round at other people's ideas in crits I did not want to conform to boring skylines; I want to make something a little bit more visually appealing and humorous. For influence I looked back at Mr.Bingo's hate mail for postcard's with a twist. 

PROCESS

Line work

As I am looking at characters within the cities I felt what would be most humorous is to exaggerate the stereotypes of the city. I started to google images of this to draw from. 

New York Yankee

Paris stereotype 

A frog smoking a cigarette, with a beret surrounded by wine and cheese. 

NYC - Bird woman from Home Alone

I like this but I don't think it would be as recognisable to the city. 

Paris stereotype

French man in a beret, carrying baguettes in striped top and scarf. 

Vegas - Elvis

Vegas weddings rather than the casino's. 

All of these were done with a 0.25 line using pen tool but when clicking the live paint tool the lines are thinned down which actually looks much better.

Colouring images

Experimenting with ways in which I could add colour and over lay them

 Colour fill

New York yankee man eating a huge burger with tiny chips on top. Questioning the portion sizes in New York and being overweight. 

I searched for images that I felt summed up stereotypes of that city and drew over them with the pen tool on illustrator.

German drinking beer from a stein and eating pretzels.

The 'live paint' tool. I selected my image and went onto options - live paint - make. Then selected areas that I wanted to fill with colour. I quite like how this image has turned out compositionally with the table appearing as if it is coming at you. 

Final postcards

Overall I think I got way too bogged down with getting my head around the process of just creating lines and live painting and ran out of time to really add tone and create work that I was happy with. I think the concept comes across in that I was trying to create stereotypical humorous characters rather than typical skyline imagery; but I feel I have not put enough consideration into composition and the background of the pieces. The skills I have aquired are useful but I feel much more confident in Photoshop when it comes to colouring. I have not enjoyed this brief as much as other's because as it is probably clear now I like to make funny pieces, and it was hard to create work that was recognisable, summed up the city, worked as a postcard, working with vectors, battling with Illustrator as well as trying to communicate a humorous message. Stereotypes worked best for this, but I feel this could have been exaggerated a lot more. I wish I had longer on these pieces to work on them. 

The postcard I feel works best is the man with the pretzels and beer because i spent the most time in colouring his figure so the tones are nice and the composition is good. However along with all of the postcards I needed more consideration into the background of this piece.