Elephant

Introduction

I was given the task to come up with my own project, which incorporated the skills I learned this year, and undergo the process to create my design. I decided to create an animal made up of patterns that could be used for a wildlife magazine cover, protesting elephant hunting signs, or just a poster to be sold at a book store for a child to hang in his room. My guidelines were that the design is 18x11in, the animal's figure must be derived from small detached segments (bringing together my knowledge that I learned from the Gestalt Principles), and each section must contain its own pattern. I decided to create an elephant design where the background of cool colors contrasted with the warm foreground colors of the elephant.

Description

thumbnail

inspiration

inspiration

With my guidelines already made up from inspiration on Pinterest, I decided to sketch out a few possibilities. While thumbnailing I ended up adding a nice crumpled paper effect to my design.

First I started out by creating both Photoshop, for adding effects, and Illustrator, for designing the elephant, documents. I dragged a nice blue watercolor background and crumpled paper image, leaving the crumpled paper on top to create a blended effect, into Photoshop.



                                                     Next I added an elephant
                                                     into Illustrator to use as

elephant outline

wood design line tutorial

an outline. I outlined sections using the pen tool and colored them different warm colors. As for the body, I followed a wood design line tutorial I found on Pinterest. After pasting these vector drawings into Photoshop, I used the selection tool 
to copy and re-paste them back in my
document, giving 
                                                     me the ability to 
                                                    manipulate my images.



                                                     In Photoshop I dragged

pattern

pattern

patterns I found on Google onto my document. After re-pasting my images, I placed them on top of the different elephant sections, added a blending effect, and erased parts that passed the sections' outlines. I accidentally added an effect to the lines that are acting
as the elephant's body,
                                                         but liked it so much
                                                         that I ended up
                                                         keeping it.

Analysis

I enjoyed my project of creating my elephant, from establishing the guidelines to actually undergoing to process. It was a lot of fun designing each section of the elephant. Although that was the most difficult part, for I had to make sure I was not taking away any key elements of the elephant's outline, it was the most rewarding. I ended up having to ask my peers what they thought my design was. Not all of them said it was an elephant, so I had to tweak my sections a little bit to make sure my design would not be mistaken. The easiest part of this process was overlaying the patterns. From the past couple of projects I have become a pro at blending different images, and through out this process I used several different effects to broaden the differences in my design. The concept I will take away most is transformation, for it was a new tool I used. I learned how to manipulate lines by following the wood design tutorial. In the end, I would say to re-create this project, it is about a 7/10 for difficulty, but my effort would definitely be a 10/10. It was a pleasure creating all these projects through my graphic design class! Good luck to anyone else who decides to go down
this path; it is both enjoyable and rewarding.

Vintage Poster

Introduction:

I designed a vintage poster from the 60s. This poster advertises a band called 30 Seconds to Mars with one of their famous logos, the bird.

Description:

Inspiration

I researched a few different vintage posters. My options included a travel poster, band poster, etc. I choose
a band poster since my life is intertwined with music. I decided to highlight 30 Seconds to Mars since their band culminates several different logos and philosophies that a vintage poster would illuminate. I searched many styles of vintage posters and discovered they include geometric patterns, bright colors, mixed media, and curvy words. I incorporated these designs in my sketches and poster.

first draft

I started by making the basic design of the bird in Illustrator. I image traced a picture of the bird and placed a teal background behind the bird. Then I changed some of the colors and deleted the extra white background. I saved this as an image and imported it into Photoshop. Then I placed a geometric pattern behind the picture of the image and blended them together with the vivid mask to bring out the retro colors of the 60s. I also created a new layer where I painted and blurred bright colors, which can be seen over the black text "30 Seconds to Mars"to incorporate more vintage colors.

final

I noticed many band posters have curvy text, so when I added my text, I found a font that didn't have clean and cut edges. Then I used the warp tool to make the words even curvier. For example, I used the fishbowl warp on the number 30. Then I added some mixed media to the background. I placed a newspaper into Photoshop, then cut out, copied, and pasted little sections of the newspaper. I placed them around the top of the bird's wing and flattened the layers so I could apply the same effects to all of the small pieces of newspaper. I then deleted the original newspaper and used the eraser tool to blend and fade the newspaper pieces into the background.

However, I was not finished yet. I had peer revisions, where I discovered I should improve some aspects of my poster. I decided to move the text away from the edge of the paper and add some more vintage textures.

Reflection:

This project was very fun, for it is practical and I was making something interesting in my life. The hardest part was placing all the little pieces of newspaper around the wing. Although it is the smallest piece of my poster, it was the most time consuming. I had to figure out how to strategically place the clippings and what hardness and opacity I should set for my eraser tool so they would blend but still be visible. I was best at manipulating the bird with shapes and color choices. From this project, I have learned how to use the lasso tool! I have enjoyed my time working on this poster. Difficulty is about an 8/10 but my performance is worth a 10/10!