Final Portfolio. Part 2: Four Best Pieces.

So here it goes: final post. 

Of the 8 formal project, I like 5ish of them, so it really wasn't all to difficult to narrow that down to 4.

Surprisingly, I really did think my cheesy airbrush turned out good.

Even though this wasn't my first attempt at this, I feel like choosing a pretty simplistic design with some key shapes really helped, especially in the act of re-masking and such. And while airbrush really can be a bite, I can't deny that it is kind of fun. Ya never know, maybe if Vis Com doesn't work out, I could work at one of those t-shirt shops in Florida. Or doing airbrush tattoos at Six Flags.

I also was really digging my album cover art. I did it in a much larger scale and brought it down, which helped it a lot for sure, along with that fact that this turned out to be a pretty clean, there are some cool painterly things that are happening, and gouache pick-out being a little more forgiving also make this one pretty cute, in my opinion.

This car turned out really well. With a little help from the luci, I got a good base, and then with all the time I put into it, I really, really like how this one turned out. I think transfers well, too. Overall, gouache really started to work in my favor.

So, yeah, 3 of my 4 best products were from this last assignment. I think that just goes to show how I've improved over the course of the semester. I love seeing improvement, especially within myself, and this class is a testament to just that.

Yep, this was my other favorite. This was a fun one for me, and with that, I think it is a good little illustration of this box. I, obviously, was really digging the gouache pick-out technique. For basically all of these illustrations.

So that's that. The semester is over, as is this chapter of my blog. 

Peace. Love. Illustration.

And, yeah, I really did just do that.

Final Portfolio. Part 1: Exercises

And here it is: the culmination of the entire semester coming down to this blog post.
I'm going to start this out with some of the exercises we did. Hopefully in order.

As I'm sure you remember, line art. I really liked doing these.  I felt like I got a style sort of going when doing these and can definitely see how this would be beneficial later on in life. 

Yep, same sort of thing again. Taking a photograph and throwing some line art around is pretty cool. And you can definitely choose the focus, unlike with live trace. This does com up with some cool result.

And then there's the whole "doing this in photoshop" way. When I was doing this at first, it sorta sucked. The only this I really liked better about this than being able to vary the line weight but more so being able to erase when I messed something up. It also made the whole tracing thing easier, but getting a straight line with the mouse (or the tablet for that matter). 

[And the reason this looks so weird is because I lost the original file when my flash drive corrupted and I had to scan in what I printed, which wasn't great resolution because of all the crap I had to go through to print it]

Line art and wash. Wash and line art. This was a pattern that continued for a while. In this case, the line art was laid down first, and the wash afterwards. This is still a little tight, but I was really starting to loosen up my watercolor at this point. I like some of the cool things the wash did.

This was also done with line art first and wash second. I, again, like how the paint is doing it's own thing in some places. It looks kind of neat, I do believe.

Wash wash wash wash. This is just that. I don't necessarily want to say this was around when I got my "aha" moment, just because this still isn't that that great, but this was a point that I started to realize that the colors you use within the painting can transfer well despite them not actually being in the piece. There were actually a lot of little tricks like that I learned just from looking around at peoples' work. In this one, you can see a little blue being worked into the black section. I think that worked pretty well.

This is when I started experimenting more with painted and implied line, in way of the chips and such. And in the bigger copy you can see more of the exciting colors within the chips, seeing the shadows and such. And that salsa... looking good.

Oh, fish. This was a pretty controlled water color, just in the fact their couldn't be all that much color mixing; I didn't want there to be all this muddy color. But with pulling out a little of the orange and letting the blue in the background... that's what this one is all about.

This one was fun. This little watercolor exercise didn't require too much precision or anything... who really knows what sushi looks like anyways? What I really like about it, though, is the cool little painterly situations within the plate and seaweed of the sushi.

And, airbrush. Second fruit, I really feel like this turned out pretty well. Airbrush is obviously not the most forgiving or simple medium, but i think this still went over okay. In all, though, bananas are pretty simple. And airbrush can be kind of fun.

And finally: the marker comp.

This was the comp I did for my album cover. I obviously changed the initial idea, but all the same, a little thing like this is very helpful in the grand scene of things. In the beginning, such comps did really annoy me, but then I started to realize that they are very beneficial to the end result. I plan on sketching my way through the process in the future.

Whoops

It's been a while since I've blogged, probably because all the stuff I'm working on right now is too large to easily scan, and it's not to a finished point yet, but they'll all get there.

So, I guess I'll just throw down a little of what's going on within these projects.

My album cover is going pretty well, it's an illustration of a compass. I've been applying and scrubbing quite a bit though, because whenever I try to put some of the detail in, it looks sort of childishly done. I'm pretty sure I'm going to try to do the rest of the detail in photoshop.

Then there's my Great Gatsby cover illustration. It's going pretty well. With a little more highlighting and line work, I think the car will be pretty much set. I'm contemplating a background. I may do a solid black; I also got a suggestion to try something art deco-y, but personally, I'm thinking I might do a really subtle skyscape (I really don't want this one to get too busy). All the same, I'll probably do it separately and combine it in photoshop, mainly out fear.

As for the cheesy airbrush, I've done my cheeseburger twice. The first one, I learned a lot about what's going on with airbrush and such, but it's really hard. Everything could be going just fine, and then the littlest bit of a pressure change can ruin the entire piece. I think the second one turned out pretty well, but all the same, I'm not totally satisfied. Again, I may try to do a little work in photoshop, but I don't want to ruin the smooth effect that airbrush creates. We shall see.

And then I read the specks for the final portfolio. I have no idea what I'm going to choose for any of that business... I have a feeling I may be redoing quite a bit this week.

Here it goes.

Airbrush....

Needless to say, airbrush sucks. Really, I hate it. But rather than sit here just complaining, I guess I'll go into detail and such based on this little planet.

This went so many directions during it's execution. I tried a different planet first, one with rings, but that wasn't working out, at all really. Think this amount of execution, and then make it worse. Really, bad news. So then I tried a simpler planet...  I already had some orange in the airbrush, so Mars was the answer.

But as you can see, the mask was a litle dirty, then I got a little excited with the saturation, and then I put the mask over my planet a little too soon, causing the frisket to rip out some of the color and leave a little residue and with all of that, I would get giong doing something and them hit the airbrush to hard, making everything I attempted to seem impossible. Ahh--this was really frustrating.

So I moved on to my fruit. Again, my first attempt wasn't so great... I tried a pineapple. I not only wasted a ton of yellow dye, but I also go overly and unduely frustrated with the idea of airbrushing once again. I couldn't get my mask to make the little triangles I wanted, or create the leaves in a normal fashion, so, again, I moved on.

This time to a banana.

Challenges to this aside, it turned out much better than I originally expected. Originally I was going to make it a green banana, but I hada couple issues with pressure, and then it turned into a ripe banana, as I got a little carried away with some of the shadows, and just my poor execution in general, and was trying to cover up my mistakes with the brown. Next time I'd add in more darker shades, expectially to areas like the stem and would emphasize more of the plains of the banana.

Needless to say, with all the hardships airbrush has already caused me, I am in no way mentally or physically prepared for this cheesy airbrush, so it looks like I am def going to be starting this project over a couple times. it will surely be an interesting adventure.

Compin' It Up

Doing some comps for all sorts of projects coming up.
First off: the CD cover

I played with several different ideas for this one, playing with a lot of different titles, and in the end, I think I overthought the situation a little bit. In the end, I'm planning on make this wonky--like not completely straight--to add a little interest, and despite the album name being "Magnetic North" there's also a possibility the compass won't actually go straight. with that, I think the background is either going to be a solid dark blue, or a map. Comping will continue.

And now to my cheesy comp.

I was having a tough time coming up with an idea for this one, so I do as all great creative minds do: a google image search. Typing "cheesy" into the search bar, doesn't actually yield all that amazing results... really, nothing was really cheesy. If you try it for yourself, you'll be a little dissapointed, I was. It wasn't until the 5th page I came across a cheeseburger, and there it goes.

I still can't help to think about a cuddly panda, but a little cartoonized panda I don't feel is as literally or even figuratively cheesy, so will probably end up sticking to this hanburger. Yeah, I feel it'd work out well.

And the book cover.

 I'm still not sold on this, really at all. I'm def going to recomp... probably focus more on the car... maybe go black and white for all except the yellow car?  We'll see. Expect that TBA

Whoops, It's been too long. But hey, 3 Image Gouache Montage

Wow, it's been a while. Whoops, I guess I've really just been absorbed in this gouache montage situation. All and all, this one was quite the challenge. Ok, so the main challenge was that pig. I was having a super hard time getting the different tones and everything right. But looking at a pig I painted in the beginning (actually looking at anything I painted in the beginning...) this looks so so much better. I still can't say my illustration is a strong point in design for me, but all the same, I can say I'm more on top of it than I was previously.

Product Illustration

With this project, I can't say that I didn't enjoy doing it. I found this project, overall, to be pretty enjoyable. I rather liked the idea of it; it seemed very practical. And with that, I feel like I'm getting better at this whole gouache situation. Slowly but surely, it's starting to go.