It didn’t occur to me to post these before, but why not?

We have a teacher here at the Art Institute who, in lieu of a final exam, asks us to throw together documents with certain technical specifications to prove we know how to use the software. He tells us repeatedly that he won’t be grading on design… which is, of course, a thinly veiled invitation to design THE UGLIEST THING POSSIBLE! (cue Bach’s toccata of doom.)

WARNING: READ BEFORE VIEWING
A very small percentage of individuals may experience seizures when exposed to certain color combinations or display typefaces. Certain conditions may induce previously undetected symptoms even in persons who have no history of prior design sense.

I scored 100% on both of these.

Illustrator final (PDF)
I was young and insecure and couldn’t fully let go of certain design principles.
Subtly ugly at best.

Indesign final (PDF)
You have to know the rules to break them. Tons of progress in this area.

Meet Victor, the Vector Dragonfly.

One of the options for our final project in Illustrator was to do a bug – I loved that idea, especially because it meant being able to visually study God’s creation up close. I started by choosing the photo I wanted to copy, knowing that I would have to really love it in order to stay inspired! Below is the original photo from Wikimedia Commons.

For those interested, I’ll describe the process of converting this photo to vector shapes. I placed the photo in the background of a blank Illustrator document, and started with the body. I used the pen tool to draw the shape of each basic segment, and then with my new friend, Gradient Mesh, I filled in the shapes with more exact color varience. Gradient Mesh creates a grid on a solid shape, and each intersection becomes the origin of a specified color. The colors fade naturally in to each other, leading to a much more realistic vector image. For example, the tall part of the stem is a single shape filled with Gradient Mesh.

Then I started a new layer and used the pencil tool to draw the black stripes, and so on and so forth…
I was able to break down my dragonfly into left-brain, logical layers for the most part. The pupil layer goes on top of the iris layer, which goes on top of the head layer… But the big exception were the wings. They are foreshortened, translucent, irridescent, and in and out of focus – way too many complex variables to even begin to think about them in the same way as I did the body!  So I drew those entirely on the right side of the brain, telling myself to see only shapes and color, saturation and value.

I used some short cuts: the white spots on the dragonfly’s tail come from the Symbol Sprayer, his hairs were created using the Cristallize tool, and some of the wing stripes I generated using the Blend tool. The best secret weapon of all though, was listening to the dramatized Chronicles of Narnia while I worked. It kept my imagination alive, and dulled my sense of the passing hours…

and hours…

and hours…

Another Illustrator assignment: Design a series of five stamps in booklet or sheet form.

In Illustrator class this week, we had something of a monster project. We created a fake music albums, complete with sleeve, tray, and CD label. Those who know me will remember that this isn’t the first time I’ve created album art – it’s the second. I can’t decide which was harder, working with real people and real content, or having to make it all up!
Click on any of these to see a larger version. If you’re wondering where the songs come from… it’s poetry reformatted to look like songs.

By the way, exciting thought: by the end of the March, I will be a sophomore!

All right everybody, it’s time to play… Guess That Fairytale!
Today’s fairytale features a rosebush, a cathedral, and a duckpond. Anybody know it?

Maybe you Wikipedia-ed it. Very good, but that’s cheating. Today’s rather grimm tale is… Foundling-Bird!

Not cut out for this gameshow, you say? That’s ok. I hadn’t heard of Foundling-bird either. But it’s such a great little story that I feel compelled to give it publicity!

The background to this assignment: it puts into practice another feature of Illustrator called Live Trace. It looks at a raster image, like this sketch I scanned in, then turns what it sees into vector shapes. It can be really helpful sometimes, but shouldn’t be overused. Sometime, I’ll have to try Live Trace on my Switzerland poster project, and compare it with the hand-traced results.

One last thing. When the piece was being critiqued, one thing my teacher suggested was adding some white to the letters. That way, the visual path defined by the white outlines will include the title. I agree – I just don’t have time to go back and do it!

Illustrator assignment: Design the front page of a newspaper, with a theme of your choosing.

So, I thought long and hard about my interests… I wanted to do something old yet light-hearted, something international in scope… and I came up with this. I hope you can appreciate the details. I made a huge effort to get into the 1950s psyche, and it was an interesting trip!

Illustrator assignment: create four different concepts for a company or institute, and design a letterhead, business card, and envelope for each one.

The School of Creative Release is something that as a church, we have a vision to start!

Even more practice with those Illustrator tools! See the 1939 travel poster on which this is based here. The most difficult part was coming up with the right color combinations, but I LOVE the way it turned out. Yay for Color Theory!