Illustration and Visual Narrative - Exercises

Azmina Fathima Haris (0337113)
Illustration and Visual Narrative
Exercises


Week 1
27/08/18

Our first class began with a brief about the module and the exercise we had to start working on. We were introduced to the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator and practiced by tracing the shapes below. Once, we were done tracing the vormator elements, we had to create a character using them.

Week 2

From the Vormator elements, I came up with this character - named Plod - which was inspired by sloths. We were learn a bit more about Ai, namely the knife tool, which can be used to add shadows and add more dimension to out characters. We also learn how to use Pathfinder, to join, subtract or divide the elements. 

Week 3

This week, we experimented with colour, texture and gradient; we learnt more about character design and how even the shape and colour of a character can describe its personality.

I added more shadows and highlights to add more dimension to my character

Week 4 - 5 

We began working on the background for the character, which is to be used in the Pokemon card. I tried to come up with something similar to a forest, like a sloth's habitat. 

Background for character and chosen colour palette

Character in created background

Week 5

This week, we also learn more about texture and how to add them as a layer mask. I tried playing around with leaf textures for the background. 

Trying out different textures on shapes in class

Applying layer masks to add leaf textures to the background

Week 6

This week, we tried chiaroscuro, which is to block out only shadows of an object and show the contrast between light and shadow. We had to do this using the pen tool (and pathfinder) in Illustrator on a pear and and this picture of a man. 

Provided images that we had to trace for the exercise

Chiarascuro pear

Completed chiaroscuro of the man

Week 7: Transitions

This week while preparing for our second project, we learnt more transitions from Scott McCloud's book and did this exercise. We had to identify the transitions applied in the comic strip below to test our understanding of it. 

Examples of transitions from Scott McCloud's book