Illustration and Visual Narrative - Project 1

30/8/18 - 1/10/18 (Week 1 - Week 6)
Jasmine Teoh Lee Suan (0331993)
Illustration and Visual Narrative
Project 1: Vormator Character Pokemon Card

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INSTRUCTIONS:

Assignment Brief:

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Week 1 (30/8/18)

In our first class of Illustration and Visual Narrative, we were introduced to Adobe Illustrator CC. We learned how to use the pen tool, firstly through a website that had tutorials on how to use the pen tool, then on Illustrator itself. We downloaded a template that had all the vormator shapes and created the shapes ourselves using the pen tool, with help from our lecturer. We did this exercise to help us with our Project 1, which was creating a character using vormator shapes only. This is the outline of my first attempt at drawing shapes in Illustrator:

Figure 1.1 Vormator Shape Outline

Then, I used those shapes and turned them into solid shapes for the silhouette of the character that we would be creating.

Figure 1.2 Vormator Shapes

I started creating my character's silhouette as we should determine the silhouette first before adding on the details. I couldn't distort the original vormator shapes while creating the character so I found it a bit limited but really cool that we learnwd how to stay in a boundary while creating the character. These were my first few tryouts, and I didn't really like them enough to keep developing them.

Figure 1.3 First Attempt at Character Silhouettes

I continued making characters and thought that the silhouettes for these were okay so I tried to add colour to the silhouettes, but I still wasn't satisfied with the outcome.

Figure 1.4 Adding Colour to Silhouettes

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Week 2 (6/9/18)

We were taught many new skills and shortcuts that would help us in creating our character for Project 1 through an exercise in class. I learned:

• The alt key can be held down while dragging on a shape to duplicate it 
• We can use the rotate option and flip horizontal / vertical option to make our life easier and not draw everything out one by one 
• You can select a few objects and combine them into a group using ctrl +G and ungroup them with ctrl + shift + G. 
• The knife tool can be used to slice objects into different shapes, if you hold down the shift key while cutting, you will get a smooth and straight cut
• The pathfinder tool can be used to combine all the shapes and create an outline of the combination of shapes

Figure 2.1 Character Exercise

I created another two silhouettes during class and I felt that these were better than the previous ones I made. I ended up choosing the latter one and giving it colour and basic details as well.

Figure 2.2 Silhouette of Mr Pennypup

Figure 2.3 Silhouette, Outline and Base Colour of Wi-Fido

After showing Mr Kannan this, I decided to proceed with working on the character's colour and details.

Figure 2.4 Initial Concept of Wi-Fido

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Week 3 (13/9/18)

For this week, I started on working on the colour schemes of my character. I made different variations of my character depending on the weather/climate or element type it was, and thought of the possibilities it could have. From top left to bottom right, the elemental types would be wind/dragon, electric/fire, dark/ghost, grass/bug, ice/water and fairy type. I had fun trying out different colour palettes for my character anyway, the colour palettes look satisfying.

Figure 3.1 Colour Scheme

I had to make a final decision on my design and after careful thought based on the fact that we were going to print it out on wood, and also if it would look attractive (mostly cute and sweet) to others, and decided to choose the last colour scheme. It gained the most attention of girls my age as they would be like "Aww this pink one is so cute! I love the colours!" when I showed them the colour scheme.

I also added a simple background to test how the character would look like without a white background. I flipped it horizontally so that I could see if it looked okay both ways.

Figure 3.2 Final Colour Scheme and Variations

I created a front version for my character and and tried playing with the colours with the gradient tool that Mr Kannan taught us about this week. Even so, I didn't think having a gradient was what I was going for but I'm glad I got to learn about this technique.

Figure 3.3 Final Colour Scheme and Variations

There were some minor problems with my design as we had to use the laser printing to print everything out in one piece but my bottom had a few detached pieces, so I had to add a part where my bottom pieces and top could all connect as one. This is the outcome and final design of my character.

Figure 3.4 Final design of my vormator character

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Week 4 (20/9/18)

This week, we went to FabS pace in Lot10 KL to print our vormators on wood. It was really expensive to print the colour out and I felt like a real broke colloege student at this point, but it was a good experience that I don't think I could experience if it weren't for this project.

Figure 4.1 Fabspace KL - Transferring my design to the computer there

I was honestly really happy with how the laser cut turned out though, I think that it's pretty!
I was reluctant to part ways with my pokemon and pass it up to Mr Hafiz right after laser cutting it, so I gave it to him nearing the end of the semester.

Figure 4.2 Laser Cut Results

I then proceeded to create a suitable background for my character as we needed to create a pokemon card as the final submission of this project. At first, I didn't really know what kind of background would suit my character and created space or sky-themed backgrounds as it could float. Bus as I kept thinking and applying my character's concept which has Wi-Fi as its power and theme, I decided that I should create a background near the city or urbanscape, where people live.

Figure 4.3 Background Attempt 1

Figure 4.4 Background Attempt 2

I searched for some references and art styles first before creating my final background.

Figure 4.4 Final Background Design Reference Pictures

I drew a really rough sketch of my background's composition first before starting to work on it.

Figure 4.5 Rough Sketch

Figure 4.6 Sketch and Background

Figure 4.7 Background in Illustrator

Figure 4.8 Process on Background (before adding details)

Figure 4.9 Completed Final Background

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Week 5 (27/9/28)

I made my pokemon card this week, with my character and background all ready. I researched on the real pokemon cards and the fonts that they used for the information. They used different fonts and sizes for each kind of information. Here's a guide on how to create a Pokemon card:

Figure 5.1 Pokemon Card Design Guide

I took awhile to think of the name, moves, move info, strengths and weaknesses, description and even the height and weight of my pokemon character before writing it all into the card. After completing it, I was rather satisfied as it looked somewhat legit (for a Pokemon fan like me), and now I really appreciate each and every pokemon card made because it's not so easy as it looks.

Here's my final design of my Vormator Character in its own custom made Pokemon card:

Figure 5.2 Final Vormator Character Pokemon Card

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Week 6 (3/9/18)

We had to submit softcopies and hardcopies to our lecturers for this assignment so I had to go and print my Pokemon card out as well. Here are the final outcomes of my printed work: 

Figure 6.1 Vormator Character Laser Cut

Figure 6.2 Pokemon Card Front

Figure 6.3 Pokemon Card Back

Figure 6.4 Pokemon Card

I printed many copies as the card in the printing shop only came in A3 size, so might as well use the extra space to print more. I had a lot of fun with this project, especially since I love Pokemon. I had a dream of creating my own Pokemon characters when I was young and I can't believe I'm living it now thanks to this project.