Illustration and Visual Narrative

Posted by Jasmine Teoh October 31, 2018

Illustration and Visual Narrative - Exercises

30/8/18 - 22/10/18 (Week 1 - Week 9)

Jasmine Teoh Lee Suan (0331993)

Illustration and Visual Narrative

Exercises

INSTRUCTIONS:

Assignment Brief

EXERCISE 1:

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 (https://bezier.method.ac/), 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

EXERCISE 2:

Week 2 (3/9/18)

For this exercise, we learned many new skills and shortcuts that would help us in creating our character for Project 1. 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 Creating a Character

EXERCISE 3:

Week 3 (10/9/18)
For this week's exercise, we learned more about the pathfinder tool and how it can help us create shapes with its different functions. We also learned how to select the wanted parts of a shape by holding down the alt key. We learned how to use gradients to colour as well and thought about highlights and shadows while colouring our shapes. These are my attempts and tryouts that I did in class to learn how to use the pathfinder tool better.

Figure 3.1 Shapes with Pathfinder

EXERCISE 4:

Week 4 (17/9/18)

Today, Mr Kannan taught us how to create our own brushes on Illustrator. He also taught us the difference between the usual brush tool and the blob brush tool, where the blob brush tool makes it way easier to colour a whole object smoothly.

We also learned how to give some objects texture and how to mask the texture layers into the objects. First, you have to copy the texture layer into the mask layer, then uncheck the link layer mask. You can move the texture layer around to adjust the place you want it to be seen as well.

Reflection from this class: I find it really awesome that I got to learn about this new skill, because when I was younger I used to think that everyone would draw everything stroke by stroke and do everything from scratch but it's nice to be able to learn these shortcuts as well.

Figure 4.1 Blob Brush Tool Colouring

Figure 4.2 Masking Exercise and Notes

EXERCISE 5:

Week 6 (1/10/18)

Transition exercise:

We were given a comic panel to read and choose the different transitions that could be found in a comic and labelled them into each category. The transitions are:

Moment to moment
Action to action
Subject to subject
Scene to scene
Aspect to aspect

Figure 5.1 Transition Exercise

EXERCISE 6:

Week 5 - Week 7 (24/9/18 - 8/10/18)

Chiaroscuro Exercise:

We started the Chiaroscuro exercise on Week 5, where we referred to a pear and traced it out on Illustrator first, then used the knife tool to cut the shadows from the main shape. We then changed the colour of the shadow to a darker or contrasting colour. Mr Kannan told us to explore more on the pears and create stories with them. I created 6 new pears along with the original pear that we tried out in class. I had a looot of fun with this exercise as I got to create whatever I want and there were a lot of possibilities to try out.

Figure 6.1 Chiaroscuro Exercise - Pear

Figure 6.2 Chiaroscuro Exercise - Pear

We also did Chiaroscuro exercises on humans in Week 7. Mr Hafiz taught us how to add textures into the chiaroscuro artwork so that it looks like a double exposure piece. I found it fascinating that I learned how to do these exercises and effects when I've been thinking how people used to do it last time. Because it was so fun, I decided to do more as practice and also for my own enjoyment (and also for my own phone wallpaper HAHAHA).

Figure 6.3 Chiaroscuro Exercise - Human (Guy)

Figure 6.4 Chiaroscuro Exercise - Human (Lady)

Figure 6.5 Chiaroscuro Exercise - Black and White

Figure 6.6 Chiaroscuro Exercise - With Texture

Figure 6.7 Chiaroscuro Exercise - Black and White

Figure 6.8 Chiaroscuro Exercise - With Texture

EXERCISE 7:

Week 8 (15/10/18)

We learned more about shadows and highlights this week. We made a ball with the shape tool and gave it shadows and highlights so that it looked like a sphere.

Figure 7.1 Sphere with Shadow and Highlight

We then gave the sphere a planet or moon texture using the masking option so that it looks like a cool planet.

Figure 7.2 Sphere with Planet Texture

There are global shadows that are the biggest shadows in an object and also cast shadows. These make a difference as shadows give more depth to the object. This is how the sphere looks like without the shadow at the bottom, it looks very flat.

Figure 7.3 Sphere without Shadow below

From this exercise, I learned that masking and creating different layers is really important and efficient for us so that we can fix our work anytime.

Figure 7.4 Layers in Exercise

I also tried out the silhouette, base colour, shadow and highlight steps on creating another object as Mr Kannan told us to try it out again. I drew a sampan and coloured it using that technique. I never thought I could create something like this on illustrator before, it was a cool experience.

Figure 7.5 Sampan

Figure 7.6 Layers of Sampan

I added a really simple background as well for this exercise as I thought the white background looked too empty.

Figure 7.7 Sampan with Background

Figure 7.8 Sampan with Background Layers

Here's the process of my exercise in a GIF form:

Figure 7.9 Sampan GIF

EXERCISE 8:

Week 9 (22/10/18)

We were working on our Project 2 this week, and Mr Kannan gave us feedback on our progress. He commented that my art should be more solid, showing the global shadows and the edges nicely, so I showed him the art style that I was going for and he did a demo for me. I then learned from it and drew something else in a style similar to that. I realized that there's no need to draw everything in really fine detail slowly, as long as you're able to visualise the image well and create an illustration that looks nice.