Week 7: Drawing faces in Illustrator

Introduction to Adobe Illustrator

Our introduction began with a short tutorial and overview of the display in the browser as well as creating a dog.

I only managed to get a few screenshots of the dog process, you can clearly see the basic shapes that make up the face and how it goes on to form the end product

I used some reference and also changed the color scheme to a mix of light and dark blues

The next project was to transfer and colour a portrait sketch, here is one of my friend

I brought the image into photoshop

After adjusting the levels and placing it in illustrator, I moved on to painting

Using the blob brush tool, I started to colour the face, I used red just a bright colour to contrast well with the sketch

I filled in the image and changed to red to a more skin like tone

I pushed the colour layer behind the sketch

I then moved on to the hair and bag straps with the same process

Continuing the process with the clothes

Orange shirt to compliment blue, finished

The next project was using the image trace to reproduce a portrait image, here is the image i'm using

I started by removing the backround

Placed the image in illustrator

Her I image traced the portrait into a dark filter

This is the same image except with a 3 colour filter

Here is the image again with a 9 colour filter

This is the trace I will be working with

I started by using the blob brush tool again to lock in the base face colour

Here is the image with highlights added on to it over the base face layer

Added the rosy cheecks

The dark of the eye and lips were added

This is how it looks so far, haven't finished the hair

the orange of the hair

I also added the pink of the hair in

 Finished

Complete

Conclusion: I don't particularly like the image very much as it just doesn't have a very clean appearance, I can see the relation to the original picture but i'm just not a fan of the style. It is very reminiscent of a pop art piece. I like how the colour contrasts with the black of the image trace, that is quite effective especially in the eyes.

Week 6: Creating a Gif

Week 6: Gif Making 

Here is my screenshot process of designing a gif based on terminator and his glowing eyes

Here is a scan of mechanical themed drawings I produced

Here I selected the terminator head

I isolated the image from the page

Here I adjusted the contrast of the image so I could start painting under it

Here is the image once it has been painted

I added a background that faded into a darker contrast

Here I am messing around with what his eyes could look like, this shot is obviously to dim

I drew upon some references from the images of the real terminator

To get a lens flare effect andy helped me in giving me the idea to scan in some scribbles and overlay the lower brightness variant on the eye 

Here I am lining up the sketch

Removed the white and faded it a bit, and as you can see the flare actually looks really realistic

Now in the layers section you can see that I have all the elements of the image that i'm gonna need to create a gif

Here I started up the gif format in photoshop

The layers tab show me creating multiple frames of an image and then merging them to define those layers as a single frame

more layer work...

To create a realistic glowing and dimming light effect I had to overlay the eyes multiple times but constantly increase and decreasing their brightness levels to give the illusion of glowing red eyes

This shot shows the eyes in their final state

This is where I start integrating the flare effect into the gif

More layer work...

At the bottom of the screen you can see where the frames show the order of what is being shown and the time each frame is on the screen

Here is the final product overall this took me 26 merged frames to create

I really enjoyed creating the gif and thought it was a valuable experience even if there was a lot of slaving away at slightly adjusting layers to get a tiny difference in each frame. It is quite rewarding seeing the gif actually move and I think the lens flare effect actually works quite well, I envisioned this sort of process to be quite difficult but has actually been very enjoyable.

-Max

week 5 - Creating a pattern

Creating a pattern in photoshop

In this weeks lesson we learnt how to create a pattern in photoshop using our own drawings/Designs

Here was a page of animal sketches I produced, really like the silhouette of the stag the most so we'll use this one first

I cut the image on to the new page

I blended the background of the crop to the white of the paper

Copied and pasted the image to the reproduce the sketch 

I flipped the image to produce a symmetrical view

adjusted the distance to really match up with symmetry

I then produced a copy of them underneath the original

I then put a blue filter on the drawing and made the two deer on the bottom smaller

From the edit button you can access the 'define brush pattern' to make whats on the file at the moment become the designated pattern

Naming the pattern preset

Here is the blank document where the pattern will be made

Here is the pattern as a filter with a bog standard row and column effect

 Here is the pattern as a spiral effect which I think is quite effective

This pattern effect has a colour overlaid on some of the blocks 

This is almost like a lego portrait due to the size of the pattern effect

Here are some of the options when making the pattern

On the second pattern I will use the crocodile head sketch

I cut out the sketch and overlaid the white background

I coloured the croc with the graphics tablet

I moved the croc head to the top right

I then flipped it

I then produced another copy whilst rotating them

I then produced a strange green background which I tried to blend the shades of green with each other and defined this as the pattern

Here is the pattern as a basic block repeat effect

I really like the effect as a spiral pattern, it really draws the viewers eye towards to the centre of the screen

Here are a few more of the adjustable options

This was the effect as a large scale repeat and block effect

 This pattern effect is almost like pop art with each other panel being different colour

Here is an example of the rotate option when making an pattern 

Here is a sketch of a bear that has had a threshold layer over it to darken the sketch

Here is the sketch with a grizzly bear brown coat of paint under the sketch

Here I have used a reference image of a panda to create a panda variant

Here is the panda variant of the bear

Here is the black bear variant

 Here are the three bears as a single image that I have defined as a pattern

Here is the basic pattern as a repeat 'wallpaper like effect'

Here is the pattern as a spiral effect

This is a better quality repeat of the basic block pattern, the bears are spaced perfectly from each other and looks a bit like a high quality paper-chase product 

For the next pattern I made a wallpaper-type of pattern using this owl sketch

Here is the sketch in colour

I flipped the image and made it smaller

Added another small owl

This is the defining pattern

This is the pattern as a wallpaper

I really enjoyed the bear patterns I created with the species colour variants, I think its the blank but still quite a deep expression on there face that adds character to image. The nice variations in pattern style really show how the patterns style changes and the context it is viewed in changes, e.g. the spiral pattern could be a poster, whereas the repeated block pattern looks like a high quality artsy-Card

-Max