Illustrations and Visual Narrative: Lectures and Exercises
26.08.2020 - 30.09.2020 (Week 1 - Week 6)
Jocelin Agustia (0345436)
Illustration and Visual Narrative / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Exercises
LECTURES
Week 1
The first class session (lecture) is with Ms. Noranis, like the other lectures we were first introduced and explained about our module. The module contains a lot of information that is important for classes. We were then explained about the exercises and project that we will have during the 14 weeks, Ms. Noranis then assign us to our first exercise. She then told us many things related to illustration and showed us our senior's exercise. I absolutely gained new knowledge about the importance of shapes, colors, emphasis, and contrast in illustrations as they can show us the meaning of each character. Harmony, expressions, and poses are also needed in order to build a good character design.
Illustration and Visual Narrative Module
Character Design Slide
For the next sessions (Tutorial and Practical) we were introduced to another lecturer, Mr. Faizal. He is the one who's going to teach us Adobe Illustrator. For the first time, he taught us the basics in Illustrator such as the pen tool. He created a character for an example. Mr. Faizal explained to us what is the difference between Illustrator and Photoshop, what is RGB and CMYK mode, and many more. The character he made is called Lumpy Space Princess from Adventure Time, he used that character as an example of how to use the pen tool, add colors, and also how to make the colors go inside the outlines without using the mask method. What Mr. Faizal taught is very helpful for beginners like me.
Today's class went well. We started off with a lecture from Ms. Noranis about "Chiaroscuro".
Chiaro (Light) and Scuro (Dark), it means the use of light and dark to create 3D illusions. They are usually applied in cinematographies, comics, and paintings. The use of Chiaroscuro is basically to enhance or emphasize a particular scenario whereas it could create a meaningful scene. We were also taught 2 principles of composition:
1. The Rule of Third
2. The Golden Ratio
figure 1.1 Chiaroscuro in painting
figure 1.2 Chiaroscuro in manga
figure 1.3 The Rules of Third
figure 1.4 Golden ratio
The use of both principles is to create an interesting tasteful composition, but if they are used together it will create an even effective composition. Another use of these compositions is to draw people's attention to a certain part. They are used in photos, paintings, and posters. Ms. Noranis recommended us to use these compositions for our Design Principle assignments, she said that it will be very helpful.
Lastly, we were taught how to study light and dark in photos. It is important to pick a good photo that has good light and dark. After that, we could put them in Photoshop and adjust the levels, brightness, exposures, and others. Just play with the tools!
Mr. Faizal gave us practical and tutorial lessons regarding Adobe Illustrator. He demonstrated the use of Shapes, Pen tools, Pencil tool, Knife tool, Selection tool, Line Segment tool, and Gradient. He also told us a useful shortcut to immediately select all and copy objects, which are Ctrl + E and Alt consecutively. We could use the pencil tool to color our drawings as it acts more freely than the pen tool. To join, exclude, etc we could go to Pathfinder in Windows and then select the shape modes, Mr. Faizal said that these options are needed to make our own typefaces.
For this week, he also taught us how to make vector landscapes, he showed us many examples on the Internet. Here, he demonstrated to us how to use gradients. He also taught us that the use of colors is very important to create the depth of objects. For example, the mountains that he created, there are 3 of them where every one of them gets further and further from our eyesight. We should apply a lighter color as the objects get farther from us.
After creating the landscape in such a short time, Sir Faizal taught us how to make a trading card and explained to us how to scale objects without affecting the weight of our strokes, simply go to objects and click on expand appearance. This option turns the object into shapes.
Week 3 / Composition
Today the lecture is about Composition. Ms. Noranis gave us an important note regarding this topic, she said that this note will be helpful for other subjects too. There are 6 types of composition; Establishing, Bird's Eyeview, Framing, Medium Shot, Close-up, and Worm's Eyeview.
figure 1.5 Types of Composition
To create a good scene we need to know these 3; Foreground, Midground, and Background.
figure 1.6 Types of backgrounds for scenes
But, before that, we need to have a good study of positive and negative spaces. To do that, we could start by learning from black and white references.
Next, we have Mr. Fauzi took over the lesson. He explained to us the development of creating a design. He also gave us some tips when facing clients. Ten, he continued explaining to us about drawing in Photoshop as we can use it to create our sketch for the next assignment
Week 4
Malaysia Day!
Week 5/Composition: Perspective
Before the 14th Century the paintings were all rich and beautiful but they missed something, which is Perspective. But then Filippo Brunelleschi came along.
So what is perspective? Perspective is used to create depth, an illusion of a representation of object that creates a 3D optical illusion from a 2D surface.
There are 4 types of perspective: 1 point, 2 point, 3 point, 4-5 points (fish eye). The way to tell what type of perspective is used it to look at the number of vanishing points. There are a simple way to apply perspective:
figure 1.8 Parallax Effect
- Parallax Effect is where you apply layers to depict depth, this kind of method is often used in comics
- Background, Middle ground, and Foreground is also considered perspective, as long as it mimics 3D then a sense of depth is created.
Week 6/Composition; Rhythm and Movement
figure 2.1 Rhythm and Movement
What is a good composition? A good composition consists of value tones, shapes, positive vs negative (chiaroscuro) and perspective/spatial depth.
The basic elements to create movement are basically lines and shapes. There are ways to achieve them:
1. Maximize overlaps: apply perspectives to the drawing
figure 2.2 Maximize Overlaps
2. Establish patterns and rhythms
To practice rhythm and movement, we can look at abstract paintings and also comic, in comic the usage of motion lines are very common.
figure 2.4 Example of Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is words that imitates sound. It is often used as effects.
INSTRUCTIONS
Mr. Faizal
Week 1 / Tracing
For the first week, Mr. Faizal gave us an exercise to trace a character using Adobe Illustrator's Pen tool. This exercise is to help us get used to the pen tool.
figure 1.1 Process of tracing from lining to coloring
Week 2 / Vector Landscape
We were told to do whatever landscape we could make, so I decided to just draw out what I have in mind.
figure 1.2 Vector landscape
FEEDBACK
REFLECTION
Experience: When doing the exercises Sir Faizal gave us, I had a hard time using Illustrator because I am still new to it, but because of the exercises I got more fluent using it.
Observation: I noticed that I am not that good with digital as I am more familiar to design manually on papers. Even before university started I already learned digital art, but I used a tablet that has a pen. However, Adobe Illustrator in tablets is still not as good as PC ones, so I need to use my mouse to draw out everything.
Findings: Using a mouse can be very challenging and so I need more practice. Now I realized that good ideas can't come up in one or two days, it needs lots of time and observations.
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