Illustration & Visual Narrative: Lectures and Task 1&2

Illustration & Visual Narrative: Lectures and Task 1

NAME: Adeline Wong Chyn Nee (0344017)

I.D: 0344017

COURSE: Bachelors of Design in Creative Media

MODULE: Illustration & Visual Narrative

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LECTURE

Week 1: Introduction and Briefing

In the first week, Ms. Anis and Ms. Jennifer introduced us to the IVN Times systems and encouraged us to check it every week for updates and any information. Ms. Anis then briefed the MIB to us, such as the introduction, contact details, the exercises, and projects. This semester, we get to work on character design, animated posters, comic illustrations,s and motion comics. To give us a little insight into the final project, Ms. Anis showed us one of the previous year's students' motion comic work and after that, the theme of our comic this sem is horror. The moment I heard that I squealed in excitement as I am a horror lover and enthusiast, so it's safe to say that I look forward to this module the most.

Week 2: Character Design

To start off the first lecture, Ms. Anis asked us to share our favorite characters and why we like them so much, and the students swarmed the chat with their own favorites. We were told that each character always has an appealing factor and unique design that attracts the audience. To be more specific, these are the things that make a character unique.

Principles of Character Design

1) Shapes- Shapes define a characters' silhouette and are used to identify one character from another.

Fig. 1.1 Character silhouette from movie 'Alladin' (3rd Sept 2021)

Importance of weight in silhouette:

Even though Aladdin and Jafaar both have similar shapes, the design on Alladin carries more weight towards to ground, like a triangle shape which indicates stability and this allows the audience to feel at ease. While Jafaar creates big shoulder pads for him, to create the heaviness on the top to create a sense of uneasiness. 

Meanwhile, Jasmine has an unstable-looking silhouette not because she is a bad character but because of her feminine character so the pinball silhouette is used, and for Sultan, he is a jolly and child-like character so that is why he has that roly-poly round shape.

2) Colours- Colours determine the heroes/ protagonist from the villain/ antagonist, this is because the color gives impressions of the character.

Fig. 1.2 Finn and Jake(3rd Sept 2021)

Finn and Jake's character uses complementary colors (Finn has blue and green while Jake has bright yellow), which makes them look like they go well together.

Fig. 1.3 Gumball and Darwin(3rd Sept 2021)

Gumball's character is blue while Darwin's character is orange, this makes them contrast each other which looks good together.

3) Emphasis and Contrast- Picking one visual element in a character design and then exaggerate it which makes the character looks outstanding and memorable.

Fig. 1.4 Hades (Villian) (3rd Sept 2021)

Sharp features like sharp chin, nose, and fingers are designed to let the viewer recognize that hades are the villain. Meanwhile, Hercules has a total opposite feature.

Fig. 1.5 Hercules (Protagonist) (3rd Sept 2021)

 

4) Harmony- All shapes, lines, colors, motifs, and patterns must be put together in a tasteful manner which compliments each other.

Fig. 1.6 Eva and Wall-E design harmony

5) Expressions and Poses- Behaviours, quirks, and personality need to be interpreted well to win the heart of the audience.

Fig. 1.7 Character Expression

LECTURE

Week 3: Composition

Fig. 1.1 Lecture screenshot

In week 3, we learned about composition, types of shots and even trained our positive and negative space identifying skills. Composition is important as it makes our photography, design, and film look good and well-balanced.

Fig. 1.2 Example of an image of the composition

When we were asked what caught our attention the most when our eyes land on the image, I immediately thought of the bag at the bottom and a person's hand taking something out of it. The second thing is the pencil case in the middle. This visual hierarchy of composition allows any viewer to focus on the focal element easily.

    Fig. 1.3 Types of shots/ composition

We are then introduced to the types of shots used in film and photography, we are then advised to practice the habit of recognizing the types of shots in films and photography when watching them (active watching)

Fig. 1.4 Rule No.1 of composition

The number 1 rule of composition is to have a balanced distribution of positive & negative spaces in that composition, that is so the audience can be able to differentiate the subject from the background. 

Finally, our final takeaway from the composition is that:

There is no right or wrong in composition, just bad and tasteful composition

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INSTRUCTION:

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ASSIGNMENT BRIEF (EXERCISE 1)

Vormator Character Design

TASK 1: VORMATOR CHALLENGE

For our first exercise, we are tasked to design a character out of the given Vormator shapes. We are required to sketch out our ideas (can be a few), then digitalize our final character using Adobe illustrator

Fig. 5.1 Vormator shapes (2nd Sept 2021)

These are the vormator shapes I created using the pen tool, I traced half of each shape, duplicated it, and reflected it to create a balanced shape.

Fig. 5.2 First sketch (Butler D) (2nd Sept 2021)

I started this exercise by simply sketching on illustrator while referring to the shapes given to us. My first sketch is a Robot Deer names 'Butler D', this robot deer does house chores and serves its human owners and it travels around by floating.

Fig. 5.3 Second sketch (Cactobeb) (2nd Sept 2021)

As I felt that Butler D wasn't good enough, I ventured the internet to search for ideas and decided on creating a hybrid animal consisting of a Cat, an Octopus, and a Crab. Although I created this character to be a cute character, I'm still not sure at that time whether I should go for the cute route or the scary route.

Fig. 5.4 Cactobeb Ideation (2nd Sept 2021)

To clear my dilemma, I shared my sketches with Ms. Anis and Ms. Jennifer during class, they both think the Cactobeb idea is nice however I needed to decide if I want it to be a cute character or not. However, this ideation of Cactobeb has no Crab element as I felt that it would look too overwhelming to have 3 animals in one and that is why I took out the element.

Fig. 5.5 Cactobeb final design (8th Sept 2021)

 Finally, I have decided to make Cactobeb a scary character and I think I made the right choice of doing so because Cactobeb came out looking better than I expected!

Cactobeb's story

8000 meters down in the Pacific Ocean lives a lonely hybrid octopus creature called October. For the past 3 million years of its life, Cactobeb has never found a friend of its own kind and always scared away other marine life due to its "double threatening" tentacles but it just wanted to find someone or something that would think fondly of itself. So it was never its intention to scare anybody... However one day while Cactobeb was hunting for food, the creature saw a piece of tentacles identical to its own, laying on the seabed, and since then Cactobeb has held on to the hope that it can find a friend again.

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ASSIGNMENT BRIEF (EXERCISE 2)

Character Card Illustration

TASK 2: CHARACTER CARD

After finalizing our Vormator challenge, we started on how to incorporate our character into a game card. With the size limit of 600 pix x 600 pix (Tarot card), we came up with our own card where our Vormator character can live in.

Progress:

I first started off with a sketch which I, drew over the lines using a pen tool later on.

Fig. 6.1 First sketch of the character card (Front)

Fig. 6.2 First sketch of the character card (Back)

Descriptions of card details:

Number 3: My lucky number, Cactobeb obtains luck to be able to search for its friend.

Tridan: A Tridan indicates strength, magical powers, wisdom, and dominance.

Colour layers: To create a sense of movement for Cactobeb's travel direction.

Fig. 6.3 First sketch of the character card (front & back)

FINAL SUBMISSION:

Fig. 6.4 Final JPEG of the character card (front & back)

After adding colors, gradients, and text. It felt like my character card came to life like Cactobeb is on the move and looking for its lost friend.

Fig. 6.5 Final PDF of the character card (front & back)

Reflection:

Throughout task 1, I have explored the world of Vormator which was so unfamiliar to me at first. Now that I got to know what it's about, I personally think that this challenge tests a design student to venture out of their comfort zone but at the same time follow the shapes of the Vormator. The exploration was a great experience.

Creating a character card was super fun because it's like creating your own card game and the one we are working on is the first card of the deck. I've learned so much from these 2 tasks, my Illustrator skills got better, learned about character design, and most importantly, had the most fun so far in this whole semester while working on these 2 tasks.