ILUS 301: Digital Illustration

My Digital Illustration class was led by industry professional Yeoung-jung Kim, and through her tutorials we learned various tools in Illustrator and Photoshop.  This was mildly frustrating for me since I didn't have Illustrator to practice with, and I don't do well in morning classes [too sleepy, haha]. But, the assignments were pretty fun, so here you go!

#1 Music Dyptich: I chose "Paparazzi" by Lady Gaga and "Cold War" by Janelle Monae'

#2 Creature/World Design: I borrowed from an earlier assignment in the Spring and revised my 'Elephant Spiders"

#3 Environmental Poster: Decided to tackle the Lionfish problem and went all Communist on it

#4 Op. Ed Cartoon: My interpretation of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest

#5 Self-Portrait- decided to abstract the idea and made 'myself' [a Piscean] as a Tarot Card

ILUS 300: Process

Back home for the holidays and bored off my butt... which means more frequent updates, ahaha!


So on top of all the amazing things I learned in my Advanced Illustration class [like portfolio creation, making snazzy business cards, and learning how to research into the markets that you wanna get into], my professor Durwin showed us an interesting method to complete an illustration, from conception to completion.  As an example, I'll show you guys the process for my first assignment.

1) Tight Pencils


This is essentially your lineart, in its final stage- not much, if anything, will be changed at this point [that's what all the thumbnails are for!].  A good rule of thumb is to keep tracing paper in your sketchbook- revisions are so much easier to make when you don't have to erase a shit-ton of graphite lines.  Plus, if you're working digitally, it's significantly easier to sub it and correct :)

lineart ahoy!  Eric and the Princess Rana', in all their glory

As an extra step, I draw my linework over again in CorelDraw. BEST PROGRAM EVAR for linework- fuck Adobe's various renditions of the Pen tool! *shakes fist*

2) Value Comps


This helps give illustrators a simplified road map to properly visualize lights, shadows and midtones, without the confusion of adding colors where tones tend to get muddled to the untrained eye.  By concentrating on what we want to be the focus of the image, working on value comps helps us figure out what combination works the best.

Once your focus has been decided, you play with value- starting from all white, to all black.

3) Color Comps


This does the same thing as the value comps- but with pretty colors instead :D  Yay color theory!

This time, the focus of your piece is centered on using various color schemes- in this case, value, complementary, saturation and temperature.

Princess Rana's Color Theory excercise

4) Final Illustration


Believe it or not, this was not the final step! [but at least things got easier after this]

So after you decided what type of colors you want to use, your layout has been finalized, you crank out the final illustration!  As you may be able to tell, some changes were made from my initial sketches, especially for the background.  Also, a very important part of this image was the mood/time of day of the illustration- in this case, the warmth of a mountain sunrise.  I also had to change some things anatomy-wise, but nothing that tracing paper couldn't solve ;)

Ta-daaaah!

5) Application!


"Application" meaning applying your final piece in its intended format- for example, my piece is supposed to be a character illustration, or concept art.  So in my case, my process all laid out on a single sheet will more than suffice [lucky me!]. The bonus about layout sheets is that I can also share things like initial idea sketches and color palettes.

A larger one would've also included character bios- but it's not necessary.

So there you go, my process from start to finish.  Process work was definitely the key-phrase this semester, especially after all the other work I had to do for my other studio classes.  It'll be a while before I work this entire process into my routine, but it'll definitely be some thing I'll save for my larger projects.

Finally done!

... with  my first year in Vancouver, and as an Illustration student at Emily Carr University.

it's been thrilling, inspiring, hectic and stressful, and i wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world.  but right now, i'm SO glad it's done with for the next month!

i'll be spending the next few updates showing off the final products of each studio class i've had this semester, starting with ILUS 300: Advanced Illustration.

this class was the first time i felt in control about what my projects were going to be- probably because it WAS in my control.  our professor Durwin first grouped us based on the industry we expressed the most interest in working in.  in my case, i was in the concept art group, since i want to be in character design at some point.  proud to say that i was one of the only two girls in the whole group, too :D

so my project was basically to finally sit down and design the main characters for a novel i've been meaning to write- from top to bottom- and work on a character-based illustration to introduce them.  we were originally supposed to do four parts to the projects, but it wound up being two due to time constraints, and the bulk of other things we had to do for the class [i'll share all of that at another time- it's almost midnight here, and i have yet to pack for my flight!]

so without much more yammerin'...

Assignment 1...

...and Assignment 2!