#artg241

Our class was tasked with the prompt Scale and Composition for the fifth Illustration Experiment. Until now, all of my pieces were created in Adobe Illustrator. This time I chose to use a physical medium - plastic. Riporagh, a  large, spindly criminal looms over a quadrupedal enforcement unit named Scavard. The background remains a stark white to allow the focus to narrow on the two subjects of varying sizes and composure. The two figures were photographed in different shots before being spliced together to form a single art piece.

My biggest challenge was definitely the texturing process of the water. To make it feel alive, I manually warped the lane lines underwater to simulate refraction and used different textured watercolor brushes to achieve the look of a realistic water surface. To add even more realism, I varied the water contact of each body to create interesting layering and depth. As a final touch, I incorporated dramatic sunlight beaming into the room, giving the whole scene a polished feel. This process taught me a lot about how to combine texture and lighting to make a scene feel dynamic and alive, and I’m looking forward to using these techniques in the future.

The prompt with this piece was essentially just raster and color, so I decided to capitalise on that by emphasizing how Adobe Photoshop is a raster/pixel based software. This notion was achieved through somewhat redesigning the main icon in an 8 bit pixel aesthetic, "boxing" its round corners to convey a more retro look and feel. One challenge overall with this piece though was making sure the .psd pattern in the background was not distracting from the main focal point while also not obstructing it in any way. This predicament was overcome by lowering its opacity and ensuring proper and smooth placement.

As an enthusiastic doodler, I wanted to get back into using outlines. I’d never used Photoshop for drawing before, but I tried the Brush Pen and immediately fell in love with its chunky and organic look, which renewed my enthusiasm for outline-based illustration. The biggest challenge I faced was color balance. With so many different products, the illustration could have easily looked chaotic. My method to overcome this was to make each item stand out but also feel cohesive. I achieved this by strategically distributing a core set of colors across the entire product range. This "mix and matching" of colors created a balanced distribution that makes the whole composition feel unified and harmonious.

For this week's theme on “Tension & Focal Point,” I immediately had the idea of a giant wave forming in front of a surfer standing on a beach. This concept seemed perfect for reflecting the theme. I never painted waves before and texturing was always a difficult part of illustrating for me, so that was a new technical challenge I wanted to tackle. I tried to mimic an analog painting style for the wave, using different rough brushes to build up the form and achieve the dynamic power of the water. In comparison, the small figure of the surfer with his yellow surfboard creates a powerful focal point. This gets emphasised through a few key choices: the massive scale of the wave, the choice of complementary colors and the strong contrast in lights and shadows right at the center. The challenge to avoid distraction from the surfer by adding too much detail to the wave was a big one. But I learned a lot about how to use different brushes and blending to help guide the viewer’s eye and achieve the impactful end result.

This illustration really got me into working with Adobe Illustrator, because I haven’t tried vector illustration much before, so it was a great learning curve for me on how to use the tools and effects of the program to create the end result. It really motivates me to try out more different techniques in the future on my illustration journey, but first: grab a snack!

I actually recycled an element—the sword—here from a passion project that has been on hold for a while, so it was nice seeing how that lent itself well into the visual tale of good against evil that I was trying to conceptualize. This piece depicts a battleground consisting of two opposing factions of the same breed: the Triangilites. This opposition also alludes to the overarching message of the illustration. Not only this, but there is also a slight element of betrayal depicted in the piece in order to somewhat surprise the viewer! When it comes to technical skills learnt through this piece, I found that if you select a layer in Adobe Illustrator and paint over it, it essentially serves the same function as painting over a layer mask in Photoshop!

I've always been fascinated by concept artists who can create entire landscapes with just a few brushstrokes. I wanted to try this minimalist approach for this illustration. My concept was a natural cliff formation on a coastline, where a lonely seagull looks out over the sea towards a flock of other gulls, all bathed in the soft light of the golden hour. The positioning of the cliffs and the curve of the beach were intended to guide the viewer's eye from the seagull in the foreground along a natural leading line to the flock in the distance. Using a deliberately limited color palette, I tried to implement this concept with simple shapes. This wasn't as easy as it sounds, as I often had to resist the temptation to add more detail. Placing the shadows correctly also proved to be more challenging than I initially thought, due to the specific lighting in the illustration. However, exploring the interplay between the foreground and background, the colors, and the overall composition was a very interesting process.