ILLUSTRATION AND VISUAL NARRATIVE Task 1 / Exercises

Lectures

Week 1 / introduction to IVN

This lecture was about the basics and structure of the module. We were told to learn the pen tool, and practice using it by playing the bezier game.

Week 2 / Building shapes with the pen tool

They showed some character designs and some other vector and raster designs, an Introduction to the shapes for the vormator challenge and its examples. 

Lecture report 1 / visual study

Find one animated cartoon/animated character and write a short report on how their character design elements work in relation to their personality and story in the media.

Character design basics

The most popular animated show When I was a child was ben 10. Everybody watched that in my school. the old character design of ben was so good and appealing for kids and even adults

The intro and everything had life to it and the characters had a dark tone to it which is kind of scary sometimes but fun

Recently they used a different type of character design to make it more kid-friendly and childish

But now, they tried to make the characters look more childish, it ended up being pretty lame due to the lack of details and the usage of vibrant colours too much. They used such a lighter tone for it that now it's just painful to watch.

what can you learn from this?

Whenever you're designing a character, don't let creativity stop you. Some studios nowadays restrict the freedom of the design to make it more appealing for kids. Never let that stop your imagination, Kids like to watch gore and bloodshed, and yes It does not affect their mental health in any way. learn to create both scary and soft designs. Explore new things, try different art styles and stay inventive.

Lecure report 2 / visual study

This week, we had to pick any movie, anime, or tv show that utilizes a scene where chiaroscuro lighting emphasizes shadow and light. We had to write a report about how the lighting shows the importance of a scene in the narrative.

I remember a scene in the movie "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" That showed chiaroscuro to focus on a character in a dark region.

This anthology movie had 6 different parts that were very interesting and had beautiful, aesthetic shots in some parts. The picture above shows the third chapter in the movie which was heartbreaking to watch in the end. The boy with no legs or arms is giving the people a speech at dawn. The lighting in the mini stage portrays the character's importance and focuses on nothing but the boy itself. This shot from the movie makes use of chiaroscuro very well.

Lecture report 3 / visual study

In the lecture, they told us to take six different pictures (Composition Theory / Visual Types and shots) that are Establishing, Bird's Eyeview, Frame within a Frame, Medium Shot, Close-Up Worm's, Eyeview

Establishing (long shot)

This is a picture of when I went to a forest with not many people and I took a picture of a rare car

Bird's eye view

Here's a picture of me pointing at the sea  Wiil we finally be free?

Frame within a frame

Here's a picture of a creepy ostrich that I took from the zoo. The bars will be considered as a frame I guess

worm's eye view

This is another picture I took from the forest

close up

A close up picture of my sleepy face (≖_≖ )

Medium shot

A monkey eating the mango I gave it

Almost all the pictures above are unedited/no filter

Week 3 / vormator challenge

The vormator challenge is where we get limited flexibility to design characters using some basic shapes and It can help bring out the creativity in a person

Vormator elements :

Using these shapes, I had to create characters.

I cannot skew or change these shapes. colouring, flipping duplicating and many other things are allowed like the use of gradients and drop shadow

First character: Dirk Diggler

I wanted this character to be a cute little alien, I played around with the shapes for a while to get the hang of it. But in the end, I successfully created This thing you see below

Second character: The witch

I designed an evil character next. I wanted her to be a bit scary and cool

Third character: the melon man

Just a clumsy melon man

For these projects, I did not use the pathfinder tool. I just came upon them in the week 3 session. I could have explored more character types with those tools. I might try further If possible.

Feedback from the lecturer

The lecturer liked the witch and told me to use shadows and different color schemes.

Reflections

I had to polish it up more while keeping the original design. So I designed it a little bit further using some other tools like they instructed

Final design

This is the final version of the witch.

Adobe pdf

character card design

By using the previous character that I made, We have to create a character game card. Since I chose to use the witch for the final design I decided to use the same for this exercise.

This is the final version of the card, The left side shows, the statistics of the witch. The right side shows the special powers and abilities and the top side shows the ranking and rarity of the card.

Feedback

The overall card design is good but could be better if I make some changes like, for eg, the flames could be bigger, and could try different arrangements and colors

Redesigning the card

I re-designed this card with different arrangements, colors, and patterns. It took a very long time to make it look like an actual game character card but it was worth the effort

Week 4 exercise / chiaroscuro

The use of light and dark to create the illusion of three-dimensional volume on a flat surface. 

I used illustrator to draw the chiaroscuro exercise. For reference, I used this picture to get the shadows properly

Then I traced the shadow and the lighting using the pen tool the finally get this. I kinda liked how it turned out. 

It looks a bit scary but that's okay. I wanted it like this.