OUGD405 - Get More People To Read

Monday night I made a couple of illustrations for the project, but I didn't want to do too many as Kirsty was drawing some animals for me to illustrate. I didn't draw any initial sketches, as that was Kirsty's part to the group, I just wanted to play around with shapes to get a distinct style to work with.

I started creating a bird, using basic shapes to show the charateristics of a bird such as wings, tail and beak.

I changed the colours to shades of blue, to make the colours work better together. I think it is quite plain, and I don't really like it.

 I strated to create a dinosaur, and gave it spikes and teeth. I didn't want to make it a scary dinosaur as it would be aimed at young children.












However, that brown is a horrible colour, so I changed it to make it brighter and fit in better with capturing children's attention.

 I also tried the dinosaur without the spikes, but I think it looks too simple. I don't think there are enough different shapes to make it very interesting.

 I then started using the same shape to make a giraffe because I thought the dinosaur was too simple, and giraffes have patterns to make them interesting. Still using basic shapes, I made the giraffe pattern our of rounded rectangles, and half rounded rectangles.

 To improve the head and nose I changed the shape of it, to round it off, as the previous one seemed unfinished. I think it works better this way, and by using the darker shade of brown on the nose it differentiates the body parts. I also made the neck longer, as Melissa from the group suggested to.

 I started making a sloth, but I didn't think the body was working, and I wasn't really happy with the face either so I discarded this idea early on.

 I then began to make a toucan, as I like the bright colours that they are. I made the beak have different sizes, and the tail to be at different angles.

 I then looked at a picture of a toucan, and realised that they have a white area on the top of their body, so I added a semi-circle to act for it.

 However, when I showed my peer Sarah it she said 'toucans have a little black bit on the end of their beak, and have a bit of yellow round their eyes' and  'and the white bit goes all the way down its body'. So I tried that instead. I think it looks a lot better.

This is the finished toucan, and it is the only one out of these illustrations that I actually like. I changed the yellow part to be a circle to fit in with the eyes.











The next day I showed the group the toucan that I designed, because I wasn't happy with the other designs, and they all really liked the style that it was in. Kirsty then scanned in her drawings, which I then started to illustrate. Here are her drawings:

Here are some screenshots of while I was producing the illustrations.

 I traced the dolphin that Kirsty drew, but it didn't fit in with the previous illustrations I did that the rest of the group liked. I tried to combine both of our styles, but for this animal it just didn't work. I tried many variations but couldn't seem to get it right.

I also started working on the koala bear, but I wasn't happy with that either because our styles are too different, and didn't work as one. I didn't want to create my style and completely disregard hers, but I wanted it to work with the basic shape toucan that I designed, because the feedback I recieved from my group about it was really positive.





I then started to work on the elephant, and at first I was happy with it, because it was simple, but it didn't fit in with Kirsty's drawing.

 I then went back to it after a break, and found that if i placed shapes over the top of her drawing in a lower opacity, I could work both of our styles into one. This one has a lot more variation than the last, and I am quite happy with it. I found this was a better style of working.

 I then started working on the flamingo, and at first I tried to make a curved neck by tracing an 'S' but it didn't fit in proportionally with the rest of the animals, so I went with a straight neck instead.

 I then added some triangles to the legs which were in the drawing, and changed the colour of the bottom of the legs to act as feet. I'm not very happy with this finish, as I don't think the flamingo has a lot of character.

 This one was really simple, I just used shapes that worked with the drawing as close as possible.

 I found this one quite difficult as the mane in the drawing wouldn't look clean. I decided to keep it clean and use simple shapes, but I don't really like the finish. I used triangles as teeth, as they are that shape in the drawing.

 I used three circles to make the face, and experimented a lot with the shape of it. Initially I put shapes over the drawing to get the same shape as the drawing, then coloured it and added more shapes (hands and feet).

 I then added a white outline to the body to see what it looked like, but it didn't work. After I sent it to the people in my group, Melissa suggested changing the bottom half of the penguin, so I made the inner shape wider, and put the hands behind the body layer.

This is the original drawing of the seal.

I experimented a few times making different variations to see what worked best. The third one is the exact shape of the drawing, whereas the second one I just used a semi circle as the body. I sent both of these out to the group so that they can pick which one they prefer as I am undecid













This wasn't a drawing originally, but I just started playing around with shapes to see what I could make. At first the face looked slightly like a birds face, so I altered it to look more like the giraffes face shape, as it looked more like a horse. I also altered the tail on the second attempt. I quite like this illustration, and I used rectangles which were curved at the end for the mane, to keep it geometric and clean.



So far this is my contribution to the group. I showed them to the group today, and everyone apart from Kirsty who wasn't there, said they really liked them, so I sent it to them all so that they can continue designing posters, murals etc with the illustrations. I am happy with some of them, but some of them I think could have been better. However, with the tight deadline we are working to these are the best I could produce, and I needed to have them finished so that the rest of the group could work with them. Tomorrow they should have done some poster and bookmark designs, so I will be able to contribute again to the group.