Exercises

Jennifer Tan Qing Ni (0333137)
Illustration and Visual Narratives
Exercises


Week 1
For our very first week of classes, we were introduced to the Vormator. We were asked to practice it by tracing on the shapes using Adobe Illustrator. After that, Mr Hafiz then briefed us about our first project, which is to create a character using only these shapes and create a Pokemon out of it. We were only allowed to

• Expand or minimise
• Repeating the shapes
• Rotate
• no distorting allowed

Figure 1.1 Vormator

Figure 1.2 The traced Vormator Shapes

Week 2
For this week, I started to experiment with the Vormator to create certain characters. Since we finished tracing it, it was easy to come up with the characters. I started to put together some characters together to kind of come up with some characters. This is my first character, he's inspired by something Mexican that I came up with in my head.

Figure1.3 Attempt 1

After my first attempt, more and more ideas started to pop up in my head.

Figure 1.4 Attempt 2

Figure 1.5 Attempt 3

Figure 1.5 Attempt 4

Figure 1.7 Attempt 5

We also learnt how to use the knife tool so that we could add some shadows on our character

Figure 2.1 Finalised character

Week 3
Gradients and shape builder
This week we learned how to  use gradients on our character. I then used my chosen character to do the exercises. I used the knife tool to put some shadows on my character and also I tried to use the gradient tool to try and make cool effects.

Figure 2.2 Using gradients 

We also learnt how to use the shape builder where we can use differentiate when shapes overlap.  Below is the exercise that we did in class.

Figure 2.3 Applying shape builder on the shapes.

Week 4
Textures
For this week, Mr Kannan taught us how to put texture on a shape using a picture of the texture. Below is the exercise.

Figure 2.4 Texture exercise

Week 5 
Chiaroscuro
 This week, we were taught the principles of chiaroscuro. So what is chiaroscuro? Chiaroscuro (according to google) is the treatment of light and shade in drawing and painting. This is really useful as us as designers, we will need to determine where's the shadow and lighting is in order to make something look more realistic and complete. For this exercise, we were told to use this chiaroscuro principle on a pear, particularly the one below. 

Figure 3.1 Pear 

Figure 3.2 The pear with Chiaroscuro method applied.

After this, we were told to go back and try it on a picture of 2 guys, particularly this one below.

Figure 3.3 Picture reference

Figure 3.4 The final outcome

Week 6-7
Transitions
This week we were introduced to our 2nd project, which is to create a graphic novel. We were first introduced to the types of transitions in typical comic. We were asked to include these transitions in our graphic novel.

Figure 4.1 

Figure 4.2

Then we were asked to identify some transitions in a comic that was given to us using the transitions that we learnt. This is the comic.

Figure 4.3 The comic

Then I tried to identify  the transitions used in this comic.

Figure 4.4 Transitions exercise

Week 8
For week 8, we were thought by Mr Kannan about light and shadow. We were first told to borrow a drawing tablet from the school to familiarise ourselves with it but at the same time to be much more efficient in doing the work. We first drew a circle using an eclipse tool then we searched for a texture/surface eg: a wooden surface, in order to mask it on the eclipse using the clipping mask. In order to make it have a more 3D look, we warped the chosen surface on the eclipse and then we drew the light and shadow. Below is the outcome.

Figure 5.1 Doing it in photoshop 

Figure 5.2 The final outcome