Vector Image Practice

Over the summer, whilst on my internship in a graphic design company it was suggested that I use illustrator as my go-to programme for creating things as everything is then vectorised and easily adjusted / resized etc. When I started, I only ever used illustrator for creating some outlines for sketches that I was planning on taking into photoshop so it was a little daunting for me!

Now, I cant say I've learnt heaps... But I have come to realise how cool illustrator can be and how useful it is! I've always wondered how people create vector images and I guess I'm beginning to finally understand how by exploring the tools the programme provides.

During the internship, all I really managed to create / assist with was some simple logo ideas and putting presentations together for clients. I didnt really get the chance to try making images as such. Since then, I've had a little practice and I decided to try creating a little fox! :)

I originally created him for a design I was working on for a competition but have since decided against using him. Still.. I'm quite happy with how he turned out considering it was my first attempt at vectorising anything properly! 

Onwards and upwards!

Animation: Preview Clip

The past two days I've been trying to refine and perfect the scenes in my Animation sequence ready for next weekend when I am hoping to add in my sound effects and Narrative. I've finally gotten around to adding in a small black dot to represent a small fly that my frog looks up to eat. 

This clip is just a small section of the scene. 

Check it out!

Animation Preview: Clip Still Under Construction

I thought I'd take a quick screen recording of one of my animation scenes to show you. 

I haven't yet finished the scene - I still need to add a bounce into the leaves when the frog jumps on each one and some sound, as well as play around with the graph editor to make the jumps look a little more weighted and lifelike! 

What's going on here has taken me a good few hours to make considering it's only a 12 second clip, but thats due to the fact that there's so many layers involved. Typical of me to make things more difficult than they need to be! Ah well. Hopefully it'll turn out good in the end! 

Animation Development: New Background Design

Today I've been continuing with some animation work and I've started making up the components of my next scenes background! I love adding texture to things like this, it gives it so much more character and life, and I even messed about with the blending options just for a bit of fun!

Original Image with black outline

Original Image, No outline

Altered Image - Looks tropical! 

Final Image - White Outline

This is what I'll be using in my animation for the background. 

It fits with the style I've created so far and looks pretty cool too! I'm happy.

Animation: Background Design

I keep forgetting how long making one part of an animation takes! As part of my second scene I've started to create these layers, which will form part of a forest-type background for me to animate over the top of. To fit my running theme / style of illustration I've given them a white outline with painterly textures overlaid within the leaves. Something tells me this is going to take a lot longer than I had planned to make everything this way though. 

Bring on the sleepless nights! 

Before and After: Vectorising An Image

I'm still working on my Animation project, slowly but surely and yesterday completed the main image for the final scene of it. (Even though I've not made the middle of it yet, hah!) 

I thought it was an interesting before and after shot, and it was my first time of trying to make an image made completely of Vectors in Adobe Illustrator so I learnt a few different things from Googling my problems. I'm sure there's quicker ways to do what I did but considering it was my first attempt at a fully Vectorised image, without using Photoshop for the majority of the work I think I did pretty well. 

I'm not quite sure what name to give him though. Thoughts............?

Hand Drawn Letterforms

Last year as part of my course we were given the brief of designing our own letterforms, based on anything we wanted. I designed mine around nature and trees/twigs without leaves in the Winter.