Illustrative Animals
Part 2: Illustration
We started class with some quick thumbnail sketches, so I did some short grayscale maps in procreate. I wanted to emphasize perspective through landscape and the ferret’s own unique form, so I made two of the same space with different animal poses.
IN-CLASS FEEDBACK:
- Prefers the first over the second in terms of visual hierarchy. It also matches the concept of them looking back from the settlements better
- Good with the settlement idea, decimating one population has a web of impact. Even though the prairie dogs are mainly affected, it is an integral part of the ferret’s diet
- Try embedding the text in the shape of the image maybe instead of it just floating in the sky
- Emphasize different things about the story?
3/15/21
I then did a few super rough thumbnails playing with perspective, height, and composition. The first are basic thumbnails of structure and hierarchy, while the second page focuses more towards the placement of the text and the pose of the animal. It’s also sectioned off into day/night, so I can have a general perception of color scheme later on.
I hopped onto Adobe Illustrator for a little bit and worked out some flattened compositions, as well as general mapping of color scheme. Although I like this thumbnail, it doesn’t particularly hint towards any endangerment issues. I’ve thus concluded that my composition requires a slightly above perspective, where you can see the horizon line.
I also did another composition of the animal so that I could practice shadows via color scheme and lighting.
To be honest, I’m really not a fan of any of these. The colors for all three are really boring and lack diversity. I think the last one has potential, and indicates some concept of shadow, but it’s much too overworked. The gradient in the background, however, is interesting and yields potential.
I then blocked out my thumbnail of choice to get a general aspect of what my final composition will look like (just less detailed).
Looking at the traditional thumbnail sketches, I’m thinking of going for a sunset-related color scheme. Black footed ferrets are nocturnal, so I can’t have them in broad daylight. Moreover, too many blues for night won’t indicate grasslands. Given that they’re generally active from dusk till dawn, I think that this is a worthy compromise.
Furthermore, I want a color template that challenges me, and uses unconventional colors that aren’t the animal’s typical white and black. Thus, I think using contrasting colors, such as blue and orange, will definitely push me. Not only that, but a sunset composition will also have me thinking about shadows and highlights that heighten the time of day.
FEEDBACK WITH DAPHNE:
- Everything is a little idealistic; even the settlement looks too harmonious (maybe add some construction work?)
- Make some sharp lines and lights on for that sense of endangerment
- Careful with the grass, they shouldn’t be visible from that far off
- Flatten mountains maybe? You’re at a grassland, not the Rocky Mountains
- Incorporate placement of text for better perception of composition
- Differ in abstraction, it’s a tad stylized.
- Incorporate more details of animal for Thursday
Essentially, I need to work towards developing a more realistic, rugged background. I will also have to incorporate text, as I ignored it for the sake of composition for this class’ critique.
3/18/21
Office hours with Connor:
- How can you break up shape language: how to make it almost alien?
- Make houses closer to make them bigger and cut off mountain
- Make them less icon-y,
- Shapes are all organic, so what if the settlement area is structured and rigid as contrast?
- Use rag of text to adhere to composition
- Think about sun position!
With this advice, I redid and modified the overall piece: the backgrounds have better depth and contrast, and the plains/fields are given more detail. I added the blocked text (even though I hadn’t finished the blurb yet), and gave the ferrets more defined form.
The burrow was particularly challenging for me: I wasn’t sure how to give it both foreground and detail, so I decided to add an accent color to 1. give the space a light source and 2. highlight that. it’s in the foreground. This gives the grass and burrow area greater definition.
The plains were also particularly difficult. I researched settlements from google images, but I think that when put into practice — especially from that far away — they just look icon-y and too apartment-like.
I think that part of the reasons as to why the settlements look off is a result of both shape and color. The shape is rectangular, which makes it look overly simplified. Not only that, but the colors of old settlements are more rubicund and brick-like. Given my color palette, the buildings translated into graphics look much more advanced.
Finally, I played with the colors of the piece. I had three main color templates in mind: a contrast of pink and blue, yellowish-orange for more “sunset” vibes, and the stark black and white. I played around with saturation, tone, and contrast for each of these.
In the end, I settled for these 3 for critique:
I didn’t necessarily choose them because I thought they were the most successful; rather, I selected them because they provided the greatest breathe and diversity I was looking towards. These pieces, despite having the same composition, would give me feedback on the time of day, general feel of the piece, and what people’s initial perceptions were.
In today’s class we talked about composition and depth. I think that mapping out my composition first in grayscale was good for checking depth, and made it easier for me to pick colors later on.
In terms of color, people seemed to enjoy the top one the most, so I’ll take that into consideration.
FEEDBACK:
- Look at contrast and the cartoonish aspect of the building
- Nitpicky, but the mountains are all accidentally right top
- Keep accent color! Good use of highlights. You’ll have to do less though
- Fix perspective of building
- Take into account shadows and highlights
- People like the first iteration better
- Green undertones give it a sickly type of feel
- Set the time in the construction process
- Try it with just the tractor
- Headline is a little bold
- Set subhead and heading to same size and differentiate it through weight
- Slightly change spacing between subheading and body copy
- Line spacing in body text is too tight
- Look a little bit more towards the side
- Is this roads, cornfields, or construction?
- Without adding a lot more detail, figure out what story it is you want to tell and the conditions
I personally thought that the “sickly” feel comment was very interesting. It would have been nice to have that hidden undertone, but in the end I decided against it — I felt that it would be too much work trying to incorporate every single problem as to why the Black-Footed Ferret was endangered, and I should simply stick with one. Thus, I chose against the green undertones.
I will also need to consider the switch about buildings. Not only is the perspective off, but it’s difficult to replicate such historical context with minimal detail and a completely different color palette. Furthermore, the incorporation of both buildings and machinery imply that the two events would happen at the same time, which isn’t the case. After all, why would there be a finished building when there’s construction right in front of it?
Overall, it would benefit me a lot more to omit one over the other. This gives me a definite time of day that actually makes sense, and will be more reasonable as a whole.
3/23/21
For today’s class, I focused more on the dusk aspect, and tried to do colors that would help make the ferret pop.
I took some advice and changed the alignment of some mountains, omitted the building, lessened the accent highlights, and added a shadow to the tractor. Not only that, but I changed the line spacing of my text, changed the style guide, and added a paragraph instead of the Lorem Ipsum fill. I also added more detail to the ferrets, and changed by color palette so that I actually have only 7 colors this time (oops).
Changed: mountain alignment, lowered and lessened saturation/contrast levels of pink highlight, orientation of second ferret so its head is more tilted to the side, added shadows, increased opacity to minimize color palette, omitted building, added details of ferret, added details of burrow.
I had a MASSIVE feedback session with almost every TA and professor, and I think I got a lot of detailed things to work on!
FEEDBACK FROM CONNOR:
- Determine if it gives off a ranch/plantain vibe (looks like roads for now)
- Because the faces are detailed, the bottom half are starting to look blob like (back leg looks a little too large)
- Tail should start having a black pattern
- Having the highlights should help with avoiding blending in
- Consider adding highlights to burrow
- Export as a JPEG or png
- More highlights for secondary ferret
- Mountains are better?
FEEDBACK FROM DAPHNE:
- Change plant highlights for some grass
- Tractor is too big, figure out scale
- 3–5 sentences, body copy is large and close together (increase line spacing)
- Issue of middle animal being dead center (move to the right)
- Body blob of second ferret is confusing
- Switch pink for back highlight
- Breakup of animal using background mountain was smart lol
- Tweak perspective of lines
FEEDBACK FROM DANI
- Be specific: tractors look different than bulldozers
- Burrow hole has issues, try to make it appear to dive down more
- Bring highlight of hole on top
- Curl up into arch more
FEEDBACK FROM Q:
- Avoid tangent lines
- Line transition of field is too harsh
- Think about spacing for text, it’s too equal
- Highlight of mountain itself is appealing, but composition as a whole blends the accent highlight together (lessen highlight of the second mountain)
- Last two mountains are a bit similar
3/25/21
After fixing said minor issues that were addressed last class, such as margin spacing, tangents, incorporated shadows and lighting details in the foreground, I tried to refine the plains in the bottom left, since it seems like that’s the final piece of this project that I needed to fix.
There are two major problems with the field portion:
- It’s confusing as to if they’re roads or plains
- It’s confusing as to whether the machine is a bulldozer or a tractor.
I first tried exploring with the fields a little more, and tested what the different number of divisions would look like.
While doing so, I inverted the color palette. Because Q mentioned that the contrast from plain to mountain was a little drastic, I hoped that switching the grey and blue colors would help. This had a pretty positive response, so I’ll keep it in.
The main issue was with scale. In terms of agriculture, an acre is typically larger than the original divisions. With the original divisions, the machine looks HUGE. Thus, the first modification was more accurate, and I should have deleted a few of the columns.
After talking to Cassie, she suggested that I give the fields more of a “lump” definition. In general, it looks like roads because the plains are too flat. Rather, I want to give them the impression of a dirt road cutting across an agricultural field.
Moreover, I changed the model of tractor to avoid confusion with the bulldozer. I also realized that one of my primary issues was that the machinery was too modern. As a result, it gave the implication of much greater, urban development.
The Key Feature was that the greatest wipeout occurred in the 1930’s so I had to adhere to that kind of timeline. I broke up the blocky, rectangle-like fields and gave them more lumped weights, and also looked into the tractors used at that time.
FINAL
