Studio Brief 1 - Idea Pictures - Final Designs

I decided to draw my designs bigger than the final formats, to then be reduced digitally and then coloured. This would make the line work appear denser and finer. I drew the finals at the same proportion, half as big for the portrait/landscape and twice as big for the square. I prefer drawing bigger and could work the detail I needed by producing them this way.

Here are my final un-edited scanned drawings.

- I sketched the designs in pencil.

- I then worked into the lines with black paint pen in 2 sizes and a fine liner to get slightly different line qualities. 

- Working bigger helped me to get all the details and also made the thin lines appear even finer and like a tonal texture when reduced which I like.
- It also allowed me to get a denser and busier pattern in the background.

Final digital designs:

Im pleased with how my finals turned out. I like how I have tied them all together with the matching shapes coming from their heads and the backgrounds. I feel the fact they link together well is a strong point for my finals. I like how they can been seen individually and also read as a set. I think colouring digitally was a good idea, its creates the bold vibrancy of the colour that I wanted. The flat colour works nice with the black and white line work - but I feel like grey tone somewhere amongst the black and white could have been really effective now looking at the finished productions. I decided to do each design a different a colour because I didn't feel there was one colour that described the situation best. Orange was my favourite but I also felt green worked better for one of the designs. I tried out yellow but it gave impressions of toxic and hazardous - so it left me with purple or blue for the last design. Purple I felt being much more relevant to the theme for some reason. I wanted the colours to be pure and bright, not half hearted, opaque or a dodgy shade. I think each being a different colours helps to communicate the psychedelic madness when looked at as a whole. 

Surprisingly my favourite design is the green landscape design, I didn't expect this as I was much more confident with the drawing of the other two - I think this is because it is not supported with a mad face, I think un intentionally I feel more comfortable when working with a strong, blatant caricature to support my illustration. It was nice to see how my illustration skills work around other subtle types of imagery. The simple character uses a subtle gesture that helps to tell the story, and explain the situation Huxleys mind is in. This has shown me I need to be more aware of subtle ways of explaining what I want to within my illustration.

Looking back at the finals I cant help feel like some of the energy in my line work has been lost, compared to my quick rough designs. This is something I often think with my finals. I need to figure out ways that I can bring through that immediate energy created in my sketches - maybe draw straight in pen? or edit my pencil sketches on photoshop to make them suitable for the final outlines? I find it hard to keep energy in the pen work when i'm following an existing line. This is something I need experiment with and develop personally.