Assignment one – saying hello pt3

Creating the image and card

As you can see in pt2 I’ve pretty much have the design thought out and now just the case of creating the design. I think this is a good way to also see my digital progress step by step pretty much so I will document this as I go along. While I have a “design” in both sketchbooks that I can scan and use I will be creating 100% digitally for this assignment as I want to work on the shapes and fore shorting a little better than the sketches.
Please note I will not always go in so much detail on the digital progress unless needed, Am thinking it may be useful for my tutor to know my progress and thinking with this assignment.

I set up the document larger than I need at A4 size, 300 PPI as I don’t think would need more for this project, also made sure I have print ready from start as mode CMYK, I did change to 16 bit, while I think I could have played safer with 8 bit and less colour choice I wanted the total freedom when comes to colours in creating this card.

This is my current setting of workspace, it actually is quite tidy at the moment as it is my basic set up, due to recent 2020 CC update. Before I start I save the document as I try to save every major change. After all Photoshop on my laptop does have a habit of crashing.

Next I zoom out to make small thumbnail size canvas, create a new layer and title “loose layout”. This layer I will be working out the layout/composition and shapes.
I tend to stick to one brush for 80% of the work, which is included in a few sets titled “Oil Pastel large” this brush for me creates great hard/soft edges I cannot seem to get with a more smooth or softer brushes.

1- I keep moving and adjusting this until have a layout I’m happy with, I’ve paid attention mainly rules of the third and taking into account the golden ratio.
Next I completely lower the Opacity of the layer until barely viable and create a new layer (rough lines) to start sketching the design digitally.

2- I start laying down the design, I make adjustments as I go along via the lesso tool, I also try to get more movement in the body and ended up turning her and losing the “left” arm as at the moment i feel does not work in this pose.
3- Now is the first time I’m going to flip the canvas and see if I’m missing anything. At this stage charges via flip canvas was small as not much detail and no eyes. I find flipping canvas very useful to find if eyes are a little off.

4 -Next is the lines, lowing the opacity again on the rough line and also turning of the layout rough. Now is also the time to zoom in (and out) so can get details and layout right. I think the arm or hand is a little off, I think its the angle of the pen so I adjusted using the lesso tool, I also moved the angle of the hand but that made the whole arm look stiff so I’m leaving that until later and coloured to see if feels right.

5- I quickly lay down colour, using the palette I created from the moodboard, I found myself changing a couple of the colours as wanted more contrast in the design. I kept the background on its own layer and foreground on another, I do not like having to many layers and like to be able to blend things.
6- I kept things rough at first and once have a good idea of colours I started to blend, I blend with the same brush by lowering the opacity and using the colour picker, I had to discover the right amount of blending for this image, I could easily make it too smooth that I will lose the artistic detail, I wanted it remain interesting with brush marks and keeping the image from looking too flat which I find can easily be down with digital.

7- Next I added the stars, while I know a couple of short cuts and brushes that could create the stars very quickly, with this image I wanted to control the placement of the stars while still appearing random. I wanted to try and draw the viewers eyes more to the wacom, so avoiding the starts cluttering randomly or gathering in a section on the illustration may make it too busy. This is the first time I changed the brushes, I used a hard round pressure brush to create the dots and add different sizes quickly without changing the brush size to do so. I did make it too cluttered in some areas so using the eraser tool removed some stars and created more space so less grouped together.

8- After cleaning “me” character base colours, I wanted to start to add a rough shadow base. Therefore I’m creating the main light source in the direction of the viewer eyes almost and being aware secondary light source from the tablet screen.
9- I created the shadow base by new layer > clipping mask > I used dark blue and then lowered the opacity of that layer.
I created another clipping mask and using a midtone colour from the background completely filled > changed layer to soft light > lowered opacity on this later and then added a mask to this layer which I used to softly hide some parts so I have a touch of the original colour peeking though, I did this to relate the image to the background colour. While I did this I also became aware I’m making the character blend to much into the background, however I’ve not added highlights to this may make her pop out of the paper again later on.

10- After this I created a layer on the top, so I’m now working on top of the lines with details and fine toning. I do question how much detail I should do as its designed for print A6/A5 size so some details may be pointless as will be lost. With that in mind I keep zooming out to make sure this works best from a smaller view.

11- I came up with the idea of adding some of my work to the floating paper, keeping in mind while details will be lost I will try to make the pages blend in. Also some of the pages will be facing away. In order to get them moving as the paper in the illustration I used transform tool for both wrap and puppet wrap.

12- Next I’m going to just work on the illustration
First I make sure I save on my CC cloud and view on a couple of different screens, the wacom in many ways always show the image in the better light, colours a little different so I make a point of viewing on different devices to try and get a better colour overall.
Like this image on my screen are a little more muted and softer, while on my mobile shows a more saturated version. Which in this case I think works better as planned to increase the saturation at the end.
The following I need to work on.

• The face, skin tone and hair has little contrast.
• papers, couple of the papers while I thought looked good with overlapping edges, zoomed out it looked like an afterthought / like I’ve not got around to working on the papers. Also the papers look too soft, while I didn’t want them to dominate the illustration I’m at risk of losing them all together.
• The clothing, I think it just I need to tidy up the values and add some texture. It looks flat and something not quite right with the colours.
• More sharper contrast shadows should also bring out the impression of the details and help with the values.
• Also need to work on the hand or screen of the wacom as the hand does not feel like it is hoovering over the screen, like it on the same level. Creating stronger values may sort this.
• I could also try a filter > high pass layer and see if sorts some of the issues now. (I normally do this when I’ve almost finished.)

13- AND after a bit of work, mainly doing things I stated above I have this result.
One major change is the hair colour, I figured shadows in space would play more on the hair than I had taken into account, for a while the hair looked very wrong, I think this change is in the right direction.
I also started toying with the idea of bring the design back more greeting card by adding some text, something simple like hello and started looking at fonts that I express the mood I wanted to say when I say “hello” almost cute, nervous yet curious “hello”.
So while on adobe font I looked at possible font for this illustration.
I wanted something tall, simple yet nothing formal in terms of fonts.

14- I needed to finish the design before I commit to a font, so I reached the finishing point with a couple more edits and adjustments.

The design is VERY me, so I’m reaching a core part of the assignment objectives, however I do not feel this is very card design, more something can buy on redbubble as an artist print on a card than I more general card vibe.

Thinking I could play with layout more and just take it away from full print on card, maybe add some borders and once happy with that look at text to see what works.

While liking the white border more, as feeling gives a cleaner finish and feels more card in design I pushed a little further while remembering a type of card design very popular with my husband, which has sort of old images and a little caption under, I thought just try it.
I actually like it, now left wondering which to do between that and the white border. I’m being pulled toward the new layout more as it almost like a start of a chapter which is what this course is really is for me. Does this unintentional design actually give more meaning to my illustration, while simple and small it could be a narrative in my own story… Would it create a bit of mystery and interest in the piece just by leaving it so open with so she said “hello”? Even the text wasn’t intentional as I was just placing there just for layout purposes.

What I did next was solely for my own curiously, I added the design in a selection of card to see if would fit and grab attention. It does stand out, mainly because I’ve not really tried too hard to make it organic in the photo edit.
To be fair this type of design wouldn’t be in this section, but it given me a little insight to general card design. Would I pick it up in this selection, maybe but it wouldn’t be my first choice. I would need to stand out more in terms of getting customers to pick my design first and pay more attention to top in order to get the card picked!

I’m going with my gut and picking this one as my final design,

I will be getting this printed by a third party, due to being Christmas 2019 in a couple of days, so in the summery learning log post I will include the card print photos which may take a couple of week to complete. In that time I will be moving on to section 2 exercises and may have already started to upload before this assignment has been fully completed.

***UPDATE***
After a debate with my husband as he didn’t get “So, she said “hello” he thinks should be Hello or even Hello she said, I’m now worried about people not understanding the intentions behind the wording, as its not meant to fully make sense on its on.
More so there is a 1970s song titled Don’t You Know (She Said Hello), by a British band called Butterscotch.

” At last I heard that little word so unexpectedly

Don’t you know she said hello to me “

Song Lyrics by Butterscotch 1970

I like this small link to the song as almost I feel, that OCA caught my attention so I said hello!