ANNOTATING YOUR THUMBNAILS

TASK

Open your digital thumbnail contactsheet in Photoshop and in a new layer annotate your initial ideas. Use feedback from your peers and insights from the case studies you have been looking at to evaluate the designs, filtering out unworkable or unoriginal ideas and highlighting those that you think have the greatest potential. Make notes explaining your thinking, and be specific about details that you consider to be positive or negative about each idea.

PHOTOSHOP SCI-FI TUTORIALS

Try your hand at the following two Photoshop Tutorials and post the results to your blog.

http://www.psdvault.com/abstracts/create-sci-fi-style-laser-light-effect-in-photoshop/

http://www.psdvault.com/drawing/create-awesome-abstract-nebula-circle-shape-in-photoshop/

Then look down the following list of additional tutorials and chose at least one more to try out:

http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/web/dark-futuristic-photoshop-effects/

FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

Before attempting any large scale drawings of the main portrait for your cover design it is important to sketch and practice on a smaller scale in order to build your confidence and understand the characteristics of the face you are going to illustrate.

When preparing his own version of a LWL cover for the Super Eight issue as part of a design competition, design student Paul Imrie first worked from freeze-frames of the film, pausing the movie at various points in the plot to get interesting expressions and then quickly sketching these in order to work on his portrait skills

TASK

  • Watch the two Ender's Game trailers and freeze-frame at points where you can isolate an interesting expression on the face of your chosen focus character. Screen-grab the frames (CMD+Shift+4) and either using the graphics tablet or on paper sketch each face as best you can, trying to work on those features that most clearly define the subject's likeness. If you hand-draw your images, make sure you scan and adjust your drawings in Photoshop.
  • Combine these initial draft sketches into a single document and annotate each image, saying what works and what doesn't and which aspects need improving in terms of working on your main portrait illustration.   

ILLUSTRATOR CASE STUDY

MICKEY DUZYJ

www.mduzyj


YVAN QUINET

www.wyv.ch


AMY SOL

www.amysol.com


TOMER HANUKA

www.thanuka.com


JOANNA KROTKA

www.joannakrotka.com


TASK

Look at the work of one of the contemporary illustrators I've selected above. Go to their website and browse their online galleries of work. Choose one image and using a graphics tablet try to create as faithful a copy of the piece as you can. You should focus on a particular area or detail and not try to copy the entire image. Work as closely as you can to recreate the style of your chosen illustrator. Upload your work as a .png to your blog. 


ILLUSTRATE LWL TARGET AUDIENCE


TASK 1
Use the brands, clothes, gigs, films, drinks identified in the advert breakdown to create a mind map of the Little White Lies Target audience. Find picture to illustrate the consumer choices and use Pages or Photoshop to arrange them in a pretty way.

It should look a little this:

Put a title on the picture: Little White Lie Target Audience.

And place the quote below on the document.

"But we don't have their tired formula, we don't cull our news section from the internet and we don't just choose the same films as everyone else to run with. That's all we want to do - provide somewhere for people who are really passionate about film to go." - Danny Miller, founder of Little White Lies

Here's an interview with him if you want to know more.

And here is an article from Grafik Magazine (Volume mag Volume 1, Issue 189, 2011).



OPTIONAL TASK 2
Go to http://www.tagxedo.com/
Press 'Create'. Press 'Load'. Cut and paste the text from your original analysis (the tables) into the empty text box.
See what you get. If it's pretty and interesting - save as a .jpg and load it onto your blog.



ARTIST CASE STUDY: THRIP SRIYANANDA

This is from the blog of postgraduate design student Thrip Sriyananda

http://thipsriyananda.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/d-student-awards-2012-illustration.html

Here she illustrates with extracts from her sketchbooks the entire process through which she came up with her own take on a Little White Lies cover design for the Black Swan issue

TASK

  • On your blog outline the key stages this designer went through in order to work up to a final cover design?
  • What different things did she do at each stage and what ideas can you get from her blog in terms of things you could incorporate into your own design process?
  • Write up a draft production schedule for your own magazine design brief outlining each stage you will need to complete the task