GOAL
For our major project in Digital Illustration 1011, we were given the task to select one of three assignment briefs and treat the project as if it were for work. While a majority of my peers decided to work on a fully illustrated book cover, I personally decided to make a magazine spread. The task was to select an individual of our choice and create an illustration of them, pairing it with a cohesive layout for print.
PLAN
Going in, I decided to do an illustration of Zendaya Coleman. I choose her specifically because I find her to be a strong and passionate woman that others can look up to, and found a reference photo that I feel exhibits such.
Using the reference photo, the eyedropper tool, and the mixer brush tool, I slowly began to recreate the image, blending it as I went. After fiddling with the mixer brush tool for a while, I eventually discovered that I was able to blend a lot easier when I set the brush to mid-range levels for the wet, load, mix, and flow settings. After some quick touch-ups, I then went looking for some textures that I could apply to the dress. Eventually, I used a “screen tone” brush for the sleeves, and a “clean fabric” brush for the body and skirt, leaving the bralette texture-free as a way for it to stand out slightly. I then turned the “fabric” and “sheer” layers’ opacity down to 25% to avoid overpowering the image, topping them with a replica of the "dress" layer at 75% opacity as a way to maintain its original color.
CHALLENGES
During this project I ended up struggling with the hair, mostly due to the ombre and highlights. After some consideration, I decided to cut out her hair from the original photo (which exhibits my knowledge of photoshop, nudge nudge), and fine tune some stray hairs with the brush tool. I then selected a new background photo to add in, adjusting the hue and saturation for a basic grey. The background threw me off for a little bit, but I finally realized that I had forgotten to add the shadow. I then selected the area of the full figure and contracted the selection by 5 pixels (to avoid an choppy outline), adding a drop shadow to the layer.
When I moved my piece to the magazine template, I felt like the full background I had originally chosen
was a bit “blocky”. After some consideration, as well as, a second opinion, I contracted the background a bit to create a transparent frame, while still allowing the figure to reach the bleed. I felt like this allowed the image to pop off the page a bit, without being too much for the eyes. It also allowed the transition to the “article” to be a bit more fluid, compared to the page versus page feel it had previously.
LEARNED
One of the biggest things I learned through-out this assignment was to experiment. I'm usually a fairly straight-forward individual, and I often stick to what I know best; however, by combining different photoshop tools and art methods I was able to discover new ways to work around my greatest weaknesses. Because of this, I no longer have to shy away from adding textures and hair to my illustrations, and I think that brings me one step closer to where I want to be skill-wise.
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