Reflective Thinking
I have briefly mentioned in a previous post that an illustrator named Carlos Garde-Martin came to visit the university and I managed to have a little chat with him about this project. While I was flicking through showing him some of my sketches and designs he pointed out that he really liked my hand-rendered work, and preferred my sketch version of my Dr. Seuss design than my digital one. This brought me back to when I was talking to one of my lecturers as he also mentioned that he preferred my sketch. I know I said that I would leave this quote until I've designed some more but while I was stuck on inspiration I decided to sketch out my design again.
The Process
Sketch & Line Work
To do this I simply traced my printed version onto another piece of paper and started to sketch it out like my old version, using two different thicknesses of micron pens when it came to line the work.
Next I scanned it in and brought it up on Photoshop to colour. This was relatively easy because I am used to drawing the lines by hand and colouring in Photoshop from when I used to do art quite a lot, so I managed to finish this in just a matter of hours (maybe it was just an hour?). Throughout the painting process however I did try out different techniques just to see what it would look like which I'll explain underneath each picture.
First I brought up the scan on Photoshop, tinkered with the adjustment settings (Brightness & Contrast as well as Levels and Threshold) to make the sketch layer completely black and white. I then set this layer to Multiply, placed it right at the top, and made a new layer beneath it for the background colour. I then produced a new layer and using the paintbrush tool I coloured in my words.
Then it was just a case of playing around!
(From left to right)
1 & 2. Here I just filled in each of the words with white and just chose a coloured background. I quite like this effect, but it didn't contain that Dr. Seuss appearance to it. Nevertheless it was quite fun to look at - something I'll take note of when I next produce a "fun" design.
3. This was where I just painted in the words according to my previous design.
4. With my line art layout hidden I tried adding a drop shadow to my words. It looks pretty cool, but I felt that the outlines made a big impact on the design.
I decided that version four was best so I carried on and roughly drew some white lines and carried on. I zoomed right in to colour in the areas where my "shading" was because it looked a bit odd missing those parts out. I was still using the paintbrush tool for this, and used the eraser whenever I went over the lines slightly.
Small Experiment - Colour Overlay
Next I wanted to carry out a little experimentation where I could make the sketch-lines the same colour as the one I filled in the word with. For this I had to go back to the line art layer, changing the layer style to Normal, and used the Magic Wand tool to select a white space before right-clicking and selected "Similar". This will allow it to select similar white layers, and then I just hit delete. With this done I changed the layer style back to Multiply.
While I'm still on the line art layer I used the lasso tool to draw around the word then duplicated it onto another layer and hid my line art layer. I then right-clicked the layer and selected Layer Style then Colour Overlay and chose blue.
This didn't look too good so I scrapped this idea and went back to what I was working on.
Changing Things Around
I have decided to display the credits on another (which I will explain in my next post as to the reasons why) so I placed everything I had so far in a group before duplicating it all. In this new group - which I named "Edited" - I deleted everything apart from the line art and words, and then I merged these two together.
Using the lasso tool I then transformed them and shifted them about until I was satisfied. I wanted these two words to take up the space where Dr. Seuss' name was originally.
Drawing the White Bands
Okay so now I wanted to use the Pen Tool for this which was completely new to me, but I treated it like I would do in Illustrator. I drew all of my points normally, but the next step was something different... I went to Paths in the Layer palette and to Work Path, right-clicking it and making it a Selection. I then inverted this selected and filled it in with white.
I put this white band layer beneath the words, and that section was done!
After changing things around again, this was my final outcome! Fingers crossed that this will be it before... Well, you know when you work on a design so much you kind of get fed up with it...
Critical & Reflective Thinking - Summary
I really enjoyed this process which made me realise how much I disliked doing the digital version. Maybe this could be my "voice" calling out to me? I've been so bogged down from producing digital work that I forgot how much I enjoyed hand-rendering and doing line art. I'm going to take this into account for my future designs to ensure that I enjoy the process just as much as appreciate the final outcome.
The process was probably made easier because of the fact that I was experienced in the field of doing lines by hand and then colouring digitally on Photoshop, as this was what I used to do when I first got into digital painting. It had been a while since I've done this but I'm happy to see that it all came back to me when I was painting! This whole process was really good because not only did I use tools I was familiar with but I learnt new ones such as Colour Overlay and the Pen Tool.
I believe that this version has a lot more 'character' than my digital version because there are tiny little aspects that give it away as being hand-rendered such as the places where my shading went over the lines slightly, or the shaky lines themselves. This is the main reason why I changed my mind - alongside with the confidence boost given to me by my lecturers and Carlos - and I believe that if a designer does enjoy their work it shows really clearly in their designs. It's like Steve Simpson's work... He seems so enthusiastic about it and it clearly shows how much fun he's having.
Next time I think that instead of spending so much time doing something digital and unknown I should mainly focus on the skills I have and find ways to improve them. This is to save time because I spent goodness knows how long on this design when I could've been producing so many more during this time.
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