art school
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
graphic design, illustrating or whatever the hell it is more appropriately called is not as easy as one thinks. it takes practice. it takes time. it requires resources. and of course it asks that you have that particular eye for what is beautiful to most people --- if not all.
most people, i believe, are born in possession of almost all of these. it's just that nature has her way of pulling us towards different directions, that by the time we're grown-ups, not too many are adept at the skill of drawing.
but it's not impossible to acquire. and it's not limited to an elite few.
going back to my point earlier, i have this series of pictures/images showing just how intricate or complex the process is in order to come up with a particular design output. hindi naman siya parang naisipan mo lang ma-jebs! hehe.
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anyway, this is a christmas card design i made today (November 21, 2007). it took me around fiver (5) hours to make it. from the time i thought of the design to the time i saved its final version in my computer.
enjoy!
here we have the design in a very raw form.
i was in the process of shading the houses in the background
when i decided to take the picture.
now you have the final output in terms of the traditional way of doing things.
in other words, from this point on, it's all digital beybeh!.
this is the scanned image of the drawing after i've adjusted the level and contrast settings.
at this point, what i managed to do was to clean the lines and remove the pencil markings.
i decided to make the background a little bit more interesting.
diba interesting na? hehe.
here's where the colors come in.
i made a new gradient (consisting of hues of blue)
and applied it to the background.
then i applied colors (solid and gradients alike) to the other parts of the image.
you don't notice it much but even the face has a faint pink color to it.
the only empty parts are the upper part of the robe the boy is wearing
and that disc-like handle of the candle (it rhymes!).
here's the tricky part. i added texture to the picture using a prehistoric version of corel painter. hindi kasi kaya ng PC ko ang mga recent versions (see what i mean about needing resources?). you will notice that the textures makes the picture stand out more from the surface. and of course, there's the stars which i also decided to put in so as to bring that christmas feeling a bit more.this could actually be a final product...
...but i decided to take it a step further in order to make this alternative output.
with some random buttons i decided to experiment with,
i put a radial blur so as to focus the attention of the viewer to the boy
without destroying the essence of the surrounding elements.
o ha.
now my hands and eyes are tired. :)
and thanks for the comments on the "remember law school" post. i was reading them while doing this one. so it was rather encouraging. aaawww.... hahaha. :)
babay!
Posted byuberjam at 12:30 PM