INSTRUCTIONS
CONTENT GENERATION
Week 1 (31/03/21)
We are required to write a minimum of 3000 words essay based on a subject we're familiar with or find a 3000+ words short story online. The story should have at least 3 chapters and each chapter will need to have 2 subtext and 1 pull-quote.
I felt like writing a story would be easier for me to illustrate because I would resonate more with it as the author, so I tried writing my own story. Below is my attempt to the 3000 words story:
Figure 1.1 Content Draft
After writing my short story, I briefly thought of what I could illustrate while highlighting the parts that I'll potentially be illustrating. Below are the visual references I've found that helps visualize my planned concept of this story:
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| Figure 1.2 Overall Mood Board |
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| Figure 1.3 Colour Scheme |
Based on my story, I want to portray that it seems like there's only a right or wrong answer for the topic discussed, like there isn't a middle ground where anything can be possible, so I just want to use 2 colours. More importantly, I want to use blue and red because students always use blue/black pens to do assignments, whereas teachers usually use red pens to mark. By using this colour combo, I hope that it can help the audience to relate to the feeling of being reviewed, graded, or examined.
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| Figure 2.0 - never ending loop - Attempt 1 |
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| Figure 2.1 running away - Attempt 1 |
Week 3 (14/04/21)
Based on the feedback, I made amendments to my previous illustrations and continued working on a few more. Below is the progression for the week:
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| Figure 2.2 blending in - Attempt 2 (Final) |
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| Figure 2.3 hide your difference - Attempt 2 (Final) |
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| Figure 2.4 never ending loop - Attempt 2 |
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| Figure 2.5 running away - Attempt 2 |
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| Figure 2.6 little things don't matter - Attempt 1 |
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| Figure 2.6 odd one out - Attempt 1 |
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| Figure 2.7 possibilities limitating - Attempt 1 (Final) |
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| Figure 2.8 they know best - Attempt 1 |
Week 4 (21/04/21)
Based on the feedback I've received, I continued making amendments and did another 6 illustrations:
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| Figure 2.9 never ending loop - Attempt 3 (Final) |
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| Figure 3.1 running away - Attempt 3 (Final) |
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| Figure 3.2 little things don't matter - Attempt 2 (Final) |
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| Figure 3.3 odd one out - Attempt 2 (Final) |
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| Figure 3.4 they know best - Attempt 2 (Final) |
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| Figure 3.5 childhood - Attempt 1 (Final) |
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| Figure 3.6 counselling - Attempt 1 |
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| Figure 3.7 define - Attempt 1 |
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| Figure 3.8 indecisive - Attempt 1 (Final) |
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| Figure 3.9 the future - Attempt 1 (Final) |
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| Figure 4.1 wishes don't come true - Attempt 1 |
Week 5 (28/04/21)
I continued working on the remaining 2 visuals and made minor amendments to the existing based on feedback. Here are the visuals :
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| Figure 4.2 counselling - Attempt 2 (Final) |
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| Figure 4.3 define - Attempt 2 (Final) |
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| Figure 4.4 wishes don't come true - Attempt 2 (Final) |
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| Figure 4.5 finishing line - Attempt 1 (Final) |
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| Figure 4.6 happily ever after? - Attempt 1 (Final) |
Here are all of the final visuals:
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| Figure 4.7 blending in - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 4.8 childhood - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 4.9 counselling - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 5.1 define - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 5.2 finishing line - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 5.3 happily ever after - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 5.4 hide your differences - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 5.5 indecisive - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 5.6 little things don't matter - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 5.7 never ending loop - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 5.8 odd one out - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 5.9 possibilities limiting me - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 6.1 running away - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 6.2 the future - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 6.3 they know me best - FINAL JPG |
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| Figure 6.4 wishes don't come true - FINAL JPG |
Figure 6.5 Final Visual Thumbnail PDF
FEEDBACK
Week 2 (07/04/21)General Feedback :
Don't be literal when drawing the illustrations. Analyze the visual and go beyond the direct approach for the visuals. Try to include more repetition to make it cohesive. Get most of the visuals in the first week.
Specific Feedback :
Colour scheme seems fine, and 2-3 colours is good to create strong visual identity. I can try to look at how stitches and buttons are used if I'm going to focus on puppets.
Week 3 (14/07/21)
General Feedback:
Our art board size should be twice the size of our actual book size. Don't make everything too literal. Try not to think of how it should be placed in the book, see it as an individual illustration.
Specific Feedback:
The button is a bit boring to look at, though there are a lot of buttons. Try not to use the 3D effect, stick to the 2D like the reference cause that's good enough. Referring to the mood board, there isn't any shadows, and even if there is, it's basically just a flat shape. Try to use the multiply style from the references. For the flowers and scissors, show more of the scissors, fill the whole page with flowers, don't leave white space. The scissors can be just an overlay, doesn't have be literal where it's directly cutting. For the doors and the chest, try to relate it back to your own culture, your surrounding. For the buttons rolling away, try to add more, and maybe go in different ways.
Week 4 (21/07/21)
General Feedback:
The 16 visuals have to be done next week. If it can't be done, at least finish the visuals for the introduction up till chapter 1.
Specific Feedback:
The first 2 looks better than before. For the rolling button, there can be more buttons coming from different directions, try more variations. Try to play more with the red lines. The door one is much better, but the top part of the furthest door need to fix the perspective. The chest one, can be more busy. The thread rolls, can maybe introduce the red threads in some of the blue rolls. The one with a lot of threads looks good. The last ones' effect is good but can be slightly busier.
Week 5 (28/07/21)
General Feedback:
Watch the videos on how to export the files into thumbnails. Try to enlarge it to fit the size of the page/spread.
Specific Feedback:
Most of it looks fine. "counselling" is fine, but it's a bit different from the rest cause it is squared and everything else I have is rounded. "define" lacks a bit of impact. Can try to make the colours more contrast like how I did in "childhood". "the future" looks like minecraft. "wishes don't come true" looks a bit dull, try to increase the brightness of the shadow and adjust the shadow to fit the curves of the object.
REFLECTION
Experiences :Week 1 (31/03/21); At first I thought the workload was quite okay since we only had to write a story and roughly think about how we can illustrate the story, but I ended up spending a lot of time on the story cause I couldn't really think of how I should write it. Still, overall it seems quite fun. Week 2 (07/04/21); it was actually hard to try to think of how to illustrate and I didn't really know how to make everything cohesive. I initially wanted to let everything be about dolls and sewing materials, but I found that some illustrations were really hard to interpret in that form, so I decided not to limit on it (not too sure if that's fine though). Week 3 (14/04/21); I kind of know my direction slightly better after the feedback and tried to explore the visuals in a more different approach because I felt like I was slightly restricting myself by how I wanted it to look like when I have all 16. Week 4 (21/04/21); I had to work on quite a lot of visuals because I only have half at the moment and the existing ones also need me to finetune. It was a bit hectic, especially because the other modules also had a lot of work due in the week. Week 5 (28/04/21); The remaining visuals were much more easier to create cause I didn't have much left and there wasn't much change for the rest either.
Observations :
Week 1 (31/03/21); I notice that I was brainstorming a lot of ideas for the illustrations when I was writing. It actually helped me with my writing cause I would have these scenes in my mind and it would help me to think of how I could continue writing the story. Also, I was constantly sketching/noting down the ideas on paper and on my phone, which was helpful for me to refer back. Week 2 (07/04/21); I notice that I'm really bad at shadows. I just don't know where shadows should be depending on the light source. Week 3 (14/04/21); I notice that I was quite reluctant to explore some ideas as I was too worried how stuff would look like together. Things seem to work better when I don't plan too much. Week 4 (21/04/21); I notice that some of my classmates had really nice graphics and their progression is really really fast. Week 5 (28/04/21); I really like a lot of my classmates work. They're really different and nice. I think a lot of the graphics could really stand alone as a graphic but they all looked really cohesive as well when put together.
Findings :
Week 1 (31/03/21); I find that it's better to write the entire story, or at least keywords of the story in one sitting cause I really had to get into the mood to write it. After that, it's better to look back at the story after awhile so that I can detach myself from the story and reread it from another point of view. Week 3 (07/04/21); I find myself being more and more comfortable with Adobe Illustrator recently. And I just want to remind myself that I have to uncheck "snap to pixel" if I want my points to be able to move more flexibly. I find that I've been having the same problems over and over again but I keep forgetting how to solve this. Week 3 (14/04/21); I find myself getting a bit lost while doing the visuals because I don't know if all of the visuals look cohesive when put together. I also find myself over worrying if things were too messy. Week 4 (21/04/21); I find that it was easier for me to work on the remaining visuals once I started doing more of it. Week 5 (28/04/21); I find myself not really liking to adjust the graphics in Adobe InDesign. Hope I survive the next task.
FURTHER READINGS
Book illustrations help readers understand the story better. It gives a vision of the character, setting, and mood of the story. Most times, illustrations aren't drawn to be so direct. It works as clues so readers can put pieces of the stories together. To explain this in another way, if an illustration is done well, readers might read a specific part and try to find clues in the illustration, and the illustration will give hints to what may happen next. It boost the readers engagement and helps them to think more than solely reading of a book.
Colour and tone also helps set the emotional mood of the book. Other than what colours are best to represent what moods, what I find quite useful in this website is the discussion about lighting in the picture. Is there only a source of light coming from the illustration? Or is the full illustration lit up? Different approach to lightings also affects the mood of the book.
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