Animal Project: Poster
By: Gia Marino
So I researched about the environments and the Catalina Islands are pretty diverse. It’s an island so there is a lot of oceanfront and some beaches but the main beaches are mainly for tourists. There are also woods that are like typical California woods. There are also a ton of prairie, and a lot of videos of the fox are in the prairie. Lastly, there are so many big hills that are dry and it seems to be prominent in the landscape cause you see in the background of pictures a lot.
I focused on two endangerments because I thought they be the best to depict and I talked about them both in my short story. The first one is the golden eagles hunting the island foxes. The second one is that a raccoon was transported to the island and brought a disease that killed many foxes.
Overall, I tried to focus on placing the text well, doing nice compositions, and trying to make the endangerment subtle.
I had Q look at my sketches. He brought up some good points. He said that my woods scenes would be hard to achieve especially with limited colors so he recommended against it. He also pointed out my last ocean scene would be hard to show depth cause it’s all ocean in the background and nothing to create depth. He also mentioned that if I did eagles then I would have to make the eagles detailed enough so viewers knew it was an eagle. Lastly, he pointed out some issues with text placement or basic composition just so I knew to keep it in mind.
This is my rough sketch of what I think my illustration will look like. I may put this in illustrator and sketch over it a bit.
Okay, I am looking at illustrator and I am concerned about learning illustrator. I have been trying to learn through linked in but there's so much to cover. I am kinda overwhelmed. I think I am going to have to jump straight in and just use the pencil or pen tool and just ignore almost everything else. I think I know enough of the basics to get by.
I started doing the fox first and it went pretty well, but I think what has turned out to be hard for me was creating a nice composition with the background. The prairie grass has been quite hard to draw for me because I had no idea how to approach it. I also had trouble with how I wanted to do my layout and where to situate all the grass. I knew I wanted some grass in the very front in front of the fox but after that was I was kinda lost. So I just placed it instinctively where I thought it would work. The hill was pretty easy for me to so I had no trouble with that.
Below are my first three iterations with some different color palettes. I like all the color palettes and I am proud of my fox but there is still something off about my illustration.
In today’s class, my drawings were critiqued and I got some good points. Daphne and Q mentioned how my colors were dull so it really flattens my work which I do really like my color combos but when they said that I totally saw what they were talking about. I need to make my colors less muted. They also said my endangerment was too subtle and I see what they are saying. It is kinda hard to find. So I have to figure out how to fix that.
So the front layer was weird so I deleted half of it, but to add depth I wanted to keep the front layer. Also, I never made legs so I have contemplated adding legs and moving the front piece of the prairie but I like where and how it is. I made my raccoon tail larger so it was more noticeable but I can not tell if it worked honestly, especially in the left picture, it looks hidden still. I have also been playing with color and trying to make the colors more vibrant and contrasting. I kinda like some of the colors and vibes that I have made. The two above are two current favorites. I also think the right one is just kinda interesting, I will play with sky colors more for sure.
I was playing around in my illustrator and I found that if I add one of my prairie pieces to the side in the mid-ground it adds some more depth that looks pretty nice. I am going to keep this and see what the professors think because I think something like this is a good idea. I also erased some grass and was able to make the tail more obvious.
I am playing around with ground color and I can’t figure out what will look good. Many colors aren’t contrasting enough or don’t look good.
I had a critique with Q and he gave me some good things to focus on. He mentioned how the prairie grass looks odd while connecting to the ground. Like when you look at real prairie grass it’s full enough so it’s only got little pointy gaps. So, Q suggested using the stroke tool and making individual pieces of grass and combining them together then copying them. Now that Q mentioned it. I agree that the prairie looks pretty unnatural or kinda odd because of these reasons.
Q also said my raccoon tail looks really cartoony so I should reference what an actual raccoon tail looks like. I think the curvature/shape and maybe the size make the tail look cartoony so I am gonna have to look into that. He also said it looked like the fox was hunting the raccoon so I think I may switch up my fox pose or raccoon tail positioning/direction, just so it looks more like the raccoon caused the endangerment.
Also, Q added in the second layer of mountains and I decided I really liked it, and I liked how he used my gray color so it wasn’t even adding extra color. So I will definitely keep that. He also lowered my mountains cause he felt like it was too much blank space in the background and not enough sky. It also makes the prairie look taller and more significant.
Lastly, Q moved my text around and made it more to the left with smaller margins, and suggested not have equal spacing on all 3 sides.
This is my new fox pose. I am not sure if I will pursue it? It depends on the time I have. But I like it and I think it will convey fear very well.
So I made adjustments to the raccoon tail to make it look more realistic, and now because the black strips are thicker it really sticks out and contrasts. I fixed the prairie grass a bit. The back looks much more natural and I made it so at least with the front pieces, there are no weird flat gaps. I asked Margot if I should do the scared fox pose and she liked it. So I think I will do it because I think I can get most of it done for tomorrow. Margot and I talked about color palettes and she suggested some things to check out and she also should me how to use artboards so I can compare color palettes easier.
So I got the fox done. That is all I had time for basically. I am also playing with colors currently. Because the current color palette here is still not working. Hopefully, colors will save this.
So, I played with a lot of fun color palettes trying to make sure it didn’t get too muted. I tried to also focus on achieving good contrast.
I got a critique from Daphne’s breakout group and I think they brought up some good points.
Firstly, the raccoon tail is still an issue. She suggested maybe lessening the contrast by muting the colors a bit. It just sticks out weirdly in her opinion and I agree. However, she did like the fox pose so at least the raccoon looks like an endangerment now. Catherine suggested maybe switch the direction of the tail so the raccoon looks like it is going after the fox. After talking with Daphne I think I may try and do a raccoon silhouette? That may help.
Secondly, I should everyone a bunch of my color palettes and Daphne thinks that the blueish purplish mountains looked kinda cartoony so I will stray from that because I think it’s a beautiful color palette but I understand there are times when doing too unnatural of color can look not right or be distracting. I think it ended up that Daphne and everyone liked the more natural color palette with blue sky and green and yellow landscape. So I will experiment with some more natural colors like that in the future because that seemed to be the most liked.
So I am still not happy with my poster but after analyzing mine and looking at upperclassmen’s work. I decided that my poster is to zoom out and there is not enough detail. The fox is detailed but there are so many big blocks of color around it and it looks unfinished because of this. Also, I just think my fox being bigger would look better and put more attention on it, so that’s why I think zooming in looks better. Also, I muted the colors in the raccoon tail a bit and I think that helped it blend it in a nice but still noticeable way, but I may still make a raccoon silhouette.
So, I went back and through everything and I looked at all my advice. I think I need to fix my prairie grass more. So I took Q’s advice and decided to make individual blades of grass and make groups of them. This will make the poster look more detailed and look more realistic AND there will be fewer big blocks of one color.
I have also decided on two other things. I am going to fix my fox because it is not completely accurate because I did it kinda quickly since I was running out of time. So I am going back in and fixing some lines and I think the legs should be white, not gray after looking at multiple fox pictures.
Secondly, I am going to try a raccoon silhouette. I think it will communicate better, and make it more noticeable but also not as cartoony. I think it overall may work better and I don’t know why I was so reluctant to try this earlier.
Update: After I made these decisions, I did some work. I fixed my fox and I think it looks more accurate and a little better. I also zoomed in and I feel like it just looks better overall. I have been spending a LOT of time fixing this grass and it has been coming along nicely. I think I still need to add more and mess around with placement but it looks better. Lastly, The raccoon DOES look better as a silhouette. I did have to add a tad of face detail with the tail just because the shape of a raccoon isn’t very distinct, they are kinda just blobs, but I feel like with the detail it is just more communicative and doesn’t look like a cartoon compared to the tail previously. Also, now the tail can be smaller so the contrast isn’t as bad.
I will be back once I am finished.
Okay, so I am pretty much finished! I placed a LOT of grass so my illustrator is SO slow it’s so bad. I put some stroke outlines and now I can’t take them off so I may just leave it. It’s not bad but I don’t know if that’s okay to have. However, I honestly have no idea how to fix it because my illustrator won’t let me do almost anything with the blades of grass. Luckily, I actually really like how my grass worked out. John told me to vary the grass placement in the middle and it makes it look SO real so I am very happy. I was also very mindful about grass length and I think it really paid off. Also, I ended up putting the grass on the right very close up so it 1) created depth and 2) it doesn’t cover up the fox too much because originally it was covering the legs kinda a lot (much like previous versions) and you couldn’t really tell what the legs looked like and it was kinda weird and distracting. John agreed so I moved the grass down and made it large and I like how it turned out.
Also, I had a mental block because the one-colored ground just looked bad. It drew attention and was bringing your eye to the ground which is not what I wanted. It just made the whole piece look unfinished. So, I bothered john once again. After bouncing ideas off of him I decided giving the ground texture would really help. I looked up dirt in google and I saw a cracked earth photo that would be nice to mimic. So I did that and I am pretty happy with the results. I played around with colors so that I was able to have a second dirt color instead of two prairie colors so that when I did the texture it was noticeable. Again, so happy I did that it helped so much with making the poster look final.
Other than making some changes in the text and mess with its placement. I messed with colors at the end. John didn’t like my poop brown dirt color so I made it more greeny gray. I ended up going a little monochromatic so it makes the fox pop out nicely. I think I am happy with the color choice because of that.
Overall, there are some changes I could make to this to make it better. Probably getting some more opinions could have helped, but for the amount that I struggled with this project, I am quite happy.
