Thursday, March 26, 2015
Project 10 / Endangered Cheetah / Virginia
This is the last and MOST difficult of my portfolio entries. It was an assignment for Illustrator, and I dread re-visiting it. It needs a lot of work: the big cat's color is too "orange"; he begs for more detail, and those spots ... those spots look more like sores! Ouch! But those eyes ... ah, those eyes are beautiful. I am proud of those intriguing eyes, which came so easily - as if I were painting by number. What can't the rest of the cheetah came as easily? Desi suggested I reduce the amount of text in the lower left and make the font larger for readability, which I will. I await your feedback.
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V - I'm wondering if you used auto-trace? I don't think Leslie wanted anyone to do that, so my guess is that you didn't. However, some of the shapes appear a bit ragged, almost too close to a photograph with a contrast problem. There are ways to smooth out some of the shapes in this drawing without redrawing any part of it - are you aware of the "smooth" pencil and the Path/point control?
ReplyDeleteOther than the overly-ragged edges of your shape in some areas, the drawing here is just fine (yes, the eyes are great). It's the color that needs work, as you pointed out. I suggest you put together a color palette that includes a few base colors, and then add tints and shades of each to the Swatches Panel. You might want to make a printed sample of these colors before using them - to see how they print on the school's printer. Make sure to be looking at some good photos of a cheetah when building your palette. (use the eyedropper to sample colors from the photos?)
Position of Cheetah - because of the cut off edge at the bottom of its silhouette, I suggest you slide this cat down to bleed off the bottom as well as the left. It will sit better in the composition, and will allow you to approach the design of the typography in a fresh, new way.
Keep all the type, but reconsider its placement in relation to the cat, and don't be afraid of running the column of text down the right side of the page, wrapping around the head/body and experiment with the pt size so it fills the space and wraps nicely.
This will allow you to keep the 2 words Endangered Cheetah together as a headline. What relationship can they have with each other? Which is more important? Use expressive typography to create a logo-like element that could sit at the top.
As you can see - I think that sometimes forcing a big change (position of cat) will create opportunities for the other elements on the page that can lead to compositional improvements. Go for it!
Leslie would never allow auto-trace, and I didn't use auto-trace. I worked from a photo of the cheetah positioned underneath the Illustrator image, as directed by Leslie. All done "by the book." All approved by Leslie.
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