Category Archives: Project 3 – Ego – Process

Ego: stylistic rendering

I had a very hard time deciding what type of stylistic illustration should I do, so I tried a few tradition and a few vector illustrations.

For my traditional medium I tried both acrylic and color pencils.

first I used acrylic paint, but because the, paint was very thin, I had to apply three coats before the base couldn’t be seen anymore. but this made the painting became fatter as I couldn’t keep in the lines. The shades were too similar to each other so I had to use the pen to outline to bring focus and definition to the character. if I were to do this again, I would definitely choose to do this with gauche or poster paint.

The second traditional medium that I used is cloud pencil.  As the composition looked to bare I added a tent, I had greater control over the medium in this case. in additions the clouds are more vibrant which I greatly preferred. However, as much I love this medium, it was too slow and I had other projects due to…

So I went back to illustrations, but I couldn’t find a balance between the complexity and simplicity.

in the first one, I felt like the line work is flat and lack variations. (but if you zoom in and see the line works actually have variations) I lack the proper brushes on illustrator to do the line work so I had to forgo this style

As the line =works wasn’t doing justice to the actual sketch I removed it completely. However,  that made the character look unfocused and lack definition…

So I thought to myself that I need to simplify my illustration by only using maximum three colors: highlight, mid tone and shadow. that worked out pretty well, and I decided to use this stylistic illustration instead.

 

 

EGO: Inspirations and equation

Before coming to ADM, I had a very difficult time being myself in my Junior college. I hated my classmates and hardly talk to them, well unless its absolutely necessary. I was uncomfortable with them, it felt like I wasn’t accepted because of my strong and radical opinions. Throw in the stress of preparing for “A” levels along with preparations of art, I became even more withdrawn, and barely talked to my classmates. But, I found a awesome group of friends in my Junior college too. That group of friends are my art classmates with one of them being your student in the earlier class, Jocelyn. As I felt very comfortable with them, my energy level  kinda exploded. its like a 180 switch from a quiet and reserve girl to this ball of nonsensical energy. As I was very all of with my classmates, this lead to many misunderstanding such as I’m a stuck up, After junior college, I went to a design firm for an internship. There I struggled to put extroverted facade as I constantly wanted to go back to my safe zone. this project will be based off my roller coaster feelings through the day in the office.

The four aspects that I want touch on are:

Nervous me + first day at work = putting on a facade
Inexperienced me + paper work = Silent rage
Awkward  me + office cafeteria = seating arrangement dilemma
tired me + my safe zone = recharging time

for my stylist inspiration, I’m greatly inspired by the facial  expression of anime characters. I like how Managua tend to over exaggerate the eyes and the facial color to express the emotion. in addition I will be using her hair to further exaggerate her emotions.Below are some of the characters I have taken inspiration from:

Tadakoro Megumi – Food wars

Yui – K-On

my second source of inspiration is retros Afshar. I like his use of simple geometric shapes to establish the back ground setting. I also like his simple two tone illustration, making the character look flat but has enough shades to differentiates the shirt and the pants