Mixed Media Outcome
After I had decided which media design I was gonna use, I got to work really realising my outcome and figuring out how it was going to work. I didn't think about it when I chose the design, but a clam shape is actually really difficult to create digitally if you aren't incredibly experienced with Illustrator. Since this was a mixed media outcome, I planned on using InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop to pull the whole design together, it actually proved quite difficult as some features in Illustrator weren't compatible and didn't work the same in the other programs etc. I decided to first really refine my sketch idea, and come up with a final clam design that I would then re-create digitally, the original idea was to have the clam and disco ball both created traditional and just imported onto the front cover layout via photoshop, but since the clam was actually quite difficult to replicate through my sketches, I decided that it was best to create it digitally instead.
How I Created Sparkles for my disco ball
Back Cover Tray
Overall Evaluation
Overall I feel that this was probably the most difficult one of my ideas to create digitally and create as a final outcome, I feel that I made some poor decisions in the beginning and those poor decisions then negatively affected my progress and final outcome in this area, I feel that with my work I need to improve on my planning skills a lot, as doing things spotaneiously without thinking ahead much is something I do too often on projects like these. For example choosing a clam as the main subject for my cover, this worked well in theory, but in practicality it was a bad choice. There are many reasons for this, one, I haven't had much practice with Illustrator, and even though I did spend time learning about it's tools and practicing in earlier units, I feel that I didn't have enough experience with Illustrator to fully accomplish what I wanted with this piece. Two, I didn't think my design through enough and how my mixed media choices would translate on screen, I feel that because of this I made an outcome that looks un-finished. I also feel that maybe, while in theory this seemed like a great idea in the original sketches, most people won't really relate the imagery to disco, or things of a disco theme, and so this design doesn't really visualise my target genre, and might confuse my target audience. Although I feel that this is one of my weakest designs, I did learn a lot from creating this cover, such as that combining creative and traditional means can be painstakingly difficult, and you have to be prepared in order to create a professional looking outcome in this area. It also relies on an artist being good at many things, from drawing, painting, and photography to digital art and print, and be experienced enough to combine these many mediums in an aesthetically pleasing way.
I also took a long time on this outcome, which meant that I really rushed creating the back cover, although because the front cover had quite bold imagery on it, I didn't want to add the same to back, and felt that it was best to keep it as simple as possible.
There are some postives to this cover however, such as the text effect I created myself and the new fonts I discovered in the process, I really enjoyed creating the text effect for this cover as it was colourful, and I felt that it really related to the disco theme, I really enjoyed applying gradients to rasterized text layers, which I didn't know I could do until I began working on this specific cover. I also discovered a vignette gradient in Illustrator which I didn't know was there until now, which will hopefully make shading future vector artwork much, much easier. I also really enjoyed creating sparkles from scratch, and now that I know how to do that I think I will definitely be using the technique in future artwork, or even some of my own personal work.
So, overall, even though this was one of my weakest designs, I did learn quite a lot in the process on making this cover and back cover, so overall I am satisfied with my progress and finished covers for this unit.
I also took a long time on this outcome, which meant that I really rushed creating the back cover, although because the front cover had quite bold imagery on it, I didn't want to add the same to back, and felt that it was best to keep it as simple as possible.
There are some postives to this cover however, such as the text effect I created myself and the new fonts I discovered in the process, I really enjoyed creating the text effect for this cover as it was colourful, and I felt that it really related to the disco theme, I really enjoyed applying gradients to rasterized text layers, which I didn't know I could do until I began working on this specific cover. I also discovered a vignette gradient in Illustrator which I didn't know was there until now, which will hopefully make shading future vector artwork much, much easier. I also really enjoyed creating sparkles from scratch, and now that I know how to do that I think I will definitely be using the technique in future artwork, or even some of my own personal work.
So, overall, even though this was one of my weakest designs, I did learn quite a lot in the process on making this cover and back cover, so overall I am satisfied with my progress and finished covers for this unit.