RESEARCH

What is Love?

I started off by researching common types of love. Romantic and platonic love were the two that first came to mind. Since flowers often hold different meanings depending on their color and type, I thought about how I could potentially utilize flowers to depict these emotions. While researching yellow flowers to signify friendship, I stumbled upon the daffodil; however, I learned that the daffodil has two meanings, with another meaning “unrequited love.”

CONCEPT SKETCHES

I started off brainstorming potential poses per type of love. Some poses were based off of memory and observations, while others were based off of photos and inspirations I found online.

After sketching out potential poses, I moved on to poster formatting and layouts. I aimed to create at least two different poster sketches per concept. The most challenging part of this process was figuring out how to combine the layout with the message I wanted to convey.

CHARACTER DESIGNS

After figuring out the potential poster designs, I moved onto character designs. Although stick figures are cute , I wanted to design actual characters for this project.

The first character, Ellie, was modeled after my friend Eileen, who is very kind and forgiving. Nathaniel is your typical popular nice guy in college and was modeled after my close friend Elliott. The two of them together represent romantic love. Ruby and James was the couple I created for the familial love poster, and Matt is the poor guy I created for the unrequited love posters.

VECTOR ILLUSTRATIONS

Since this was my first time challenging vector illustrations, I focused on keeping it simple and used combinations of shapes and small lines. Since this was my first attempt at vector illustrations, I was very happy at how they turned out in comparison to my sketches.

02 Roses

Drawing the rose was a bit of complicated in the fact that I do not have a drawing pen or tablet. The only tool I have to draw with is my mousepad. I think flowers are never perfect. Each flower, even if they are from the same family, can look different from one another depending on the amount of sunlight they get and so forth. I wanted to make the rose look slightly messy in the sense that it’s look more real, but it proved to be quite a challenge.

DESIGN ITERATIONS

When working on the “Romantic” poster, I felt like the top half of the poster was a bit too empty. Version 1 in the middle was my attempt to create a clean poster matching the “Platonic” poster, but I continued to experiment as I was not really sure I liked the idea of the large rose.

Version 2 on the left was my attempt to use more words to describe the emotion. I chose to incorporate a quote I thought best represented “Romantic” love and a series of words important in maintaining a relationship. The hearts were overflowing with “affection”. The text “Support” and “Trust” were placed under the bench to demonstrate two very important ideas crucial to a relationship. Lastly, the bench is made of the word “Communication". I believe that good communication is one the most important aspects to have in a relationship.

Version 3 on the right was meant to be a cleaner version of the first version. I kept the quote but changed the font to a cleaner sans serif font.

After making these three, I decided to go get some critique and opinions from my fellow peers and acquaintances. Version 2 had the most negative reviews as it was considered to be very messy and cluttered. Although I had specific intentions when incorporating each of the words, I think I went a bit overboard with the text.

Version 1 had the most positive reviews as many people liked the rose and the clean, minimal look. I realized this version was able to best convey the idea of romance without too much visual clutter. Overall, I ended up sticking to the initial design of the poster on the very right as it clearly matched well with my "Platonic” poster and it was the cleanest of the three.

Another challenge I had was with the Family poster. I struggled figuring out the placement of the sunflower and the background color. The 4 posters below are just 4 of 20+ background colors I tested. I struggled finding colors that would work with not only all of my characters but also the text. I moved onto testing gradient colors in attempt to find a balance between text color, background color and character colors.

I experimented a bit with the location of the sunflower. I tried three versions. The first one had the sunflower at the top half of the poster, with the goal of mimicking the sun. The second version had the sunflower at a low opacity behind the family. The third version involved several small sunflowers in order to mimic a sunflower garden or meadow.

FINAL DESIGNS

REFLECTION

1. What were some challenges/struggles you faced?

   • Getting a fresh pair of eyes

     • Often times, I felt that my eyes were getting used too used the colors I was using and the designs, so I tried to consult various people for their opinions and critiques from time to time and then used their critiques to help me continue iterating.

   • Digitizing realistic items into vector illustrations

     • Making the flowers were some of the most complicated and time consuming parts of this project. As this was my first project working with digital art and vector illustrations, I struggled with finding the right color to mimic the feel that I wanted my drawings to exude.

2. What did you learn?

   Through this experience, I was able to familiarize myself more with Adobe’s programs and I learned how to utilize color and layout more effectively to convey messages. This experience helped re-emphasize the importance of contrasting elements, as certain colors often blended into the background and I had to adjust them accordingly depending on my changes.

3. Moving Forward…

I would have liked to make some animations for the posters, but I ended up running out of the time. Additionally, I would like to continue to work on new vector illustration projects in order to polish up my design skills on Illustrator.