Illustration class – Final project – Alice in Wonderland book cover

Final project is supposed to be the most challenging and most involved project of the semester, and it really was. For several reasons. In the beginning – because I wanted it to be special.  I didn't just want a scene from the book to be the cover, I wanted an idea, something original, a different spin, a different point of view. So I was looking for that idea for a while. And later on it was challenging because it was simply huge (30x20") and therefore time consuming, and also because I had some technical difficulties while working on it.

Story of one dress.

Making my own dresses to go to friends' weddings became sort of a tradition for me. Mainly because I hate shopping and I am way too picky to find anything that I like.  And, of course, it's a chance for a creative project. But I never felt like writing about any of them. This last dress I made though, was pretty special, so I thought I'd tell the world (the little world that surrounds me) about it.

Illustration class - Invisible Cities

This project was based on a book by Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities. Entire book consists of 50 or so short descriptions of different imaginary cities. Some are pretty abstract and bizarre, but most are more or less imaginable. We were supposed to choose one and illustrate it. 

Illustration class – fashion/costume design based on an art movement.

I think this one turned into graphic design project rather than illustration. I guess partly because of the idea and the art movement that I chose.



But first thing's first...

Beautiful animation

Created by two Australian guys, Ari Gibson and Jason Pamment. Their studio is called Mechanical Apple. Apparently they make their films in Photoshop too. One of them works on the backgrounds and the other animates the foreground I suppose. But at least they composite everything in After Effects, which makes more sense to me. Personally. I really wish I could watch over their shoulder and see how it's all done.

I like this one one a lot. It's not very eventful, but sweet and beautiful.

Illustration class - Portrait of a famous person with an animal

The purpose of this project was to have a piece in our portfolio that shows our rendering skills. So we had to choose someone recognizable and throw in an animal that represents this person somehow.

About the process.

Animation made with Photoshop

Few days ago I learned that some people create their animations in Photoshop! Shocking news for me really. Aside from animated gifs, PS didn't seem like a very useful animating tool. Yet, here is an artist, Alex Grigg, that uses solely PS for some of his animations.



After watching his tutorial... still not entirely convinced that it's a good animating tool. Though I can see his point that as far as visual art, you can do anything you like there, since it's, well, Photoshop. As long as you know how to make a drawing there, you can animate it. Just have redraw it about a thousand times. But I guess that's how most of animation is done anyway.

What I didn't like (at least at first) is the timeline. Seems cumbersome.  And endless amount of layers that you have to create. He has his workflow all figured out though - uses actions a lot. Which definitely simplifies things quite a bit.

Might give a try some day.

Here is the tutorial.