This follows off of my live drawing with music, where we experiment with using the Image Trace tool on Adobe Illustrator. This was really fun, and there is so much power we have when it comes to this tool, where you can instead of drawing using the pen tool, you could instead draw it in real life, take a photo of it, put it into illustrator, and then select Image Trace to make a perfect rendition of such using vectors.
Now, before I start I will warn you that this is going to be very, very long. So if you do wanna read this, I would recommend a cup of tea by your side, or hot chocolate I don't judge, to have a lovely look at these graphics I made using this new tool.
This is the first one I wanted to talk about because it shows my development of these designs. I wasn't the happiest with the first one (the right one), and so I wanted to try and spice it up by using the blur tool as well, I might make a blog post documenting my usage of this tool, but for now, we're talking about the Image Trace tool.
To talk a little about how I used the tool here, mainly because I want to, I chose the setting"Black and White Logo" since that gave me the cleanest lines with as little contrast as possible, I then went in and removed everything white in it so I'm just left with the black, and to finish it off I coloured it orange, then made a duplicate of it, put it under the original, and turned it a darker orange to give a more elevated look. I would talk about the other things I did too, but that's not important, what's important is what I think about this.
So, what do I think about these designs? I think the first one, on the right, is definitely a good start, because the composition is quite nice and the colours really work with each other, and I also like the second design because of the added depth of the shakey background.
Was it successful? I like to think so, this could be seen as a poster for an album and with the simple title there in a unique shape, along with a graphic that could be within the style of the album art, It is quite effective at its job.
What would I do differently? I think I would have tried more than just orange and yellow tones throughout these pieces like perhaps making a red version, maybe a blue and green one too. I also could have looked for a better font than the one that I have chosen here, but the one right now I think fits really well with the poster.
How could I move forward with this? Quite simply, I would try and combine V1 and V2 to make a V3, because there are qualities I do like about them, like the size of the drawing in V1, whilst there also being qualities I don't like about them, like how I should have made the blur effect on the background in V2 harsher.
Is this something I would revisit in the future? Perhaps in my spare time, when I'm not busy doing any work and done with other things too, I could make V3 and print it out, since I think this is a cool poster I would have in my bedroom.
This is coming right off of the dancing man. You can see the influence the first one had with the same effect of layering the graphic underneath itself with a different colour to make more of a deeper visual, rather than just the flat look of the black on its own. I also made a new graphic for this that wasn't included in the drawing whilst listening to the music task, which is the text that says "Bawling".
But anyways, let's talk about the graphic itself. What do I think about this? I think this is quite a nice design. Although yes I can see it is quite simple, and I can also see this definitely not being a full final product in my eyes, it's quite a nice start to have for the concept. I also like the pink and purple tones, it makes it nice to look at and at least for me it's calming, despite the texture that could be seen as harsh or with angry emotions.
Was this graphic successful? To be honest no, I wanted a final product that was easy to make, but instead, I made a product that is quite nice but in my eyes is not a final product, and needs time and thought put into it for it to have that extra 5 per cent to be a final product.
What would I do differently? I don't think I would do anything differently, the concept is already there and I'm more than happy with it, I would only work on it for longer to try and get it to a level of quality that I see as enough to be deemed production ready.
How could I develop this then? I would first mess around with the background, for me its quite empty, so I might make that pink shape bigger, maybe put a blur effect on it or a bit of a wave, and maybe even use the image trace function to make a textured background in real life to then put it into Illustrator. Then, I'd redo the "ing." at the bottom, since to me it doesn't look right but I can't put my finger on it, maybe if I redrew it or made wider spacing, I would just have to experiment before I was happy with that. But besides all that, I think it's alright. I might also make different versions with different colours since I like colours.
Is this something I would revisit? No. This is because it doesn't sit in my heart the way the dancing man poster does, I just find the other one more interesting, and when I'm done with that one I'd probably have something more interesting to work on rather than this.
Now, you may see that these two graphics have different names so you may wonder why I have bundled these together. This is because they both use the same image as the basis. You can see this because they both have the triangle with an eye, along with the text that reads "Let:g0". I made "Chaos Music" first but I hated how it looked, for me, it was too simple, so I made "So much better" using the filter tool on the graphic to give it an interesting texture, along with using the gradient tool on the 0 to give it some depth, along with obviously recolouring some of the shapes, and also adding in extra text using the image trace tool and moving around the letters.
I also had the idea of adding text that said "I'm Sorry, Lily." to the album cover so it would have a little more weight and could possibly tell you a little bit about this fake album, I haven't made a premise for this fake album but I feel like that should have been something I should have done. But anyways, for the concept of each one, Chaos music was supposed to be some edgy minimalist-inspired poster that could be a poster or even a repeating pattern with a bricklayer style. So much better is supposed to be an album cover, since we are making graphics on the theme of music, I might as well add a little more music inspiration. The album cover isn't inspired by anything really, just messing around in illustrator got me what we have here.
Now, what do I think of these produced pieces of work? To start off with Chaos Music, I think it's quite bland. This is because of the basic two-tone black and red, along with the graphic itself not filling up the entire board, which for me would have saved this from being boring, but sadly I didn't think of that when designing it, which is why I made a new one. For this one, I think it's more successful but still has things that could be improved, like the choice of colour and text size.
Was it successful? For Chaos Music, No. I don't like the execution of it. It's too simple and I know that's weird to say but it has no sort of creative or intelligent flair to it at all. With So much better though, that's more successful, since it looks like a real album cover, but sadly I still don't think it full is, since I don't like the effect on the shapes since some look a little off to me.
What would I do differently? For Chaos music, I would first change the background of it to be a splodge-y gradient. I don't know the real term for it but in Illustrator there's this tool within the gradient tool that can make your gradients like splodges, so I think I would do that with different sorts of reds. I would also make the graphic bigger so it clips outside of the artboard to give it a bigger, more bombastic look. With the So much better graphic I would get rid of that filter on the graphic, maybe shrink the text a little bit, might even mess with it all again, and then add the controversial language thing. I forgot the name of It but you usually see it on rap albums.
Would I revisit this? If I ever make an album, yes. I would also like it to be called So Much Better because I think it's a pretty neat name for a project. But, if I don't make an album, then I probably wouldn't. But I might make other mock-up album covers, so let's see. For Chaos music, it seems simple enough so if I have free time and am bored then yes.
This is my second favourite piece of this entire series. This is the combination of a couple of graphics merged into a single pattern. I wanted something wild like it was painted on, along with it to be quite bold. I will admit though, this ain't very musically of me unless you count that all of the graphics used are inspired by pieces of music I listened to.
So, what do I think of this piece? I think it's stunning. The three patterns I made here are amazing in my opinion, the first one is a really nice terracotta feeling, whilst the second one is a more jungle-themed party, whilst the last one is a lovely big print that could look quite nice on something like a pillow or even wallpaper if you like your wallpapers busy.
Well, was it successful? Indeed it was. The intent of this was to make a cool pattern that could be plastered onto various items like tour merch or even as a background for a poster announcing a tour with its bombastic pattern, along with it being recognisably sketchy like the album cover, it quite effective.
What would I do differently? a couple of things, I did try other colours but I wasn't as happy with the ones I've shown here. They didn't hit as well and didn't fit the feel of it. I would have also made different sizes of all three of these, so a bigger version of the green and orange one, along with a smaller one of the black and white pattern, but apart from that, this is it.
How could I develop this further? I would start by showing these on some mock-ups to show what they could like on real products like merch and that, or even show them being used on a poster for a tour, possibly try and move the shapes used in these around to make new interesting patterns. But apart from this, that's about it.
Would I revisit this in the future? I think I wouldn't, although its a really cool graphic that I personally love, I just don't think its enough for me to come back to this, although I can see the potential.
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