Assignment 1 Prototype 2 and Feedback

As mentioned in the previous post, background has been added to both designs, and I think they look much better :) From this experience, I have learned that ideas/designs need to be tried out before I discard them. Visualizing in my head definitely does not count! (I guess I forgot about the lecture on “solution and the problem are the same.”) This means I’ll have to spend a lot of time in front of the computer though…

Music A

I have colored the stick men and added a stage as the background. Initially, I thought of making the stage small and cozy, something like Esplanade’s Recital Studio. On the other hand, an outdoor stage probably gives more impact. I can now present the complete stage structure and not just a horizon. The design will look more interesting with depth.

I set the background as sunset, since gigs usually start at around 7 p.m. In the attempt to make the design look more realistic, I changed the spotlight’s layer to “Multiply” mode. I have also added a drop shadow effect to the stage.

Music B

I had considered adding an audience to the design, but have decided to consult Julian first. Then I realized that I had missed the point about “solution and the problem are the same.” After the reminder, I added an audience and lowered their opacity. This is to make them less distracting. Drop shadows were added to the musicians, and clouds were added to the sky. I think the design now looks more realistic than Music A :)

However, not all aspects of the design are realistic. The background where the audience is standing is light yellow. In spite of this, I think the color reflects the vibrant energy of music fans at a gig, and thus decided not to change it.

Dog A

I improved on the dogs to make them look less like mice. I did this by drawing a wider muzzle and tail, as well as closing the lines for the ears. Their small size may still bear resemblance to mice though. However, I can’t enlarge them any further as their current sizes are just nice for A5.

The background for this design is a meadow. To achieve this effect, I used a sponge filter to imitate the texture of grass and earth. I then drew grass of different shades, and copied/resize/rotate them to further improve on the design. Initially I used the symbol tool, but I have forgotten how to use it properly and the grass ended up looking like stars.

To complement the meadow theme, I used twigs and stones to form the text “My name is” and “and i love DOGS.”
Drop shadow was used on the dogs, twigs and stones to make the design look less cartoonish. This creates the perception that they are laying on the meadow.

The feedback from Julian was that the design is good, but I can “improve the bones (my name is).” Bones? I think I’ll have to work on the twigs :S

Dog B

The first thing I changed for the twigs was to get rid of the “split-ends.” I guess that may be the reason that they look like bones. I then added details to make the twigs more realistic. However, when I zoomed out, I realized that the details were too small to be seen. As I can't make the twigs bigger (otherwise they'll overshadow my name), I added patterns that look like tree bark. At first, the tree-bark pattern was in black and the text looked too dark, so I moved the pattern on to another layer and changed it to “Lighten” mode. Looks better now, I hope…