Character Development

I have been developing characters to put on our designs. We tried several styles, but settled on a flat colour, cartoony style done on Illustrator. To create these characters I first drew it in pencil, and then scanned the file and traced it in Illustrator. We believe these characters bring humour to our design and are a stand out feature.

Original Sketches

Final Characters

Poster Development

After finalising our visual character style, we went onto developing our poster compositionally with the other details. At first we wanted to use all three characters but it began to look over crowded. We also tried to incorporate the 'texture' smoke but that didn't fit in with our visual style. We got rid of the crab and starfish to make the seagull the main aspect of the poster. We are still hung up on the tagline for the poster. We have tried to see what works but it's a bot hard. Here are some tag lines we have tried:

• This isn’t natural, clean up the beach.
• We don’t need your stinkin’ trash
• isn’t this what you wanted?
• We have feelings too.
• Your trash is our problem.
• Put litter in it’s real place.
• Keep it classy, Keep it clean
• Keep your bad habits to yourself
• Clean it up, its your dooty

Now the poster looks more like this compositionally. The smoke from the cigarette is more subtle and text may also be overlaid without it being confusing. Still need to keep refining the proportions and now add all the details.

Idea Refinement

Today in class we refined the idea of the smoking bird that we had in interim. We have received feedback telling us that the bird would better convey our idea if he looked like he was a slob. We have been trying to find a illustration style that we can pull off that will show this idea of a slobby bird, while still being fun and eye catching to draw attention. We are also thinking of developing different animals in the same style.

Styles

Interim

UNDERSTAND/ IDEATE/ CREATE/ CRITIQUE

Since our moodboards we have established our 'style' from the moodboards which is a retro and an illustrative style. We began making mock ups of our thumbnails and had 'mini' critiques on which ones worked with our peers. We decided to carry on with the idea of the smoking bird and mermaid and the idea of the footprints. 

 

From the interim the smoking bird works best and has a sort of quirkiness to it. We will further need to develop the use of type and composition. Maybe the bird could be situated on a wooden pillar so it isn't just floating mid air. Or what if we use a different background? 

Another point is that we need a type logo that can be placed on the other trans-media parts so they look like a collective. 

                                                                                                                                                     - Richie

Initial Visualized Concept

A.K.A THUMBNAILING

During class we had many cool sand different ideas. From the thumbnails ideated, we figured we would go for an ironic/comic approach.  We want to get many thumbnails done in order for us to have more options when we choose which ones to carry on with and develop.

Here our our thumbnails so far. For the interim we are thinking to develop, the smoking bird idea, the mermaid smoking, the ice cream melting to reveal rubbish/ ice cream cone holding rubbish and the idea of embedded human rubbish footprints.

Beach Exploration

At first we just researched the different beaches and figured out what was different between them. We chose Petone Beach because it was more central to where we live and we know that many different types of people go there. For example; fishermen, dog walkers, swimmers, families, students etc. That beach probably requires the most cleaning anyway.

Before beginning to think about the actual poster, we needed to visualise what 'things' could portray the beach and how. We listed items we may like to incorporate in our poster. For example; ice cream, jandals, shells etc. To get a deeper understanding we did some rubbings of shells and a drawing of the wharf in Petone. The word exercise in class made it easier to make things more metaphoric and challenge our thinking.

Moodboards

We have created moodboards for the beach context, beach design, styles, clean up design and the target audience. Through these moodboards we are trying to establish a specific tone that our work will take as we continue on the design process. These moodboards will be used to inspire us in the future, when we are in need of deign direction and fresh ideas.

-Shanna

Research

We have begun to gather different research resources such as drawings & rubbings to gain a better understanding of our topic. So far our mission has been to gather visual references we can use when designing and creating our web hub and materials. I think we have a lot of visual material now which will help us along the way when making decisions, it's just a matter of developing auntie we get a solution.

We have our own tasks to do, so more research can be done within the time given. Tomorrow we will probably bring our research together and discuss our ideas with one another along with updating our workbook. 

               

Getting Started

We have decided to go with the "Clean up our Coastline" topic. We both love the idea of using the beach in our designs and think that we can create some awesome designs.
At the moment we are looking at images to inspire us as we start to come up with design ideas. These images include images of the beach, objects associated with the beach, sea animals, beach textures, beach themed graphic design and existing beach clean up advertising. We have been keeping a Pinterest board to collect these images. http://www.pinterest.com/tercleod/beach-moodboard/

We have also been coming up with ideas for our designs. At the moment these ideas have a whimsical feel, with ideas that personify animals, contain the world in claimshell and ideas that feature fairy tale princesses.

-Shanna