A Reminder About Submitting Roughs

I just wanted to remind you that your roughs must be approved by me before you create final art for your pieces this semester.

A couple of students have sent me final art for pieces for which I haven't seen any rough sketches.

From now on I will only accept final artwork if I have seen and approved a rough sketch of it.

Thanks for your attention to this!

Tips for Composing Beautiful Images

These images are taken from the book Composing Pictures by Donald W Graham.

Live Trace Settings for Illustrator CS5

These are the settings I use to get the best results from Live Trace.

Adding Halftone in Illustrator

Option drag the shape you want to add texture to.

Select the Gradient Tool and fill the shape with a gradient.

One end is 50% black with an opacity of 100%.

The other end is white with an opacity of 0%.

Go to Effect > Pixelate > Colour Halftone

Max Radius 6

It should look like this.

Go Object > Rasterize > Bitmap at 300ppi

Then Live Trace with these settings

Expand

recolour and drag back over the original shape.

Preparing Your Business Card in InDesign

This is a very handy tutorial about how to design your business card, prepare it for printing and liaise with a printer.
It's from vector.tutsplus.com

http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/designing/quick-tip-designing-a-business-card-with-indesign-cs5/

And don't worry if you haven't used InDesign before. I am happy to help you in the preparation of artwork for printing.

Second Year Show - Business Card Assignment

In preparation for the second year exhibition in, Amanda has asked you to create a business card for yourself.

The standard dimensions are :

90mm x 55mm.

You don't have to adhere to this, but remember that you want your card to be able to fit into a wallet or a business card holder. The ones that don't do this can tend to get lost.

As an illustrator, your card should give some indication of what you do!

You can use an existing piece of illustration, part of an existing piece or you can create something specifically for your card.

The copy on the card should include your name, some way that people can contact  you and a website or blog if you have one, so that people can see some of your work.

You should put plenty of thought into the design of your card, as it is probably the way that most people will be introduced to your work, so make it look fantastic.

I will inform you of dates for when this should be finalised in coming weeks.

Reminder about Semester 2

In the second semester I will not be setting assignments. You will write your own briefs and will create 5 folio pieces from those briefs.

The preferable scenario is that you create a range of works which covers a variety of styles, rather than 5 pieces which are all basically the same.

Your first task is to present a written submission briefly detailing the five assignmnets you will be undertaking.

You will post this document to your blog for assessment by me. It doesn't have to go into details such as document size or exact pictorial content, but it should let me know the kinds of things you want to create.

Please note that if you create five pages from a graphic novel, that will count as one assignment. I'd like each assignment to show some difference from the others to enable you to create a folio that shows a range of skills both conceptually and technically.

As usual you will show me sketches for all your work before you proceed to final artwork.

Areas in which you may want to work:

Magazine editorial

Children's books

Adult books

T-shirt design

Storyboarding

Advertising

Package Design

Character design

Comic books

Websites

Concept art

Good luck!