Training: Principles and Elements of Design

Goal of training: to understand the basic elements and principles that make up visual art and design

Elements: line, shape, form, size, space, color, value, texture

Principles: Repetition, rhythm, movement, balance, proportion, negative space, contrast, emphasis, variety, unity, hierarchy

Step 1: Finding Images

My first step in this process was to find images that suited each principle. I primarily found images on https://www.behance.net/, although I also found some on https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/. I recall that the first concept I found was for the principle of movement. I was looking through Behance and saw this image:

I was immediately struck by the movement of this image, and how everything in the image gives the illusion of flying through the wind. The girl herself’s hair and dress flow to the side, and the background and shapes only add to this. In fact, as an animator, finding an image for movement was probably one of the easier ones to do. In terms of the most difficult, I found the more abstract concepts such as size and space to take the longest. It’s hard to find a representation of such vague terms unless one is looking at quite abstract art. Fortunately, I was able to find examples that fit, although most images I came across were comprised of several different concepts, and I had to focus on the one that seemed the most prominent.

Size was tricky for me, because almost everything has some sort of size. I picked this particular image because of the variety of different sizes that are found in each type of bottle shape. This could also work for variety, but the variations are primarily in size and width, so I felt another example would be more fitting for variety.

Step 2: Outlining

The second step was to outline each drawing. I did this in Procreate and focused on outlining the features that were most important to each concept.

For movement, I outline every shape to convey the basic form and their tendency towards shifting to the right.

For value, I did the opposite. Instead of outlining the form, I shaded out the basic values used to illustrate this portrait.

For color, I outlined the colors used and how they shifted into other colors going from cool to warm to cool again.

Step 3: Powerpoint

For my final step, I created a powerpoint with slides that analyzed why I chose each image and their relationship to the principle or element I used them to exemplify. Below are a few of the slides that I created:

The rest of the slides can be found on:

https://utexas.box.com/s/eb1ti43rnx56q89n1ip8ou0a7ylvjlis

After doing this, I had the powerpoint reviewed by Abriella, and then the training was complete!

What I learned:

• Different concepts require different styles of outlining in order to convey the most important features
• Almost every image combines at least 2-3 of the principles and elements. The less abstract the art, the more principles and elements they employ.
• Space and negative space are not always the same concept. Size and Hierarchy are related, but are not the same and may be used for different reasons.
• Contrast is most commonly shown with color variation, although size and shape are also used.

Training: History of Design

Assignment: Replicate a famous art style from the past

Chosen Art Style: Art Nouveau

For this assignment, I was tasked with creating an image that replicates the famous Art Nouveau art style. I decided to create a digital painting that mimics this style with a bit of a flare of my own art style as well. As it turns out, there is much more to the Art Nouveau style than meets the eye, per se.

Step-By-Step:

1.) Sketch

This was certainly the easiest step. I wasn’t entirely sure where to go with this drawing, so I looked at a bunch of Alphonse Mucha drawings and tried to get a feel for the style of work he did. I decided to draw a woman with elaborate hair, because that is always a good idea. As you can potentially tell with the background strokes, I wanted to have an ornate background, but wasn’t certain where I was going to go with it yet. I often leave painting sketches vague and then implement more details with lines later on.

2.) Colors and Basic Rendering

Here are the base colors with some shading on her face. I altered her eyes quite a bit during this section of the process, and also made her face more of the centerpiece of the image as well. I decided to go with something different with her hair about halfway through, which will be shown in the next image.

As I worked on rendering her face, I realized that I didn’t like her hair being quite as gigantic as I had initially drawn it. This is a common issue of mine: as an animator, I tend to draw very exaggerated and flowy shapes that don’t work quite as well when rendering things in a painting form. From this painting, I’ve realized that I may need to consider how realistic things are if I want to render it in a more realistic, painterly style.

3.) More Rendering

After about an hour of rendering, I ended up with something like this:

At this point the face and hair were mostly done, but I was struggling with maintaining an art nouveau style in the drawing. I had decided to add more dark lines around everything to imitate it better, but I was a bit lost on the background. Hence: the random paisley brush thrown aghast everywhere. I was successful in deciding to add flowers to her hair, though. Fortunately, Valerie was extremely helpful in giving me advice regarding making it more “nouveau-esque.” Valerie also suggested giving the woman a more whimsical or pleased expression to fit with the style of woman portrayed in nouveau.

Step 4: Background, even more rendering on the clothes and face

Here is a more complete version of the drawing, although it is not entirely done.

Things I did between steps 3 and 4:

• Changed the facial expression to be more whimsical
• Went for a more peach, warm-toned vintage color
• Rendered out vines and more of a background
• Rendered out flowers and a shirt
• Flattened the shading on some areas to fit with the more flat art style of Mucha

Step 5: Further fixes

In this final rendering, I edited her facial features to push a more realistic art-nouveau look. Art-nouveau women tend to have quite goddess-like, strong proportions, so I wanted to mimic that more with this drawing. I also changed the background to have more patterns, and outlined the patterning to match the paisley look. Furthermore, I added some warmer color tones to appear more vintage. After this, I was done with the piece!

To give a brief summary of what I have learned during this assignment:

– Art nouveau is highly patterned and busy, but also relies partially on the negative space achieved by these patterns. It’s good to include lots of details, but not so much as to make it hard to read.
– Use light colors that appear vintage and dated, specifically use jewel tones
– Art nouveau has more realistic/hyper-realistic proportions (I’ll need to work on this more in the future). Specifically, larger jaws and necks seem to be a common trait.
-Facial expressions are more whimsical and dreamy, not too serious but not so happy that they seem too grounded. Basically, the women generally look like they’re zoned out in a happy place.
– Use black/very dark lines that are on the thicker side to outline pretty much everything except certain internal structures
– Most items, except maybe the face and hair, should be very lightly shaded or not shaded at all, with just a gradient and nothing else

AFR 303 Work Process

As I continue working on AFR 303, I want to document the typical work process I go through in order to create a graphic or graphic de-design. In this case, I was creating a graphic based off of a slide.

• Proportion of men in the static year of 2000 in jail vs. college
• The proportion of men as a dynamic between 1980 to 2000 in prison system vs. college
• The percentage of men who are ex-offenders 16-34 years old (young men are much more likely to go to jail.)

Attempt 1
My first attempt at tackling all of this different info was to try and dump it on one slide with three separate unrelated graphs. I could sense going in that this would likely not work, but I was also hopeful that it could work if I tweaked it enough.

While it didn’t come out awful, it is a large load of information and there isn’t enough of a story going on in between each graph. You really want your graphs to tell a dynamic story as you follow along, especially when you have a collection of graphs like this.

Attempt 2

Maddy assisted me in re-thinking these graphs and creating more of a cohesive story with them. Considering how the first two both tell similar information, and the range goes 1980-2000, we were able to come up with a story that tells “between 1980 and 2000” and then “by 2000.” The last one still wasn’t super related, but it works as a side-note at the end.

The problem here was the text. The text itself was quite small on this version, and would be hard to read for a professor looking at the powerpoint some distance away. To combat this, we decided to keep all three graphics on separate slides:

What I Learned:
• Try to avoid shoving tons of different graphics into one slide
• Try to combine graphics into one narrative or metric if possible
• Always try and tell a story with the graphics
• Don’t be afraid to use multiple slides if it will ultimately work better

Other Graphics Made Recently

Here are some other graphics I created recently for AFR:

Stay tuned for more processes!

It is almost Halloween! Rejoice! Beware of small children!

AFR Graphics for early November

Last week I was assigned several graphics for AFR that are due November 3-5th (roughly 2 weeks from now.) These were definitely on the more complex side, although we found some ways to combat the challenges they brought.

Graphic #1

This one was the most straight-forward of the three. Essentially, we had to present a cultural cycle where certain values are taught to children, which they learn and replicate as adults, and then teach to their children in the future.

We represented this as a flow chart. The first draft looked like this:

We then combined the two separate graphs together and made the arrows smaller to fit within the style guide:

What I learned:

Keep arrows in the style guide, keep most graphics in the style guide unless there is a specific need not to. Make sure to include the spaces where different pieces will go (like text or the spot where the professor’s face shows up in the presentation) to help format things better.

Graphic #2:

The second graphic was much more complicated, due to the huge variety in metrics used for statistics:

The first statistic uses exact population, the second uses a proportion, and the third uses a percentage, as well as referring to age and not time period. In my attempt to get all three graphs in, my initial draft of this ended up being quite cluttered:

This would’ve been especially difficult to see, considering how small the actual slide looks when it’s being presented. We took another approach and came up with something like this:

This was a huge visual improvement, but was still too small for the professor to see. We’ve decided to have each graph on it’s own slide, like this:

This is about how it will look, although furthermore, the jail cells need to be a proportion with the hat, not an unequal sign. I will update the other graphs as well as graphics for the third slide when they’ve been done!

What I learned:

Text needs to be bigger, less is often more when it comes to reducing the visual load.

History of Design Training

Finally, I revisited the History of Design Training on my off time, and started an art nouveau illustration after I re-read through all the content. Here’s the draft so far, which I work on when I have down time from AFR:

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Ignore how sketchy it is! It’ll be better with the line-art.

Week of Oct. 5-11th

Hello! Somehow, it is nearing mid-October. How does it go so fast? The world may never know.

AFR 303 Course Graphics

This past week has been pretty slow due to a lull in graphics needed. Yesterday, our team was assigned more graphics that are collectively due for lectures in early November. We just learned of this a bit before my shifted ended yesterday, so I haven’t had a chance to begin my graphics much yet. However, I did have time to create a nifty rounded arrow for flow charts:

Behold: it’s rounded-ness.

Otherwise, the graphics themselves are a WIP. I will update this blog later in the week when they have more progress!

A & B Course Graphics Training

This past week I also completed the A&B Course Graphics Training. I made some adjustments to the B-style graphics, and changed some of the UT lettering to black, before I implemented them into the templates. Here are the templates for both Style A & B:

After I completed these, I uploaded the style B banner and buttons into my Canvas Sandbox, and voila-

The class I wish I could take but is sadly fake has been completed,

Spooky Month Commenced: AFR and Trainings

It is here! The best month of the year!

AFR Graphics

This past week was somewhat lighter on the AFR graphic assignments. My primary assignment was to turn a 6-circle venn-diagram into something more digestible and aesthetically pleasing. The diagram I got looked like this:

The diagram itself is not aligned well and the colors get muddy when they are combined. At first, I wasn’t sure exactly how to mimic this in our style without changing the style of the Venn diagram. When I tried to copy it verbatim with our color style in, it ended up having the same issue.

I tried a few other versions with less variety in colors…

All of these had the same basic issue – the colors still become muddy and hard to see. I tried another version where I manually chose colors and didn’t rely on opacity to create the Venn diagram.

This was getting closer. The primary issue with this is that the size of the overlap is huge, while the text is relatively small and squished to the side. After getting confirmation that I could, in fact, change the style of the diagram altogether, I was able to explore other options that would make the diagram easier to read and have larger text.

The one on the left looks cool – like stained glass – but it ended up being too clunky for the art style. The in the middle and right are based on a “flower” style Venn diagram where each piece serves as a petal on the flower and there is an open center area. This ended up being the route to go, and Maddy liked the one on the right the most. The final version had a third layer of overlap:

And voila, a flower in bloom! I was very happy with how this came out, and again want to thank Abriella and Maddy for all their help on this (also thank you Valerie for looking over it too.)

What I learned…

To document a few things I learned from doing this particular graphic:

• For most art styles, and especially for AFR, having just a few hues and relying on varying shades of these hues looks better than pulling a ton of different colors together.
• Venn Diagrams do not need to actually be the traditional Venn shape to get the point across – especially if they are trying to combine more than 4 circles together.
• While changing opacity can be a handy trick to get an in between color, it can sometimes also end up being muddy. When you are changing the tint or shade of a hue to create accent colors, you usually want to move the hue over slightly to be either a bit cooler or warmer. If you don’t do this, the color ends up looking muddy, and a bit like Clip-Art from 2005. Manually selecting the different colors in the graph can avoid this altogether, although it is more work.
• Avoid lines for this art style. At all costs. (There are times when it may need to be used, but try to prevent this.)

Trainings

After finishing up this graphic, I began to wok on my trainings again. I haven’t had a chance to touch them since I did the AFR Stinger assignment, so this is a good chance for me to catch up. I had done the A-style graphic format in late August/early September. Yesterday, I drafted up much of the B style for my imaginary class. Here are some parts:

…I wish I could actually take this course.

I’ll finish this training up soon and combine it with the A style graphics for my sandbox course. Then, I’ll move onto some other trainings. I’m really excited to work on the ones that require drawing/art/design in them!