Design Week 2

Went through another week with everyone's favorite teacher Lawrence, learning more of the fundamental principles of design:

1. Line
2. Values
3. Spacing
4. Colour
5. Texture
6. Shape
7. Volume

These aren't in the order of importance, but rather in the order that first came to mind when listing them.  By yesterday we have learned about all of them except for colour, which will be taught a a few months from now.

During this week we started of with strict values, alongside what we have learned from last time, though urged to not use line too much or at all.  The theme for the assignment was Act 1 Scene 1 from Hamlet.  For those not familiar with the play, its a scene where threecharacters see the ghost of the dead king.  What was fun with this was that we were allowed to put it in any timeframe we wished, so I placed mine during the golden era of piracy.

The second assignment revolved around designing an Atlantean weapon using rendering to invoke volume.  This meant we had to illustrate the shapes by placing gradients of gray across the surfaces.  While I have done this before in life drawing, it was difficult to pull it off convincingly, and in the end the result was somewhat sloppy.



The third and final assignment was to illustrate an adult being saved by their childhood imaginary friend.  Th key concept here was to demonstate depth by placement of characters and objects in order to invoke a mood, as well as texture, in order to give the feel of material in the image.  After fiddling with alot of thumbnails, trying to come up with ideas, I eventually came up with the idea of a unicorn, and decided it should save his creator who is now a grown woman from a burning building.  Due to the difficulty and constant changes to improve it, it isn't fully finished.  The buildings aren't fully rendered, and theres a terrible tangent (see if you can find it).  However, the unicorn felt very volumetric according to my teacher, which is a good sign.

These design weeks have been amazing for me, loving the secrets and tools of the trade, learning what it is thats important in an image, and feeling the motivation to experiment further.