Illustration & Visual Narrative/ Task 2: Editorial Illustration

1 Nov 2023 - 23 Nov 2023 (Week 6 - Week 9)

Natalie Chu Jing Xuan, 0354589

Illustration & Visual Narrative, Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media

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Editorial Illustration

Editorial illustrations are produced for newspapers, magazines and websites to add a visual dimension to a piece of writing. 

This serves two main functions:

• helps in drawing the reader's attention as they peruse the publication.
• help a fresh viewpoint to the article.

In this assignment, we were instructed to find a story or an article about an urban legend and use Adobe Illustrator to create a minimalist editorial illustration based on an urban legend of our choice. The art must be in the Art Deco style.

The urban legend I chose for this assignment is the Werewolf. 

Fig.1 Sketch, Rationale, Moodboard/References

Sketch

After browsing through Pinterest for some ideas and brainstorming, I begin with a sketch of the werewolf. I also drew some mountains, trees, stars, and a full moon for the background.

Fig.2 Sketches of werewolf and the background

Digitalising

I uses the Pen tool to trace out my werewolf in Adobe Illustration.

Fig.3 Tracing outline

After that, I coloured it and added noise and a gradient to make it stand out more. The reason his shirt and pants were ribbed was because the man transformed into a werewolf during a full moon, so that's what he wore during the night in human form.

Fig.4 Colouring(left), add gradient(middle), add noise(right)

Fig.5 Werewolf outcome without background

I then used the Pen tool to draw the outline of my background. Due to the moon light effect, there are two rings outside of the moon. I have discovered that this is one of the elements of the Art Deco style from my research on the subject.

Fig.6 Digitalising the background

Fig.7 Combine both werewolf and background

FINAL OUTCOME

Fig.8 Final outcome

Animation Progress

I drew my rough idea on iPad using Procreate. The idea was the werewolf thinking how he transform from a human to a werewolf during the full moon. 

Fig.9 Sketches of the animation

Then, I uses this sketch to drew out the shapes and colour it in Illustrator. There are three parts moving: shooting stars, werewolf roaring, and the thinking cloud of how he transform from human to werewolf. So I separate into three parts to do. 

Fig.10 Background shooting star animation

Fig.11 Thinking cloud and roaring animation

After designing all frames of images, I import them to Photoshop to complete the animation. There are total of 14 frames.

Fig.12 Photoshop progress

FINAL OUTCOME

Fig.13 Final animation outcome