Week 10: Shovel, Sunglasses, and Flip Flops Variations

Craft: For the remainder of the semester, the focus is on designing a deck of cards, while adding a creative side to the design-making portion.  This week, we had to design 3 illustrations based off the theme of our cards and from there, have 3 variations of each illustration.  The variations included changing the color and stroke.  Since we have the option to trace a photograph, I decided to use photographs for each of my illustrations.  The illustration I will be talking about is the purple flip flops located on the right hand side of the screen.  I used a flip flop image off Google and placed the image into Adobe Illustrator after I saved the photo.  The pen tool was used when tracing the photograph.  The fill and stroke buttons were used when choosing what color I would like the flip flops to be.  Since I am doing an Uno deck, I decided to have the flip flops one main color, purple, and then a lighter shade of the color so that it's easier to distinguish the illustration as a pair of flip flops. The Brush library was used along with the Color Guide and Color section.  All those sections are found underneath the Windows button, located on top of the screen.
Composition: Since the flip flops fill up the entire page with a white background, the viewers can see the flip flops very clearly, and the background helps elicit the idea that the flip flops are the main focus.  There's nothing to distract the focus from the flip flops. The darker purple attracts viewers towards that color first, and the lighter shade follows that view.  The darker color is more prominent in terms of surface area so viewers are able to see that color first.  Since the lighter shade of purple is located in front of the dark purple, the viewers eyes directly go to the lighter shade.  The lighter shade is not overpowering the darker shade so viewers' are still able to see the darker shade first and then  the lighter shade.  The strokes outlined on the flip flops are what viewers see last since the strokes are very small compared to the purple colors. The simple combination of both color and the strokes help the viewers distinguish the illustration as flip flops and allows them to see a clearly recognize the illustration.
Concept: Even though the majority of the color is dark, the color displays the idea that flip flops can be any color, and that they don't necessarily have to be bright.  While light colors are usually associated with a beach theme, the flip flops show that any flip flops are okay to wear on the beach.   Also, the flip flops appear as if they were bought from a regular store since they don't look fancy and don't have any exquisite designs.  They appear as just normal flip flops and illustrate the idea that the beach is just a place to relax and is a laid back place. The flip flops also suggest that many people go to the beach since the flip flops aren't a specific brand or design.  Even though the brush stroke might be fancy, the main use of the strokes were to exaggerate the shape of the flip flops.  A simple design can elicit a whole new meaning towards an illustration.

Week 9: Card Games

           In the second half of the semester, we are focusing on designing cards for our own personal use.  We can invent our own game or redesign a current card game.  I chose to redesign a current card game, which in this case is Uno.  My family sometimes plays Uno which inclined me to make an Uno deck.  For my deck, I chose a beach theme since we go to the beach every year and relates to everyone. Since there are four main colors used within the Uno deck, I'm going to have an image represent a color.  This would allow the players to easily identify the color.   I had to make sure that the images were simple enough where I would only need two colors to fill them in with. The card would look weird if there were a multiple of colors used when the border is one color.  I'm incorporating the color of the border of the card into the image.  The other color would be a lighter shade of it.  The Wild card would have four different images since it's wild and we don't know what image we'll get.  Those images will include all four colors while also incorporating a beach image.  The border that I would create would be similar to the Uno border except my border would be more geometric.  The Skip, Reverse, and Wild card would say those words on there since it would be hard for people to know what cards are which since they're not the regular deck.  This is the general idea of my card game.