Illustration and Visual Narrative - Project 1

 1st September 2023 - 10th October 2023 (Week 1 - Week 7)

Asma' Binti Mohd Jailani / 0354335 / Bachelor of Mass Communication (Honours) 

Illustration and Visual Narrative

Task 1B / Vormator Challenge

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At the beginning of our semester, Mr Hafiz informed us about the Vormator Challenge that would make up part of our assessment. During our first class, we started off by tracing the Vormator Challenge shapes with the pen tool. 

Figure 1.1: Vormator shape tracings (Week 2) 

We were then told to come up with a monster/creature using these Vormator shapes, and to apply the Adobe Illustrator exercise techniques that we would be learning in the upcoming weeks, to our final Vormator creature. 

Personally, I don't think I'm the most creative person when it comes to character design, but I knew that I wanted to do something cute. My first attempt at a Vormator monster was a mermaid cat, which turned out pretty... terrible. 

Figure 1.2: First attempt at a Vormator monster - the mercat

I decided to rethink my idea and come up with another creature. After watching a documentary for one of my DMP Mass Comm modules, I decided to make a sheep (the documentary was focused on the countryside and farm life). I took inspiration for the design from a chapter cover in One Piece by Eiichiro Oda, and Mareep from Pokemon. 

Figure 1.3: One Piece Manga Chapter 599 Cover Art

Figure 1.4: Mareep character sheet

My second Vormator monster ended up looking like this:

Figure 1.5: Vormator Sheep Draft 1

It was real cute, but it felt kinda bland... so I decided to swap the leaf with a pipe full of bubbles instead. More cute, and also more whimsy!

Figure 1.6: Vormator Sheep Draft 1 + Pipe

After showing the sheep to Mr Hafiz during our Week 3 class, he told me that overall it looked good, but it would be better if I made the head bigger. 

Figure 1.7: Vormator Sheep with larger head

He was right. It did look better with a bigger face. I also tweaked the eye a bit and made it slightly larger, to match with the new face. 

As we were required to design a background for our Vormator creature, at first, I contemplated making a field with some flowers, and even some smaller sized sheep blowing different shaped bubbles. But somehow, it felt like too generic idea, so I thought it over some more. 

Then I figured, since my sheep was blowing bubbles, why not focus on that?

I decided to change the shape of the bubbles and make them more spherical, using the Shape Builder tool. 

Figure 1.8: Sequence to create the spherical shapes I used for the bubbles

I also decided to change the colour of the bubbles and try to emulate their shiny, holographic sheen, so they would look more realistic. At first, I tried to replicate that by using a texture I found on freepik and layering it as a clipping mask. 

It didn't work. 

Figure 1.9: Failed attempt at using a free texture to replicate a bubble's shine

Then, I remembered the gradient techniques that we had learned how to apply during class. Using the freeform gradient option, I added pale pink and yellow to the bubble to to emulate the reflective sheen.

Figure 1.10: Vormator Sheep with updated bubbles

After figuring out the bubbles, I adjusted the positioning of the sheep's legs and created a background for my Vormator sheep. This is what it looked like:

Figure 1.11: Version 1 of final draft

After looking at it for a while, the framing felt kinda off, so I adjusted the sheep and the bubble so it would be more centred. 

This is the final result:

This is what it looks like as a Pokemon card: