Animal Project — Part 2 (Poster)
Lab Spring 2021
3.11 — Introduction + Thumbnailing
Notes:
- the colors themselves don’t matter so much as the amount of contrast between those colors
- subtle stories= more interesting than explicit stories!
- “when it is difficult to visually represent the cause of endangerment, you can communicate the idea through color and very subtle silhouettes in the background.” — Q
- “I always like to spend like 30 mins doing really rough sketches super fast, then choose a few I like better and do iterations that are slightly more detailed. Don’t jump in to illustrator yet!” — Margot
Feedback from Q:
- the bird in the actual poster will be far bigger than the bird in the thumbnail — scale the puffin down a bit
- need some sort of reference point (flowers, rocks, etc.) to gauge the relative size of puffin (is it the size of an eagle? or a hummingbird?)
- compositions look good, consider text positioning
3.12 — Sketching + Exploration
I also wanted to see what the given choice of typefaces looked like, so downloaded them and wrote a little blurb:
words are beautiful!
Named for its puffy appearance and known for its bright, colorful beak, the Atlantic Puffin spends most of its life at sea, returning to the cliffside every spring to reunite with its mate and colony. As climate change causes ocean temperatures to rise and fish to migrate or die, puffins have an increasingly hard time finding enough food to raise their young.
3.13 — Refinement + Color Play
3.16 — Illustrator
Still need to add:
- details to sky, ocean
- fish
- shading to body, feet, beak
- more to cliff?
- grass? (dark red)
- Do the sun rays look like sun rays? Does it communicate the story clearly enough?
- Include more than one puffin?
- Frame too full?
3.16 — Crit + Work Session
Feedback from Q:
- Color choice is nice, conveys mood and emotion
- Similar levels of complexity in the fore/back-ground create competition
- Focus may go to background instead of the bird
- = simplify background, make the depth + level of contrast more realistic.
- Maybe add some rocks or texture in foreground?
- Color temperature contrast of ripples vs. water is a little much
- Frame/composition is a little full, simplify sky area
- Communication of sun rays is not very effective, try different ways
- Reduce margin between sub-title and text so the text is seen as one chunk
- Consider negative space with the outline of text, try to make the right margin more even
- Right wing is too close to cliff edge, draws attention
3.17 — Three Iterations
More process versions, things to consider:
Notes:
- not very refined iterations, will work on shading+ value more, just wanted to get compositions into illustrator and test out illustrative styles (sun rays, city lights)
- haven’t written a blurb for the night scene yet. will be about light pollution and how artificial lights confuse puffins from navigating their migration routes correctly, leading them to get lost and likely get injured or die.
- communication of light rays may still need some more work
- which composition with which color scheme?
- cliff shows depth, outline might be a little confusing? city helps place the puffin into context and environment + create depth
- night sky composition is nice, light rays are a little confusing and leaves no negative space take away rays, fish(?), try to create depth in background with water, etc. right now there’s too much going on
- space around text with the fish is nice, maybe just get rid of the rays?
- first iteration, text placement needs work (might need to shift everything over to the left), second iteration text placement is successful
- “I would also consider softening the light rays a bit — they are quite sharp and, generally, light rays tend to be seen as subtle brightness all going in the same direction. They have a lot of potential but they aren’t quite there yet I think”
3.23 — Making a Decision
I liked the colors of the daytime/sun ray composition, but the more I thought about it, sun rays themselves don’t exactly convey climate change, and is more of a beautiful, good thing than something that implies global warming/harm. Also, more people preferred the nighttime composition over the daytime, and I got feedback that the city lights were a more intriguing and unique story than just a puffin on a cliff by the ocean during day, which is a little more “predictable”.
Named for its puffy appearance and known for its bright, colorful beak, the Atlantic Puffin spends most of its life at sea, returning to the cliffside every spring to reunite with its mate and colony. While they use stars to navigate their migratory paths, artificial lights can confuse and disorient the birds, causing them to get injured or even die when they are lured toward urban areas.
From there, I darkened the composition to convey the nighttime atmosphere more, and noticed from reference pictures that glowing cityscapes were lighter than the sky, so lightened the buildings. I also explored some more on the ipad to develop highlights and shadows.
I rendered the puffin (!!!!) and tried different ways of communicating the city lights.
Process Pictures
Some references I used:
Final Poster
