Illustrations finished!

Saving in photoshop --> illustrator

Saving as a tiff means that you can transfer without the white background. PNG can also do this, but it's more for internet. In tiff, when you save, there is an option to save transparency. Tick this box, and when you place it into illustrator it will not have the white outline.

If you have a layered photoshop document. save it as a psd, making sure that the layers mode is ticked. When you place this into illustrator, DON'T PLACE. Open directly into illustrator, options, convert layers to objects. Default is to flatten image, but if you need the layers intact do it this way.

If you're transferring a vector image into illustrator, if you paste in as a smart object, you can continue editing it. When you double click on this object in photoshop, it automatically reopens in illustrator, can change it there, and when you save it, this automatically changes in the photoshop.

Creating symbols, gradients and blending modes.

Matching colours in a subtle way, going for good blending - for gradients

Use symbols of round rectangle etc

Use effect --> convert to shape\

path - the same as those under object path

Effect --> warp - very useful for industrial design.

Distort and transform are the most useful. Free distort is like free transform in photoshop.

Preferences - scale stroke - go into -object --> path and outline stroke

Roughen - very abstract

Pucker and bloat - pucker changes anchor points

Gradient - can be radial or linear - this is good for the colour of the eye.

Remember for eyes, not to go too round - don't forget the eye lids!

To change colour of gradients, double click and change, decide how many tones you want to blend between. To get rid of a colour, just click and drag. Gradient sliders indicate the amount of colour.

If you want a highlight, use white in the middle and make it a sharp gradient

Blending modes - 2 shapes, select both - object --> blend --> make. This blends one shape to the other. This can be released in the same place. Can got to blend modes 0 go to smooth, can decide how many steps you want - more steps is smoother.

Recent Illustrations

Artist bios - just in case

Name and bio - Tim Walker, (born 1970) is a London based photographer. His interest in photography began during a work experience, where he coordinated the Cecil Beaton archive. Walker studied at Exeter Art College, completing a BA (Hons) degree, and after this worked as a freelance assistant, notably working under Richard Avedon. His career was launched through the Independent Young Photographer of the year award, and he has since shot for Vogue, W, and Harper’s Bazaar, as well as advertising campaigns, including Comme des Garcons, Yohiji Yamamoto, and Dior. Walker’s works are on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Protrait Gallery in London, in their permanent collections. His first major exhibition was in 2008, at the Design Museum in London, coinciding with the release of his book, pictures. In the same year, Walker received the “Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator, and in 2009 he received an Infinity award from the International Centre of Photographu, and in 2010 won an ASME Award.

Describe the chosen artists visual style? Walker’s styles has a very distinct fairytale feel, with a magical and eccentric charm. The images are highly evocative, and create a surreal and exuberant environment in which the garments are showcased. Walker considers his signature to be in extravagant staging and romantic motifs.

What materials and processes are visible in their work? Walker uses entirely constructed and elaborate sets, without using digital imaging to create the surroundings. The sets are instrumental in creating the surreal atmosphere, and Walker is careful to choose models who are able embody the mood of the piece.

What demograpic is their work aimed at? Walker’s work appeals to a wide range of people, perhaps because of the universal themes he explores, exploring a nostalgic, dreamy world.

What inspires their practice? Tim Walker is inspired by trying to portray the world of his imagination. He describes it as “a way to communicate. I could see things in my head that I wanted to express” (Walker, 2008). His work is compared to Cecil Beaton’s, in the “Englishness” portrayed in both works, but Walker is mainly inspired by a fantasist approach to photography.

What appeals to you about their work? Walker’s work is inspiring in that is so evocative, and creates a story around a singular shot. His work allows fashion to become a fantasy world, which is, in some ways, the essence of fashion – becoming someone else, if only briefly.

http://www.timwalkerphotography.com/articles.php?article_ID=8 - viewed 16/8/11

http://www.timwalkerphotography.com/articles.php?article_ID=3

Prince Lauder

Name and bio Laura Laine is a Finnish based illustrator who studied fashion design at the University of Art and Design Illustration. After completing her studies, she began to focus on fashion illustration, and began working as a freelance illustrator as well as tutoring fashion illustration. Laine has completed work for several high profile clients, notably Vogue Nippon, GAP, Zara, Elle and H&M.

Describe the chosen artists visual style? Laine creates fashion illustrations with an eerie, surreal look to them. The women she draws are often outside of traditional fashion proportions, and her signature style is in the painstakingly rendered luxuriant hair that her models sport. Her illustrations have an incredible sense of movement to them, and the mixture of beauty and the sinister expressions of the models create very memorable works.

What materials and processes are visible in their work? Laine works almost entirely with lead pencil, creating works that are mostly black and white with occasional bursts of colour on the garments

What demographic is their work aimed at? Laine’s work has a wide base of appeal, though tends to be used by more art and design focused publications. Her works appear as artworks more than fashion illustrations, thanks to the surrealism evident in the poses and the models themselves.

What inspires their practice? Laine is inspired by fashion, and the most effective and beautiful ways to depict these works, as well as literature and art. Her artworks are a very organic process, as she draws whatever she feels at the time,

What appeals to you about their work? For me, the sense of movement and the delicacy of the rendering are very inspirational, combining melancholy with beauty in a highly effective manner

Nikki Farquharson

Name and bio Nikki Farquharson is a London born and based illustrator, who graduated from the university of Arts London, with a degree in graphic and media design - typography. She has worked for several high profile clients, including MAC cosmetics, the Cool Hunter, and been published in several design oriented magazines. She currently works as a freelance creative, with a focus on illustration, and coordinates cooperative blogs with a strong focus on photography and conceptual design.

Describe the chosen artists visual style? Frauharson’s fashion illustration combine abstract graphic design patterns with highly produced fashion images. The mixed media of her works, using aspects of the original photograph with a flat, cartoon look of the figures, along with intricate patterning and hand drawn line work.

What materials and processes are visible in their work? Faruharson combines hand drawing, collage, and digital media to create these artworks, which create exciting twists on traditional fashion images

What demograpic is their work aimed at? Fraquharson’s demographic is a youth oriented market, with the strong graphic look, and the edgy appeal of these works, and has been utilised by youth companies such as myspace, love dough, and Malibu.

What inspires their practice? Farquharson’s work is inspired by surrealism and Dada, and her training in graphic design has been of great influence to the abstract shapes and patterns of her artworks.

What appeals to you about their work? The most appealing aspect of her work is the surreal and heavily illustrated aspects of the work. For me, the combination of collage with line drawing is very inspirational, as it creates such a distinctive appearance to the works.

Illustrator design magazine

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/sampler - look into this page for some exciting ideas about digital illustration - great articles on font, profiles on illustrators

Using symbols in fashion llustrations

Illustrator symbols - hair and fur are sometimes useful, but most of the symbols already in illustrator are a bit crap. Try searching for Vector symbols.

Draw a circle. select symbol, with spray can

Use these to change things, e.g. size, colour, spinning. Use stainer to change the colour of symbols - but doesn't work if it's grey!

Edit a symbol that's already there - drag from symbol palate onto document - break link, ungroup, and change however you want. Then save.

This week find some symbols that would be appropriate

Looking at fonts

Create hierarchies - title in capitals?

Larger fonts to make sure people know what is happening

Positioning is important as well, people read from top left.

Spacing - think about spaces between paragraphs. Easier to get involved with clear, structured things.

Font explorer - X-pro. This is at UTS - font management library

click connect - asks for username - use the number on the back of the computer - password is fonts. Click in the checked box next to it, and then it activates.

Helvetica is a reliable fall back option.

Want a big, impressive font for the titles, and then a small, unobtrusive font for the body of the writing.

Body - between 8.5 and 10.5.

http://fortheloveoftype.blogspot.com/

http://www.dafont.com/ - free fonts

kuler.adobe.com - gives colour modes, search for skin tones?

Or should I use this one?

Final Tim Walker images

Skin tones

Draw different shapes for each colour area.

In colour swatches, can find a skin tone library.

Easy way to do this - open in photoshop - posterize document - can pick threshold that it goes at. If you put that into illustrator, then it's much easier to see where the shading is, and individually trace each block from there.

Fill each of these in, choose the right skin tone.

Creating fashion image in illustrator

Make sure that we don't have fill on - start off drawing legs - always go a little bit further up than you think, in case you want to make skirt shorter. Put fill on to see which bits need improving.

We'll do lots of the body with pen tool, maybe garments with brushes?

Turn reference image off to see how these are looking. In outline layer, hit down arrow, there will be areas named path - double click and rename each area - right leg etc. Internally to layers you want to make this as easy to find as possible.

Remember to use your brushes -

Alter size and colour (stroke is on the top bar) to change the look of brushes.

Remember that when you change the size of an object, the stroke of your brushes doesn't change. Can alter this in preferences.

Can edit brushes by double clicking on them - always check preview box, so that you can see the alterations you're doing.

To make your own brush - select your design, at the bottom of the brush window, select the new brush - if in doubt, make an art brush - use these for garments, feathers etc. These are handy for giving you whatever you want.

Also, remember to save brush library - top right of brush thing, don't want to lose these things we create, start your own library

When you open this library, it opens as a blank document, but any brushes you saved are there.

Save over the same library so that you don't end up with 1 million different libraries. Remember to search for free vector/illustrator brushes.

Illustrator notes

Remember - we're starting research first, let this influence the fonts and layout.

Work out how much space you need from the edges of the spine of the book - want at least 1 cm, but be generous with this. Put in margins for each artboard.

Textbox - size of interior margins.

Write up the text for our document by next week.

If document isn't set up properly - file document set up

Type everything into word FIRST - then copy paste.

Command shift 3 gives us a picture of the computer screen.

Problem with screen snapshots - low quality and small.

Put into photoshop, set as CMYK.

Go to image --> image size, - un check all the boxes - tells us how large we can make it. Save this as a jpeg, and then into your linked files.

Remember to place this - file --> place - not copy and paste. This reduces the size. Cross across the image shows that it's placed, rather than pasted.

Find a reference picture for your fashion illustrations, not drawing from scratch. Don't have to copy garment exactly, but can if you want.

Start thinking about how we want this layout to look. Find our fashion image - think about the pose - find someone you're interested in, think about how it uses the background. Remember that these are only used to sketch over - don't bother making it the right size colour etc.

Image has to be at least half to 3/4 body - can be any look, any view.

Reference layer - dimmed and locked so that we don't go over it. Create a new layer for drawing on.

Week Two - notes on assessment one

Booklet - will have many placed images. Don't want to place every image in - this makes it very unmanageable - link files instead.

Press files - our PDFs - this has research document as well as the 2 illustrations. Research document is A5, illustrations are A2.

When using pen tool - make sure that you find a way of doing it that expresses an interesting style, rather than simply tracing - eg, this previous UTS project.

Brushes are used a lot, don't want things to look flat, go outside lines, use gradients etc. For large blocks of text, stick with a standard, easy font. Try not to use handwritten, italic etc in large blocks - hard to read. Keep a consistent look and feel throughout.

Break paragraphs up, people like to read small areas of text. Good contrast between foreground and background.

How do you best want to showcase the artists that you're studying - page showing illustrations? Collage pictures? Keep writing clear, with maybe one picture. Try to avoid the illustration pages looking like cut and paste.

If you're doing light type on a dark background, make sure to make it bigger than you normally would.

Don't need a contents page for this document.

Tim Walker - this shoot from Vogue Italia March 2010

LOVE - the fairytale feel, the poses - so typical fashion, but done in a new and interesting way.

- The use of light

- The fact that these sets are completely real

I would take from this the poses, the background - maybe?

Prince Lauder

Love the mix of mediums again - the splashes of colour on the lips and hair, and the slightly surreal feel to these collage illustrations. These have a much more painterly feel than many other collage pieces, and I like how unstructured they feel, with the seemingly random lines. I think that I could use the combination of flat and lifelike, and black and white and colour on these pieces.

Nikki Farquarson

Things that I love about these images - the graphic mix of print, flat, cartoony images, and parts of the body - I really like this combo of different styles. Very cool.

Waldemar and Max

http://www.waldemarandmax.com

File setup and management - and a little reintroduction to illustrator.

Name them like they are in the brief - 2011_lastnameinitial_task1.pdf - have a very clear structure for this - name variations as 1.2, 1.3, etc. Can just go back to the next step. This file management thing will be put back onto uts online.

Artboards have changed a little since the last time we've used them.

Illustrator - for vector. Means that we don't get pixels, but the computer uses an equation that allows the text to scale to any size, remaining sharp. Photoshop - bitmap - for photos. Uses pixels, hard to blow up. PDF is standard for printing.

To compress files - right click and compress - turns it into a zip file. God to send to yourself. Sign up to yousendit.com - sends a file to anyone for free. Or wetransfer.com Can send things to printers - send up to 2GB.

Delete files that you don't need, they just get confusing. Don't hand in practice drafts. Use layers in illustrator, make sure you lock and make invisible. Name so that you can locate quickly.

File setup in illustrator - Name everything 2011_kruszelnickia_task1_week1

Make sure that you are doing print documents, can do heaps of artboards - set up bleed, allowance to make sure that it prints in the right spots. Remember spacing stuff - to keep each artboard a little part away from each other - 1.5 cm. 3mm bleed is industry standard - click on paper clip thing to make them the same.

Save things into Student work - can be saved and pulled out later. Remember to save it as a legacy format. Saving into student work - can only be accessed in this computer. Also, anyone can delete. Can also save to public areas.

Preferences - under illustrator dropdown, general

Getting the proper types of black - rich black - black as well as cyan, magenta etc. True black is just black. Can check "display blacks accurately". This can be very obvious in printing, so check those in settings in general, and then you will have it all in place.

Remember to keep in CMYK

Type - everything for fonts etc

Most of the stuff in the drop down edit and file, are also in the right click. For mice without buttons, just hit control before you bring it up.

Effects - at the top is illustrator effects, at the bottom is photoshop.

View - show grid, rulers etc

Window - all tools and libraries.

Help menu - very useful

Artboard tool - click on sideboard tool, or go into document setup. If you want to move documents further away, just click on the artboard, and you can just shift them around with the mouse. Selected when it has dashed lines around the outside. Add another in just by clicking and dragging.

Shortcut to hand is putting down space bar key. Zoom in, and when you hold down the option key, you zoom out

Can save workspaces -

this keeps the setup of the illustrator how we want them.

Artboards - Name each one individually - And can edit them however you want them.

Marie Zucker

http://www.mariezucker.com

Berlin based photographer - I like the dreamy, surreal quality of these.