I actually couldn’t think of any project where I was planning one direction and then something happened where I had to change things until recently. It’s not even anything crazy but for Jason’s first project, we had to only use letters to create an animal of our choosing. For example, I choose a narwhal so I had to use those letters to create a narwhal in any style of my choosing. Before we started the project he showed us a few examples from past students for some inspiration/ guidance. I loved the more realistic ones and they were definitely impressive so that’s what I had in mind before going into illustrator. However, when I started creating all the pattern brushes and “painting” with them it was not as easy as it seemed. So I tried using my iPad so I could use the pen to make things easier but the Illustrator app didn’t have a feature where I could create a pattern brush. In the end, I just used my computer and worked with what I got. I tried to create layers and shades of grey to try and achieve that realism but it didn’t look right to me. I was getting frustrated with myself because when I can’t get something right the first time or fast enough I just want to give up but I couldn’t do that obviously. So I continued until I ended up with a more cartoony style. There are different types of cartoon art so I leaned into the children’s book style. That can differ too but since I have illustrated a children’s book before I kind of kept that similar style. So in the beginning I wanted to be impressive and do more of a realistic approach but then realized that where my narwhal was going was in a completely different direction but it turned out well. Happy accident I guess 🙂
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