WEEK 5

ILLUSTRATION PROCESS

SUPERVISION MEETING

The conversation started with my questioning of how the medium of my project which is the Kanji cooperate system could be delivered, as the kanji animated gifs have been decided to be delivered, time is one of my biggest limitations so I was not sure if I need to animate all of the covered kanji characters considering with the consistency
Where this has been going through the main focus of my project is illustration instead of animation, which led me to decide the kanjis will be selected to be animated only for the concepts that are difficult to convey their meaning in a still illustrated image. As it has been decided these animated gifs will be delivered digitally which will be a website as one of the deliverables

DEVELOP PORTFOLIO

UPDATE THE PDS: I will modify some of the needs and metrics since they are unclear and unrealistic to fulfil their corresponding need as I proceed with my practical design process
RENDER KANJI SKETCHES: Render 6-8 kanjis and animated gifs to test with my deliverables for the effectiveness in motivating kanji learning, as well as the consistency of illustration style in terms of colour and illustration method
MOCKUPS: To visualise my initial concepts for presentation to show how exactly they look and are used by the learners
INTERVIEWS: With Japanese teachers for feedback about the current sketches, gifs, and ideas of the deliverables in terms of the effectiveness of motivating learners

止, to stop

目, eye

曲, to bend (I have been using the wrong kanji for this concept this kind of pressuring might be more suitable to use for 圧 (pressure))

ILLUSTRATION PROCESS

A note of how I set up the canvas and did the illustrations to maintain quality and consistency within the Kanji Cooperate System. This process has been carried out through the illustration software IbisPaintX.

SETTING UP THE CANVAS

Canvas size: 2048 px x 2048 px
- The reason for setting up a big canvas is to ensure the resolution is clear enough for animating and printing
- It is more flexible to scale up certain parts, especially in doing the linework without lowering its resolution which mostly happens in a smaller canvas
- A square canvas has been set for all of the illustrated kanjis as the structures of Chinese characters come with a square shape
Inner margins: 100x100mm
- An inner square grid is set up to create negative space around each of the kanji characters

Canvas size of each illustration

Using inner margins as a guide to measure the approximate size of each character

PROCEDURE

Pencil 1: Outlining brush
- I often use a brush width above 10px due to the canvas size, as I adjust the brushstroke width throughout the process depending on if they have smaller details that need a thinner brush
Pencil 2: Airbrush for shading, highlights / adding subtle small details
- A thick width is used for airbrushing (~120px)
- ~8px is used for adding in details
Colouring brush: for base colours
- For colouring in the base colours I have chosen a lower-opacity brush due to the outlines are not completely solid, and this brush could create softer edges than the normal brushes

Details of the illustration to show the shading and highlighting process referring to the arrows below

Colour range of how I adjust the colour tones for shadings and highlights. The grey circle indicates the base colour I applied at first for the strawberries in this illustration

Finish the line work from initial sketch, readjust some concepts if needed

3. Apply 3-4 basic shading by picking darker tones from the original base colours (see the green arrows shown at the colour wheel at left), then apply highlights (yellow arrow) by picking a light tone from the original colour.

5. Colour the outlines in a colour that matches the overall colour palette of the whole illustration to create a softer impression – Here I have picked a dark brown tone used for shading and highlights of the main outlines. Whereas for the air bubbles of the sponge cake I used a darker yellow among all of the yellow tones already used from above (I also created a sense of width of the outlines through this process)

2. Apply base colours

4. Apply a new colour to create more shading and highlights – I often apply colours that are next to the base colour and shades in the colour wheel (cyan arrow). Sometimes this is not applicable to neutral colours such as grey and white. Add in smaller details if needed, where I added in the strawberry seeds at this point

6. Apply a background colour and decorations next to the kanji character.

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