University/College

Character Design for Beeline (Homework)

In drawing class we got one corporate design assignment: Design modern versions of St. Nicholas, Ded Moros (Santa) and Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden) for the Russian company Beeline. Needless to say “modern” is a very vague description and can be interpreted in various ways. Oh, and the corporate color yellow is a mandatory. Green and red on the hand are to be avoided as much as possible.

I didn’t have a lot of time so I just colored the figures with crayons 🙂

St. Nicholas

St. Nicholas

Santa

Ded Moros (Santa Claus) Note: One fellow student told me he looks like a professional killer. He's not a hit man XD He's bringing presents and he doesn't want to wake up the kids...

Snegurochka

Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden)

I included the bee pattern in every character. After doing some research on the company’s page I figured that’s a must-do.

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

The Cube Project

During the whole semester we had to simultaneously design 4 different cubes. This was my first opportunity to really build something you can actually touch 😀 Of course the professors had a few specifications for the project:

  • use only one material for each cube (like paper/fabric/wood/metal/plastic etc.)
  • use only the materials provided in the workshop
  • measurements 10×10 cm (about 4,0″x4,0″)
  • every cube must consist of more than one single part
  • the main connection between the different parts mustn’t be made by generally used means (like glue, tape etc.) BUT during the creation process of single parts all means can be utilized

Obviously this assignment is meant to give us the opportunity to work practically with different types of material. Idea – scribbles – illustration – draft – manufacture.

So here is one of my drafts (the plastic category cube):

plastic draft

Detailed drafts really help during the producing process!

And here are my babies 😀

material:styrodur (plastic category)

material: very hard, pressed paper (paper category)

cube 3

materials: foam and thin fabric (fabric category) The clue is that the little squares are either stitched to the top piece or the bottom piece of the big cube. While one square hangs the other one "disappears" and when you flip the cube they switch. I hope you get my idea...

cube 4

material: thin metal layers and thick copper wire (metal category)

It’s not crucial for the cubes to look good – the main aim was to experiment (the overall topic during the first two semesters, I guess). It was a lot of work but it was also a really exciting and fun experience 😉

The results will be accounted in my Foundation Course grade!

in Design Foundation  by Savina 0 comments

Go Typomon!

Time for fun typography homework!

This time we were supposed to create 15 different monsters/animals by using typographical characters only. There were different approaches to deal with this task:

  • minimalism: the less characters used to depict an existing animal everyone still recognizes the better
  • create one huge, extremely complicated creature
  • concentrate on one font
  • and my choice: ANARCHY!

Well, I did have a plan (so it’s a systematical anarchy ;)). I picked an interesting font and just started trying out and analyzing the font’s characteristics.

Here is my fine assortment of Typomons!

This exercise is supposed to make you see more than just boring letters and teach you to make a more illustrative use of typography. And it’s supposed to make fun I guess 😀

in Typograhy  by Savina 0 comments

Most frequent drawing Assignment

Every 2-4 weeks we have to create new characters for drawing classes. Sometimes we are given preset information on the appearance or the character traits (like being afraid of cats or being shy etc.). And other times we only get names, nationalities or very vague descriptions like “make him/her look modern”. The more creative freedom one is given the more complicated the initial concept can get, but on the other hand you can give your characters your unique design (it’s best not to get too carried away, this is design and not art!).

Well, let’s return to our story. After the accident in Odessa (Harald survived ;)) a new disaster takes place: Someone steals all our luggage and on top of that the police officer we turn to doesn’t speak English well enough to record the exact stolen objects. After drawing (!) every single stolen item (this was part of the homework) everyone leaves the police station disappointed…

(Western reading direction) As already said, some of the main characters leave the police station. Harald (panel 4) feels bad about not being able to overtake the bandits because he's sitting in a wheel chair (he used to do a lot of martial art). While speaking a young man called Ludomir suddenly appears out of nowhere overhearing our conversation. He is a Ukraine student and he HATES criminals, hence he decides to help us and inspires Harald to take his destiny in his own hands and stop feeling sorry for himself.

Ludomir takes everyone to Olga, another Ukraine student with psychic powers, who can help find the luggage. She performs an exhausting ritual with her magical orb and gives Ludomir the "card of answers". He reads it and it turns out the stolen bags are at the police station. Everyone assumes the police officer is a criminal himself. Ludomir is full of rage and comes rushing into the policeman's office accusing him. And indeed, the he has the bags, but it turns out they were just retrieved. The accusations were uncalled-for.

Well, this is the main story so far 🙂

Oh right, designing the characters of Ludomir and Olga was part of the homework, which was mainly to show how the stolen luggage was found. These are my Ludomir and Olga:

Given information: The names, both are Ukraine and university students. The rest was up to me.

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Some Drawing Class Results

I haven’t posted anything on my drawing classes for a while. That’s because most of the time I’m doing sketches or trying new things out (technique and working material related).

Many of the assignments we get are comic/picture book orientated, since these are the professor’s main preferences (he’s a comic artist). The first two semesters he likes to go on an excursion around the globe with us…Well at least in our sketchbooks 😉

Perhaps you remember my version of Harald, which I tried drawing digitally (by now I learned a lot). He is one of four characters with some given attributes I had to design. The basic plot for the whole semester is that these characters (and some professors/other students) go on a loooong trip. Everyone is heading east by the way. After a long train ride the group arrives in Odessa, a town in Ukraine, where a monumental stairway awaits to be conquered. Poor Harald sits in a wheelchair (given attribute) and accidentally someone lets him fall while going up the stairs! Here is my version of what happens next (format and panel number was given, western reading direction):

theFall

"Hey guys! Who's holding the wheelchair?!" These are Harald's last words before the shocking experience... Oh, and his brakes mysteriously broke 😉

Here's a close-up of the first panel.

This drawing exercise is supposed to make us find the best shots (like in story boards/movies) to depict Harald’s falling down the stairs. The trickiest part was to get by with only four panels! Action scenes in movies require a lot of different shots in order to create a feeling of speed. With only four panels one has to give some sort of an establishing shot, the action and the outcome. These are a lot of aspects to show on only two pages! As you can see I cheated just a little bit in the second panel by adding a tiny extra panel 🙂

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Analyzing Cameras Part 1

The past weeks we’ve dealt with product design (example chairs) and graphic design (example print media). This time we learned about the historical and technological development of cameras. As usual the students were overwhelmed with an enormous choice of objects to work with:

all cameras

This is how it looked like 🙂

In this first session we only discussed the history and development of the camera (and what this meant for photography). The professor introduced to us how the process of taking pictures technically changed starting with the camera obscura:

camera obscura

This is it: The camera obscura!

I’m not going to describe everything in detail since there is enough technical know-how on the Internet already! But here are some general points to sum up our findings:

  • cameras were initially invented in Europe and developed over time with some great additional inventions in the USA (Kodak, Polaroid) and Japan (Nikon)
  • new chemical processing methods emerged reducing camera size and prices making photography an everyday experience for many
  • analog cameras (including the camera obscura) are still perfectly able to take pictures (provided the mechanics are working and the chemicals and lab equipment are available) whereas digital technology is developing so fast that some cameras have become useless over a time period of  only one decade

Oh, and some spillovers paved the way for nowadays very popular 3D-effect in movies/photos:

stereoscope

Here is one of the earliest stereoscopes ever. The 3D-effect is nonetheless impressive!

Part 2 follows (and then it’s time for the exams for me!!!)

in Theory  by Savina 0 comments

Transformation and Colors

After dealing with moirés, reliefs and modules now we’re working on transformations.

The topic “transformation” is all about combining and gradually changing shapes with different color pairs and contrasts. One simple way to transform shapes is to pick a basic border-shape and develop all the movement within these borders, which restrain the transformation process and reduce chances for confusion later on. Here is an example I made:

example colorless

Even if you leave out the borders in the beginning the order of elements is still obvious.

The next step revolves around colors. After a very short introduction in color theory we were supposed to apply different color combinations. A good way to gain the viewers attention is to expose him/her to contrasts, since the human eye reacts to those phenomena extraordinary strong. Nevertheless you can try the opposite way and use color harmonies to attract your audience and give them a nice feeling.

Here are two variations of the previous example:

complimentary contrast

complimentary contrast

color harmony

color harmony i.e. similar colors (without lines)

Next time we are going to do some manual color mixing (not digital) to sharpen our senses 🙂  Our professor really cares for us to know what we are doing when picking colors with computer programs and not depending on them to dictate our choices.

in Design Foundation  by Savina 0 comments

Word-Images

Our next homework in typography is called “Word-Images” (Wortbilder). We were supposed to create 11 different images (or animations) made out of the word to be depicted. All images had to be in the same format and only sans serif fonts were allowed.

Here is my contribution (hope you get the idea):

word-images

here the words in english from top-to-bottom and left-to-right: to avoid, narrow, lust (sexually), pointed, battle, hunger, fear, pacemaker, error, mirror, dead

Unfortunately some of the word-images weren’t as obvious to others as expected…  But I wanted to have fun and try different things, so I guess it’s all right 😉

in Typograhy  by Savina 0 comments