Fix fix fix fix fix!

I did a few changes to my illustration, because it wasn't that perfect. I forgot to add shadow to her hair, and her neck is out of proportion, so I tried to re-fix those errors.

Future generation, take my world by storm!

Yes. That's my illustration, and assignment 2 for Computer Graphics 1.

Secret meaning behind the illustration...
Well, look at her, she's smiling even though her giraffe toy is burning, and not let go. Why? She's pretty confident she can put it out. You see, the future generation, no matter forced or voluntary, will have to put out global warming, or the world would go kabeesh, gone. As for that small plant on the ground, do you notice there is 1 piece of leaf that isn't burnt? That's a sign that shows that there is hope. THERE IS HOPE. Hope for the better world, hope for a world with decreased global warming signs! Technologies get more and more advanced as time goes on, so what is so impossible about getting strategies to put out global warming in the future? She's smiling, confident. They're confident, innocently confident. Are we gonna let them clean up our dirty doings? I say no, I'm ashamed to let them clean up our mess. So let's start helping today!

Colour schemes used...
Light-ish blue - symbolized calmness. Calmness of how the future generation (that includes us, university students too) takes in about global warming.

Red, orange, yellow - once again, to symbolize global warming ; fire. The earth getting warmer and warmer, until little giraffe is burnt! The giraffe's yellow and orange comes under here too, it's getting hot from the sun, thus, I used yellow and orange.

Brown - For the ground, earth and tree branch colour. Brown. ; for her hair, to show a wee-bit mutation in the human body. Imagine, black hair to brown. ; For her skintone, from getting too much sunlight and thus, getting a dark tan.

Green - the tree leaves, to show/represent the Earth's nature.

A little bit of black - to show the colours of ashes, and what will become of us and the world if we don't stop global warming!

Tools/effects that I used in illustrations are...

• Pen tool (of course)
• Brush tool
• Pencil tool (for the tree leaves so the specified steps' way of blending works)
• Ellipse tool
• Gradient
• Lasso tool (to select more precise than selection tool, especially the fire)
• Eyedropper tool (to select colour for the shadow sections)
• Zoom tool (to go closer, especially when I did her hair rubber band/acessory)
  
• Selection tool (to move the illustration position into a better way)
  
• Some effects like stylize -> inner/outer glow, distort and tranform -> zig zag etc
• Some transparency like transparency -> screen, and multiply

P/s : I took like, 1 and a half day to complete this. Steal this and I can make you enjoy pain by the end of this semester, just like Eddy.

Step by step.

As the title says, step by step.

First, I dim the reference picture behind by 30% so that my pen tool doesn't get covered up by this cute little baby girl. And yes, you can see, I'm chatting while I do my work. I multi-task. :)

Then, I slowly trace the picture with pen tool. Tsk, Randy Tan and his spammage on my yahoo messenger down there at the bar.

And I'm 1/4 done with the face. I know, she doesn't look that cute and baby-looking anymore, don't need to remind me...

And then I dim 30% on Mamima tall, the giraffe and repeat the same process, by tracing it over.

Ta-dah! I finished tracing Mamima tall and baby girl's face! I freelanced the girl's body, though. I added in some colours to make sure they match, and not go out, or unbalanced. That's a base colour.

I did her legs and adjusted the position of girl and Mamima giraffe.

Oh uh, here comes the messy and hard-to-explain part. I added in some shadow section into girl and Mamima to create shades for them to look like there is sun. I intersected the shadow section into the base lines to make the shadow section more prominent. Also pen tool-ed.

By now, I would expect everyone to know how to colour bases already. :) I coloured the base, and then used gradient on the shadow sections, after that I went to transparency -> select multiply to make the shadow section colours blend in really prominently into the base, to make it stand out but not too attention attracting either.

P/S : Suddenly my illustrator cs turned into illustrator cs3! SUPER!

And so, I did some hoo-ha pretty effects on her hair acessory. First, I created a small darker blue circle with ellipse tool, then I blend it with the light blue outside by going to object -> blend -> make. Then, I used the ellipse tool again to create a gradient of black to white into the rubber band, and set transparency -> screen to make the rubber band balls to look very shiny. To do this, you MUST MAKE SURE that your black in the gradient is (that is, if you're using CMYK mode, I used it) C, M, Y and K=100, or it won't blend!

And the main starrings are born!

And so I did some tiny bit of background. I don't want to do much, or I don't know what I can do for assignment 3. Added the ground with ellipse tool, and set Effect -> distort and transform -> Zig zag for the distorted ground effect and effect -> stylize -> outer glow for the black glow. And I used the brush tool for some fancy strokes called thick pencil for the cracked ground. I also used a thick, brush tool called fude for the tree branch/vein. As for the leaves, I used my old trick that I used for my symbol for it - object -> blend -> blend option -> set to specified steps and insert random numbers -> ok -> make. :)

BURN, MAMIMO GIRAFFE, BURN!!!!! Well, as usual, I use gradient on the fire layers 1 by 1, and set some effects like Effect -> Stylize -> Inner glow, and outer glow. Then I copy pasted, ctrl c then ctrl v and scaled the fire and added them randomly around.

And then, I scaled and set the position of my symbol drawn for assignment 1. AND IT'S DONE!

I did my design on illustrator if that's okay.

Okay. I know I didn't do any sketches, or designs this time, but I have a really good reason for it. I already thought of what to do, actually. By combining...

Picture courtesy to a guy in flickr.

This super adorable little girl, which I hope my daughter would turn out to look like-, and...

Picture courtesy to Ape2zebra.

...This cute little giraffe toy, Kathe Kruse Mamima Tall.

What did I do? I traced these 2 pictures together into illustrator straight.


...Erm, yeah. It turned out something like that, just a wee-bit nicer. This one is still in process, that's why it's not awesome yet, ahem.

P/S : Yes, I DID sketch on papers first before I decided to straight away design on illustrator. This link is the proof.

What is - Global Warming?

"Global Warming is defined as the increase of the average temperature on Earth. As the Earth is getting hotter, disasters like hurricanes, droughts and floods are getting more frequent.

Over the last 100 years, the average temperature of the air near the Earth´s surface has risen a little less than 1° Celsius (0.74 ± 0.18°C, or 1.3 ± 0.32° Fahrenheit). Does not seem all that much? It is responsible for the conspicuous increase in storms, floods and raging forest fires we have seen in the last ten years, though, say scientists.

Their data show that an increase of one degree Celsius makes the Earth warmer now than it has been for at least a thousand years. Out of the 20 warmest years on record, 19 have occurred since 1980. The three hottest years ever observed have all occurred in the last eight years, even." -- Knowledge Allianz

Now you might have an idea on why I picked future generation as my sub topic. We all know how harmful it is when the sun gets too hot. We can get all kinds of sickness like skin disease/cancer, burnt skin, and so on.

"Ultraviolet (UV) light rays emitted by the sun are the cause of damage to our skin. This damage may be visible as age spots, fine (or not so fine) lines or simply as skin that has lost its elasticity eg hands that have lost their youthful suppleness.

There are two types of UV rays. UVA rays primarily cause an ageing effect on the skin and UVB rays primarily cause burning. The amount of UV reaching the earth's surface varies depending on factors such as the time of year, the time of day, the weather, the amount of ozone in the atmosphere and the altitude.

...Sunburn occurs when skin has not been sufficiently protected from the sun's UV rays, when the body is unable to produce enough melanin to protect the skin. Sunburn destroys cells on the skin's outer layer, the epidermis. In most cases these burns are minor, causing red, tender, sometimes blistered skin that sheds or 'peels' after several days." -- Unilever

It doesn't just sound harmful - it IS! Especially to our young future generation ; the babies, the toddlers, and the ones who are still in their mother's big bellies. What have they done to deserve this? They have yet to do anything to harm the Earth yet!

This is what I know about global warming. :]

References for illustrations

Ahhh, so here are some references I would like to follow for my illustration, please guide me or tell me where I'm wrong if I did something differently!

Picture courtesy to Jiyu.

I know, I know, anime/manga artstyles are overrated and should not be used in my illustration, but I'm taking it as a ref for baby body propotions and that's the best one I could find.

Since I can't do realism babies, I'll just do a cartoony one, more to my style. Yes, I've practiced realism babies on illustrator and they turned out to look like a 15-year old mutated girl who's screaming in pain.

Picture courtesy to AnimeFactory.

And this is some super cute baby drawing style I might consider using.

Picture courtesy to Egg-demon.

This would be a typical cartoon-baby propotion, but I think it's too cutesy. Maybe I could reference on the teddy bear on the floor.

Picture courtesy to Rapsody.

Awww, now that's what I call a perfect cartoon baby!

That's pretty much it for baby references I might use for my illustration.