The tools I used
For our second illustrator task we experimented with Typography using the tools that were provided by illustrator. These tools I used were non-traditional tools as I used them digitally on a software on the iMac. This time there wasn't much non-traditional tools needed to use since I am only tracing my face around with the pen tool and type tool. The tools I used were, pen tool which was to create a line for the text, the type tool which was to type over the traced line I made to create a sort of shape to resemble my facial features. Such as my eyes, eyebrows, hair, nose, mouth and face etc and the colour picker tool which is to fill the colour inside of a shape for the text to cover over.
How I've done it
I create this project task by using Adobe illustrator. Instead of creating a new A3 portrait, we created a A4 canvas portrait. After that we started our process on the typography face. We first watched a very long tutorial video which was quite boring, interesting and sometimes misunderstanding but we then did a small recap on what was going on with the tutorial and understood some of the bits. The only part I didn't understand was the text to shape distortion bit which to me was confusing, but eventually in the end I got the hang of learning it by practicing the technique that the teacher told me what to do. What I basically done was I used the pen tool to create a shape over my facial feature, then I filled it with a colour to make it easier to see, after that I made a text to resemble of what the facial feature is, after when I finished that I then hover the text over the shape, put the shape over the text then select both of the text and shape and distort it together to a text that forms with in the shape. I then repeated the same process for the rest of my facial features such as the nose, eyes, ears, face and the hair. Since it got quite repetitive a bit I got quite tired with it but overall it was quite fun and interesting to see what new techniques that I can do in adobe illustrator.
My statement and opinion of the task of the work in progress version and the finished version
Although this was a work in progress the outcome wasn't that great because it seemed to wide for my face and what was even worse that I didn't even managed to finish half of my face on time because I struggled some bits on my own which was annoying but then eventually I figured it out on my own with using my problem solving skills. I hope to finish the rest of my face later on and see how the actual outcome goes. The black bold lines of the text makes a spooky haunted looking theme and it kind of looks eerie and distorted as if it were look like a ghost if I didn't put the real photo behind the layer. There wasn't any words to "describe" my personality or what I like so I just went along with just using facial features as text so the audience knows what it is. To me it is kind of lame to do that kind of thing but It was kind of hard to make it my own thing to make it interesting and make the audience to spot which one of the facial feature it is. Since I've done typography before to me it wasn't something really new or fun or interests me. When things get repetitive for me, It gets boring and uninteresting. So I want to discover something new which I haven't done before. Overall with this typography task, it wasn't that quite successful. The reason being is that I felt like it is going to be ruined by something or the work wasn't nearly as 65% completed yet. The only thing I laughed about is that my hair looked like a string of pasta.
On the new and refreshed finished project of the typography task however, I was very impressed on the improvement as I soon realised the mistake of what I did. Such a small simple mistake which it was quite hard to understand what as going on because there too many things going on but once Doug taught me again with the technique in a "simple" way (or the same way) for a few I times I began to understand on how I know to do the portrait task properly. Although I did wanted to figure it out on my own but eventually I needed some help. I just gave up for a bit because it was putting me some stress and I was quite frustrated with it but I didn't want to show any signs of that so I just kept it all to my self for a bit then I just needed an extra bit of help. I think to me in that recording of the tutorial video was sometimes quite misunderstanding since the teacher had to do many other things while teaching other students which was keep getting delayed of the recording and it when the video progressed further on it kind of made me forget a little bit of the process of the tutorial. Nevertheless I got there and I completed with some help and on my own and I am quite proud of my self for doing it. In my opinion of this final refreshed typography work, I quite liked it and hate it with the click and hold for the shapes which was quite a drag but the fun part about this task was just creating my own portrait in a different unique interesting style. The face looked quite abstract, bold and simple. And I say the completed piece was more successful than the other unfinished messed up typography portrait work. I hated that work because it looked kind of off and was quite eerie.
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