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Evaluation

During the Don’t Panic project, I have faced many new techniques and different ideas that I wouldn’t come across to. It has allowed me to find a new diversity of artists that has implemented me to use their techniques and ideas to my own work from researching about the specific artists, and it has immensely changed the craftsmanship of my work. 

Most of my work is heavily influenced by Eelus, Karborn and Tishk Barzanji, all of the artists gave me new skills that I’m unfamiliar with. I learned how adding drop shadows to my work made a massive improvement, this is by familiarising myself with Tishk Barzanji’s work and his artstyle. My ‘Don’t Panic’ postcards are certainly guided with Barzanji’s artstyle because of how he uses his shadows and how he added feelings to his characters and the colour scheme. I've primarily focused those qualities on his work and that is how I’ve adapted to his techniques and ideas, and now it has led me to create my best work so far. 

Throughout the ‘Don’t Panic’ project, I have learned several techniques in photoshop that I discovered myself. I discovered how to add texture, drop shadows, strokes and how to differentiate the text. I’ve done this by experimenting in photoshop whilst I was creating my second postcard for my Don’t Panic project; I was satisfied with experimenting in photoshop because it is my most used software from Adobe. In addition, I have learned new techniques in Illustrator from hating Illustrator to liking Illustrator is a very big step for me because I did not like Illustrator when I first used it but I’ve confidently grown into it when I’m mostly using it for my Illustrators for my postcards and sticker pack. It was my first time using Indesign too and it seemed complicated at first but it was quite easy when you’re used to it for a couple of weeks and Indesign taught me how to create my own Zine book using their tools similar to Photoshop but more complicated. It is the same with Illustrator but I believe that Indesign is easier than Illustrator because there are less techniques/tools to remember.

I believe my postcards worked particularly well because I was invested in trying new things rather than being set specific tasks, I was more free with what I can do and show what I can do. It worked well because I followed some artists that I really liked and followed their footsteps on how I created most of my postcards; the colour scheme matches my theme of death and the Illustrations I created are so diverse because my fear Thanatophobia is a diverse and open wided subject that I can somehow easily link it with most things. This has shown my creative skills from the Illustrations I produced for the postcards and you can clearly tell I took my time creating most of them because of how detailed they are; not also from drawings but also from the thought and background stories behind it. The only disadvantage of this assignment is that your work might not be liked by others because I am creating my own style of work that I creatively thought and others might not like the ideas that were implemented into my work. Although, I frequently ask my acquaintances if they like the work I produce and what I can improve on.

I particularly wanted to change the grime art postcard and the poster because I felt like the two of the work wasn’t the best I produced because the poster looked too simplistic to be a poster and the grime art looked wrong in way but it was my first time developing a grime art so it was an experience for me. The grime art postcard had a pleasant glitch effect added into it as well whilst combining grime art and I believe it worked well together, the grime art I made for the postcard was putting me off because it doesn’t seem to look right because of how weirdly shaped it is. I continued with the postcard despite me thinking my first grime art looks off-putting because it was my first grime art and I still think that grime art and glitch effect combined together was a likeable idea for a postcard. 

Overall, I have enjoyed the Don’t Panic Project because I was more free with what I can do and it shows what I can do when I’m not being set a specific task, I loved the challenge and the work I created throughout the project and I do not really regret any work I made because I took time my time making all of them but there are some that I am not 100% happy about but it balanced with the extremely good ones which are my favourites.

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Process in creating my Envelope

This is my Final Envelope for my Don’t Panic pack

Review

I personally think this is not my best work but I really liked how the skull mirror turned out with the brown paper and its simplicity, I also liked how there’s still the shadows I created from Illustrator came through when I printed it off because I thought it wouldn’t because the brown paper would be too dark but it came perfectly fine. 

Although there are some rooms for improvements, for example I could’ve added more thought into the back page because it may be a bit too simplistic, I could’ve added more typography or more detailed Illustrations. 

Steps and Processes

I have firstly drawn an Illustration for the front of the envelope which happen to be an interesting Illustration I have envisioned with creating a skull’s head into a mirror, I did this by tracing a picture of a skull with carbon paper and then going over it again but with darker ink, I then started to add details to the outside of a skull and added a simplistic holder that makes me think of an old fashioned mirror. 

After drawing the skull mirror, I drew a simple rose in Illustrator for the back of the envelope. I went to a new page in Illustrator with the given template of an envelope to add our Illustrations, I made my skull mirror more darker so that it is easily visible when it comes out printed. I decided to place it directly in the middle of the front page and adding the Don’t Panic logo on the side of the Illustration, with the necessity free logo I made in Illustrator from the star tool.

For the back page I wanted it to be really simplistic because rarely no one sees the back page or cares about the back page. I decided to add Thanatophobia because that is my fear and my simple drawing of a rose but I’ve duplicated them to face each other, I drew a rose because It’s occasionally linked with death and graves and funerals. 

I then printed it with the front and back page both printed separately to be able to have a bigger capacity and it is printed in brown paper because that is the Don’t Panic restrictions and guidelines. The back page printed a bit wobbly but that’s because printer took the paper too fast. 

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Zine Design Book progression

Final Front Page look

I spent some time developing my front page because to me, it is the most important page for the zine design book because it is the first judgement of your work and the customers will judge your front page to see if they like it or not. 

I chose pink and white for the front page because I think that the colours goes well together, I’ve also mixed up some shapes into one page to make it abstract because i wanted to make my theme into an abstract theme. I’ve also put a pink border to make it dimensional and the outlined circle to contrast with the rectangles. 

I made the background pages black because I wanted the theme to be constant so it won’t be too chaotic to look at and I was inspired from that from different zine design books I have found in Pinterest.  I also only used the work I have made with Wednesday’s sessions to keep a constant theme to the zine design book instead of creating one will all of my work that I have made so far. The Wednesday’s work I used were, glitch, darkroom and the vortograph images.

I kept the two opened pages the same image for both pages to not make it look chaotic and messy, I thought it would give off a good impression sticking to one image at a time for the opened pages.

Tools and Techniques in Indesign that I’ve used

I have used the rectangle tool to be able  to change the background colour of my page by just creating a rectangle that fits the entire page and I also use the rectangle tool to create borders for the pictures that are rectangle or square by selecting add stroke at the top of Indesign and change the thickness of the stroke and take off the fill colour.  I can also use the rectangle tool to add some shape onto the zine design when you don’t know else what to add onto the page.  And the rectangle tool is also similar to ellipse tool and polygon tool.

I have used the rectangle/ellipse/polygon frame tool to be able to add your pictures or drawings onto a shape, you have to place the picture in the chosen shape by going to files and then select place and place your chosen image. You can of course move your image and resize your image to your liking. 

I have used the pen tool to be able to create Irregular shapes and also to be able to place an image to an irregular shape from also just going to fie and then place and then choose your image to place. 

I have used the type tool to obviously type in letters or words into my zine design book. 

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Process of creating my sticker pack

My final sticker pack

Review

I overall loved the outcomes of the stickers because it looks very professional and looks like what I would see in small business’s online stores or in stationary shops that are local because the stickers I made looks unique per say, It is not your average sticker pack because it has a lot of different and unusual Illustrations. I loved how the coloured background also made the stickers look more vibrant than it is and I definitely think it matches with the sticker’s aesthetics. Some of the drawings on the sticker packs are definitely by far one of my favourite outcomes, for example the poison bottle and the skull in a cocktail glass; it holds so much details onto this sticker pack and I believe the customers would love my poison bottle Illustration too. 

There could be some improvements by adding more stickers but smaller ones to really fill in the page and to have more Typography Illustrations because it turned out quite well, I could maybe mix drawings and text together next time.

Steps and Processes

I have found some inspirations from Pinterest and decided to hand draw some Illustrations so that it won’t take a lot of time to all do it digitally, I have drawn the hourglass, poison bottle, skull cocktail glass and the death coffee cup from and to experiment with different techniques and ways and to also have some details to the drawings I created,; I find it easier to hand draw Illustrations when I want details in them. 

I’ve placed my drawings into photoshop with adjusting the brightness and contrast of the drawings to make it look more of a good detailed drawings. I used the magic wand tool to remove the white background from the paper, make sure to also find the tiny spots that could have the white paper on them so it won’t be visible from the coloured background we will add at the end of the sticker pack process. 

I then placed the drawings into different angles to make it look like It’s a sticker pack, I rarely found any sticker packs that was aligned to each other and I found it to look unprofessional. I also re-sized some drawings to fit into page so that it doesn’t look empty when they’re all small. 

After placing and re-sizing the drawings, I started to added colours to the drawings because I didn’t want a monochrome stickers, I also decided not to have a colour scheme because I aready had my postcards have a colour scheme. I decided to make the colours simple with no gradients or shading onto the colours because I mostly don’t see any gradients or shading with stickers because it is meant to be simple Illustrations. 

I added some Typography in the sticker pack to somehow balance Illustrations and Typography and to also practice with using Typography being an Illustration itself.

I used the warp text tool with the style of fish and changed the distortions and the facial structure of the text, I also went ahead to add a second layer of the same text but with a different shade of brown and a different size to create that Illusion of 3D dimensional which I thought was a creative perspective. “Death Before Decaf” is aimed for teenagers or people who are young adults because I don’t think the elders would understand why I would create a sticker for “Death Before Decaf” .

After creating all the stickers and used the magic wand tool to remove the white background, I selected a drawing and added a white stroke to the outside of the drawing and added a small shadow to create a professional looking sticker pack, I did this with all the stickers I have made with the same consistent thickness of stroke and shadow. 

I have added more Illustrations to have a full page of stickers and changed the background colour to properly see the white stroke that has been added. I chose this aesthically pleasing green and blue colour that overall matches with the stickers.

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Inspirations for my sticker pack

I found some inspirations from pinterest and some sticker packs I have bought before and carefully looked at them by what I needed to add in a sticker pack what I don’t need in a sticker pack. After some evaluation, I need to create some simple Illustrations, not too complicated because the details won’t be shown as much when it is sized down.

I also need to add a layer of white around the outside of the Illustrations and a small shadow or black outline to make it look like actual stickers, most stickers has a white outline after to make it look more professional and realistic for a sticker than just having the Illustrations on itself. 

I also looked at typography sticker packs to perhaps add in my sticker pack because having it all as Illustrations can get boring and repetitive. I also didn’t want a colour scheme for my sticker pack because I already have a colour scheme for my postcards. 

Some Sticker/Sticker packs that inspired me

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Postcard (6) process using Photoshop

The final outcome for the sixth postcard 

Review

I overall liked the outcome but it is not my favourite from all the postcards I have made so far. I liked how I experimented with using glitch effects with drawings instead of photographs and I personally thought it does go well together because it added some dimensions and details to the postcard itself, in addition when I added the shadows and the texture,  I believed it was a good concept because it overall made the drawing so much better by it looking more explicit. Adding the squares also just made it more chaotic which was the Impression I was going for with the ‘Glitch Effect’. 

There some improvements that can be made by making the grime art style more realistic and more gruesome to achieve the perfection of the grime art style but I needed a lot more practice ‘perfecting’ grime art. The overall shape of the drawing looks unique because It’s not smooth, It’s rough and has some edges but it might be a good idea to some people but I personally thought it was off-putting. 

Steps and Processes 

Firstly, I have placed an image of a half skull and half human picture onto Illustrator to be able to draw a grime art style, I was inspired by one of the grime art I saw from Pinterest and thought it was cool to try and draw my own grime art because I had an idea of mashing up a skull and a normal human head together to create my own very first grime art. I outlined the human face (top) and the skull with drip effects so that it looked like a grime art style, I thought creating grime art was extremely difficult because it looked difficult but it took me a few tries on getting used to using drips. After I’ve outlined the image with drips, I then outlined the facial structures and added more drips onto the face to add more details onto the drawing. 

After outlining the details, I added another artboard and copied and pasted the drawing into the new artboard to start adding shading, I firstly made the drawing into a live paint group so I am able to be colouring it in. I used only the greyscale provided from Illustrator essential classics because I can do actual colours when I edit them in Photoshop. I made a simplistic drawing of a grime art because I did not want the postcard to look to chaotic with the ideas I had planned, originally grime art looks complicated and chaotic but I tried to make it semi simplistic for the ideas of my postcard. 

I kept the colour scheme the same and edited the colours into Linear Light in Photoshop to keep a consistent theme throughout with a different opacity. I have just copied and pasted the drawing into an a5 page in photoshop to start editing the actual postcard, I have then again used a penguin book page as my background to add some contrast from the drawing; I also adjusted the brightness and contrast for the drawing. 

The last steps are that I changed the background colour into hard-mix of red with an opacity of 67% and added a drop shadow on the drawing to make it look 3D dimensional. I have then also added some texture onto the drawing because I thought it was a nice touch to the postcard since I don’t have any typography or bizarre drawings and I thought it also looked somewhat more crisp from adding the texture and the drop shadows. 

I was inspired from my glitch work from Wednesday’s session and I thought it was a good idea to combine the work into a postcard, how I have done this is by creating rectangles with different sizes and placed all over like a glitch effect and I’ve grouped the rectangle layers together and made them into hard mix, I have also placed them above the drawing to effectively see the glitch. I have added more contrast by mixing in some squares and rectangles under the drawing to create more dimensions and to gain that glitch look that I wanted it to be. I wanted to experiment with drawings and glitch work to see if it works together and if it balances out simplicity and intricacy. 

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Postcard (5) process using Photoshop

The Final outcome of the fifth postcard

Review

This is by far the most simplest postcard I have made so far because of just using what I already have from my penguin book and making them into a postcard,  the overall meaning of the postcard is somewhat depressing but It’s an important message to point out. I loved how the hourglass was presented to be spinning like a clock which I thought was a creative way presenting time. In addition, the texture of the background really goes well with the Illustration because it makes a contrast between the background and the drawing. I’ve also liked how there’s a relation with my fear and how I carefully used the pages. The silhouette of the woman was also a creative idea because I haven’t seen anything like that before. The contrast of the postcard is really in depth because of how dark the black parts on the drawing turned out. 

Steps and processes

This Illustration I drew was from my penguin book, I got inspired by Pinterest with using an hourglass to present ‘time’, with this Illustration I wanted the audience to depict how time is also used in death, we are all slowly dying and time is a big part of our lies that we don’t really value as much and I wanted to be pointed out with a postcard to inform that time is valuable and wasted. Some people are wary about time because they generally don’t have a lot of time left to live; for example people who are sick or who are aged.

My Illustration turned out to be simple but in a sense, I liked it more than being detailed. There is a silhouette of a woman in the top bit of the hourglass slowly being sucked into the bottom where time is being wasted at the bottom and the pieces left at the top is where she got time left. It shows the importance of her time left. I placed my scanned drawing into photoshop and used the polygon tool to take away the background and only kept the actual drawing itself so I can easily move the drawing into its place and to resize it, I then pressed Control T to select the drawing to be able to resize and move it. I placed it slightly tilted to present its moving like the hand of the clock.

I wanted to keep a similar shade of red for most of my postcard so I decided to stick with Linear Light, I did this from selecting a chosen background from my penguin book to add contrast and I changed the contrast and the brightness of the image to give it a crisp outcome. I’ve also made the drawing into a Linear Light colour but with a different opacity to clearly see the difference between the drawing and the background. I have copied and pasted the drawing to layer them into different stages of time, like its turning the hand like a clock, showing different seconds/minutes into time and how it’s representing ‘Time passes by’. I made the ones at the back with lower opacity to make it like a faded moment and I made into different layers and the top layer has a full opacity to mean that that’s her main time passing by. 

Furthermore, I have added texture onto the background to be able to differentiate between the background and the drawing because It is hard to tell what is what, the words on the drawing is also connected to death and time, I carefully chose the pages from the penguin book to have some sort of connection with my theme. The words on the background page also shows some relation with time, I read some of the penguin book pages to perhaps find something that relates to death that can give me some inspirations to create with my Illustrations. 

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Postcard (4) process using Photoshop

Final outcome of my fourth Postcard

Review

This postcard was a mixed of simplistic and intricate meanings because of the ideas I have came through. Overall, I liked the final outcome because of its balanced simplicity and intricacy, I loved how the ripples of the background because it looks like a suicide note that has been foreshadowed of death. I also loved the contrast between the background and the text because it makes the text stands out and make it seem like its the important value in the postcard. The text from the background creates that idealism of its actually being a suicide note because of the contrast, the consumer wouldn’t know why it’s there but it holds in an important value and background story to the postcard.

Improvements on the postcard could be that the word ‘deep’ and ‘living’ could have been dripping onto the side to create more dramatic effects onto the postcard, I could have done this buy using the liquify tool in photoshop. I also could’ve added shadows on the text to create a symbolic effect on the words to possibly present that the words are ‘deep’ and meaningful. 

Process into creating my fourth postcard 

I’ve decided to make one of my postcards to be simplistic because most of them are quite intricate and has some detailed Illustrations, I thought it creating a simple typography postcard will balance within the other postcards with Illustrations in them. 

I started by placing one of my penguin book pages into photoshop with the size of an A5, I changed the brightness and the contrast of the image to make the place and the ripples darker to be able to see it, I rasterized the layer and then added a colour overlay of linear light with a high opacity. I the adjusted the image to create that sinking effect on the background to add a tiny details to the postcard. I also changed the brightness and the contrast to my liking. 

After getting use to the warp text tool in photoshop, I’ve created an arc with the word ‘suffering’ to experiment with text layouts and getting used to with warp text tool, I have made the short words in just normal layout to balance it out. 

I have made the word ‘deep’ lowering down onto the page like it’s getting deep down into hell and created the same idea with the word ‘living’ like it’s also lowering and no time to live or a short time to live. I’ve made text into white so its clearly visible and easy to read. 

“Suffering is a deep part of living” is my chosen quote because depression, stress, anxiety can also lead up to death and I wanted to go across the idea of suffering by yourself is also deathly since not a lot of people would classify depression, anxiety and stress as a cause of death but in fact about 7 per cent of men and 1 per cent of women who are diagnosed with depression are dead from suicide. This is a big issue that we couldn’t easily fix because it’s depending on that one person. But this is how I have shown it by creating a simplistic postcard.

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Postcard (3) process using Photoshop

Final outcome for my third postcard

Last Steps

“Dia De Los Muertos” simply means Day of The Dead in Spanish/Mexican, I faced a challenge where I did not know where to place the text because the drawing was in the way. I’ve tried in several places in the postcard but I thought it was too awkward to place it into those places, like at the top of the crown, in the middle of the postcard and etc. After some time, I thought about creating the text into a wave shape to fit into the page because the hand and the head are slightly close together. I did this by of course typing in Dia De Los Muertos onto my postcard, I made it all capital letters so that it is easily visible and I also made it white so that it can be seen from the dissolved background. I created the wave effect by right clicking onto the text layer and there should be an option called “Warp Text” it differs where this settings is by your photoshop app. I chose the wave effect tool and started to differentiate the levels of the bend and distortion to ideally fit in between the face and hand. Lastly I’ve created the text into a dissolved effect too to somehow match with the background. 

Review

I personally loved the outcome of this postcard because I thought outside of the box, trying to think of ideas and events that relates to death without it being too obvious. The contrast between the dissolved background and the simplicity of the drawing really compliments each other because it’s making us directly look more at the drawing itself. The overall layout of the text is aesthetically pleasing because to me it’s fitted perfectly in between the face and hand, it’s also a good place to put the text because if I placed it elsewhere, It would’ve looked really awkward.

There are a few things that I disliked; for example, the drawing at the left hand side has no finishing and just been cut off completely because the Image I used has the model on the side of the image, I could’ve eyeballed the drawing to finish it off completely but I didn’t want to risk the idea because I think the drawing itself was adequate. In addition, the shading on the hand, especially the fingers looks a bit confusing. I tried to present the fingernails and the front of the fingers as shape and shaded but I personally think it looks a bit off.

I’ve interestingly loved the concept of creating postcards of events that relates to my fear because it’s promoting positive values of fears instead of it being negative all the time. It’s definitely a different idea from what I had at the start of thinking about Thanatophobia because I would just think of negative values all the time. But Day of The Dead is somehow a positive outcome from all the death by celebrating the importance they hold. And bringing colours and party into their graves to give them a somewhat freedom and relaxation. 

Steps and processes

I’ve firstly went to pexels.com to find an image related to Day of the Dead, I’ve started to outline the image onto Illustrator because it is easier to draw in Illustrator, I’ve changed the strokes of the paintbrush depending on the importance of the shape. For example, the main outline has a thick stroke to show what actually it is and the thin strokes are for the details so you won’t be able to see big stroked lines.  I’ve outlined the highlights and shadows so It will show onto photoshop. 

I chose this image because I thought it had a good connection with the Day of the Dead, the day of the dead is a  Mexican holiday celebrated in Mexico, it is held in November 1 and 2, it involves family and friends that gathers to a certain grave and offer food for the dead to remind of them of their importance. It still relates to my theme of death because there are multiple mentions of death and they are celebrating death and bringing their importance.

 After outlining the image with the paintbrush I’ve copied and pasted it into a new art-board to be able to fill the shapes with colours but only using the grey scale because it is easier to then to select the colour when editing in photoshop, I’ve firstly selected the drawing and made into live paint group to be able to colour it in; I’ve started to put the shadows and highlights from using the original image as a guide. I’ve used the same techniques before to keep the consistent theme of my postcards because I wanted it to be vaguely similar to each other but with its different quality. 

The image is also a woman with a makeup of a skeleton to present the dead and the crown is to make offerings to their loved ones by them dressing up and creating events, parades, festivals to enjoy their presences by gathering together in some way that everyone can enjoy. 

I have placed my drawing onto Photoshop to start and develop the actual postcard itself, I’ve kept the size of the drawing as fit into page so that you can properly see what the drawing is and hopefully they can tell what the drawing is about.

I’ve chosen a background from my penguin book and tweaked a lot of the background because I wanted it to be different from the other postcards I have made so far. Additionally, I have made the drawing into linear light with a different opacity so that the drawing itself won’t be as bright. But after some considerations, I believed the penguin background was too distracting for the drawing and the postcard. 

I have changed the background of the postcard into a suitable dissolved effect that I have used from photoshop where I click onto my background layer to change the colour of the page of the penguin book to red and changed the texture to dissolved to get that grainy look of a paper to perfectly match with the simple coloured drawing, it balances with simplicity and intricate details and I believe the two components goes well together. 

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Inspirations on creating a Zine Design book.

Matthew Sorgie 

Matthew Sorgie is an 18 yr old artist based in Connecticut, America. I’ve come across him from his youtube videos and I sometimes watch how he creates his Illustrations and zines step by step. His zine designs are available to purchase but unfortunately I wasn’t able to purchase one for myself. 

His zines inspired me because he has a set of theme that he produces throughout the zine book, for example this zine book he created called “Mish Mash” is all about a colourful compilation of his 8 stand-out pieces from his series on ‘messes’.  This is a simple way of organising a zine book or setting a theme. This inspired me to be creative in my zine book and experiment with different techniques in InDesign to be able to find my theme for my Zine Design book. 

I believe Matthew Sorgies’ zine design could be a big help towards creating my own one by taking notes or watching and watching again on how he created his zine designs from his youtube channel. 

I liked his process and work itself because the colours he uses are vibrant and his colour theme are original because I haven’t really seen colour themes of his like that before and I thought it was unique and creatively shown from his Illustration works.  Although I didn’t really like how he only had a few pages from his zine book, it might be possibly that he only had a small set of work to present in a book but I would definitely like to see more pages from his zine book even if its the same Illustrations but just presented differently. 

Zine Designs from Pinterest

Here are some Zine designs books that I mostly found aesthetically pleasing and loved the cooperation of type and simplicity of an Illustration, It’s a satisfying way of combining two different components that you wouldn’t thought would go together. My teacher personally said not to add any text throughout the zine book which I respectfully obeyed but perhaps for future work I would definitely experiment with this component. I would set my own colour scheme and pick a theme throughout the zine book, for example a theme of cherry blossoms or and the Japanese culture.  

Here is an example of using typography form having a list of  songs or some sort of listing which is another way of creating zine designs book, you could make a zine book just with lists of songs and maybe cooperate pictures from the album or the artists that sang the songs. Creating a small guide and some information about the artist and possibly to come with the record or the CD. 

This zine design is an example of a continuous colour scheme, not changing the colours throughout the book and being able to have different unique ways of showing the colours. This is certainly a difficult technique to learn because we will usually want to change the colours of each page and you will need to have self control to be able to get the difficult technique. This type of zine will be a challenge because most of my work I produced from Wednesday’s sessions are colourful and different from each other. I could maybe use this idea with future zine designs work. 

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Postcard (2) process using Photoshop

This is the final outcome of my second postcard for my Don’t Panic pack

I honestly loved the final outcome because it holds a lot of details everywhere but nicely balanced. I can see the shadows I created on the apple to make it look like it’s floating and the white stroke outlined on the apple also made it look like its a sticker at the same time. The apple itself is also opaque to see through the apple and seeing the text behind it, which I thought was a strong outcome for this postcard. The accidental border really made the postcard itself really compact and structured. The textured background additionally created a n intricate detailed postcard.

The only problem I had with this is that it looked more of a poster than a postcard and I don’t know how much of the details would be shown when I print them off and the shading in the apple could be presented and shown more because it looks like it’s a flat colour but there is definitely some shading on the apple itself. 

This is the Illustration I did in Illustrator from outlining a picture of a rotting apple I found in pexels.com and from copying the same processes on my skull drawing, I have shaded it with greyscale to create shadows and shading. I wanted to make it simple because I will be mostly doing the edits in photoshop and will be experimenting with tools and techniques whilst I’m making the postcard. 

I chose a rotten apple because it represents decay, and decay is a process of death, I did not want to be too obvious with my Illustrations because it makes boring and over-repeated. A rotting apple is one of the choices that doesn’t sound too gruesome and I think it’s a good choice to do as a postcard. 

I have then again used one of my pages from my penguin book as my background to create textures and shading. I have positioned my rotting apple in the middle so It can be easily seen. I have changed the brightness and the contrast of the background to create a more in depth details of the postcard because I mostly trying to experiment with backgrounds since most people leave it as a simple and plain background so I wanted to think outside the box to try and create different backgrounds for each postcards. 

Here is where I experimented with different techniques that I have mostly never touched in photoshop, I’m glad that I took the opportunity to experiment with different techniques or otherwise my postcard would just look plain. I have added a bit of everything in this postcard because it works well together, additionally I made a different shade of red to change up the aesthetics of the postcards so that it won’t be exactly the same looking postcards. I then again changed the brightness and the contrast of the background to make the text noticeable so that there is extra details on the background. 

I experimented with more techniques on the apple itself to see what I can create; I have added, contour, texture, stroke, inner shadow, inner glow, colour overlay, pattern overlay, outer glow and a drop shadow. 

Contour- sharp shadows , Texture - I have created a grainy texture to the apple to make it seem like it is like a sticker, stroke- the stroke is added to make it visible from the background colour because it is the same (the white outline), inner shadow- creating more in depth shadows and shading, inner glow- making the overall colour of the apple vibrant, colour overlay- the ability to change the colour of the layer, pattern overlay- creating patterns in the layer, outer glow- creating a glow shading outside the apple and drop shadow means adding shadows around the apple either at the top or bottom of the apple.  For this postcard I created a shadow on the bottom of the apple to create that 3D dimensional effect. 

“All things that have form eventually decay” text I just simply eyeballed a perfect size for the postcard and copied and pasted to create this text page, the purpose of this text layout is to be able to identify the shadows I created because I have realised it wasn’t showing with the red background so I had to improvise the poster by adding a simple but effective text layout. 

I have searched up in Pinterest for death quotes because all the quotes I was coming up with were too long to fit the page. I made the text all in capitals to be able to easily identify what it says. I finally made the text a bit bigger and perfectly fitted it within the page to also accidentally creating borders around it but I’m happy with that accident because it looks a lot more structured and clean. 

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Postcard (1) process using Photoshop

This is the final outcome of my first postcard for my Don’t Panic pack.

I personally thinks it looks really cool because it holds such intricate details on the skull and having it as a neon colour also makes it really vibrate, although the printer definitely won’t be able to capture the true neon red because it can’t possibly print into neon red. I also loved how the textured background came out because It’s very original and the hinted typography on the background add that tiny details that you will probably miss out. The big typography was also a big experimentation because I did not know that you can create a really good text from just using basic skills from the wave text tool. The ‘Thanatophobia’ text makes the overall postcard look 3D dimensional because the text is slightly facing down onto the page; the skull with the slight shading also makes it look slightly 3D dimensional.

There some room for improvements because I did not like how the skull’s head was chopped off from the left side and also on the top but it was one of my mistakes from drawing on Illustration, but it was my first time properly using Illustrator and I think I still did a good job of trying to maintain the Illustration. And the background text could perhaps be more vibrant because you can only about see it, I couldn’t change it because I mostly wanted the loop effect to be more vibrant than the actual text on the background. 

Here is where I started to experiment with different techniques, like using clipping task to make the border and also experimenting with colours that matches my fear, I’ve also experimented with the colours of the skull because I thought having it as the plain grey and white and black would be too simplistic for my liking. 

Here is where I experiment more with the layouts of my first postcard but I thought it was not looking like an original so I keep changing and changing until I find the right perfect postcard for me. I’ve simply created that border from using the clipping task on the typography image and copied and pasted my Illustration without the shading, just the outline itself because I thought it would look quite cool but looking at it now, it just looks like a repetition of work on the same page. 

After spending hours on end, I’ve found a perfect layout for my first postcard. I decided to make the background quite original, I found one of my pages from my penguin book to simply make as my background, I’ve made the penguin book background into this black and neon red by placing it with linear light and finding the right amount of opacity and then I’ve changed the brightness and contrast of the background to get that perfect dark black and neon red. 

In addition, I’ve been playing about with the text and trying to find the perfect place for it because the screenshot above, where the text is looks out of place. 

I moved the text again to see where it is placed better, additionally I have experimented with different textures of the text to see if they are worth to add in. 

Final processes

After a few minutes of figuring out where I should put my text, I decided to put it at the bottom of the page where it has this wave effect to it from using one of the tools in photoshop called the Wave text, you can find this by going to the top right of your screen and you should have an Icon with a T and an arch at the bottom of the T, you have several selections that you can transform your text. For this instance, I used the wave text to create that wave effect on the text and I decided to make the opacity of the text the same so you can see what it says because underneath it is the skull outline.

Furthermore, I changed the brightness and the contrast of the outlined skull to see a better defined neon Illustration so that you can see the finer details of the skull. After that, I slightly moved the background more into the middle of the skull to create that loop around the skull. 

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Inspirations in creating my Postcards

After surfing around Pinterest for inspirations on creating my postcards, I have found some inspirations from this particular artist. 

Tishk Barzanji

Tishk Barzanji inspired me because the colours he uses in his Illustrations are so beautiful, he uses limited colours to have an ongoing theme of Illustrations to perhaps present the stories that goes within the Illustrations, his main colours are red, black, green and white but with different shades of each colour. 

Tishk definitely added characters with background stories because you can see the characters are showing some type of emotions from their positions  and I believe this is a really creative way adding details into your pieces. 

His work are a mixed of hyperrealistic and cartooned Illustrations because his pieces are mostly very appealing but I couldn’t decide if it is more hyperrealistic or cartooned but I decided it is both. It seems like his work is very focused on architecture because his pieces has buildings or inside the buildings mixed with everyday life items or humans and pets. 

I will be definitely taking in considerations on following his footsteps with my postcards and possibly with other different works or with upcoming projects. 

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Developing my  final Poster in Photoshop

Review

This is my final poster outcome, I chose this poster out of all the 4 posters I made because I felt like this is the strongest outcome and the colour scheme really goes well together. 

I overall love the final outcome because the colours definitely are aesthetically pleasing to look and they match very well within each other, I went for more of a simplistic poster because most posters I see around are simplistic and I believe it is more appealing to look at because you won’t be confused or having a headache from the poster. 

I generated a poster that I would hang up in my room when I go to University or what I would hang up in my current room, the colours are matched each other to create that clean look, this is important because most people likes a clean look on a poster, but some would like an abstract idealism. 

I only have some second thoughts on how I can possibly improve the poster, for example adding more of that typography on the magenta background but I think it will be a bit chaotic. I then thought of the Illustration from the penguin book just slightly creeping towards the front of the skull was a bit complicated to visualise but I then realised it kind of looks like there is a spirit looking through the skulls eyes. 

I’ve firstly copied my skull Illustration from Illustrator to the photoshop file and then I have changed the  brightness and the contrast of the Illustration, I have put colour overlay of linear light with the opacity of 100%.

Steps and Processes

this was the Illustration before editing it into a poster. 

after editing the Illustration, i have added another layer of one of my pages from my Penguin Book Illustration to add contrast and more definition to the poster, i have added the penguin book page at the bottom layer of the Illustration and grouped the penguin book page with the Illustration to create the background as the penguin book within the outlines of the skull; there is also an Illustration within the penguin book and I slightly placed it on the side of the skull to create in depth shading and imaginary. 

I then changed the background colour into a neon type magenta because I believed it will go really well with the blue skull and the blue typography on the background, I’ve had inspirations from some of the posters in the Don’t Panic website, whilst I was doing the 10 poster analysis, I thought it was a good idea to take some inspirations on some of the posters. Finally I then added a simple typography of “Thanatophobia” with the text type as a ‘blackoak std’ and then I chose the gold-ish colour because it complements within the magenta background. 

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Posters outcomes that I rejected

I have rejected this piece because I thought it was too chaotic and the colours are not really matched which really bothered me but I although loved the black and white contrasted background because It’s really different from others I have created, but I think I will carry that idea onto my postcards to create the similar textured background. 

In addition, the typography position is a bit awkward and it is blocking the details on the skull which I thought is really an important reason why I shouldn’t choose it as my final poster; I believe a lot of people wouldn’t prefer this poster because it is not for everyone. I have asked my colleagues and friends on which they prefer and they definitely on the same page as me with my actual final outcome of my poster and sometimes you have to ask people what they think of your work to get ideas and a bit of help on what to improve on the next poster or work I produce. 

This was the second outcome of the posters, It is very similar with the one on top but it is just different colours to experiment. 

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Collage of Thanatophobia

Here is my simple collage of my fear Thanatophobia, I’ve added photos or Illustrations that will inspire my upcoming work. I have a picture on how to die in several ways, drowning, suffocating, rotting and I’ve also enlisted some items that relates to death and also the celebration of death (Day of The Dead), all of them are important values to my work because the fear of death is always not about dying, it’s also the process of death, the feeling of dying and the general thoughts on dying. There are some pictures that are questionable, for example the animated character on top right, It’s a famous anime character in the anime called ‘Death Note’ and some episodes in Death Note inspired me to Illustrate some ideas in there, also the poppy is questionable but it represents the soldiers who died from the war and I believe it has a connection with the fear of death. 

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Don’t Panic Poster Analysis (2)

Dark by Eelus

I really loved the colour scheme in this poster, It’s simplistic but it can hold a lot of contrast and details to the Illustrations created, I am very inspired to create something similar for postcards because I really do like how it has been created, it also links with nightmares and death which is my fear, death is a really interesting fear because It’s everywhere and it happens everyday, even if its for humans or animals or even plants. The Illustrations created are somehow cute, which is a big contrast with the title of ‘Dark’ but it is a nice connection with the contrast of the cuteness and the darkness. I will certainly take this poster for inspirations because I love the colours and the Illustrations. 

Food by Yuko Kondo

This Poster has a reminisces of the hierarchy system, I like the Illustration of it being vintage and old news, the title ‘Food’ just makes me imagine about the class system, where the rich gets more wealthy food and whereas the bottom class get the poor food or nothing at all; or the poor being servants to the upper class and serving/cooking them their food, we can kind of see that in the Illustration where the men are carrying the heavy snakes and on the top of that is this God guarded from the Angels and the servants are with the devils. This is signifying the class system of the society. 

Nature by Sam Ashton

I really liked this simple Illustration because It’s a definitely simple idea of using triangles as trees and mountains. I like how the artist used different patterns and textures with each different sections of the triangle to add in depth and it looks like he added that to also create shades onto the Illustration, the river flow also has dark blue lines to create waves onto the river flow which I thought was a creative way of creating imagery. The simple shading for using only grey as the back of the mountains is also a really nice simple Illustration to create effects of 3D dimensional. 

Ritual by Hammo

A ritual simply means a ceremony, for this instance their ritual ceremony for the big astronaut which I’m using is the leader of the pack and he’s been looked up upon because he is probably teaching them valuable lessons about how to be a successful astronaut, It’s similar to being a President or being a teacher, a lot of people looks up to this person and being inspired. I also like the colour scheme in this poster from only having limited colours to use and using the same colours but in different shades.

Democracy by Johnny Kelly 

This Illustration is really creative in trying to depict Democracy, democracy is basically a set of rules set up from the government that we strictly have to follow, in this Illustration it shows the different stages of how democracy works, with the computer programs at the top from informing the country about the news and the tiny rooms of shelves can be the indication of important documents and the rooms with chairs are where the conversations are being held to make decisions for the country. This Illustration is a creative way to present how democracy works and how its shown creatively. There are many process and steps to make decisions for the country and many decisions to also create rules. It holds up a lot of power.