I started off by hitting the National Zoo site and initially selecting a Porcupine to work with (not for any particular reason, but I thought I'd draw him hanging from a branch). I worked a little bit on this, then came back a week later and realized the porcupine was basically all upper case 'I's used as his "prickles" and decided it wasn't very interesting.
Going back to the site, the animal that grabbed my attention was the Scarlet Ibis. This interesting bird is all scarlett, except for the beak and tail feathers. I started by placing the image I had into my document, then using that as a basis for my illustration I chose a font (helvetica for long clean lines) and began placing letters. My process for this was (over and over): create text box, enter a letter, change to outlines, scale to size, then rotate and put in place. Almost all of my letters are recognizable, except for the upper-case I's I used as the beak, which I warped a bit to make into a beak. Also hard to see are the 'B's I used to indicate the knees- 2 for each knee, places back to back. The eye is a white 'e' behind a black 'c'.
4 comments:
I'm glad you switched over to a more "interesting" animal in terms of which letterforms could be used to compose the body, and I really like the outcome. Nice subtle touches with the "b's" for the knees, "a's" for the toes, etc. I also like the font you chose for the common name/typography, but I'm not sure I'm sold on the use of the star to dot the "i" and then again as a bullet to set off your paragraph...I don't know much about the Scarlett Ibis, but for some reason the star seems out of place to me...
Otherwise, I dig it...nice work.
The start was part of the 'i' in the typeface I used for The Scarlett Ibis, though I did add the other star. Maybe too much... Thanks for the comments.
I like how you minimized the use of text and focused on the Scarlett Ibis and the layout. The result is really clean and modern. I like how you kept your color palette in the same family.
Just a couple of suggestions. The large circle in the background hits your text boxes on the left hand side. I just want to nudge the circle over a few spaces so there is some room between it and the white text. It's very minor and you may feel it's fine the way it is. I was also thinking if it might be nice to have a little more contrast in color between the positive space of your letter forms and the negative space in the Iris. Maybe making one shade a little lighter to play up the letter forms. Overall, good job.
Definitely love the mood you're creating with the colors. There's a bright eye-popping quality to the animal and it feels like you've captured it here as well. I also like the playful, flowing nature of the letterforms in the title. It creates a very inviting feeling to the Ibis. The only area I would look at modifying would be the text on the right. Not sure the locations all work for me. I can't really pinpoint what it is but I feel like I want the latin name below, maybe play around with the location of the body text. Not sure. That may just be me being picky. It's a real eye-catcher though! Nice job!
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