Audience/Purpose: describe the intended audience of your illustration(s); what are you trying to communicate to this audience?
I would say that the intended audience is humanity, but more specifically, it's for those who are oblivious about how their selfish actions have a long-lasting effect on animals. Some human activities affect penguins more directly than others such as irresponsible fishing, poaching, and tourism. Similarly, but more indirectly, climate change proves to be a major threat to the penguin population which needs to be rapidly addressed. My image is trying to show penguins as victims of human disturbance but in a fun and creative way. Hypothetically, if they were able to protest, they may be arrested or shut down because humans wouldn't want more penguins like him, to be going around blaming them for their endangerment. While the penguins see Mr. Sardines as a hero, humans may see him as a threat.
Image(s): how do features of the illustration(s) effectively convey the message to your audience?
After getting feedback on my image, I realized it looked pretty plain. So, I started enhancing it by doing the following: coloring in the penguin, thickening the jail bars so they didn't blend in, making the text bold to stand out more, and adding dramatic effects to really capture that it's a breaking news story. I think that the red and blue frame does a good job of making sure the image is alerting something, as well as the stickers, the arrows, and the lines around the title. I took inspiration from really newspapers and realized that my rough draft was boring and didn't catch my eye as much as this one did.
Process: what did you do to create the illustration(s) in this project?
At first, I was unsure of what to make for my illustrator project; I had some sort of writer's block. So, the first thing I did was draw a random blob with the pen tool. From there I started playing around with the repeat option and ended up making a snowflake. Since I already had a penguin theme going on whenever I did tutorials, I stuck with it and drew one on another layer. It was pretty time-consuming, but definitely worth it in the end when I had learned to do it successfully. Then, I saw that the penguin I drew looked a bit sad, so I made him look even more noticeably upset and added a pitiful remark on his sign. That's when I got the idea of putting him in a jail cell and coming up with a story of why he was there. I used the ruler tool to make them as straight as possible and made the stroke slightly bigger so it is distinguishable from the penguin's outline. Finally, I added a light blue layer on top of everything and made sure the opacity was low so everything was still visible.
Learning: what did you learn from working on this project–for example, about Illustrator/Canva, about design, about communication, about yourself?
From working on this project, I learned the usefulness of both Illustrator and Canva. They are convenient tools when trying to communicate a message to an audience and allow a lot of freedom to do so. Illustrator calls for starting with a blank page while Canva already gave you a starting point. I was actually not aware of Canva before this class, so knowing that it exists will help me if I ever need to make a quick post, flyer, poster, etc. Therefore, I will be taking the knowledge of these programs along with me throughout the rest of my life.
Next: what will you do the same/differently on the next project?
For the next project, I will definitely try to have a plan on what I'm doing, earlier rather than waiting until something comes to me. I felt that my creative block prevented me from creating something even more thought and prepared. Regardless, I am proud of my image, and even more, so that I got to do it on something that matters to me. With the next project, I also hope to do it on something I am passionate about because it makes the process even more fun. I will also continue to look up tutorials on my own time to use the tools to their biggest potential.