Because I really had no clue how to start this UN brief, after brainstorming, I decided to try and get all my thoughts and ideas onto paper so I could see what I could potentially be working with, visually. I went for obvious things like nuclear weapons and globes, but I also tried to think outside of the box. Because the UN are looking for a serious, yet eye catching poster, I wanted to involve serious aspects. For example, what is the main consequence of nuclear weapons? Death. Therefore I thought about including bones somehow, maybe draw them falling from the sky, or even as shadows across the page. I then thought about drawing children because children are innocent and are used a lot to grab the audiences attention. They are loved by all so I wanted to involve them in my poster too.
I obviously don't have much experience with drawing characters or having a personal style, so I opted to go for round shapes, which I experimented with on paper. I think this will be much easier to replicate in Photoshop where I can use the shape tool to create the children, but I wanted to keep them stylistic yet simplistic, and have no facial expression on them to keep the professional theme going.
Once I knew what themes I would be running with, I made a quick template with my favourite drawings and started to think about where I was going to place my text with the images surrounding them. This was just a rough idea of where I thought I wanted my placements to be, but I had the idea in my mind that I wanted to place facts and figures in paths (circles, cubes) so that my information would be more attractive to look at and people would want to read the information and not turn a blind eye towards it.
I also had ideas about using some of the images I had draw as shadows. for example have the nuclear weapon as a shadow of the little boy to suggest that there is ALWAYS a threat of mass destruction amongst everyone, even young children and that it follows you wherever you go because you never know when it could happen. Also the bottom right image on the template I thought was quite clever because the little boy is then the shadow of the skeleton as a representation of who he used to be, but without the disarmament of nuclear weapons, there will be no life of young children. I also put the girl on top of the world because it shows that WE have the choice to dictate whether we want to live on this earth or not. It is freewill that has caused these threats of nuclear weapons so it is also up to us to stop them.
My colour palette that I wanted to work with is vivid yet also muted. I wanted to have a select few colours to work with and I wanted to challenge myself also to not stick to neon colours and gradients. I think red is a powerful colours and amongst the other muted shades it really stands out and I thought this was perfect.
This is my refined version of the little boy with the nuclear weapon as a shadow. I really love how this turned out and he was a starting point of how I wanted to visualise my whole poster, from colour to style. I also surprised myself with the shadow, once I had coloured my characters and objects in, I thought about connecting them and didn't think I could do it without messing it up, but I actually love it and it is more eye catching than my initial idea.
Because of how happy I was with the little boy, I next went and created the skeleton and him as a shadow. At first I really wasn't pleased with how it was progressing, but once I inverted the colour of the shadow and experimented with a black background I thought that it looked much more pleasant. I then added some 'stars', more so because it looked stylistically, more appealing, but also because it could represent the dust particles that are also an extremely large danger to those who do not die initially after the nuclear impact.
Then the last of my planned illustrations was the girl on the world. I think this turned out MUCH better than what I had planned. I followed the style form the little boy that I made first and then also added the dusty, black background from the other illustration and was extremely pleased. I think this is quite thoughtful as it represents the text that will go beside it, as well as wanting to interest those from any age to read the poster and think about the real effects if there is no nuclear disarmament.
Then because I was still in the mood to make some illustrations, I went with my first idea of having bones fall from the sky as a symbol of all the deaths that will take place, and took this and made it into an umbrella shield. I mostly went with my instincts, and created what I thought would follow the themes and colours of the poster, but with my own twist. I also added a red drop shadow to the bones to make them appear more dangerous and prominent amongst the plain background.
This is what they looked like once I placed them together and followed the template that I had created. I have obviously made some alterations, for example the plans that I had weren't drawn to scale, so when I put my refined images into one poster, they didn't look right in the way that I thought I could originally place them, so I just altered them around. I also changed the font that I had thought about and made it bolder, and bigger to attract those near by. To separate my illustration I made some borders on the spur of the moment and I am glad I did because I feel like they really pull my whole colour palette together, and this enabled me to put separate pieces of information in the three sections.
And this is my final poster with text and also on an example poster frame. I think finding the right text was the hardest part of this whole poster process! I didn't want to babble too much because although it is supposed to be informative, it is also supposed to be appealing and creative and shock people. There is so much information out there on nuclear weapons and disarmament that I really had to think when I was shortening it down. I got most of my facts from the UN website because I thought this would be most appropriate, and I tried to educate with facts figures, things that stand out as well and talk about the effects of nuclear weapons like drop in the earths temperature and starvation, that may be less obvious to people, but still interesting.
Overall this poster was a CHALLENGE. Especially because it had to be an informative poster and not just a creative one that was aesthetically pleasing. I had to include reason and purpose in combination with creativity and I really hope I did an okay job!
No comments:
Post a Comment