Digital Diary

I began my animated character by tracing a drawing I had done previously in Fine Art, I carefully followed the outline below onto the tracing paper. The drawing was of a model wearing a dress I had designed, the dress was inspired by the coral reef and has many intricate folds and creases. When I had traced it I then scanned it into the computer using the scanner, I then saved the scanned image to the copy folder so I would be able to retrieve it from my own computer. After saving the image on my computer I then began preparing the image by opening it up into Adobe Illustrator. I then traced the image using the tracing tool to make the outline of the drawing bolder and more defined. After re saving it I then opened the image up in PhotoDraw to begin bringing the image to life.

I had used PhotoDraw before so I had a good knowledge of what tools and techniques the software had to offer. I began on the neckline of the dress, creating shadows using darker tones of purples and also creating highlights using white or paler shades of pink. I zoomed in on each crease of the dress to get a more detailed view to achieve a more lifelike interpretation and texture. I coloured the dress by using the paint tool to form a black outline around each fold and crease of the dress, I also used a wide variety of colour shades of purple and pink to form the tones of the material of the garment.  I also used the blur and smudge tools to blend the colours to avoid a stripy, pixelated effect. To colour the skin I used a pale peach shade but altered the intensity and transparency to make the colour more translucent therefore paler and less bright. I wanted to avoid my character looking like a cartoon, I wanted the model to look as life like as possible while retaining the feel of an artistic sketch. For the models hair I wanted to create a lot of texture that would resemble strands of hair , I also wanted there to be a contrast between the smoothness of the material of the dress to the wiry surface of the hair. So I used the pencil tool to create thinner lines overlapping to give the effect of strands of hair.