Adobe Illustrator

Hello guys, what do you think for my first assignment on Adobe Illustrator? :blush:

gdfmoving

Moved to Student Forum :slight_smile:

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Are you saying this is the first time youā€™ve used Adobe Illustrator? Most people struggle with it at first, not being able to draw much of anything other than a line or a box.

Or are you saying that you already knew how to use Illustrator and that this is your first class assignment? If so, are you asking us to comment on the design of the Illustration or your proficiency with Adobe Illustrator?

What was the assignment?

Iā€™m not quite certain what I am looking at, or what I should be looking for.

Hello Smurf, a birth card.

Hello Eriskay, what do you mean?

Hello Just-B, thank you for your answer.
Yes, this is the first time I use Illustrator, because Iā€™m studying at the moment. Actually this is a very significant assignment and I want your opinion ( for possible mistakes that need improvement), before I send it to my teacher. :blush:

But whatā€™s the whole brief? It canā€™t just be ā€˜birth cardā€™.

How can we judge it with so little information about the requirements for the project?

Did you produce everything in the scene from scratch, or is it made up of ā€œsourcedā€ artwork?

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Based on your screen name and the card, it looks as if you were asked to design your own birth announcement, maybe? But as others have hinted at without knowing the full requirements and the brief for the assignment it is hard to provide proper feedback.

@HotButtonā€™s question about whether all of the art was drawn by you in Illustrator is also valid. At a quick glance it looks as if the grass may be a photo, or a cutout image placed in Illustrator (it looks pixelated)

Everything is produced by me from scratch

Thatā€™s the whole brief :slightly_smiling_face:

Hello CraigB. Everything is drawn by me :slightly_smiling_face:
Thatā€™s the brief from my teacher

If this is your first time using Illustrator, you started with a blank document, and drew all of that yourself, I am impressed. But I have a seriously hard time believing a first-time Illustrator user did all of that from scratch.

If I were to criticize the piece, a couple of things jump out at me.

The first thing is that youā€™re mixing styles. The grass has a brushy, painterly style, and the clouds are in a flat art style.

You have areas of visual tension. For example, where the cloud almost touches the flower on the duckā€™s head and where the heart just barely touches the cloud on the right. To my eye, different graphic elements need to overlap to connect or have a sufficient amount of air between them that they read as separate elements.

The random size and placement of the flowers, and the fact that there are no stems to ground them, make them feel tacked on.

There are highlights on opposite sides of the shell (left on the bottom half and right side of the top or cracked half). Where is the light source?

The color palette is not particularly harmonious to my eye.

Overall, it feels like it was something that was put together using different sources of stock art or found objects.

All of that said, Iā€™m okay with the layout, and I like that you have a bug and flower overlapping the box around the text. This adds a nice bit of depth.

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Have you used other vector Illustration software before, such as Inkscape or Affinity Designer? The reason I ask is that learning to use vector drawing software is difficult and counterintuitive for most people. The software takes time to learn.

If you already knew how to use Inkscape, learning Illustrator wouldnā€™t be too difficult. However, for a first-time user of vector drawing software, what youā€™ve drawn seems almost impossible. It seems a bit like learning to play the violin or to speak Swedish in a week.

If this is the first time youā€™ve Illustrator or other vector drawing software, and if you drew everything on the card yourself, Iā€™m extremely impressed and you deserve the best grade possible for a beginning class.

Aside from that, I agree with @Steve_Oā€™s observations, so I wonā€™t repeat them. In addition, Iā€™m not a fan of the typography youā€™ve used. Script typefaces have their place, but using script fonts as text over a complicated background interferes with legibility and readability.

Please excuse me if Iā€™m wrong, but I have a hunch thereā€™s something youā€™re not telling us.

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If remember correctly the flowers are part of Illustrators integrated stock material.

Hello Just-B, i have no reason to lie. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
Iā€™ve never used another vector program, I just have seen a lot of tutorials when I struggled with something. Thank you for your nice words.
Which lettertype do you think fits the best?

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Hello Joe, from everything on the picture, I stole only the white flower because I liked it :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Hello Steve_O , I have no reason to lie. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: the only think that I ā€œstoleā€ is the white flower from the Illustratorā€™s stock. You were very clear and helpful, thank you very much! I will try to fix what you pointed out! :blush:

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