This is a college project for my Digital Illustration's class called, "Vector Poster."
For this assignment, our goal was to create a vector poster in which we got to be totally creative with. The idea, design, character and theme were completely up to us. The whole idea of this assignment was to gain a great portfolio content item for our Portfolio Presentation Package. So what did I do? I went above and beyond with this piece.
There weren't any specific dimensions for the page size, so I just used the classes standard file size 8.5 x 11.
When starting the creative process for this assignment, I knew exactly what I wanted to create and the type of theme I wanted to portray within the piece. I chose one of my all time favorite singer's Dua Lipa with a retro theme that went with her Future Nostalgia era. Below is the reference photo I used from her Future Nostalgia album cover.
Dua Lipa's Future Nostalgia Album Cover.
As you can see, the reference photo that I chose had a lot of different color variety's as well as numerous highlight's and shadow's which I definitely had to keep in mind considering that I had to draw them all, if not most- shape by shape and color by color. I was up for the challenge.
Now that I had chosen the desired picture I wanted to use, it was then time to search for retro inspiration for the overall theme. After searching and searching, it wasn't long until I found a really great representation of retro. Below is the piece that inspired me.
All credits for this image belong to "Mustard Yard Press" on Etsy.
This image had exactly the kind of simplicity for a background as well as the overall retro theme that I had in mind.
Next it was time to start putting my idea's into play and start the design process. I created an overall black outline for Dua lipa and then it was time to start putting in the color. Since the original reference photo that I had chosen had more of a dark look to it, I found another reference photo from the same photoshoot which was a lot brighter to use for the some of the color picking in my piece. Below is that image.
This photo was especially helpful to use for certain areas of Miss. Dua that the original reference photo had shadowed out, like her skin color, left earring and skirt.
When I had finished with her overall illustration, it was then time to work on the background.
I found a 60's inspired retro colored pallet online and decided to pick and choose the colors I wanted to use from that. A red "X" is on the colors that I had used within my background.
And the grand finale of it all, here is my finished Vector Poster.
I am extremely proud of how my final piece turned out and I am in love with the finished outcome! being more than halfway finished with the piece at the time, I started to have doubts that I made my piece look too complex and I was even considering deleting a lot of the shapes to make the piece look more simple, but I'm glad I didn't since this came out better than I anticipated. I was even considering not adding her face to take the more simplistic approach, but again- I'm glad I did.
Last but not least is my Poster Art Asset Sheet which shows a great variety of the different tones and hues of the numerous variants of colors I used in my finished piece.
Thank you for viewing!