Project 1 - Maurice Frank

*All images link to larger view*



I drew a night time cityscape with buildings of various sizes, the moon, and stars. I used rectangle primitives for the buildings because all changes were limited to position, scaling and skewing (mostly). There was no need for any distortion or interaction with other drawings. I needed shapes that would always look like buildings.

For the moon I used two merged drawings, both ovals. I thought this would be the easiest way to create a crescent moon. I placed one oval over the other, nearly covering it entirely. I removed the top oval, deleted it, leaving a sliver of the waning moon.

I then made stars (3 point), and a planet (circle) near the moon, using object drawings. I think I could have used any shape type but I had not used object drawings yet and I needed them to fulfill the assignment. Another reason was, merged drawings and primitives have specific purposes. Unlike the moon and buildings, I had no reason to limit the transformations nor was it necessary to create a shape using merged drawings. What if, at some future date, I need to use these objects again? Object drawings utilize all transformation options giving me the freedom to change it as needed without worry of accidentally modifying another object.

On a whim I decided to skew the buildings and the moon. I also rounded the top corners on the buildings.






I created a face in profile using four guides to form a box. Then using the pen tool, snapping to guides, I drew a square (the face). I then drew lines (the hair) starting at the top left corner, and ending at the bottom right corner of the square. I added an anchor point near the center-bottom section of the left vertical line of the face. I used the subselection tool, to make the straight line into an "S," creating the nose and mouth. I used the convert anchor point tool on the "hair" lines to smooth out the corners and then used the subselection tool and Bezier handles to shape the hair.






Text is probably my favorite part because, and I'm sure this will shock you all, my drawing skills aren't anything special. In the first example I created the text with the 'marker felt' font, wide style. I scaled it up some, changed the font color and put more space between the letters.

Here I applied a gradient to the text from the previous example. A gradient cannot be placed onto text without first converting it to shapes. To do this select the text, right-click and choose 'Break Apart.' Now each character is a separate object. While all characters are selected, right-click and choose 'Break Apart' again. This converts the text to shapes. Now it is possible to apply a gradient.
Here I chose to create a banner using a gradient with a modified focal point as the background with Mardi Gras colors because it is Carnival Season. I used the 'Funkadelic' text from before with a different color. I keep using Funkadelic because they are performing Monday night and I'm something of a P-Funk junkie.



It's OK to laugh. Really. For the brush tool (car) I used the large round brush shape and the fourth smallest brush size. I used the smooth mode with the pencil tool (driver, cloud, and bird).


I didn't know what to do with the deco tool. So I made a vine covered road.


I redesigned the car and road with the transform tool.


Again, I do enjoy text creation. However, it's easy to get sidetracked choosing fonts and colors. I also like modifying images and shapes. Although right now I am just pushing and pulling until the image looks kind of cool, I hope to strengthen those skills. Since I cannot draw well, I think modifying shapes may be a more realistic approach to creating images.