A good majority of my pattern swatches started out as photos of interesting patterns that I took with my phone, both in and around my apartment. Some of the textures are cropped rasterized pieces from things like kitchen appliances and musical instruments, while others are from the landscaping around my apartment including flowers and stone wall textures. I chose to go with a complementary color scheme, focusing on orange and blue. I really wanted the colors to pop so to better match the colors I needed to complete the project, I also searched online and sampled some screen shot textures of water and other closely matching patterns to achieve my more desired effects.
I struggled most with this project when it came time to move from the thumbnail sketches into Illustrator. I didn't like the the look of my sketches and didn't feel comfortable when I tried re-drawing the whole thing out in Illustrator, ultimately I reverted back to the many reef and scuba diving images I collected during my initial brainstorming. I started bringing in cropped pieces of the different photos that I liked until I had constructed something close to the layout that I envisioned. Then I rasterized the image pieces and did color image traces. I followed that with live-trace and live-paint actions, further simplifying and altering the image, making it my own and filling it with the patterns I created. About half way thru the project I noticed the file was getting too large and slowing the program and my progress down, even after switching computers. At that time, I decided to export what I had as a JPEG and then brought it back in and started working with the patterns in brush form, adding to the top of the image (and my prior work). I had some fun with this, adding in new painterly elements with even more abstracted patterns and got more comfortable using the drawing tablet in the process.
Very well done, doesn't look like 30 random patterns just thrown in.
ReplyDeleteGreat job on the design and pattern layout.
ReplyDeletethe design is very concise and well balanced with the patterns, good job :)
ReplyDeleteI really like this design. Even if so many patterns were used, you still managed to make the image look clean and not busy (I had a problem that my work turned out to be little more busy than I'd prefer, but you managed to male it look great)
ReplyDeleteit looks awesome. at first glance you don't notice the texture because of how well you matched it to the theme.
ReplyDeleteNice work. I like how your eye wants to go deeper into the image to try and pick out more patterns. The clown fish are awesome and add just the right amount of color to all the blues and darkness.
ReplyDeletethis was my favorite one. i would hang that in my kids room. you should do something with this one.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you constructed the diver and the subtle pattern variations used. It reminds me of collage or stained glass. The clown fish are refreshing - Nemo! Good job.
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