Design 101 Portfolio
I bow with respect
you fought and died with honour,
alas! We were foes
Poster 1: The Fall of a Foe
#DES101 #Poster
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'The Fall of a Foe' is my first poster and it represents the honourable death of the samurai. As well as this it represents the potentially short life of warriors.
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My inspiration for poster 1 was my previous work in low poly design as well as original samurai sketches. I felt like using my skills in low poly, although previously only digital, would provide a fantastic base for this poster.
The skull and samurai helmet came out extremely well. The cherry blossom tree is unique and the style helps create continuity between all the elements in the scene. However, the blossoms on the tree are initially difficult to identify due to the limitation of a grayscale colour scheme.
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The main concepts used in poster 1 were: geometric shapes; abstraction; strong silhouettes and harmony through composition. The geometric shape used in this poster is a triangle, this is the only shape used throughout the whole poster, creating harmony and continuity. The abstraction comes from taking typically organic shapes, like a skull and tree, and abstracting them to a much simpler form. The silhouettes come from the two main elements having bold outlines and strong shapes.
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Poster 2: Honoured Pasts
#DES101 #Poster
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‘Honoured Pasts’ is a movie poster that would be used to promote the film. Its shows the main character standing upon a cliff, reflecting on his past life.
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The technique required for poster 2 was digital creation. I opted to use Adobe Illustrator due to my past experience in the software.
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​This poster consists of 4 elements, the foreground image, the title, the actors/release date and the background. To catch the viewers attention I made the foreground image red. I chose to make the koi fish red as it is the colour associated with rage and death, suitable colours for a samurai war film. The inside of the koi has a landscape and the samurai himself. This is a simple way to set the scene for the movie as well as introduce the viewer to the main character.
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The typography choices in the title and movie information helps to create a hierarchy between the elements. As well as this the combination of the black and white colour makes the text stand out from the background.
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Finally, the background is an abstracted ying-yang to suggest the movie is about balance within a war.
Poster 3: Seppuku
#DES101 #Poster
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The story is short and to the point, two samurai face-off, 3 frames to set the scene, the fight lasts 5 frames. And the twist is the losing samurai performs seppuku.
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Seppuku is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. The samurai used this and die with honour rather than fall into the hands of the enemies. This storyboard shows the showdown between two samurai warriors, with one being defeated and performing seppuku. In this instance, as if the haiku is written by the samurai that wins. Respecting the death of his enemy and his choice to die by his own hands.
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For this poster, I used a combination of sketching and digital work to create the storyboard. The majority of frames are hand-drawn, then scanned into photoshop where I touched them up and made adjustments.
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I chose to use minimalist backgrounds for the majority of frames in order to keep the viewer’s attention on the samurai and the arc with the two. As well as this I ensured I kept the armoured samurai on the left side of the frames to help keep a sense of direction and progress.