Ever since I was 6 years old I loved the cartoon She-Ra, Princess of Power. The two of us had a lot in common, She-Ra and I. We were both sassy, blue-eyed blondes with an annoying brother. I had a rainbow colored pegasus, liked to wear a cape with skater skirts, and so did She-Ra. It was a perfect match.
Developing my skills as a graphic designer will always be an important part of my career. When building those skills, I like to research styles and techniques that I've never had the chance to discover within my own work. In the midst of designing and printing the fan art posters for a comic convention (see poster projects) I realized that the range of styles were very limited. This got me thinking about what I would really enjoy creating, and learning. Although this project is more personal, I'm motivated to learn and develop new abilities.
The pictures below show the progression of my project: Geometric She-Ra
Photo credit: Cinnamoncosplay @ DeviantArt.
Photo credit: Cinnamoncosplay @ DeviantArt.
March 2015 Update: After editing the photo, I roughly start outlining the triangles on photograph in Photoshop (blue). Once the photo is complete, I switched over to Illustrator and created a new doc, and layers. With the assistance of my trusty pen tool, I create what feels like guh-zillions of triangles, align them to center point, and move on to forming She-Ra's face. I'm concentrating on how the specific contours of her face would look, but trying to have faith in the process not perfection at this exact stage of the project.
April 2015 Update: This update contains the restructure of all the triangles. Focusing on the build of the different triangle shapes. Larger ones for expanding coverage of less complex shades that show highlights, and smaller concentrated triangles to represent shaded details. Basically, I redrew all of the sloppy triangles and aligned them for a cleaner look and this is the outcome.
May 2015 Update: Once the triangles are all aligned and formed to the face, I made several different layers that contained the original photograph, a bright background, and the triangles that would be getting color. I started to add color by eye dropping the photograph layer in the center of each triangle. This work is so detailed and repetitive I felt as if my fingers were going to fall off.
June 2015 Update: Several layers are made so that I can switch from the original photograph to the layer with colored triangles. This helps me decide if I need to reshape the triangle for a certain section of color. This reshaping is what I'm doing with the eye. The solid blue layer (invisible in this shot) is used like to the photograph. The bright color peeks through the cracks where triangles may be missing. This allows me to add more triangles (yay), and give the piece more detail.
