I am looking for:
- A creative background that tells a visual story. Your completed assignment should illustrate a moment in time. What is your character doing? Why is it interesting? Make the person who is looking at your cartoon ask, "What's going to happen next?"
- Your character to be the focus of your final design
- Details that are well-thought-out and appropriately executed.
- Strong understanding of the pen tool. Neat, clean, and accurate vector shapes.
- Make your character the focus of your final design.
- First, put your cartoon in a group. Select all your layers with the shift key (if they are next to each other in the layers palette) or your option key to grab them individually. Then go to Layer>Group Layers
- Open a new document and drag your grouped cartoon into this new document.
Background Document Size: 8x10 inches at 300ppi OR 10x8 inches at 300ppi - When you are starting your backgrounds, first decide if you would like your character to be inside or outside.
If outside: Set up a HORIZON LINE (where the sky meets the land.) Things that are closer to you will be bigger and lighter (for color). Things that are further away will be smaller and darker (for color).
If inside: Determine where you would like the floor to meet the wall. This is NOT considered a horizon line, but it is necessary for an interior background. If you are adding an object for your background, make sure the view of the object is the same perspective as your background. - If you need a image to help you make a vector object, that's ok. Don't use a green triangle and a brown rectangle to make something that represents a tree. Make an actual tree. You can use a photograph from google to help you create pen-tool shapes, but please make sure you are using a photograph (meaning a picture that was taken with a camera), not an illustration. An illustration is something that was already created on the computer. If you copy an illustration, you are only "re-vectoring" -- which is essentially plagiarism.
- Adjust color accordingly.
HERE ARE SOME TIPS!
