Of late, the quality of work i see on this section has been sub par. not to say i'm a pro, we are all learning. but i dont see any drive for improvement in what a lot of us put out here.

there's no arguing that graphic designers in general dont get rewarded well enough for the amount of work they put into building a company image, be it PR, advertising or just plain ol' graphic representation of info so the lacklustre attitude is understandable..nonetheless, if you do something, might as well do it right.

so here's my idea; this should be a space where people can bring their work, get constructive criticism, and just throw ideas in general. That way, we can start to raise the bar if not on anywhere, on nairaland at least.
people can come here to get ideas on how to approach creative projects and execute then in a polished fashion.

So this is how it should be done;

** post your work and explain thought process (what made you choose that shape/colour/perspective)
** if possible, throw in a small tutorial so we all learn from each other.
** if you need feedback, ask for it and anyone can throw in a suggestion..we all need a different opinion from time to time.

any form of biased or pointless criticism will be subject to removal as this is not the time and place for that e.g 'that is very ugly', 'it looks terrible', etc..instead make suggestions like; 'i think it would look better if you change this colour to that colour' or 'you could try put this on that and see how it looks'..you get the idea.

it should be a thread where people can pick a thing or two.

this might morph into something else at the end of the day so rules are subject to change, so here goes...

so ill get the ball rolling;

here's a break down of a personal piece i've been working on for close to a week now.
thought i'd name it 'nail in the head' but its starting to take another direction..drop a line or two

i started with a sketch to visualise what i had in mind (it always helps)



i thought i'd add a scroll aswell to add some text and character to the overall image;
(the scroll is actually a trace of a vector stock)



so I fired up illustrator to begin sketching;



now is time for the hard part. its always tricky to determine where lights fall on an object and where shadows do..especially when you are working from imagination..its usually a trial and error thing...



a few close ups you might be interested in;


might have to touch that up a bit


this came out well in my opinion


those shadings are called 'hachures'..originally invented for maps
but they work well for creating depth in illustrations.

as you can see, its incomplete and i will update it as time goes on..

so yh..what do you think?
any questions?..suggestions?..lets hear it.
thanks.

turl

Wow... This is super cool. Have always wanted to do something like this really but there's something I want to know.
Did you design the concept on paper, scanned it and then trace it with illustrator? Or how did you do it?