special edition blog 1

craft: For my craft on this series, I first had to draw the outlines of each shape with lines. It was tedious, but I tried making the shoe look as realistic as possible. I then went in and did the fill of each object, and made sure the colors looked good together as to draw the eye in. I did not draw the outside of the window at first, but later changed my logic to that.

After filling the objects, I used the gradient tools to make the object look more 3D. For the other illustrations in the series, they are not as realistic as the original blue shoe, but the general idea is presented to the audience on what the illustration is portraying. The lighting for these pictures also had to be correct to make sure that the image is realistic looking and could look 3 dimensional.

One important detail was the fact that after trying out the outside window as a solid color, it was definitely better to add the background to the illustration. Tracing the outside objects and fading them a bit and using the feather seemed to help the picture look accurate. It was very important to go through all these steps to get to the final piece because showing my improvements was helpful to show which illustration looked best.

concept: The concept of this series was somewhat murky at first, but after adding the outside backgrounds to the illustrations it became more clear for everyone viewing these pieces. The outside objects were important to these pieces because it brings the shoe and the atmosphere together into one idea. For the original piece, it was important to display the background as to make the shoe appear more realistic and almost humanized, looking out a window.

The other illustrations in this series also needed the window background to display the themes of each. For example, the pink shoe was placed in front of a window, looking out to a Macy's store, as to display a feminine feel and bring each object together to make one illustration. It was an important move to keep these pieces in context and connecting them all to each other.

compostion: The composition was an important deciding factor when figuring out which photo to use. The shoe at that angle and the viewpoint with the background information helped display a theme of personification of the shoe. It is very important to keep the compositional aspect in perspective when doing this series because it helps hold together all of your pieces perfectly. My series needed to have different background windows for each piece to display the message of each, because without switching around those backgrounds to fit the shoes, the series would not make sense.