Fan Art Poster

Brief 

• Design and produce a 2 colour screen print fan art poster.
• 200mm x 287mm
• Illustrated piece of fan art.
• Consider composition (depth, frame, value etc)

Initial Ideas/Roughs

I instantly thought of album covers of a couple of my favourite bands. Both being American Football and Brand New. I have experimented with creating rough drawings whilst considering the compositional elements of each piece. 

Doing tests of each composition has allowed me to narrow down the best design as well as considering that it has to be made using only 2 colours. The image I have chosen has the most depth and a strong sense of value. I plan on continuing to draw the image until it is ready to be scanned and prepared for printing.

I have began to focus on the value of the image which seems to be the strongest compositional element. This is allowing me to work out which colours I should use when creating the screen print.
To create the half tone effect when the my design is printed I am going to bitmap it using Photoshop allowing me to have more tonal variation.
I am also thinking about just limiting myself to just one colour and using the white of the paper as my second colour with the bitmap effect.
The set dimensions for the poster are 200mm x 287 mm although I am thinking of making this slightly smaller to be more of a square format which should make the printing process easier.

I want the characters to be my best possible standard so their faces are clear when it is printed. I am working on this by repetitively drawing the same character over and over allowing me to experiment with different features.

I have cracked this skeleton dude.

After drawing him so much I have managed to draw him to how I want him to look. However, I'm struggling on drawing him like this again.

I am going to carry on drawing him using this particular one as a reference until I can do it.

Why can I not draw this guy?

Because his face is to the side.

Why are side angles so hard to draw?

The bottom right drawing is the strongest so far. I am going to use him as a reference as I continue to develop the character. 

I have managed to perfect this character by repetitive drawing and practising drawing it with speed. This needs to be done for the first character to perfect him ready for the final image.

This girl is so hard to draw. The angle of her face is difficult to perfect. I have been continuously drawing her and seem to be getting nowhere.

Should I completely change my method of approach?

A few of the faces on this page are a lot stronger than others although I am thinking of changing the shape of her face to a more simplistic shape. 

This might not need to happen as her face is only small on the design.

I am going to draw the design as a whole and see how it looks with my best drawn characters as I need them to be as clear as possible as they are going to be made a lot smaller and need to be suitable for printing.

When drawing the image to scale the characters seemed a lot easier to draw apart from the small girl who is still an issue. I am going to carry on drawing her until it looks right. Apart from this issue the final image is almost ready to be drawn and scanned in. 

I scanned in my drawing and perfected it by using the brush tool and graphics tablet. Still being undecided on what 2 colours to choose for the final print. 

As drawing the design I have decided to stay with black and a dark shade of grey so when using the bitmap tool to create a half tone effect I can use different variations of monotone colours.

I soon discovered this doesn't work.

Using the bitmap method only allows you to alter one layer as a white background is added which ruined my initial idea. 

How can I make my screen print have two colours as well as halftone effects to make it more compositional?

I came up with the idea to using my two layers overlapping so the bitmapped area can overlap different areas to make them darker than the initial grey tone.

This idea worked.

I now have my two layers ready to be placed on a screen and printed.

The printing process may prove difficult when it comes to two people working on one screen using different colours. We will have to work together to solve any issues.

Final Print 

I am proud of the final design as the bitmap worked perfectly in giving the design depth, making it more compositional.

If I were to print the design again I may use different colours which could alter the composition of the design. I'd also do the design without an outline and use the bitmap effect on both layers to make more tonal variation to differentiate between each element of the piece instead of using the outline as a separation method.