Vector Art: AD360

COURSE DOCUMENTS | Final Project | Due Week15

Super Hero Poster

Create an informational poster about an invented super hero whose mission is to fight a specific evil in our society. For example, your superhero could fight poverty, inequality, disease, pollution, global warming, etc. (use your imagination)

The poster should include the following:

• A title/ banner
• An illustration of the super hero, dressed in a costume of some sort.
• A logo or badge for the super hero
• A well-written body of text describing the life history and mission of the super hero (any instance of plagiarism will be cause for failure).

This poster will use all or most of the skills we covered in this course:

• Layout and type: several columns of text, with kerning, tracking and leading applied, and one instance of text wrapped around a graphic, on a path or as a mask.
• Logo design: using the pathfinder palette and path menu
• Path Appearances: creation of custom color swatches, patterns, symbols, strokes, fills, and styles.
• Project organization: creation and organization of named layers, inclusion of fonts, tracing image, copy text.
• Path Components: efficient use of the bezier pen tool, basic shapes, and transform tools

PART ONE: Research

• Go to the Jewish Museum located at 5th Avenue and 92nd Street (directions | hours)
  • See the exhibits: Super heroes: Good and Evil in American Comics and Masters of American Comics
  • It's free on Saturdays!
• Research historical figures.
  • Biography resources: Finding information on the famous, infamous, and obscure
  • BBC History: historic figures
  • Research the life histories of historical figures and how they have influenced your own life.
  • Think about how your super hero might take shape. Use the historical figures' childhood, adulthood, personality, family life, etc. as a starting point.
  • Think about ways to represent different personal, political, social qualities in your superhero.
• Find your super heroes' cause or mission.
  • Research social, political, economic, environmental, health problems in our society or world.
  • http://www.nytimes.com/
  • http://www.cnn.com/
  • http://www.bbc.co.uk/
  • http://www.motherjones.com/
  • http://www.economist.com/index.html
  • http://www.nrdc.org/
  • http://www.greenpeace.org/international/
  • http://www.unicef.org/
• Look at these resources (more to come)
  • Links to resources about Posters
  • WPA (Works Progress Administration) poster highlights
  • Superheroes
  • Supervillains
  • Comic Book fonts
  • Famous Fonts
  • WPA poster collections
  • Rob Kelly Samples
  • Understanding Comics (Paperback)
  • Comics & Sequential Art (Paperback)

PART TWO: Brain Storming

• Start by mocking up your poster on paper.
• Make sketches of your character, logo, title/banner.
• Think about the graphic style, color scheme, placement of elements, like the banner, character, text. Look at other posters for reference!
• Write several drafts of your text-- include an intro, body and conclusion and a list of sources.

PART THREE: The Illustration

• Create a folder on the desktop called final project and place your scanned drawing(s), fonts, and paragraph of copy, in the folder.
• Setting up your Illustrator file.
  • Tabloid
  • CMYK
  • portrait or landscape.
• Next "place" (File > Place) the scanned drawing in Illustrator. Choose the template and link check boxes and click ok.
• Use named layers to organize different elements in your illustration.
• Use these skills to realize your illustration:
  • Layout and type: several columns of text, with kerning, tracking and leading applied, and one instance of text wrapped around a graphic, on a path or as a mask.
  • Logo design: using the pathfinder palette and path menu
  • Path Appearances: creation of custom color swatches, patterns, symbols, strokes, fills, and styles.
  • Project organization: creation and organization of named layers, inclusion of fonts, tracing image, copy text.
  • Path Components: efficient use of the bezier pen tool, basic shapes, and transform tools
• Create your colors in the color palette. Remember to save and label your color swatches.
• Toggle between OUTLINE and PREVIEW mode in order to achieve accurate curves.
• Apply your saved color swatches to the different parts of your illustration.
• When you are finished, zoom into your illustration and clean up any stray paths, unnecessary or redundant anchor points.
• Save your file with your first initial, last name, final: jsmith_final.ai

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Presentation Requirements

Save and present your files in the following formats:

• AI (Adobe Illustrator file)
• Please burn a CD with the file and all supporting files (fonts, placed or traced images, etc).
• If you have access to a color printer, please print a copy of your poster.

Please Note:

• Make multiple copies of your illustration files as you work so that you can go back to earlier versions if need be. This is also wise because files, Flash drives and ZIP disks can and will become corrupt.
• Please stay away from excessive or complicated patterns, gradients, masks and complex paths. You will experience problems.

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The Final project is DUE in class on the last day of class for Critique.

• You will be presenting your work to the class. Any student who does not have the Final Project IN class for the critique will receive a failing grade. The Final Project is 18% of your grade. Do not miss this class.

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