Hi guys! This week’s assignment requires us to use Adobe Illustrator to make a story from one of the fairytales by the Brothers Grimm. This assignment sounds like a lot of fun, we need to use basic shapes and a limited palette to make a story. In my memory, my favorite fairy tale is Rapunzel, because I was so jealous of others who had long hair. I think this is every girl who dreams of being a blonde princess, or maybe not.
After I read the story of Rapunzel again, I simplified the story and wrote down the important parts in one sentence:
- There were a man and a woman who had wished for their kid, and the woman wanted to eat the rapunzel from the witch’s garden.
- So her husband sneaked into the witch’s garden to stole a lot of Rapunzel.
- One day, when the man was stealing Rapunzel as usual, but the witch found out, and she very angrily said: “you must give me the child.”
- When the child was born, the witch took their kid away and named her Rapunzel.
- The witch locked Rapunzel into a tower.
- Twelve years later, Rapunzel was very beautiful with long blond hair, every time the witch would say: “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair to me.”
- After two years, a prince was passing through the forest and heard a beautiful song, then he started looking for who was singing.
- Deep in the forest, the prince saw a witch who asked someone to let down a beautiful long blond hair.
- When the witch was left, the prince imitated her and said “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair to me.”
- When the prince meets Rapunzel, he fell in love with her and promised to take her away from the tower.
- Unfortunately, one day Rapunzel asked the witch why she was so heavy, which aroused the witch’s suspicion.
- The witch was very angry and cut off Rapunzel’s hair because she knew Rapunzel had betrayed her.
- Then, the witch took poor Rapunzel to the desert, where she had to live in great grief and misery.
- When the prince came to the tower, the witch pretended to be Rapunzel and gave him long blond hair from Rapunzel.
- When the prince went to the top of the tower and found Rapunzel not there, the witch told him that his lover had been scratched by a cat and that he had lost Rapunzel forever.
- The prince was mad with pain, and in despair, he jumped down from the tower.
- He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes.
- He wandered about in pain for many years. When he came to the desert, he heard the voice of Rapunzel and the children, finally, they lived happily together.
Then, I created the main character on my iPad:
Here is my storyboard:
After done with my storyboard, I used three basic shapes to create the main characters on Illustrator:
Rapunzel — I used the function “shape build tool” to make 4 circles together to build her long blond hair.
Witch — I made this character higher than the others because she is the bad character in the story. I got inspiration from this week’s reading “Picture This” by Molly Bang, she talked about how larger objects in the picture can make people feel stronger.
Prince — Add a “crown” to look more like a prince.
We can only choose three colors for this story. I chose yellow, green, and gray to present. Molly also mentioned that different background colors can represent the atmosphere of a scene. I’ve also applied it to characters, the witch is the representative of black, while the prince and Rapunzel are ordinary grays.
I think the hardest part for me was designing the layout of the scene. In order to let readers clearly understand the sequence of development of the story, I chose the horizontal letter background. In order to make the whole story look harmonious, I set all the scenes uniformly. After letting my first reader read my story, she suggested me to add arrows on the drawing to better understand the story.
Finally, here is the link to my work.
Reflection:
Honestly, this is my first time using Illustrator. I really enjoyed the process of making the whole story. I learned a lot about how to use color and the size of graphics to express emotions in design. After the completion, although the whole work is not perfect, it is already a good start for me. I really like the professor's step-by-step video on how to use Illustrate, which is very useful for novices. In addition, the emotional composition exercise helps me to pay attention to the emotions of each scene in the design.
