This project required us to familiarise ourselves with Adobe Illustrator by completing 10+ tutorials that we found online to gain the necessary skills to be able to complete a final poster. Then we had to select three existing movie posters and reverse engineer them and create our own concepts. For our final project we got to chose either our favourite book or movie to base our final work on. I chose my favourite movie from the Harry Potter franchise. 

Above are 10 posters I made just using Abode Illustrator software. I found this opening task challenging as I had no prior experience with this software, I don't consider myself good with digital design, I am better at creating with my hands such as sculptures and pencil drawings, so this was a challenge I had to learn to overcome. I went though lots of trail and error when making the posters above. I found it difficult to make my posters look the way I wanted them to look and had to redo lots of elements many times. I got advice of one of my classmates who did the Illustrator experiment as their first project and they told me that the digital creator "Xuyu Design Tutorials." This was a good place to learn the basic functions of the software. So I took their advice and watched some of the tutorials and I found them very helpful. I was able to understand the software better and gain more independence when making my posters, every skill I learned made gaining new skill easier since I had prior knowledge. 

I started by working with shapes and colours, this was a nice and easy place to start off on as it used simple procedures and was a necessary skills for me to gain in order to develop other skills. I then moved on to using gradients and line movement. being able to distort colours and shapes was very beneficial when creating my final product. Using text was very simple which gave me more confidence in learning new skills as it was something I already had prior knowledge of. 

I am proud of the progress I made by creating these 10 posters and I believe that they have given my the necessary skills in order to continue with this experiment. 

We were instructed to create 3 movie posters from inspiration posters that we had to find ourselves. I found my three posters that I was inspired from off Pinterest. We had to create our own concepts of these posters and make them our own. This was something I thought that I could easily achieve as I had more prior knowledge of illustrator to grow off. 

I chose this poster to re-create myself as a liked the parallel the poster created with the villain and hero storyline. I liked their use of colour and simplicity to create a strong message.

I decided to create my own version with an iconic hero villain duo that I love, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. When creating this poster I didn't want to change lots of elements but just change the storyline from 'Batman and Joker' to 'Darth Vader and Luke'. I kept the parallels of hero and villain. 

I created this by getting images of both Luke and Vaders, cutting out the basic shapes of their faces, splitting them in half and combining them into one image. In the background I added their lightsabers so that I would make the background more personal to the characters like the original poster had done. I then added the text to tight it all together. Since this poster was very simple I didn't come across many challenges other than making sure everything was lined up correctly. 

I chose this poster to re-create myself as I liked the use of silhouette and the monochrome theme.

I decided to create my own version with the movie Oppenheimer, a popular movie that recently came out. I stuck with the simple silhouette and monochrome colour of brown for my poster as this is a common colour in the movie. I used a pipe to mimic the cigarette in the original poster. This poster has a bit of mystery to it that I like as it makes the poster feel ominous. I changed the layout slightly to make the overall composition more cohesive, but I keep the overall layout and ideas behind the poster.

I created this by getting images of Oppenheimer, cutting out the basic shapes of his body and changing the colour of each of the different parts I needed. I drew the smoke in white and then used the blue effect to mimic the look of smoke. I added the simple text in small lettering to mimic the original. This poster was more complex for me to create as I struggled to make the smoke look real, I tired using the mesh effect but I think the blur produced a better result. 

Through all my experimenting with Abode Illustrator, my final task was to produce my own original movie poster for my favourite book or movie. I chose my favourite movie from the Harry Potter franchise; the Prisoner of Azkaban. I chose this movie to create a poster for as I feel very connected to it and have lots of ideas of what the poster could look like. There are many elements in this film that could help me to convey a striking poster that shows the viewers what the movie would be about. This film has a darker colour palette which is something I like to work with. Working with dark colour is my favourite as I feel it shows more emotion and ominous feelings. 

Below are my first initial ideas of what I had in mind for my poster. I chose two of these three concepts to form a basic layout in illustrator.

I decided to develop my first and third idea into illustrator. I did this so I could see which concept I drew more inspiration from and which I though I could develop more into a stronger final product. 

I decided that I would develop initial idea 1 as I liked the way it came out in the software and I think that I could develop it into a more interesting poster. 

The feedback I got from my classmates also showed that they liked the first concept best and thought it was more eye catching and told a better story. 

I developed aspects of my poster for the feed back I got in class. Firstly, I increased the size of the stag since it is a main focus image. I also increased the size of the moon, These two pieces of feedback were given to me by my classmate Lily, I agreed with these statements as I think it makes the background and foreground look more connected. I thought that the background needed more laying with the mountains so I added another layer of blue jagged lines. 

After more feedback from my classmate Mahek, she told me to add more dementors and change the front. I thought this was a good idea cause it made the background more interesting and made t he poster seem more ominous. I change the front and I think it ties into the poster theme better. I decided to make a the stag look luminous like it does in the movies. I did this by using the blur effect and layering it behind a solid picture of the stag, giving the object more dimension and aura.