St. Patty's Day Poster Contest: #2....and that ain't bad.

Our latest assignment in my Illustration for Publication class was to do a St. Patrick's Day poster illustration for Atlanta's St. Patrick's parade (the winning one to use for the actual event, with payment for the use of the design). The contest was confined to the five students in the class. Last year, the contest was open the entire Illustration department, and i was lucky enough to tie for the runner up position with a fellow student. I was surprised and delighted last year. This year I was equally as happy to find out that mine was the runner up again (although this year there was no prize money for the no. 2 spot). This makes me feel good, like i might have a pulse on what the client's needs are.

I wasn't feeling this year's design, originally. I have been experimenting with this dead line and rough coloring technique since last quarter, and i don't feel comfortable in it yet. Sometimes i just think it looks too unfinished. My idea started out as just one kid being lifted by a single shamrock, but then i (with the input of my class too) felt like i wanted to say more about the event, like that it was held in Atlanta, which is a diverse city, and of course i had to work in the peach too, and that it was fun (hence the confetti leading down to the city), so slowly my idea, I felt, got too big. I have been reminded many times before to keep my ideas simple, and i wasn't convinced that this was hitting that mark of simplicity. But i finished and started working on another design, this time in Adobe Illustrator. However, that didn't get done in time. I would like to blame the cross platform use: trying to work on CS3 at school, and CS4 at home destroyed my layer organization and made me frustrated. But honestly, I just don't think i could have gotten it done in time anyway, with being out of town the weekend prior.

Last year's entry:

This celtic-knotted shamrock took absolutely forever to do. I designed the basic knot shape in Illustrator, then imported it into Photoshop for manipulation.