We continued to do some of our own pattern work thumbnails until we had soaked up a bit of inspiration for the following few tasks and learned some Adobe Illustrator techniques such as using the spray can, blob brush, pathfinder and compound path to create some wacky shapes and designs. I think learning these techniques really affected the outcome of my vinyl as I did use the CAAD session techniques to create my piece.
Unfortunately I was unable to attend due to outside-of-college occurrences the following week and had missed out on the vinyl cutting. But made my design and sent it over ready to be printed.
When making my vinyl I was once again influenced by the Halloween vibes, and decided to make an elixir/potion bottle. I started by gathering inspiration for it's design and appearance, looking on websites such as Pinterest, Etsy and Tumblr.
I used these three as a reference, looking at individual aspects of each of them, such as the shape of the bottle, the cork, the label and even on the last one I liked the look of the contents spilled up against the glass, it almost appeared as though the potion itself was floating in an upwards motion and helped me branch off more ideas.
I started off by making an A3 canvas at 300dpi and made a circle using the ellipse tool as well as a rounded rectangle on top.
I warped the rectangle in to an arc to make it look as though its almost wrapping around the bottle.
To me this appeared more organic and flowed much better with the style and composition.
I had to consider how I was going to make the neck of the bottle look, the general shape and size. I went for a more simple looking one so that the piece didn't look crowded. I then went on to use the pathfinder to unite the neck with the rest of the bottle.
The lip of the bottle followed the same process as the banner; apply a rounded rectangle and warp it in to a slight arc. I could now move on to more specific details such as the cork, lines and the tips of the banner. All for which I used the pen tool. The cork I impromptu decided to change it to look like the end of a bone, giving it a little extra creepiness. This had brought an end to the general overall shape of the bottle which meant all there was left to do was to touch up the little details and add my type.
For the lines I went around changing the weight, opacity and profile in the stroke options so they did not look so stiff.
Which meant the last thing there was to do was to fill the bottle with its contents and put my type on the banner. I used to blob brush while reflecting back on the previous CAAD session to fill in and round off the liquid. Inspired by my research in to the three references I gathered I wanted to make my contents look as though it was floating and bubbling upwards, giving it an 'eerie magic look'. The type I placed over my banner felt very fitting of the piece. Looking as though the bottle contained this 'Black Magic' in liquid form. I applied highlights around the bottle where the liquid was to give it a little more depth in its shape.
Finally to round off the design I added little stars on the inside to add a little more of a 'magical' appeal to it.
Et Voila!
