Carried on working on the 'Roots & Wings' project but switched my attention to designs featuring a full length figure. After working up several roughs I used the afternoon to trace out, what Julian and I considered the most promising, in Illustrator.
Once again my comparatively poor computer skills made this a slow process. However, I did feel that I had really got to grips with the pen tool and bezier curves by the end of the afternoon but I am still finding it very difficult to assess how to set about achieving a required or desired effect.
Day Seven
Roger reviewed progress so far and declared that what I had worked on till now was, "quite nice". He suggested experimenting with different treatments from the Effects menu in an attempt to achieve the kind of 'distressed old print' look that we are after. I spent the morning finishing the facial features and experimenting in this way and attempting to place my design into the image of the packaging. This demonstrated to me that the design works in the roundel format but inserting the design proved problematic in terms of its quality; once rasterized to achieve an approximation of the desired effect it then became horribly pixelated when attempting to utilise it against the packaging. I don't understand enough about the software and the way it behaves to overcome these difficulties by myself.
Late in the afternoon, at Julian's suggestion, I developed the wings of the figure a little more and also gave her arms, hitherto these had been tucked behind her. These represent small but significant and satisfying improvements.
Sandwiched in between I went shoping for Zoe in preparation for mocking-up some Bendick's boxes tomorrow. So it was another trip to Waitrose and Selfridges to spend £40 plus on chocolate mints. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
