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Xaquin's Pulp 50s Science Fiction Poster Project
Xaquin
Right behind you!Registered User regular
Right behind you!Registered User regular
My Father is turning 60 in a month and for his birthday I'm making him a poster.
He collects pulp 50s and 60s scifi paperbacks (well, scifi in general, but he gets a kick out of the pulp stuff)
I'm attempting to do this poster in a pulp 50s style and I'd like some critique. My plan is to take existing elements and sort of break them down into basic shapes and color them in photoshop like a paint by numbers kit (but better).
I feel like it's coming along nicely so far, but I wanted to get other opinions on it and advice to maybe make it better. So far, the only thing I'm really not feeling is the 'G' in 'AMAZING'. I feel like I just haven't
nailed it, but can't seem to fix it.
I'm posting a few screen shots I took from basic layout to a more refined outline that I plan to insert into photoshop and color.
Also, I'm ridiculously color blind (I took the test where you're supposed to find the numbers in the little bubbles of colors and could find maybe 1 out of every 5 or 6) so I'm almost certainly going to need some help in that department.
This is my first Artist's Corner thread, so let me know if I need to give anymore information or if I commit any faux pas!
First:
I just wanted to get the general layout. The image in there is more for inspiration and my lettering is mostly copied .... I was going to be original, but after sifting through hundreds of covers, I figured I'd be closely imitating -someone- no matter what I did
Second:
Top lettering in. Not satisfied with that 'G', but no matter what I did, it never seemed to look right. I have half a mind to make it block, but I don't know.
Third:
Lettering finished. My father was born in 1953
Fourth:
Tracing my Dad! Hope he doesn't see this thread or my secret project will be discovered! (He won't)
Fifth:
More tracing of images I know he will enjoy (Saturn 1 Rocket, Saturn (the planet), and an open book)
so, there we are so far! I'm open to any critique/comment/advice/whatever available!
Thank You!
He collects pulp 50s and 60s scifi paperbacks (well, scifi in general, but he gets a kick out of the pulp stuff)
I'm attempting to do this poster in a pulp 50s style and I'd like some critique. My plan is to take existing elements and sort of break them down into basic shapes and color them in photoshop like a paint by numbers kit (but better).
I feel like it's coming along nicely so far, but I wanted to get other opinions on it and advice to maybe make it better. So far, the only thing I'm really not feeling is the 'G' in 'AMAZING'. I feel like I just haven't
nailed it, but can't seem to fix it.
I'm posting a few screen shots I took from basic layout to a more refined outline that I plan to insert into photoshop and color.
Also, I'm ridiculously color blind (I took the test where you're supposed to find the numbers in the little bubbles of colors and could find maybe 1 out of every 5 or 6) so I'm almost certainly going to need some help in that department.
This is my first Artist's Corner thread, so let me know if I need to give anymore information or if I commit any faux pas!
First:
I just wanted to get the general layout. The image in there is more for inspiration and my lettering is mostly copied .... I was going to be original, but after sifting through hundreds of covers, I figured I'd be closely imitating -someone- no matter what I did
Second:
Top lettering in. Not satisfied with that 'G', but no matter what I did, it never seemed to look right. I have half a mind to make it block, but I don't know.
Third:
Lettering finished. My father was born in 1953
Fourth:
Tracing my Dad! Hope he doesn't see this thread or my secret project will be discovered! (He won't)
Fifth:
More tracing of images I know he will enjoy (Saturn 1 Rocket, Saturn (the planet), and an open book)
so, there we are so far! I'm open to any critique/comment/advice/whatever available!
Thank You!
0
Posts
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gems_from_the_collection/421517084/in/set-72157600000117243
or this, even?
http://www.covers.classicscifibooks.com/post/31398046668/the-1-000-year-plan-1955-by-isaac-asimov-cover
Basically, A visual guide for where to put your rocket and saturn so they don't immediately lead your eye off the page. You may want to scale your dad up a bit, so he takes the focus.
I really really like that Asimov cover a lot. I think I'll shift the Saturn 1 rocket, shrink it down, and multiply it by 2 - 4, as well as enlarging the portrait.
Thank You!
edit: actually, I think maybe just making the margins half again as big would do the trick.
I also increased the portrait by 10% and decreased all lettering by 3% (towards the center of the page). I also added in his shoulders to make a cleaner area to break up foreground and back ground colors when I get to that step. That made sense to me, but I have no idea if I explained what I was going for there.
Next up, I'm going to probably grey shade it in CAD just to see if I notice anything really obvious that needs to be changed.
I added some grey scale shading to the portrait. I only used the standard shades of grey in CAD, so there are only 6 shades. When I take it into photoshop I figure I can add as many as I want (and of course use actual colors instead of grey) (but the hair and beard will remain white as that is what they are in real life).
Anyone see anything glaring? Suggestions? I'm down for it!
I'd like to get the main line work done in CAD as it's what I'm most comfortable with.
edit: maybe the book should be a bit bigger? looking at it on the forums instead of zoomed in while using cad, it looks kind of small .... like maybe a 10-15% increase?
edit 2: thank you Iruka for suggesting scaling up the portrait and getting rid of the planet. Looking at it now, the older version does look cluttered.
@Magic Toaster I will give it a go! It should only take a few seconds
(This was not a serious attempt, just a trial to see if I remembered any of the photoshop commands from 14 years ago) (I only remembered a very select few, sadly)
I'm glad I have two more weeks to play with this .... I think I'll need them both.
Ravage me artist's corner!
edit: I'm kind of debating getting rid of the book ....
wow, that's perfect
like seriously perfect
edit: the bad part is I have no clue how to do that lol
least I have a couple weeks to figure it out
thanks!
edit: you know, I think I'm going to try a different approach to this ....
I'm going to seperate every element into a different drawing (in CAD) so they can easily be assigned their own layer. That will make it easy to color (or change colors as the case may be) and easy to replace/fix should the need arise.
which is probably what I should have done in the first place, but you live you learn.
Do you have illustrator? Someone with a mind for CAD may actually have an easier time with vectors.
and I have been using paint bucket ....
that said, I'll take your advice and see how I do! worst comes to worst it won't take me but five or ten minutes to separate it in CAD and plug it back in to photo shop
I'd forgotten how much you can do in photoshop. @Iruka, I borrowed your ideas (and in the case of the face, some of your colors) if that's ok, and modified them some.
I'm going to keep tinkering, but I'm pretty close to where I'd like to be.
edit: haha I fixed the shading at the neck so it matches the color palette of the face
The blues looked purple, the bright vibrant oranges looked deep and muddy, the dark greys looked black, and the light molecules (for lack of a better term) looked dark and barely showed up!
Is this solely because I tried it out on regular paper instead of photo paper? At $20 a pop at Staples, I really can't afford a bunch of test prints.
Any thoughts?
When troubleshooting color issues, there aren't so many things to investigate.
Is your monitor reliable?
It might be that the colors generated by the computer and the colors displayed on screen are mismatched. This is due to varying display quality or calibration.
Are you working in RGB?
Monitors display RGB info, but printers use CMYK. CMYK has a smaller range/gamut so it's easy to use "out of gamut" colors if you're not aware of this. This could explain why some colors show up fine on screen but muddy on print.
Is there a color profile conflict?
Design programs will default to a specific color profile, but some printshops might change it. This part is a little sophisticated, and I'm not sure if Autocad deals with these sort of issues.
It's hard to troubleshoot accurately, I don't really know about Autocad, but I hope that these can help you locate the root of the issue.
If you want to save money on test prints, just print a smaller version on regular 8.5 x 11 paper. It won't have the same finish, but you can see if you're getting close.
One more thing: For test prints, you can also try "soft proofing". Assuming you have a good monitor, you can export to PDF and get a pretty accurate image of what your final result is going to look like onscreen. Soft proofing is not really accurate, but it is close enough.
Edit:
I like independent printshops, they tend to work with you. If you explain that you are doing test prints, they won't charge you... or at least I never got charged for this.... but then again, I was printing in the millions.
Thanks! I'll look into all of this!
Still slightly darker than I'd imagined, but not a deal breaker by any stretch. Plus I'd imagine it might only have looked a shade darker because it was a small print.
It's off being printed at 16x20 as I type!
Thanks for all the help, I'll take a picture of the final product when I get it
Staples ended up botching the print very badly, but someone at a local Walgreens took pity on my and printed it asap and it looks fantastic!
Mission Accomplished!
It's the first artwork of mine to grace his wall since I was 5 lol