The Design Process – Inspiration to Artwork

How many people sit down to Photoshop in the mindset that you are going to create something amazing?… And how many people have turned it off after an hour or so, having come up with nothing!

My hand is raised.

Sometimes it is extremely difficult to come up with ideas, other times it is hard to get those ideas out of your head and into something others can see. Which is why I am going to show you my design process.

I have chosen this design, purely because it was the last thing I created in Photoshop. Thus meaning I have not yet misplaced, lost or binned my notes which will inevitably happen in the next month or so.

Inspiration

This is what initially triggers that spark in our brain that gets our creativity flowing! It can be something as simple as a poster or a TV advert/commercial. When you get that spark, make sure you write down your idea, or do a quick sketch so as not to forget it. You don’t have to necessarily go and turn on Photoshop right away, but often we get ideas when we simply cannot access a computer. If you have a camera phone try and Photograph the thing that got you thinking!

My inspiration for this design came from a Music Video by an Australian band called The Potbelleez. The track is called Don’t Hold Back, and you can view the whole video here. The video shows Johnny Sonic staggering about various scenes donning a TV for a head. His facial expression and his visual path seems to relate to his surroundings, and it just gives a really weird sense of realism… Even though its a guy… with a TV… for a head.

At 1:43 into the video came my inspiration.

Brain Storming

Now you have seen something that inspires you, your brain starts pumping out ideas. It is important you write down every idea you think you could use. You may not use them all, some might not work, but then again they might, and you don’t know that yet! So don’t forget anything.

I grab whatever is available to me at the time, in this case it was a pack of three permanent markers which I use to write on CD/DVD’s, and a pad of lined paper. Forever the professional lol, with my lined paper and marker pens off I went.

Now, as you can see you don’t have to be the greatest artist in the world, so long as you can grasp the concept of what is going on in the picture when you come to create it digitally. Every annotation points to something, which might be obvious even from my terrible drawing, but its the words that are in my head at the time, so I write them down.

Preparation

Before even opening Photoshop you must prepare for what it is you want to achieve. It is no good getting an idea and starting to create it, then realising you must stop and break your chain of though because you do not have all the things you need at your disposal. Planning is essential.

Decide on the kinds of image you need and set about finding them. Use sites such as SXC.hu to find high resolution images you could use to get the effect you want. I had a torrid time trying to find stock images to suit what was in my head. I had this idea, in my head and on paper, but no photographs to make it with. The closest I found was this.

So… After much unsuccessful searching I decided I would simply have to dig out the Digital Camera and take my own stock images.

As for the background I found my Pavement under the keyword ‘Cobbles’.

And my Television under the keywords “CRT TV”.

Photo Taking

Now that I had decided I was going to have to take my own stock photos I had to find a volunteer. People are often asking me to Photoshop pictures of them, so they can have a cool profile picture or whatever on social networking sites like Facebook. Because of this exact reason I had no problems convincing one of my best friends (Michael) to kneel like an idiot on my Mam and Dads kitchen floor =)

Be sure you have your notes and your mental image so that you can get the photographs from the right angle. Make sure you take three or four from slightly different angles just to make sure. If the photos don’t match the image in you head, then neither will your final image and you could be left disappointed.

The idea is not to worry about how ridiculous these pictures look now, but to visualize how they will look when your design is finished.

I had also decided by this point not to include the Lamp Post like in the original drawing. I realised that because I had opted for cobbles, I also opted for an older looking Lamp Post, and Michael is wearing very modern clothes, so I just felt it would not have worked. Had I prepared a little more I could have maybe dressed him in some dated clothes for extra effect.

Design

Now we can start thinking about Photoshop. Background removal is always the things I do first. I have watched other people work and found not all people do this as it is time consuming. If you can visualize your final image accurately with backgrounds present then by all means do it that way. But I find I get a much better feel for the image if I remove them.

Start throwing your ideas together, they do not have to be perfect at this point but just so you get an idea of what is going to work and what is not.

Progression

Start thinking about how you are going to achieve certain effects, whether you can use a stock image, or does it have to be drawn from scratch? Be sure to pay attention to detail. Cutting corners will simply reduce the overall quality of your work.

Completing

When you have created your image always make sure you sign it. Whether this is a logo, a website or simply just your name. Make sure the fonts you use suit the image you are making. A dirty grunge font would look terrible on a clean innocent image.

So this is basically my design process. I have notes and sketches and all sorts written down on any shred of paper I can find. I did try to keep a design journal, and carry it with me, so all my ideas are in one place. But this rarely happens and I find myself writing design ideas on the back of Nando napkins and such lol. It is irrelevant where you store your ideas…

As long as you do!