See an Art Director Work With a Freelance Illustrator

See in depth what the process is like when an art director provides feedback and direction to a freelance illustrator.

Table of Contents

Videos

Art Director Ashley Browning joins Art Prof Clara Lieu to demonstrate the type of feedback, communication, and graphic design elements are important in advertising.

Video Walkthrough

Art Director Feedback, Round 1

Concepting

I think for thumbnails we should start seeing what themes we can extract.

So what I see is concept #1 would focus more on a singular character, concept #2 use negative space and landscape elements to visually portray the vastness of the world, and concept #3 (isn’t developed but would be nice to have)

I know you are into the blue eye thing but I don’t think that tells a compelling story alone. Yes, include it in the singular character concept but it shouldn’t be the star of the show (let’s stay away from eye close ups)

How can we incorporate multiple elements of the film (i.e. the “good guys vs bad guys” or man vs. the desert or some of the technology aspects along side a human character or landscape)

Moving forward, have all of your thumbnails fall into one of these 3 buckets.

Thumbnail Execution

• Please double check your dimension ratios. Some of your thumbnails are shorter than others which will affect how I will digitally lay them out.
• We want to get proportions correct from the very beginning.
• Leave room for the type in your layout. You can rough in the title which would be very helpful.
• When roughing in the title, be mindful that the Dune brand has a font which we should adhere too. Try to make your roughed in font look like the official font.

• Also keep in mind that we will need space for the name of actors and maybe teaser copy. Please leave appropriate negative space to accommodate this.
• I noticed you had artwork notes inside some of the thumbnails. Please only include text that will be in the layout within the thumbnails. You can write your notes to the side.

• Try to play with the scale of how the type interacts with the image. We can create the sense of vastness with the type and whitespace in the composition.
• I can finesse this for you in the rough stage but I would like to see an earnest attempt at this.
• Try to keep your thumbnails in grayscale. At this stage we should be thinking about layout, shape and how different overall concepts communicate to the consumer.

Action Items

• Create 3-5 thumbnails per each concept to review.
• If you have another concept you’d like to explore please do the same amount of thumbs for that as well.
• Create contact sheets for mood boards

After you get the next round of thumbnails I’ll pick the ones I find are the strongest and go over feedback with you. Ideally I would like to see the next round of thumbnails by Tuesday AM.

That will give me time to give feedback and start the rough process prior to the stream. Please let me know if there are any issues with that timeline. After I get the rough layouts done and we discuss, you can then move on to creating the artwork.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Thanks,
Ashley

Art Director Feedback, Round 2

General Design

• Before starting design we should have decided on the main themes of the story and then create thumbnails accordingly. We want to tell a clear story to the customer so having that story outlined before moving on to the design is important. (A big reason a creative brief)
• Since this is a movie poster we want the image to be immediately readable. Think about where you might see this “in the wild.”

• Maybe a busy mall? Downtown on the side of a building? A version of it on a billboard? In those circumstances, the consumer may only glance at it for 2-5 seconds before moving on. So the image needs to be immediately interesting and recognizable.
• We want to utilize the image to lead the eye to the title and release date, because despite how beautiful the art is, it is not the star of the show. Great design has a balance between informative and beautiful.

• In a professional setting, a designer would have access to a brand style guide, which is a handbook about the brand. It includes stuff like messaging, what images are and aren’t acceptable to use, appropriate use of the logo. Basically all the rules so that the branding is consistent across all channels.

• Since we don’t have access to that for this project we have to make a lot of assumptions based on creative that is currently out there. There are a few times that I set the Dune logo type vertically, and honestly I’m not sure if that would fit their brand standards.
• It’s all things that you have to take into consideration when doing a project like this. Thinking about what Dune’s brand standards are can even help when you move on to the art, all things I think you are already picking up on.

• On a few thumbnails I asked you to think about the visual center, which isn’t the mathematical center. It’s usually just above and to the right. But it could also mean what feels visually balanced in the layout.
• A lot of modern movie posters seem to center their type. I think we should try to do this as much as possible since it’s what consumers are used to. Sometimes following industry trends helps with the visual literacy of the piece.

Thumbnails

Concept #1

1B

• I’m not sure if the villain being the star of the show would be appealing to consumers. But I still have feedback on the layout.

• Are those tracks in the mouth? I wasn’t sure. I would move the point they all converge to align with the “D” in Dune.
• Center Dune horizontally. Keep the bottom half lower contrast for type placement (this can be done digitally too)

Concept #1

1D

• This one could work for an art print but as a poster I’m not feeling it.
• Something to keep in mind when you have a person in the layout looking off the page, the consumer’s eyes are going to follow the person’s eyes in layout right off the page too.

• In order for this one to work you’d need to move the larger figure to the left side.
• Even better if we could work it in a way that the figure is looking at the type.

Concept #2

2A

• I don’t think the figure adds anything to the layout – plus it’s facing off the page….
• Try without the figure. I think it could work better to show the vastness without it.

• I don’t think we need the sun. But maybe without the figure it would feel too empty?
• Drop the title to just below the figures (use the image to draw the eye to the type)
• Center type horizontally.
• If the bottom is a continuation of sand, keep lower contrast for type

Concept #2

2C

• I really like this one! I think we could really have a nice type treatment with the more open areas of the layout.

• We can vertically align the type on this one, and even add “part 2” between the “u” and “n”
• Let’s try to have a balance of white space on either side of the title and the points of interest in the image.

Concept #3

3B

• This one is AWESOME! We start to get a sense of action and a story. I think that could really resonate with people.
• The type placement is really good (just make sure it’s horizontally center).

• I would like to be able to keep the type all one color. So maybe make it all a bit darker?
• I could even see playing with this in Photoshop and having it look like “N” is in between the dust.
• I want to place the cast callouts across the top so making sure we have clearance between the type and the sand worm. I think we could drop the sandworm a tiny bit.

I think that is everything! Hopefully you’re not overwhelmed. Let me know how you want to proceed and if you’re okay with doing a deep dive of this round of feedback on the stream.

Thanks,
Ashley

Painting Study

• 1 min. video (watercolor pencil)
• 1 min. video (explaining painting studies)
• 1 min. video (acrylic ink glazes)
• 73 min. video (starting the study)