Final Poster

Rationale

This illustration depicts a cheese seller that decides to scam his audience in order to gain profit for himself. He lets the audience believe that the moon is made out of cheese while claiming that his normal cheese are actually the best quality moon cheese.

I decided to illustrate my story in a way that the audience views my story in first person, as if the cheese seller is directly persuading them to buy the cheese. I found this to be a more interesting method for the audience to engage with my story.

My palette consists of mainly dark colours to successfully build a mysterious aura. To make a connection between the moon and cheese, I decided to only use light colours.

In terms of media style, I decided to create my story through illustrator. I like the clean-cut images that illustrator produces and it fits in quite nicely with New Scientist style.

As for composition, the moon, cheese seller and shack are the largest component in my story, as I wanted the audience to focus on these images to find the relation between these images and unpack the story.

I wanted to convey to the audience that the business is dodgy through imagery. Instead of positioning the cheese seller in a shop, I found that a painted sign and shack is much more unprofessional. I also played around with the expression on the seller's face, giving him a sly expression. I also added a sack of money to convey the deceitful lies are working. 

3 Developed Thumbnails

Paper + Test Print

I was fortunate to get some paper samples to choose for my test prints.
I ended up choosing 200gsm satin matte paper and the colours came up extremely well on this paper.
However I noticed there was some minor errors in the poster that I wanted to fix.
I also got some opinions from some students at university and they gave me some good feedback.
One commented on how the text + text colour looked like blood and made it appear more gruesome which is not the idea intended for. She suggested I should try a text that has brush strokes and also play around with the colour. A lot of people suggested white as it has a nice contrast to the wood.
I was also ask to remove the clouds as the moon is an important image to the story and shouldn't be covered up. I also found the factory to appear too white when the poster was printed out so I had to tweak it a little and make it darker. Some also suggested to remove the windows on the factory as it is more of a silhouette and it didn't suit the windows.

Various type I played with. I ended up choosing 

paint peel as it fit into my poster concept the best.

Factory colours + Text changes 

Removed windows + clouds

Test print.

Refinements + Final Poster

Taking all the feedback from the last session, I began to do some final refinements so I can do some early test prints, ensuring that all the colours come out how I wanted them to.

Image reference from google.

Re-drew the factory as my previous one looked more like a power plant. 

Image reference from google.

Adding some moon textures so it won't appear too flat.

Re-drew the money bag - Exposing all the money that the character scammed from people.

I played around with out-glow for the moon.

Added some clouds and stars. Also added more cheese to the stand 

and put drippy paint text on the sign to make it appear more like a dodgy business. 

This is my final piece for test print. 

Feedback

After some further feedback, I had a little more refinement to do to make my narrative more clearer for the audience to interpret. I was suggested to avoid script/calligraphy fonts, instead to make my text appear like it was painted on the shack to further suggest that it was a dodgy business. I also need to add more cheese on display so it looked more like a shop. The factory looked like a power plant opposed to a factory, so I was suggested to look at some picture examples and refine it. It was also recommended that I change the colour of the money bag to a beige/brown colour with possibly money spewing out of it as it is easier to interpret by others.

Refinements

Referenced Imagery

-A shack to possibly portray the dodgy salesman and his factory. 

-Cheese wrapper (saying best moon cheese) to make a connection 

with the cheese and the moon.

-Money bag to show the fraud, making money off people from the lies.

Critique Feedback

After critique I found there were some changes I could make to improve my image and help convey my story a little better. I was told to maybe add a store in my story so it is easier for the audience to understand that the figure in my story is a cheese seller/maker. To also create a further link between the cheese and the moon, It was suggested that I can maybe add a wrapper (possibly on the cheese) showing that it was the "best and only moon cheese" around. I also needed to add some imagery that can show the cheese maker/seller scamming people and becoming rich off their money. Overall the style of the story was fine but I had to make a better connection between with the images in my story.

Critique Presentation

Conspiracy Theory: 

The (moon is made out of cheese) conspiracy is created by a cheese seller who decides to scam everyone by telling them that his cheese are the top notch moon cheese around the market. However the moon is not really made out of cheese. It was a conspiracy created by the cheese seller in order to gain profit for himself.

Tonal Exercise