The Joy of Designing: Workshop Three
Contestant Deadline: 6/18 @ 5pm

Hello all ~

Alongside the Joy of Designing Contest, I will be holding some design workshops. These workshops are open to everyone, so please feel free to join in. All contestants who participate in the workshop will earn an additional vote on their designs for the week! There are two types of workshops: one focuses on developing design skills, while the other focuses on giving back to the community. (: If you choose to participate, I'd love to see what you come up with - please feel free to post!


Round 5 - Design Workshop

This week's workshop focuses on design critique and design skills. As some of you recall - the application process required you select an existing theme to critique and improve upon. This was designed to not only test your design skills, but your analytical skills. Being able to improve upon small details can take your design from good to great! This workshop is about learning to identify those areas and improve upon them.

That being said, this week I am going to ask you to go into my project stable and select a breeding pair to critique and improve upon. I promise I won't be upset about anything that is said ahaha. The hope is by the end of the workshop, you are able to identify those small things in your designs and push them over the top. (: In the next post, I will walk you through some of my thought process when analyzing designs.

I am sure based on my pairs you will see large differences in design quality as they were made over the course of about 2 years. Here is the stable with my projects. They are in tabs 1 through 5 and the top two rows of tab 6.

For context, this vene is my oldest project design and this lune is the newest. (:



Contestants: Please ping me and create a post that mirrors the steps taken in my tutorial. (:

Identity:
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Changes:
Final Analysis: how you feel the final product measured up

Example - Eventide Aeridini

So I don't also select anyone's pick for the workshop, I am going to do a theme - the same theme I used in my example application. (: I randomized the 6 traits.



Step 1: When you first analyze a design, one of the most important things you can do is find a few words to establish the identity of the design - some will be more obvious than others. The Eventide Aeri reads to me as *elegant, dark, and mysterious* - kind of an Egypt or Cleopatra feel. It's important when you start making changes you improve the design while maintaining it's identity as it is otherwise very easy to end up with an entirely different design by the end.






Step 2: Look for strengths and weaknesses within the design - sometimes it isn't obvious until you start playing with the colors. Feel free to put them in the generator and start to push and pull them to help identify these areas. When you find a weakness, manipulate the design until you find a way to remedy it.

Tip: If a design features the same color codes, these are great candidates to revisit - sometimes you can push and pull these colors just a smidge to make them really pop. This is especially true for this aeri!

Strengths:

- The rich orange in the feathers really compliments the golds and emphasizes the elegance of the design
- The blue undertones to the black give the aeri more depth.
- There are parallel traits - the body is tri tone and so are the wings.
- There is a good balance between busy and minimal traits.

Weaknesses:

- The rich orange doesn't appear frequently throughout the body, it would be great to further incorporate it.
- The body reads very dark - there is very little difference between the C1, C2 and C3. This design would benefit if the darker colors were more varied.
- There are two different bands of gold on the wings, but they look like one, these could stand to have more color variation.
- The flower has very little contrast - it is difficult to see the gene and needs to be revisited.







Step 3: Here you start implementing changes based on both the strengths and weaknesses (you may change traits):

- I used the blue undertones idea and made the belly lighter, so it would contrast against the body.
- I wanted to keep the underside of the tentacle wings dark since they curl over on themselves and this place is more likely to be shadowed. *It is really helpful mind where shadows and highlights might fall on a sylesti and manipulate the colors to reflect it.*
-This also influenced the G3, so I edited the C1, and made it just a hair lighter to continue to emphasize the contrast.
- I took inspiration from the original orange feathers and started implementing a more vibrant orange across the body to create a beautiful accent against the gold.







Step 4: Compare your newly finished product against the original. Definitely ask yourself if it is an improvement. Try to identify if there are any parts you like better about the original and make changes accordingly. Most importantly, does it still maintain the identity of the original! Go back and compare your final product to the identity you laid out in step one - you might create a lot of designs along the way, but it is important not to lose sight of your original inspiration or design intention. (:

Workshop 3 has now opened. (:

Step 1 -

When I look at this design I see a Mydas thing going on with it, Makes me feel lucky or rich via money

Step 2 - Strengths
There are rich shades of browns and golds like Mydas would have.
I love the Pearl traits and Mystic horns.

Weakness
I think there is just not enough shiny elements going on here to really embrace Mydas
C3 and M1 very close in shades. Also the Pink accents did not go very well.

I changed G3 and A1 getting rid of the pinks in the design A2 is not in use but I still changed it to match the design.

changed G1 to a burnt orange for a brighter golden leafed effect

Changed C2 also brighter more golden

Made M1 match the creatures eyes.

Old/New

Identity: Jade Jewelry


Strengths:
-Nice diversity of colour
-Yellow really pops on the green background
-Trait choice compliments the colour choices without being overwhelming

Weaknesses:
-Pale yellow seems a little out of place in the idea of the design
-antenna choice does not add to the design (likely due to regen restrictions?)

Changes:
Because my reading of this project was that of jade jewelry, the first thing I changed was the antennas. The Scarab antenna immediately make me think of a piece of jade, especially with the colour AC2 already was. With that changed, I really did want to work with the yellows. The pale yellow, while a nice balance to the brighter yellows in the original, didn't really seem to be adding to this idea. So, instead I moved the brighter yellow to the AC1 slot and deepened the other yellows, trying for a more yellow-gold feel and really bring out that feeling of a piece of jade set in a gold necklace.



Final Analysis:
I really liked the original for this design, so I didn't want to change too much. I'm not sure if my reading of the design is what was originally intended (mostly had the pets' names and the original colours to work with), but I think the changes I made are another good way to come at that feeling.