Little Girl Song
Implementation »
Since there was no lyrical content in this song it a good opportunity to do something at little abstract. I out mark-making as a starting point. Nothing too fancy just red and yellow poster paints dabbed with a sponge.
Really wanted to try out some mark making in this card
I chose this A4 sheet as a starting point
Converted to a smart object. That way I could try out various filters and setting non destructively
I settled on this. The range of colours and round shape seem like little sweets, which I felt was a fitting backdrop
To add a bit of mood I added in this A4 spray paint and set the blend mode to multiply . It actually car spray paint available at any pound shop.
I had im my mind to highlight a central artwork with a vignette effect. hence added a slight radial gradient overlay to the layer. At this point the background still seemed to flat so I tried various textures in layers styles with just enough relief to give the backgrop more form.
Looking for a representation of a little girl.
I looked at some silhouette brushes. Not finding what I was looking for I opted to simple illustration and bring over Photoshop.
I found this rather nice tutorial demonstrating little illustrated figures. And used this as a starting point.
The figure on the left is from the early steps of the tutorial. Just a series of rounded rectangles joined with a square to form the body. I only needed the first few steps as my requirement was for something with less detail.
On the right are my additions. Simple use of the pen-tool, and pathfinder to merge shapes to form the hair and body
imported this into Photoshop as a smart object. This image is black stroke on white. I knew that using Multiply would drop out the white background leaving the black outline. But because the was so much white peering through the backdrop I thought having a white figure would better suite my purposes
Applying an invert adjustment layer and blend mode to screen did the trick.
I made a few subtle adjusts in layer styles just so it didn’t look so flat. I added a very fine outer glow, just 1 pixel. It acts more like a blur to soften the figure and a 1ps shadow to provide a little bit of lift.
Again the changes are hardly noticeable, but when you turn them on and off the difference is clear
To complete the card I added some vector shape, reduced the fill opacity, and worked them in further with a soft brush on a layer mask.
Now finally for the text. At this point the whole thing reminded of candy. In my mind I thought oversized swirl lollies.
Straight away I knew I wanted something curly and styled as though a child and written it.
I went to dafont.com. There were many to suit my needs. I settled on TS Curly
Finally, to give it a little lift I gave it a stroke selected on of the dark colours of the backdrop.
The back cover is just a copy of the first with the pointilize filter removed and the cell size in crystallise increased. The more I look at it it looks better than the front!.
