Yow there, it's zeZehfuh (づ￣ ³￣)づ

So I'm trying to be more active on AFF (except for making graphics of course!) and thus I decided to continue the 'Beyond the Design' series (didn't know the brain child of my boredom at work would've received such warm respond >.< Thankyou so much). 

Since I'm insomniac anyway (it's currently 2am when I started writing), here we go... 

!!WARNING!!

IT'S GONNA BE FULL OF NARCISSISM AND SOMETIMES (ACTUALLY OFTEN) SENSELESS EXPLANATIONS

READ AT YOUR OWN RISK, AND DON'T FORGET TO REPEATEDLY STRAIGHTEN YOUR OWN FINGERS CUZ IT'S GONNA BE CRINGEY AF

1. JUST A WISH

I love making fantasy artworks and of course I love writing fantasy stories too! This poster "historically" sets my bar as a fantasy poster maker hahaha, cuz when this poster was released I suddenly got a lot of love calls for fantasy/sci-fi requests >.<

Anyway, the author, AlfieAdrian-nim told me that the story has this ice and fire elements. At first I thought about following the mainstream side of my brain and just literally put fire and ice elements on each end of the poster. But then the other half of my brain told me that it might make the poster look too... rowdy. Well, of course, cuz I had to consider placing 2 Mamamoo members and 9 EXO members on the poster, adding as well each EXO members' powers before making sure to add the ice and fire elements into the poster! So... I decided to just use the hues of ice and fire! I also kept the idea of dividing the poster into two opposing ends of ice and fire, and thus that's how the blue on the left and red on the right background came about. 

Tbh I didn't know which of the main characters (Moonstar and Solar) did the author wanted to represent ice or fire, cuz back then the story only had foreword. I decided to trust my, ehem, instinct and put Moonstar in blue and Solar in red...pshh, nahh, actually it's cuz I found Moonstar looking gorgeous in that ash-blue hair and then I accidently found Solar wearing that red beret while surfing tumblr HAHA. And then I wanted the EXO members to have a uniform look and thank god for their concert trailer photo (¬‿¬). All I had to do left was symbolising all of their respective imaginary powers, which of course just self-explanatory.

I was seriously glad it didn't end up looking too rowdy #proudaf

2. AMEROXIA

Just like petrichor, I fell in love with the word ameroxia. Yeah I have always had this symptom of liking unique words hahaha, maybe becuz I love fantasy and Lord of the Ring. To this day I still wanted to learn the Elven language. Anyway, the plot of this story was very much sci-fi, but the author wanted to have this adventurous vibe. So the first challenge for me was photo manipulation!

I'm very very very picky when it comes to photo choosing, that's why I'd always be happy to change the photos on request and even ask (if any) for photo link on my request form hehehe. That's cuz for me, characterisation is really important, my artwork should really be the representation of my clients' imagination, otherwise why would they even request for a poster, right? At first I couldn't find that perfect photo to represent the adventurous Onew and Changmin; they'd either be too dark or too fluffy. I'm not against photo manipulation, but seriously tho, photo manipulation takes time and concentration hahaha ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ. But then again I don't wanna do things half-heartedly. Fortunately, lady-luck was on my side, and after several research I could find Onew in that perfect outfit! Changmin was the problem, tho. The author wanted Changmin from his web-drama, Mimi, but all of the still-cuts from that drama was seriously faaaar from adventurous. And thus, I decided to search all over his airport fashion and finally found that perfect outfit! The actual pic with that outfit was actually Changmin with long, wavy hair hahaha.

And the background! God I was so proud of this background. I went for blue hue and a bit of purple just cuz I had always wanted to try ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). I was actually highly influenced by Star Trek, so I placed several flying spaceship hahaha and motion-blurred them a bit to show dynamism, and even the buildings was actually the fruit of my Star Trek and Guardians of the Galaxy research.. I didn't know why, but my brain always associate fantasy/sci-fi with the... moon. Yeah so I just placed the moon right there. 

Now the typography. Anyone here sharp enough and guess where might you've seen it before? Hahaha, it's actually the font that the movie Tron used (¬‿¬). Y'know when you have the occupational disease, especially when it has something to do with graphic design or digital arts in general, you ended up with a bank of fonts. I currently have over 350 different kinds of fonts. And yeah, I was still in the 3d font fever haha.

3. THE UNIVERSE COLLIDED

Owwie I'm finally writing about this poster for my friend, Sunchild! This poster is just the definition of my favs in one; Blackpink, BTS, NCT and Fantasy in one. I was honestly experimenting a lot with this piece. I wanted to incorporate the pastel pink and purple colour just cuz I love how it'd look, especially after watching Blackpink's Whistle music video. I was honestly mesmerized when I first looked at that MV, and when I read the description of this story my mind went whistle! So yeah, the overall colour scheme for this poster is highly influenced by that video!

I wanted to show the 'colliding' part of the story title so I incorporated the "different universes(?)" of the story. The story had this different realms(?) for humans and celestial beings, and Sunchild even provided photos for them. So I simply incorporate the 'celestial planet' on the top where Blackpink are. The typography is actually self-explanatory. I used a rope to sort of hang the word 'the universe', and then slashed the word 'collided' into two and making it look as if it's opening. This is just a bit of symbolism to indicate how the celestial beings who lived up there would come down and later on get involved with the humans who lived down there.

4. ROYALTIES

This poster is seriously really memorable, cuz it's the very first poster I made when I opened my shop, and it just had to be a Seventeen piece! Thank you again Gelli07-nim for being the honorary first client >.<

It seriously had a lot of photo manipulation going on, just cuz the whole story theme was 'kingdom', and of course I had absolutely nothing against doing this much photo manipulation for the sake of Seventeen and Jeonghannie. Like seriously Jeonghan is sooo shippable with everyone in the group, but still my heart low key shipped him with Seungcheol. Always. Nope wait I'm pretty much a hardcore Jeongcheol shipper. Sorry not sorry.

Anyway, in the story, Jeonghan was supposed to inherit his father's position as his kingdom's king, after an unfortunate event that took his royal family's lives away (yes, I actually read the story >.<). At first sight of the theme I went Lord of the ing Ring. I remember the colour scheme of the poster so much (since I'm seriously infatuated with the movie), I decided to apply it to this poster, cuz the pallete just has this medieval flavour and screams royalties and elegance, which fits what the author wanted. 

Then I went on to search for the 'perfect body' for each of the character. I initially wanted to 'borrow' (HAHA) the bodies of the characters in Lord of the Rings but then I abandoned the idea cuz I couldn't get the perfect fit. I'm a bit (no. a lot) of a perfectionist, tbh, so when I do photo manipulation I do it with all my heart. This means I looked for photos with the perfect definition, perfect angle, and sometimes even the perfect colour pallete just so I don't have to adjust the colouring. Anyone familiar with Game of Thrones? Yeah fortunately I could get my resources from that series \ (•◡•) /. And I'm seriously happy with how the members turned out, especially Jeonghan and Mingyu.

Oh the background. I'll be honest and say that the castle is actually Disney's castle. I remembered taking a photo of the castle when I went to Tokyo's Disneyland. I just can't believe I would be using the photo for this hahaha.

5. EXO'S NEW HYBRID

This was actually the fastest poster I made for sci-fi/fantasy genre, I actually took only 20 or 25 minutes for this piece.

Initially, for some reason, I couldn't grasp the main elements of the story :/. When I saw the title 'hybrid' I was expecting some dark, heavy and medieval-ish story, but when I actually read the first chapter I felt the hidden fluff (?) and the futuristic side of the story. What actually helped me hit the current idea was actually the sentence "the year was 2056". I was convinced that I had to mix in the elements of fantasy, sci-fi (for the sake of "genetically mixing genes of humans and animals"), and of course futuristic. My brain associates futuristic with random digital lines, dots and cubes. And so that's what I simply did; I added a mix of reddish random lines, but then I thought it looked too empty, and I never liked only having one hue in my artwork. So I jumped to include futuristic buildings and changed the colour to blue. And yes I was still in the 3d font fever...

6. MAY WE MEET AGAIN

Oh, this is one of my recent posters! Second to Exo's New Hybrid, this poster actually took 1 hour to make. I don't know why but I felt a connection (?) with the plot of the story and the idea just flowed like a river. I don't know if I'm good at angsty and dark genres, but tbh dark ones are much easier than bright ones. With dark genres, it's easy to point out the main colour scheme: it's black, and more black. But with bright genres, there's just sooo many colours to choose from. Honestly just like its counterpart, white, black popped the other coloured objects that sit on top of it. Whatever am I even making any sense right now. 

Anyway, the author, exolexact-nim, helped me by being very specific about which photos to use, and hers was Exo's Monster era. And the fact that the story is actually based on the tv show The 100 also helped me decide the whole composition. I've always wanted to try the contemporary graphic design, where you would have this random squares, box or other shapes or frames in the overall design. So I used rectangles. I liked how the characters would sometimes be hidden by the rectangular strains or actually pop over it. Fortunately, the whole Monster era photos grasped the gore and dark horror side of the story. I just had to a bit of 'destruction' flavour in it by adding explosions here and there. And of course red and black go hand in hand to create the overall angsty, dark, horror and violent vibe.

7. GEUMJI: LIFE OF NYMPHSIEKELING

This poster was memorable for the fact that I had a hard time making it. I went back and forth to change the whole composition just cuz I (and the requester) wasn't satisfied with any of the designs. I made like 4 to 5 drafts, all with different elements. Actually, I didn't know that this poster was supposed to be a roleplay poster cuz the requester didn't specify it until I saw the credit... :(

Anyway, the roleplay had this five different fantasy creatures: grimreapers, ghost, siren, gumiho, and goblin. The first draft was seriously a mess, I don't wanna talk about that it'd just take my self-esteem away... but then I remembered watching this Jack Black movie, I reckon the title was Goosebumps or something along those lines. I remembered how it had an open book at the bottom, and that's why I decided to use it hahaha. And then of course, I just simply had to align all the characters with their respective fantasy creatures. Fun fact tho, thank god I read this webtoon series called Sirens, otherwise I'd be too dumb to know what siren is. And at first I wanted to add kyuubi's tails on Tzuyu but... omaigat I couldn't believe how ugly it looked! 

8. IN DIFFERENT WORLDS

MY NEWEST FANTASY POSTER!! It's seriously been a while since I do a thoroughly fantasy-themed artwork. I was so scared I'm gonna lose my touch >.< I'm so thankful to langleav26-nim for the very warm respond on the finished arts! This one is actually similar to the Geumji: Life of Nymphsiekeling poster, where the characters are actually creatures and that I had to include them somehow in the poster without making it too rowdy. 

The first that came into my mind was background. The story shows how different creatures have their own lands (it seriously gave me Lord of the Rings vibe, gosh how many times have I mentioned LOTR now?) and thus... I decided to sort of incorporate that fact into the poster. So I placed skyscraper, hovering islands and even hovering castle like the one in The Hobbit. Note that I actually used the same base colour as the Royalties poster, it's cuz the whole map thing in the story gave me a chilling middle earth feels. 

Anyway, Pinky is an angel, but the angels in this story has contradicting personalities (healing powers vs. extreme naughtiness), that's why I placed white and black feathers around her, cuz a huge wing is too mainstream. Mina is a vampire and she's supposed to have this mysterious, arrogant and hostile persona, so I used black crows cuz they are associated with arrogance and hostility. A little bit of photo manipulation on Seulgi, for she is a werewolf. And finally my baby Rose is a witch! Anybody familiar with FullMetal Alchemist Brotherhood? Yeah I love anime and kpop and I'm proud of it. I was seriously wondering if I should put some sort of witch circle around her or something, and then I was reminded of FMA's alchemy circle HAHA. Yeah, so the little circle around her is actually FMA's alchemy circle ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).

9. TASTELESS

Thought I was gonna talk only about fantasy posters? hahaha, nope, so lemme wrap this with a talk of my NEWEST YOONMIN POSTER (KYAAAA~). This poster is perhaps one of my posters with the most symbolism in it. And I'm proud of it HAHAHA.

Let's start with the... lips. I think it's self-explanatory that taste equals mouth/lips/tongue. The one I really like is actually the 6th lip with purple lollipop. In the story, Yoongi is supposed to have this stone-like personality who is just barely aware of his surrounding (even my baby Jimin's major crush on him). Since lollipops have this sweet taste but rock hard structure, I used it to sort of represent Yoongi's personality hahaha. It also double as, ehem, y'know. If Zico were to say it, it would be, "grabbing my mic" HAHAHA. Yepp, I used it to represent the "oral" part in the game of  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). Note the purple colour of the lollipop too. I used purple becuz, hey, it's the international colour for gay!

And then the typography. Gosh I'm sooo happy at the final result of the typography. Again I was experimenting on how to represent the 'less' in 'Tasteless'. And of course my mind went transparent! But if I were to simply make it transparent it would look just like my previous posters ("Lost and Found" perhaps?) and I don't really like that. So I decided to splash a bit of my favourite pastel yellow ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), and I'm not even sorry. Note the 'Ts' in 'Tasteless' are actually flipped lambdas? Yeah the ones in math, but nope I didn't use it for its mathematical meaning. Lambda symbolizes New York's chapter of Gay Activists Alliance, which was created back in 1970s or so I forgot. 

Anyway, I'm not really the type to make posters with only typography so I had to put in the main characters HAHAHA. At first I used tiny Yoonmin which honestly kinda seem out of place. Throwingpineapples did point that out too! So I changed it and replace it with a brand new Yoonmin muahaha.

Finally, and my favourite, is the little camera and paint brush icon at the bottom between Yoongi and Jimin's names. It's nothing much actually, it was just a subtle indication on Yoongi's profession as a photographer and Jimin as an art teacher.

Honestly overall I was soo satisfied with this piece hahaha.

Anyway, I really have to sleep. So bubye :*

Cheers!