Grace Huang

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Endangered Animal Poster

Vector art,  Typography, Stop Motion Animation

An 11x17 in. poster made for the Ryukyu flying fox, an endangered species from Taiwan and Japan.

Constraints: 6 colors, 2 fonts, and no gradients!

 The graphic tells a story about the animal’s habitat amongst the cherry blossoms, as well as the reason behind their endangerment.
Duration:
2 Weeks
Course:
Design Lab, Spring 2024
Role:Individual
Tools:Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop





Gif Component:
Final Poster Showcase:







Process:

Species Study:




References: 




Composition Ideation:

When creating the compositions, I tried to express a variety of stories about the bat. First, I strived to show their natural habitat, where the flying foxes roosted amongst tree tops. Another extremely unique feature was their flight behavior. 


Final 2 Composition Options: 






Procreate Workshop:


Generating 6 colors: 
Being nocturnal, I knew one of my colors should reflect the night sky.

For the environment, I selected the cherry blossom flowers as base. The light pinks contrasted well with the blue background.

As for the animal itself, its colors were a warm brown. It consists of a primary body color, darker wing, and the signature light ring of fur around its neck that I found essential to highlight.

Color Variations on Procreate:







First 2 Drafts

Vertical Iteration:
A hidden rifle at the bottom suggests their endagerment cause.
Horizontal Iteration:
A close-up view of the flying fox, where the hunter rifle in the upper left corner hints the fox’s escape..


Narrowing Down:

From the last iteration…
Darkened cherry blossoms as an attempt to make bats more distinct.
Tried out the circular/geometric abstraction of cherry blossoms.

CRIT:
The cherry blossoms are still ambiguously shaped…
Tree stems signify overly tall trees → add more branching out lower
Ring of blossoms around the moon is awkward, opt for fuller foliage.




Environment:



Studying their shapes more and adding individual petal details to make the form more like florals and not ambiguous blobs. The process involved a lot of “blob” removing, being more selective of the shapes, sizes, and how they grouped together.







Color:






Text:



With the first iteration, adding a straight title disrupted the flow of the composition. Thus, I curved the title to the cherry blossom foliage. After my composition changed, the curved text was no longer “necessary” to keep the flow.

However, I still liked how it suggested the feeling of “flying off the page,” so I made the curve more gradual.



Final Edits:


I cleaned up the overall rendering of each item in the frame, including adding details for highlights and shadows to give dimentionality.