When first given this project, Michael showed us a few examples. I was very unimpressed by what he showed us. Everything was bland, lacking detail. There was too much left open to interpretation. I knew I wanted to make my self portrait as detailed as possible.
We had two guidelines:
1. Make a 8.5" x 11" self portrait.
2. Only use the rectangle tool in Adobe Illustrator.
Sounds easy enough, right?
WRONG
I have dabbled in Photoshop and Illustrator in the past, so I thought that this would be a walk in the park. Psh, was I ever wrong. I didn't realize how little I knew about Illustrator until I got about third seconds into the project.
So I looked around at my classmates and how they were doing it. I listened.
*click click click click click*
*click click click click click click click*
*click click click click click click*
*click click click click*
Everyone around my was creating tiny little rectangles to creating light and shadow to make a million shapes form a face. I thought to myself that making thousands of rectangles would go by quickly. Once I reached the ten hour mark and my face was still incomplete, I knew I wasn't going to bed that night.
Sure enough, click, drag, release, repeat x 100000000000 took a solid seventeen hours.
However, I fully achieved my goal.
I wanted the viewer to know that this was not a normal self portrait, that there must be something slightly off about this person. But, I also wanted it to be absolutely clear that this was in fact my face. The details in the T-zone translate that it is me, but the "larger" rectangles on the cheeks and neck and shirt give it a pixelated look.
