Power of Primitives
This assignment involved creating a fictional sea creature using basic shapes in Adobe Illustrator. I decided to go with an arthropod because I felt that their segmented bodies would be an easy thing to construct from basic shapes.
After looking at a few pictures of crustaceans and insects, I settled on an ant-like design that included spikes to simulate the crags and points of volcanic rocks. Ovals were used for most of the body parts: the body, head, legs, joints, eyes, and even mandibles were created with ovals and the Shape Builder tool. The only exception is the antennae, which were simply polygons made with the line tool.
The spikes and back texture were made using stars, which I felt really embodied the natural crags and spikes you'd see on broken rocks. The spikes on the body and head were simply stars that had been merged using the Shape Builder tool, while the pink markings on the back and head were stars cut up using the Eraser.
I think the creature turned out as well as I'd hoped, though I regret not making the background more interesting. I used noise on a brown rectangle to get the background to look like sand, but I think adding rocks or vegetation would have made this picture more interesting to look at.
