Senior Thesis Project
Digital Painting | Layout
While brainstorming about my senior thesis, I kept returning to the subject of myths and their appearances in different cultures. That is when I decided I would do a series of posters that illustrated different myths. At first I thought about focusing on wolves for my subject, but while having a discussion about different myths the raven was brought up. While doing more research for my project, I discovered the multitude of myths focusing on ravens in various cultures leading me to settle on the topic of ravens for my senior thesis. I then had to make the decision on which myths I would center my focus on that I would later depict within the three posters I wanted to create. That is when I decided to focus on Native American myths about the raven. There was many different Native American myths but I narrowed it down to three. The first myth is about how the raven is originally white and had tricked the chief of the tribe into releasing the sun and moon. After the chief realized that he was tricked he then locked the raven into a small room where the only way to escape was to go through a smoke hole which turned the raven black. The second myth is about how the raven used to come and take the souls of the dead and deliver them into the afterlife. The last and final myth is the myth that the raven controls storms, that by flapping its wings the raven would create the winds, thunder, and lightning of a storm. After having my myths I had to decide exactly what I wanted to do within each poster. I decided to turn the posters depicting the myths into movie posters. Making them into movie posters creates more meaning to me and symbolizes how I have worked at a movie theater during most of my time at UD. After deciding what type of posters I wanted to make, I went and found reference images of ravens that would work for each poster and then found background image references. Following that I had to decide on what each movie for the movie posters should be called. After having the titles for each piece I started working on them. I used Adobe Photoshop to digitally paint each piece separately. After getting the images painted I then brought them into Adobe Illustrator to bring them together. Once the images were brought together I then had to decide what to put on each poster. I researched movie posters to see exactly what was usually on the small print of a poster. Once I had figured out what positions and information I wanted on my poster it was just the process of writing it and putting in names of people who have helped me through my time at UD. While creating the images I started brainstorming on how to best display the finished projects at the Senior Thesis art show. While I was working at the movie theater one day I decided that I was going to find a way to have my poster in a light up box just like real movie posters. With the help of my dad I was able to create the best way to display the finished project, |