This Ad was created to raise awareness for the giraffe. Their numbers are dropping drastically because of habitat loss, war and senseless killing/poaching. I wanted to portray the silent fading of this species. You typically hear about the rhino, elephant, polar bear or penguin but not the giraffe. They contribute so much to the African Savannah, it would fall apart if they disappeared! I also wanted to show the violence in the poaching. Many times the poachers take the giraffe's tail, blood, or nothing at all. The greatest predator to the giraffe species is humans.
For this project I wanted to try a different medium, I decided on bleach and fabric. After printing out a few vinyl giraffe stickers, I placed each one on a black T-shirt. Since I have never used this method for illustration before, I experimented with different amounts of bleach spray. About two hours later I ended up with some pretty cool results. The one I used for the illustration was my first attempt.
After photographing the shirt, I brought it into Adobe Photoshop. For a more dramatic impact I de-saturated the picture and added a few filters to make it glow slightly. I used a splatter brush to create the blood drops. To create some depth I used a lighter red and then a darker red with different sized blotches. Once I was satisfied with how that part looked I used the mural filter to give the giraffe some texture.
To create the ad I brought the illustration into Adobe Illustrator. I added the headline and matched its color to the blood. Then I wrote the body copy and directed the viewer the the companies website. I really like how this illustration turned out. The process was very fun! My dad wanted to helped me, so we worked on the bleach part of the project together. The only difficult thing about the process was the bleach, it was very strong. When I was creating the illustrations it was sub-zero outside, so I had to complete the project inside. One upside is that I can wear my artwork!
