Gackt Kakejiku

First off, whew. ^^; A LOT of work put in this one! I am exhausted and so done with it. This is my final project for Digital Illustration.<br />
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Alright, well, there was a very specific purpose behind this piece. I made it with a contest in mind. The point of the contest to make a sort of kakejiku, which is a Japanese ceremonial banner celebrating Spring. As most of you should know, the Vernal Equinox was just a couple of days ago, so this was a good time for this. :)<br />
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The other point of the contest was to include Gackt in it somewhere.<br />
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Now, for my assignment we were supposed to do a gradient mesh. A gradient mesh uses a whole bunch of points on a grid to make a more realistic appearance. It's fairly difficult to explain, so let's just say that Gackt was done with a gradient mesh. You can see what the framework looks like here. I tried to give Gackt a realistic, but slightly idealistic and etheral feel. I'm fairly happy with the result.<br />
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And then the choice of flowers was a choice made with Spring in mind. Both the irises and cherry blossoms are spring time plants.<br />
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Alright, I'll stop blabbing about it now. ^^; It is complete.<br />
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Time Elapsed: 35 hours<br />
Size: 11"x17"<br />
Program Used: Adobe Illustrator