#049 Patriot

An experiment in Photoshop using images pulled from Flickr and a little bit of Illustrator type editing thrown in. Design-wise it's a little weak, but it was meant to keep my Ps muscles from atrophying. Hopefully this will be the first in a series... tell me what you think!
Inspired by Mark Weaver's Make Something Cool Every Day.

#030 How You See Your World

Well, I'm enjoying a short break for the winter before I start my spring semester the 1st of February. I had a great Christmas, and it was great to just relax, but I still feel like I could sleep for weeks.
This is my final project for Design Technology. In the 1st phase we created the logo, 2nd we rendered the eyewear using the difficult yet interesting gradient mesh tool in Illustrator. Then we created the final poster.
Can you believe this isn't a photograph of the sunglasses, but a gradient mesh tracing? I think that's amazing that you can achieve this level of realism just by color sampling from a photo and adding points on a mesh. It was tedious though, and it required many hours of clicking and listening to my iPod for hours on end. But I got a good grade, so I'm thrilled.

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Coming Soon: One of the Best Things I Got for Christmas!

#024 Board of Bored Executives

"They'll vote with Potter otherwise!"

This is the 2nd poster in the Interbank series created this week. In case you don't get the joke, no one in the photo is happy with their insurance agent or their rates. Yeah. Now you get it. But unfortunately I cannot resist using vintage photographs and spending a whole hour poring over these archives.

#023 Low-Tech & Lovin' It

Golly! This thing really works!

I hope that my ad works and that the message is loud and clear. I really want this one to work out because I used archived photos (not stock photos mind you) in this assignment, and even though it wasn't specified not to use them, I am a little skittish about the whole thing. But with 3 days of Thanksgiving travel, I was pressed for time, and this one served the purpose.

You can get cool old pictures just like me. Just go here.

#022 Wishing You a Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving!

#020 Hello Analog...

This friendly little droid has mastered the art of fine penmanship. In fact, his little mechanical brain has learned to write just like Jane Austen. He uses his 2B Ticonderoga pencil with great skill and style.

This week in class we have been learning about the 3D capabilities of Adobe Illustrator. The assignment was to come up with a character that uses these techniques. It was hard to get in the swing of it (Illustrator is not close to a full-scale 3D application) but I managed to figure out the basics.

The droid shown here is based on a character from a little comic series (never released to the public) that I did a while back featuring Dot Bots (above) and the Düm Bots (not shown). Perhaps they will make it to the blog someday...

#019 The Bane of the Seas

Flee from the wicked wrath of the Bane of the Seas: The dreaded purple Squid!!
In vain bearded seamen have tried to drive the harpoon home. This vile creature who lurks the foaming deep in search of treasure-laden vessels will stop at nothing to satisfy his lust for gold and human flesh!

I created the waves using custom brushes in Illustrator. Good friend Squid was also created with the same technique, and all was submitted for last weeks assignment. I can now sleep with the peace of mind that my assignment is completed, and you cannot sleep for fear of groping tentacles in the murky abyss.

#018 Champignon

A beautiful specimen pushing up through the black dirt and pine needles. And no, it probably is not edible, however lawn gnomes have been known to frequent them. Ink washes & splatters in Illustrator.

One of my experiments for this week's assignment in WNM 105. I may be able to come up with something better, but so far this is the best I've got. I thought it was very pretty.

#013 Tea Anyone?

Trying out some logotype ideas for some organic tea packaging. Any favorites out there?

#011 Magazine Cover (Part 3)

VECTOR LIFE Magazine - on Newsstands now!
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This afternoon I completed my Midterm project for CANM 105 Design Technology. After completing my vector tracing (see posts #008 & 009) I proceeded to design the type layouts and background, using only a subtle gradient.

I had more progress pics, but I'm having trouble uploading them. Anyway, that's about it. I think my favorite thing about the design is the type treatment. I really felt like it was dynamic. Now that I think about it, the colors are sort of fall-ish. I guess that's good for an October issue!

#009 Magazine Cover (Part 2)

Okay, now that I've got my shirt done, here's what it looks like. The Headless Horseman, right? Notice how I've carefully traced the stripes on the shirt, and how this makes the outlines very defined without tracing the rumples in it.

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Now I've began to work on my head. One bad thing about this project is that I have to carefully scrutinize every detail of my face. Let me tell you, it's humbling.

I've kind of got a rough outline here, and basically I'm trying to capture the defining details of the image without getting bogged down with minutia. Also, I want to start to define the highlights & shadows on my face by making them into vector shapes as well. This is hard because the come out looking solid, and not very transparent like real shadows and highlights.

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In this image, you can see the highlights on my nose & forehead. I'm trying to get just a basic outline of where the light is hitting it. I used a flash photograph in broad daylight to kind of really get some strong light. This helped me separate the headshot from the background, and capture the light and shadow better.

At this point I'm kind of looking like Michael Jackson, but I'll eventually get the light like I want it, and substitute some better colors. All the colors are kind of placeholders until the end, when I'll fine-tune the colors a little more.

Next: Magazine Cover (Part 3)

#008 Magazine Cover (Part 1)

On Tuesday I officially entered Module 5 of Design Technology. Upon entering it, I discovered that our assignment would also be our midterm project. We have two weeks to complete this, whereas usually we have until the next Monday. En lieu of our regular assignments, we will be working on this.

The assignment is to design a magazine cover for the fictional magazine Vector Life. I've been given industry-standard specs to work by as I complete the assignment.

So, the professor wants us to use a vector graphic of ourselves (self-portrait). We're supposed to use this as the main image in the cover. When I got home this afternoon, I did a little photo shoot. In this screenshot, I've got the JPEG in Photoshop, and I've resized it to 50 pixels per inch.

 

Here you can see my workspace in Adobe Illustrator, and as you can see, I'm already hard at work using the Pen Tool to create outlines of the stripes on my shirt. This is done by clicking wherever you want a point, and then clicking again to get another point. Then you use something called "Bezier Handles to make curves in the line that accurately form into just about any curve you can imagine. It's time consuming, but the results are really nice. Also, I've applied a clipping mask around the outline of myself. I think I'll turn that off right now for expedience' sake.

In this image, I've got my tie outlined (I like my tie!) and we've got sort of a placeholder color going here so I can see where I've worked. I think you can also see some points and Bezier handles there in the lower right fold in the tie in red. 

Coming up Next: Magazine Cover (Part 2)

#007 Fresh Fun!

Straight from the fridge: a spiffy ad by yours truly.

I should have made some joke about James Bond since this is post #007, but I won't. Instead, I am serving up fresh fun from the advertising agency of Will Kelly. Hopefully you will want to take out a loan from Acme Financial services after viewing this ad, in order to completely renovate & remodel your home. If not, then you may simply enjoy the retro-vintage goodness of this wholesome graphic design layout, and then move on. Have a wonderful Tuesday.

#005 Fantasy Album Art

Did you hear? Coldplay is releasing their next album: And We Lived... 

Or not.

Okay, sorry to get you all excited, but I came up with an interesting idea as a challenge for myself in my precious little free time. 

Since I'm learning Adobe Illustrator right now, I thought about using vector art to design an album cover for a band. I like Coldplay quite a bit, so I thought it would be fun to design their next release, especially since their 2005 release X&Y featured a vector-like cover.

So, I came up with a dumb album name, and some sappy song titles and created a front & back for it:

I had the concept of a setting sun in my head, and just played around a little with an interesting horizon line, some cool fill colors, and a bunch of circles. In the end you get a really nice clean graphic look.

Looks like a chart-topper to me. Not to mention it's got a bonus remix of Lovers in Japan on it. Can't beat that. Okay Chris Martin, if you need art for the next record, call me up!

#004 Mini Cooper, Illustrated

Well, it's module 2 of Design Technology this week, and I'm hard at work with my next assignment. Here's a shot of it getting close to being done.

What I'm doing is tracing over a photo with the Pen Tool in Illustrator. Very handy tool.

And of course, the Mini is the coolest car ever, and one of my favorites, so naturally that's what I chose!

#002 School Begins

Well, School has started for me, and I am a bona fide student here at the Academy of Art University Online. I am getting my Associate of Arts degree in Illustration, and hope to become a real-life illustrator! Oh Yeah!

So here's my first Assignment in progress. I'm working in Adobe Illustrator in a class called Design Technology. It's really fun (it feels like playing) and my professor Ruben Mosqueda is very good. Our assignment was to create an insect using only basic shapes. Harder than it looks!

My workspace in Illustrator (and my insect)