#014 The Lepidopter

Last night I discovered a very beautiful painting by James Gurney of Dinotopia fame. It is an amazing painting blending imagination & realism so well that you can feel this Lepidopter taking off into the night sky. With you in it!
As anyone who knows me well can attest, I have been a big fan of Mr. Gurney's work since I was very young. I was thrilled when he left me with the kind encouragement that follows on his blog:

Thank you very much Mr. Gurney. I'll certainly try. (Spectrum is an annual album of imaginative art that features artists' work from all around the world).
Go to http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com to see more great art like this, and to get a peppy dose of artistic instruction and inspiration.

#013 Tea Anyone?

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

#012 New Blog Banner

Just changed my Blog Banner, hope everyone likes it. The design features a drawing of a Pappenheimer Rapier (whatever that is) that I drew here a while back. Hope to post more drawings soon. Have a great week!

#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!

#010 Rock Harder

Rock Harder by Eleanor Aarts.

Rock harder. Everybody needs to.

More from my midterm project soon, meanwhile I'm hard at work.

Have a good weekend!

#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.

#006 Right On!

I have had a great weekend!

School, although very stressful last week, is going great, and my assignments have been getting good feedback from the profs.

I went to a church retreat with some of my best friends this weekend, and had a lot of fun, even though we had a little rain. Spent some time during the day playing volleyball, and spent a couple of evenings studying with my two friends who are going to school to be nurses. 

And the weather is all-around fall-ish, and fall is the best season ever.

So, right now, life is "Right On"! What a great saying.

#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!

#003 Onwards

Onwards from AKQA on Vimeo.

This is a cool little video I saw on Drawn! the other day. 

Drawn! is a fun illustration blog for cartoonists, animators etc. They highlight artists that you've probably never heard of. This video is one of those viral videos disguised as an ad for Nike. But it's cute, and the music is really neat.

You can read the original post here.