VILLAINS!

For this project, John had us pick two villains...one from 19th century literature (or before) and one from modern day film. We had to compare them in some way...or show how these two villains have something in common.

I chose Medusa and Davy Jones...and I outlined these in ink first, and colored them in photoshop. Approximate time was (much longer than I should have spent on these) about 21 hours of work from sketch time to completion...but I think it was well worth it! I really love how medusa turned out (and her snakes).

One thing that I think helped tie these compositions together was that pattern of the checkered floor. I think adding in that diamond pattern to the wall helped to tie their styles together. I originally intended to do a lot of flat color and shapes, but I ended up shading and rendering everything...which benefited me a ton. This is probably one of my best pieces I've created :D

Career Guide Illustration

Here's something I whipped up in a day or so for the cover of StudLife's career guide that came out a couple weeks ago. I metaphorically tied the search for a job to a pirate hunting for treasure. I did this one with a micron and then scanned and photoshopped in the colors.

OMG new post finally! New illustration

It's been awhile and I've been bogged down with my 20 credits, but here is one of my latest illustrations for John's Editorial class. It's supposed to be an illustration for a book review about this pornographer who gets into a horrible car crash, gets badly burned and therefore loses his previous life of fortune and fame. Done with pastels and sumi ink on hotpress watercolor paper.

Really cool vintage-inspired Vector Illustrations!

http://abduzeedo.com/beautiful-modern-vintage-illustrations-tom-whalen

Such an amazing use of flat shapes and vectors to create very simple figures!

Because I have no time to post new artwork:

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/50-beautiful-and-effective-package-designs/

I thought this was pretty neat to look at knowing I'm working in the marketing field right now

Get pwned with manual shutdown in Power Plants!

A couple of the colored editorial illustrations for an article (an old, old 2005 article) expressing that manual shutdown for powerplants was inferior to an automatic shutdown, and that manual shutdowns are very complicated.

So this is a way to add more UMPH to a website?

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/50-inspirational-website-introductions/

Of course one of my favorite websites to visit for more tips and trick in the art (and website making) world...Webdesignerdepot.com

This post shows a bunch of examples on how websites use an opening face page consisting of a sentence or two explaining the purpose or short bio of the artist. Apparently it's a new trend these days...and I have just the spot to do it on my website!

http://www.snowwhitedesign.com

I have always tried to figure out what to do with that spot...maybe I'll handwrite a short intro there. Right now the text seems a little artificial and too digital to really match up with the style of the drawing. I'm also considering maybe adding in some color to the drawing instead of keeping it purely blue and white.

Any thoughts?

3d Typography!

So I've been trying to think of ways that I can integrate typography more into my images so that they seem more intertwined...still working on that.

I like to think of John Hendrix's examples of his 3-D type that he uses in a lot of his work. Lots of 3D type. It's like his ongoing special in a diner or something.

I came across this website posted on Digg.com on 3D typographic examples. very LOVELY! I am so inspired now! Here's the link:

http://naldzgraphics.net/inspiration/40-most-inspiring-3d-text-typography-designs/

and some examples from the site:

Branding Me?

So today is the first step I'm taking in trying to "Brand" myself...as in giving myself a logo that sort of stands for me as well as linking my resume, cover letter, website, and portfolio in all forms so that it may all be cohesive.

So I came up with this neat design for my name...as you will now see in the header at the top. A very nice cursive snow with a snowflake substituted as the "o." Just trying to emphasize the uniqueness of my name, really. Hopefully this is something I can stick with for awhile and really build up on it.

Also, I got an internship offer at Twist, a small local marketing agency specializing in branding small local businesses that revolve around lifestyle and entertainment, though theres some others as well. I have still yet to have an interview with Rivet, so we'll see where my road takes me, but it looks like I definitely have an option!

Urban Outfitters and Illustration NOW!

There are a few reasons why I hardly purchase anything at Urban Outfitters:

1. Honestly, who spends $45 on a basic t-shirt that I can find at target for $9?
2. I don't know how they decided when grandpa's sweater came back in style...it never did.
3. Almost all of their stuff is fairly seasonal, though I've seen them put out the same basic soft sweater from their dusty winter inventory 3 years in a row.

But on the counterpart, I love their accessories and home furnishings. I stumbled across a shelve of books they were selling, and I found behold...

ILLUSTRATION NOW (a tanschen book)!!!
A conglomeration of 96 different illustrators' work. AMAZING! (Yuko Shimizu is in there too, btw).

I'm having all sorts of fun flipping through it and checking out all the contemporary illustrators work. So far my favorites are:

- Gina Triplett (she has a wonderful balance between acrylic and ink)
- Christoph Niemann (tons of visual metaphors and very clever)
- Arthur dePins
- Jason Brooks
- Delicatessen (the last three are very similar in their vector/flat shape way of composing people

Another fabulous book to add to my library, which I have just recently thought of building.
I just purchased the other day a "photo reference for comic book artists" book, which has basically men and women in very neat action poses in different perspectives, with very awesome lighting. I would have purchased the "all male models" one since I am lacking in my male anatomy skills (if you know what I mean, everytime I draw the male body, it ends up being slick straight like a rectangle with very little muscle definition. Like nerdy guys with baggy clothes.)
My library is building... :D

ThurtenE Poster Contest entry

So here's the poster that I created for the poster contest. The theme was "Timeless Traditions, Endless Opportunities."

So what can I draw that alludes to something that is timeless and endless.....a MOBIUS STRIP! it's very endless (and one sided) or basically an infinity sign, which is essentially shaped like a mobius strip. So what if I just have the entire carnival on this mobius strip?

I hope my idea works. The illustration took me awhile but I'm very happy with the way it turned out, and The color workshop keeps helping me explore non-neon colors and I ended up dulling a lot of stuff down. Also, notice the lovely texture added, because it looked horrifying as flat color.

Finished Wine Bottle Labels!

Here are the finished labels for this project in John's class. We first made icons of animals (I started with the lemur) and then were given the task of creating a label with the icons on them. I think my labels turned out nicely, though I think if I had another class period I could really experiment more with varying how the type is set.

Awesome tutorials...did you know you can do this?

http://www.layersmagazine.com/roundtrip-logo-from-illustrator-to-photoshop.html

I had no idea what the heck a "Vector Smart Object" was whenever I decided to paste stuff from Illustrator into Photoshop before...usually there's a million options like "Paste as Pixels, vector, shape, etc" but NOW I know what the purpose of a "Vector Smart Object" is!

Apparently, if you copy and paste something from Illustrator as it is open (and vice versa from Photoshop to Illustrator) you can manipulate the image in one program, and the changes will appear in the second program! I have yet to really try this, perhaps later today...but that is awesome.

I totally dig the mask/texture tutorial in this video too.

Yay new post!

I'm excited...this is my first blog post. I'm not usually a blogger, and I doubt I will have enough time to update this more than once a week, but at least it's a place where I can put up some art I'm working on and comment on it besides just on my website.

LINOLEUM CUTS (are amazing).

I'm excited with my 3 icon animals...a lemur, a platypus and a wolverine. They are very cute...then again, most of my work I realize is more on the cute "softer" side. I'm deciding to choose the wine label for this "label" project since having a good wine label in a portfolio is definitely a booster. I have leftover linoleum so I think I might carve a turtle and have that as a logo for my website or just as a logo in general since I love turtles.

Surprisingly, I have very very few drawings of turtles in my portfolio, or just turtle drawings in general.