Bloggin' It Up

"The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" Illustrations

2012-01-16T06:49:00.020-05:00

As a total spur-of-the-moment, just-for-fun experiment, I took a whack at rendering Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, the lead characters from the recent "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" film.

I found a few photo references for each character, and just started laying down basic shapes in Freehand. I challenged myself to keep the shapes as primitive as possible, to see if I could still render a recognizable likeness. I kept the images very formal, so the face structures are completely symmetrical.

At first, Lisbeth's eyes and nose ring were round, but they stood out as the only curved shapes, so I went back and replaced them with flat shapes later. Restricting the shapes this way seemed to work - it kept the style cohesive.

I kept the colors limited, and allowed only one level of highlight and shadow for each colored surface. The backgrounds were pulled from the eye colors.

Detail - before and after grunge.

When the images were finished, I pulled the vector shapes into Photoshop (keeping them as Smart Objects, so they could be resized - even larger - without any quality loss) and added some texture. The grunge layers were free high-res files that I found online. The layer modes were set to Multiply. Lisbeth's texture looked perfect as it was (it had a nice natural gradation - darker at the edges and lighter in the middle), but Mikael's needed some erasing in the center, so as not to obscure his face too much.

And that's it. Here are the final pieces:

UPDATE: It looks like the style is sticking around:

Corkboard

2011-11-07T06:59:00.013-05:00

I've been thinking about a way to share friends' projects for a while now, and I finally went ahead and built one. Check out my corkboard.

I knew I didn't want to build a traditional portal. Whether it's a bunch of images in a grid, a combination of text and images (like blog posts), or a gallery with sequential images with one large/featured image and a bunch of thumbnails or navigation - I didn't want anything like that.

There's something interesting that happens when you have a disorganized collection of stuff. I wanted to create something closer to the physical, tactile experience hunting through a pile of old records, or photos, or a messy section of a store. Summaries are nice sometimes, but it's a different experience getting a small glimpse of something, then jumping into it with with no other preparation. That's what I wanted to make.

I searched through existing free or pay versions of this kind of this kind of interface, but none were customizable to the degree I wanted. I did find some existing drag and drop galleries, but none of them allowed the user to click on the image and open a pre-defined URL (and not a larger version of the image). Had I found a solution like that, I probably would have went with it.

Instead, I built a custom app in Flash. I've created Flash/XML galleries before, but this was more complex because it's dynamically duplicating images based on the number of items in the XML list instead of filling in a bunch of pre-defined spaces. From a technical perspective, making sure all of the elements had been loaded before the animations began was the biggest challenge. Once I had that working, the majority of the technical work was done.

I wanted a tactile experience, so I created an animation effect where the image lifts when initially grabbed - it rotates a bit, the shadow lightens and moves further away from the white border, and the tack lifts of and gets slightly larger. Subtle stuff, but it adds to the physical feeling of the app. This created some technical issues - the "drag" button is under the "view" button (the center of the image) and rotating it sometimes caused it to rotate away from the mouse, causing it to get stuck. Some careful motion tweening fixed this. A little "pop" sound helps sell the tack removal/inserting effect. I kept the description under the image really minimal - only two or three words will fit, depending on their length - and I used a handwriting font (even with a bit of a blur effect) to keep the interface looking less digital and more analog.

I photographed all of the elements on my iPhone, then assembled them in Flash. As each movie clip is duplicated, it's given a random horizontal and vertical position, rotation, and one of three possible tack images. I made the corkboard image tile in the HTML (after removing the seams in Photoshop), and enlarged the Flash file to 100% so that the elements could (if their random start positions or dragging allowed) go beyond the bounds of the window. I'd considered adding a border around the Flash file itself, and making the HTML a wall element (like wood grain) but this effect - filling the window completely - worked out closer to what I was going for.

During the development, I also discovered a bit of code that allowed bitmap (raster) images in Flash to smooth - that's always been a problem in the past. That's always been a compromise when using raster elements in Flash - when the .swf is presented at anything other than 100%, or when individual images within the file are presented at any other size or rotation than their default (100% and no rotation), the images look jagged. The new code worked great - I'm glad someone worked out a solution. Unfortunately, it's executed within the Flash application, so it doesn't help the dynamic images. I did more searching and discovered the .forceSmoothing property - not sure how I missed that before, but by adding one line of code I was able to make all the externally-loaded images look beautiful. That was very satisfying. I was worried that it would slow down performance, but after playing with the app after the update, I didn't see any noticeable slowdown.

I also randomized the depths of the elements. Initially the pieces were all coming in in the order of the XML file, so the earlier images were always buried. After trying and failing at randomizing all of the duplicated movie clips after they were created, I used the "sleep on it" method and instead randomized the order in which they were loaded from the XML-created arrays into the duplicated movie clips. That worked out much better, and now any project stands an equal chance of being at the top or bottom of the pile. And once a project is dragged, it moves to the top of the pile anyway.

After I had the basic app working for a couple days, I made a couple big tweaks. When I started the project, the images were much larger, but because the number of projects kept increasing (to 117, at the time of this posting) I had to reduce their size. I went back and created three buttons at the bottom of the page that allow the user to resize all of the elements to 70%, 100% (the default, of course) or 130% of their original size. This definitely helps when trying to dig in deeper, making sure more of the elements are visible - or, conversely, letting the user see larger images, though with much more overlap for a messier experience.

I played with the site more and added two more features. The first was stack/unstack option, turned on and off with two separate button. The stack throws everything dead center, and lets the user sort through the images one by one. The unstack button throws everything back to its initial (random) position.

I then added a categories feature. It pops in and out via a button at the bottom center. At first I didn't want to give users the ability to search too easily - and possibly ignore stuff that they might otherwise enjoy when discovering it by chance encounter. But with so many varied projects, this seemed almost necessary for people to really use the app - especially for repeat visits. Users can click All Off, then click on only what they like - or, they can start with All On (the default) and subtract out what they don't want to see.

Keeping with the minimal explanation (think Led Zeppelin IV) effect, I didn't add any extra information to the page. Just a Facebook share button and a little box linking to me for any administrative questions or issues, and it was up and running. I didn't want to give visitors the kind of navigation or explanatory elements most sites have - in the end, this is an art project, and it's designed for exploration more than traditional, sequential viewing/reading.

I may give it its on URL someday - though all the cool ones are taken. If only there was an international domain suffix for .rd, I could see if "www.corkboa.rd" was available. Ah well - have a look at the corkboard.

The Camp Out - A Jabloo Adventure

2011-10-28T07:07:00.005-04:00

I've just finished writing and illustrating a storybook using my Jabloo characters. The story is aimed at kids 3 to 6. You can read The Camp Out online.

I created the Jabloo gang back in 2006, and this was the first story I conceived for them. There's something about the camping out in the woods that's always evoked the idea of creativity for me - maybe it has something to do with telling stories around the campfire, though I don't think I've ever done that.

Since each of the Jabloo characters represents a different creative art (filmmaking, music, acting, writing, and visual art), The Camp Out is about them creating a piece of art - in this case, a monster movie. Yubi, with his video camera, is at the center of this creation, but each of the other characters contributes to the movie as well.

The story was designed as an "adventure" - meaning, it's not an introduction to the characters, so we jump right into their camping excursion. Kind of like an episode of a continuing television series rather than a one-shot, stand-alone show.

I worked backwards with the layout of the book, using Shutterfly's Photo Book sizes as the basis for my design. I went with a 7x9" book, so I opened up Freehand (the now-outdated piece of vector creation software that I used to create Jabloo - and still use daily) and set up a 7x9" document with a bleed area.

It's nice when the hard work is already done!

Much of Jabloo was already created - the characters with different hand and mouth positions, fonts, colors, even many of the backgrounds in The Camp Out (for the as-yet-to-launch online, interactive version of the story) so I was able to move into the book's creation quickly. I'd spent months analyzing the layouts of my son's books (which contained every imaginable style of layout) and decided on a full-page image every page (with a few exceptions - the first page and a two-page spread), and a limit of two sentences of text contained within a white arc at the bottom of each page.

Dig those crazy vectors!

I put the story together in a fairly haphazard way - writing a few pages, putting the illustrations together (which could take hours or days - even with many of the elements already created), adding a few more pages, changing the sequencing. The story itself is 24 pages, with a few additional non-story pages at the front and back.

I wrestled a bit with how much story detail to include - especially when it came to the movie the characters are putting together. I wound up showing only an indication of the story they were telling. The two-sentence limit on each page was a good natural limit, forcing me to only hint at the monster movie. The reader's imagination adds the details. I think that works nicely. It's a story about creating art, not about the creation itself.

Since Freehand is no longer a current program, and copying/pasting into Photoshop isn't viable (gradients get messed up, and there are other issues), I went through a tedious process of maximizing the Freehand pages on my 30" monitor, grabbing screenshots and shrinking them to get smaller, high-resolution images for printing. Of course, after doing this I found plenty of small things that needed revising or correcting, so I had to repeat the process for many pages. It was still a worthwhile compromise for being able to work with the beauty and elegance of Freehand.

I had a few hiccups when I began assembling the book in Shutterfly. When I was writing and laying out the book, I didn't set the pages up as two-pages spreads, so some of the images (especially the backgrounds) looked awkward when placed side-by-side. For example, some of the hills in the background seemed to run into each other, making the pages seem like they were meant as two-page spreads (that didn't quite align properly) - but with the same characters on each page. So adjustments had to be made to the backgrounds as well.

The next stage was assembling a readable version of the book online. I could have gone with a more straightforward gallery, but the effect of side-by-side pages would have been lost. I found a Picasa-based template online and, after plenty of technical issues, got the online version up and working.

The final printed book from Shutterfly looked great. The only minor drawbacks are a white area on the left of the cover (presumably the digital printing would flake off where it bends back) and the fact that you can't print a back cover (unless I missed that option), so the back of the book is plain white with a UPC code on it. But the printing itself looked great, as I expected from previous Shutterfly orders. And as much as I consider myself a digital kind of guy, I have to admit a piece like this feels different when you can hold it in your hands.

Read The Camp Out now - preferably with a kid or two.

Batman Comic Page

2011-10-18T09:22:00.003-04:00

I haven't drawn a comic book page in a long time, but recently I've wanted to develop that skill again. My normal illustration style is pretty cartoony, so one of my goals was to work in a somewhat more realistic style. Another goal was to try a new digital coloring technique I'd just discovered. So this was an experiment more than anything else.

I read a few tutorials just to refresh my brain on drawing a comic book page. This tutorial on drawing Copper by Kazu Kibuishi was the most helpful by far. I discovered it a few years ago and have read it a few times since, but this last time it really got me jazzed up to try doing a comic page. I went out and bought an 11x17" smooth Bristol pad, pre-lined for comic books (something that didn't exist the last time I drew a comic page, fifteen or so years ago), a non-repro blue pencil (never really used those, but I thought it would be nice not to have to erase my pencil work), a new eraser (for erasing pencil errors), process white paint and a brush for errors in the inking (which I never used), a Hunt number 102 Crow Quill nib pen (as mentioned in the Copper tutorial), and Higgins Black Magic India Ink (also mentioned in the tutorial). I also had a few of my handy Tombow brush tip markers handy - I've been using those or similar models since the early 90's.

I decided to do a page featuring Batman, my favorite superhero - just to make things simpler. Using an existing character let focus more on my style and the page, rather than creating an original character (and likely, a costume) for this project. I can draw Batman almost without thinking. Because the character is so iconic, and I was just winging it and not working from a script with pre-defined panel descriptions, I started penciling with the non-repro blue right on the page, laying out some panel divisions, then adding the character and some backgrounds. Unfortunately, I didn't scan those pencils, but you can get a sense of them from this raw scan of the linework (yes, I'm jumping ahead) - and you can also see that I made the rookie error of inking to the full page size instead of the live area - I'll definitely have to avoid making that mistake next time.

Next, I tried inking using the nib pen, but - unfortunately again - it just didn't feel right. Lest it seem like I didn't give it much of a shot, I actually diverted myself to a few separate pages in the midst of this experiment. Call it laziness, or habit, or comfort, but I reverted to my Tombow brush tip pens, and it just felt right. I like my linework to be bold and that wasn't happening with the nib pen. Though I have to say, working at only 150% of the final size made fine feathering and detail very difficult - especially in the panels where the character was smaller (hey, it's not like your pen tip reduces proportionately to fit). I made many blobby errors that I later cleaned up in Photoshop. I also did thinks like filling the sky in the first panel solid black (see the image above) which I later undid in Photoshop. Here's the eventual result of the inking process, after removing the non-repro blue pencils and darkening the inks until they were almost pure black and white:

And a closeup of one inked panel:

I think I hit the style I was going for - my figure wasn't very cartoony in his composition, but my linework was chunky and varied in the way I like it. I'm not a crosshatchy kind of illustrator, and I don't feel comfortable working with a totally clean line - I think it makes me feel too exposed. I also wound up with many more solid black shapes than I was hoping for, which was somewhat disappointing because I wanted to focus on digital coloring, and that's harder when solid blacks handle much of the shading. Kinda hard to draw Batman without using a lot of black, though. These things are just part of the constant artistic struggle of trying something new vs. knowing your innate style. I've grown comfortable with that struggle.

I did have a problem with the non-repro blue pencil - in some places it didn't let my brush tip (and water-based) ink sit correctly, so I had to clean the linework up later (again, see the first image above). The light blue template lines in the page did the same thing in places, so I think I'll be avoiding both in the future, which is a darn shame - both are convenient.

For the coloring, I watched a few tutorials on YouTube, this one by Tony Aviña being the most helpful. Even though the style he was demonstrating was something he used more in the past (he said it was the house coloring style for WildStorm Comics), I stuck with this method - starting with dark, flat colors, then adding cuts and gradients - rather than trying a more brush-based coloring technique. I typically work light-to-dark, and I wanted to try a different, more efficient coloring method. Check out the tutorial for details. I can say that by forcing myself to work this way - and not creating dozens of "safe" layers for highlights and shadows - I was eventually making better coloring decisions and getting the page done without constantly making slight tweaks and trying to make everything look consistent. And of course, I used my Wacom Intuos tablet for this coloring work, so things moved along fairly quickly.

I also used Kazu Kibuishi's method of filling each panel with a base color (mine was orangey) to bring all the colors together and avoid them looking too separate and kaleidoscopic (his term). This made it easy to easily experiment with and adjust that global hue afterward. I tried some greener colors, but this orange layer, with the mode set to Hue and at 30% opacity, worked best. It took some time, but the whole coloring process flowed much more than it has in the past for me.

The final colored page:

The only real "special effects" I did beyond the typical coloring method was adding stars in the sky with a slight outer glow, and the shadow on panel two.

Now, I've been reading some new comics - more than I have in the past decade. In both Sweets by Kody Chamberlain and The Cape published by IDW, there's a strong halftone effect used to add to the tone. I liked how both artists used this effect - the last time I used halftone for illustration work, it was called Zip-a-Tone and you had to cut it with an X-acto knife and place it right on your illustration. And the funny thing was, back then I wished it could be a smaller, finer pattern - and now the style I was going for was the same big, obvious dot pattern effect I'd used in the past. Crazy how things change, huh?

I created a halftone in Photoshop, filled then panels, then (mostly) erased away the parts I didn't want. I tried to keep the halftones to the edge of the black areas, though I did use it for the entire skyline in the first panel. I was very loose with that pattern, and I really like the grungy effect it gave me. In the end I made it dark blue instead of black, and set the layer to Multiply instead of Normal. Try doing that with Zip-a-Tone (don't really try - you can't).

Oh - and I created a subtle texture that I laid over the color. I filled a layer with 50% gray, added a lot of noise, then set it to overlay. It gives the color a little more of a natural media effect, especially when viewed at a large/close-up size.

I composed the text afterward, which really isn't fair - if something didn't fit, I just edited it down. I know - cheating. For the lettering itself, I used Comic Book Commando (regular) on top of some dingy yellow boxes. The boxes were on their own layer, and I gave that layer a Stroke effect (so I didn't have to keep re-outlining them every time I resized a box), and a little inner glow (really a shadow) and a noisy, subtle drop shadow. Pretty ostentatious stuff.

Here's the full, finished page, with the bottom two panels I haven't shown yet:

And a couple closeups of finished panels. You can really see that overlaid noise layer in these.

I was reasonably happy with the final piece. Of course, I found many reasons to work on my sketching, anatomy, backgrounds, coloring... but it was a nice workout, flexing muscles I haven't flexed in a while. More comics to come!

Feller's Baking Company

2011-06-05T07:55:00.023-04:00

I developed an identity for a wholesale baking company. This project had an extremely tight turnaround time - the business had to get running in only a few weeks' time - so I got to work quickly.

After giving me an overview of his new business, the owner's only design suggestion to me was a request to use brown and cream. Though I had to make the "cream" color a little darker so that it could stand on its own, I presented six concepts using that color scheme.

The first concept uses thick letters that felt hearty, like freshly baked loaves of bread. I added the cutouts in the letters of "Feller" to suggest the slashes made in the tops of baked goods to release heat. I also created a few smokey shapes in the same blocky style as the typeface, and added a bottom line with end points matching the letters' serifs:

Concept two combines two friendly fonts - one with a prominent, rounded serif, and the other a script that worked well at a small size. I had to tweak a few of the script letter shapes - the lowercase N's originally looked more like U's. I then created a badge-like shape to contain the "Feller", and added some cream rays emanating from behind that shape:

The third concept uses a stencil face for a more rustic feel. I created an image of a cupcake in the same handmade, scratchy style as the text:

The fourth concept is more formal, and uses only type and design elements for an emblematic approach. I also added a bit of a 3D feeling to this concept:

Concept five has a simple, all-type approach. I combined a tall, naive-style typeface with a thicker stencil one. I also reduced the first "E" in "Feller" to fit in the "the", carefully slicing out sections of its vertical bar rather than just squashing the letter, which would have distorted the its shape.

The sixth and final concept uses the same rough-looking font for all of the lettering. I combined some of the letters to create a more unified look:

The client chose the fourth concept - he liked the strong emblematic feel, and liked the fact that this approach had the feeling of a motorcycle company's. But there was one change - the company's name would now be "Feller's" instead of "Feller". I recreated the main shapes, adding the apostrophe S. I had to shrink the height of the top shape to accommodate it.

Because the client liked that dimensional, almost metallic feeling of this concept, I amped it up by adding additional 3D effects to the background of the top shape, and to the letters in "Baking Company". This is the final, full color version - ideal for signage, presentations, advertising, and other uses where colors are unlimited:

I also prepared a simple two-color version of the logo. This might be used for packaging, vehicle signage, letterhead, or other printing processes where full color printing isn't available or financially feasible:

And I also prepared a single-color version of the logo and presented it in a number of colors, on both black and white backgrounds. These versions might be used on product labels, fax templates, invoices, checks, and other instances where the logo does not need to be prominent, and where color printing may be limited or unavailable:

Vital Market Research

2011-05-10T05:11:00.022-04:00

I was asked to develop a logo for a small market research firm working exclusively for pharmaceutical companies. The client wanted the company's identity to represent confidence, experience and professionalism, but it also needed to be slightly whimsical and not too stuffy – a worthy challenge for any designer.

And there was a bonus challenge - the client's first name is "Vita" and her last name begins with an "L", so she cleverly named her company Vital Market Research, with "Vital" being a combination of her first name and last initial. She suggested that if this could be emphasized in the design, it would make a nice Easter Egg for her clients.

The initial round of logos contained five samples, all in a bright orange and a desturated bluish-purple color scheme. The first concept used an implied word bubble at the top of the shape, indicating the voice of the customer. The tail of the word bubble split the "Vita" and "L" in the name, providing the clue to the hidden meaning of the firm's name:

Concept two was more fun and retro - "Vital" was laid out in a custom-designed typeface, with an image of a rounded boiling flask (I did my research) next to the text portion of the logo:

The third concept was the most formal due to its centered layout. The orange triangles emanating out of the center of the "M" created a megaphone/speaking mouth effect - another representation of the role served by the firm – gathering information from customers and conveying that data to pharmaceutical companies:

Since many pharma companies have all-text logos, the fourth concept I presented was a type-only logo. I created a custom face for the "VMR" and set it next to the firm's full name. The angles on both sides give balance to the layout:

The fifth concept used a futuristic font and a segmented capsule pill to illustrate the concept of market analysis:

The client reviewed the first round of concepts and selected the first logo as the one to develop further. She asked that we modify the color scheme – the orange and bluish-grey were too close to the colors of an existing pharmaceutical company. The client also requested that I present alternate typefaces as well as additional ways to emphasize the word bubble element:

For the next round of revisions, the client asked that the lime green be changed to a more subdued color – I chose with a 50% gray. We also explored additional shape and font combinations, and added a version of the logo with rounded corners:

After reviewing her options, the client went with a version of the logo with sharp corners, an additional top shape, and the original typefaces:

Hopefully one of her clients will pick up on that Easter Egg.

Create a Vintage Comic Look with ToonPAINT and Halftone for the iPhone

2011-04-25T11:00:00.030-04:00

A vintage style comic panel created with ToonPAINT and Halftone.

I came across a cool one-two punch this week - a dynamic duo of iPhone apps that, when used together, create a neat vintage comic book/strip effect for photos.

The first app in this combo is ToonPAINT ($1.99 from Toon-FX). ToonPAINT lets you first convert your iPhone photos to black and white linework (with the option of a gray mid-tone) which you can then hand-paint directly on your iPhone screen.

The original image.

Once you Load the image from your Gallery (you can also shoot directly from your Camera, if you choose), the image takes a few seconds to process as Inklines. The Shading controls in ToonPAINT's Inklines stage allow you to control the amount of black and gray areas in your image, as well as the amount of edges shown. You can also use the app's Size options to fine tune the Coherence, Edge Width and Edge Length.

I've found that the size of the subject in an image will determine what works best for these options - a closeup of a face, for example, might work better with wider edges, while a full body in an image can benefit from the XS settings in Coherence and Edge width. Play around with the options until you're happy with the look of your Inklines. You can also use the Pan/Zoom feature to zoom in and get a detailed look at your linework and tone.

Inklines from ToonPAINT.

Next, move onto ToonPaint's Paint stage. There's a slider to adjust your brush (or eraser) size, and a palette with a selection of eight colors. Once you select a color, you use your finger to paint over the Inklines. You can also use the Color Picker to modify the colors in your palette, and there's a a Pan/Zoom feature in this stage as well.

However, for my experiments in getting a vintage comic book look, I've bought an additional feature - Auto Color. It's a $.99 in-app purchase, and you buy it by clicking on the icon above the palette of the lovely lady, in color, with the flowing blonde hair. By using this tool, color from the original photo is automatically added back into the image, though in a limited range, giving the image a posterized style which works really well for what I'm trying to achieve.

You can still paint on top of the colorized image, with the hand-painted colors completely replacing the original colors - and, interestingly, if you use the eraser too after Auto Coloring your image, it only erases the hand-painted color - the original color remains, which can be helpful if you want to take your time modifying one specific object in the image.

The colored image from ToonPAINT - fully colored using the application's Auto Color feature.

I've found that high-contrast images with strong lighting yield the best results - no surprise, but getting the lighting right helps ToonPAINT handle the outlines and gray tone in a more naturally comic book-like way. If your outlines aren't bold enough, your final image will look less like a printed comic and more like a printed photograph (which Halftone alone can generate just fine on its own).

Once you're happy with your colors, click Done and you'll get to the Save/Share screen. Make sure to turn on the High-res Output option (hopefully whichever camera you've taken your original image with was also set to its maximum resolution) and then Save to your Photo Gallery.

Next, fire up Halfttone ($.99 from Juicy Bits) and click the camera icon at the lower left, then Choose from Album and browse to the image you just created with ToonPAINT. Halftone will generate a dot pattern within the image, and will also add a background texture and border - both settings which you can modify later.

For the sake of comparison, this is what the original image looks like when processed directly with Halftone and not using ToonPAINT first. Not very comic-y.

When your image has finished processing, click on the gear icon in the upper left. First, make sure Full Size is set to On, so you can preserve your image at the highest resolution possible. You can then experiment with the Blend Original and Process Original features, as well as the Dot Size (the primary setting you'll want to play around with) and Dot Strength (I've always kept mine at 100% - the default).

Click Done for now (you can always go back and modify those settings later), and click the Paper icon. You can pick from 20 different gnarly backgrounds that your image "prints" onto, as well as a plain white background (more on that option later) for a clean effect. Next, click the Layout icon, which lets you select from nine pre-existing panel layouts, varying the number and position of two different styles of captions. There's even a completely captionless, borderless effect.

You can then click on the Word Bubble icon to add up to five word bubbles. Click and drag the bubbles to reposition; click and drag the tip of the tail to change its length and direction (a particularly impressive detail); and click within the bubble to modify the text, style (traditional oval, "flatter" oval, rectangle, rectangle with rounded corners, exclamatory "pointy" bubble and thought bubble), and z-position (which bubble is on top of which other bubble, if they overlap within the layout). You can also delete the bubble you're currently editing from here. Click Done when you're finished, and the bubbles will auto-size very nicely to the amount of text you've added.

Back in Halftone's main screen, you can keep adjusting the elements in your layout. Though you can't reposition the captions, you can click within them to edit your text (you'll have to change the layout to delete them completely). There's also Font option that lets you adjust the global typeface selection and size (you choose from Small, Medium, and Large options).

Detail of the final image. Dig those funky wrinkles!

Again, fine tune the look of your piece until you've got things looking the way you want them, then click on the icon in the upper right of the main screen and Save to Album. Since Halftone doesn't have a Pan/Zoom feature, I recommend opening the saved image from your Photos app and zooming and and around to make sure the results look the way you want them to.

I loved the effect I got when I first combined these two apps - it reminded me of the independent sci-fi comics I read in the late 80's/early 90's, when comic production techniques and paper quality started to improve. The Pacific Comics (and later, Eclipse Comics) anthology series Alien Worlds came to mind - many of those stories featured art with strong linework and thick blacks, colored with the kind of fluidity that mainstream comics usually couldn't achieve when printing on the typical nasty newsprint that I don't remember seeing much past the 80's.

Using this technique, it's easy to imagine creating a full-size, printable comic by exporting the full-size final images, then composing the page layouts in a full (not iPhone/iPad) version of Photoshop (or InDesign, or Illustrator, or your preferred page layout program - preferably with adjustable guides so you're not laying things out by eye). The default panel dimensions are a bit wide for the traditional 6x9" comic book page 9x9 panel layout, but they fit almost perfectly on a US Letter-sized page, as long as you overlap the borders. Since it would look odd to see the same exact page texture repeated nine times on a comic page, you could select the plain white background in Halftone before saving your images, and if you still wanted that aged effect on your page, you could put together your panel layout in Photoshop, create or buy your own background textures, then set them up as Multiply layers in Photoshop so that they cover your full page.

Letter-sized comic book page using two images. The paper texture repeats (though this can be dealt with), and the large panel is out of proportion.

I confess that I've also tried using Adobe Photoshop Express between the ToonPAINT and Halftone steps, to adjust the Exposure, Contrast and Saturation settings of the image created by ToonPAINT. This is helpful in general, in achieving a certain look (adjusting the Contrast of an image so blacks become dark grays, which really gives the panel an aged look) - and may be necessary if you're putting together a number of panels into a single comic strip or page, and want them to all look consistent.

And speaking of Photoshop Express, what if you don't want a static nine panel layout for your comic book page? Maybe you want a panel that stretches across the width of the page? Well... I don't see it happening. Yes, you can use Photoshop Express to crop the original image (or the ToonPAINT version), but when you take it into Halftone, all of the elements - background texture (if you use it) panel and word bubble border, text and dot pattern size - will be out of proportion, because you'll have to enlarge the final image to make it fit into the layout. Sure, you could shrink the Font and Dot Size in the outsized panels to try to match the look of the other panels, but that's going to take some work - and you can't enter those values numerically, so you'll be winging it every time you perform that task. And you'll have to visually eye-up the size you're cropping to every time. And if you were thinking of stitching two panels together side-by-side, you'll have to deal with manually matching up the dot patterns in each image. I'd have to say a versatile comic page layout is beyond what these two apps can comfortably do at this point - and that's fine.

Out of the box, ToonPAINT and Halftone are a great way to use your iPhone to create images that seem ripped from an old, printed comic page - all for under $5. I'm planning on putting together a short comic book story (and if my son were a little older and more cooperative, I probably would have at least one page finished at this point), so expect a trial run sometime in the near future.

An image created with the Edges setting in ToonPAINT set very high - this gives the image a more painted feel.

The boldness of the linework on this image, combined with the high contrast in the original photo, give the final panel a strong comic book look.

The different page textures in Halftone can make the image look like it was printed on aged newsprint, cardboard, and other wrinkled, ripped, and otherwise-distressed materials.

Creating Comics - 47 Master Artists Reveal the Techniques and Inspiration Behind their Comic Genius

2010-12-20T06:41:00.010-05:00

Back in 2006, an author named Spencer Drate called me out of the blue and asked me if I'd like to be included in a book he was writing about comics and the creative process behind them. He'd found my work and he thought I'd be a good fit for the book.

I was certainly honored to be asked, but I explained to Spencer that, although I did illustration work in a cartoony/comic book kind of style, and I'd created some comic strips for myself and some very small publications, I hadn't ever been published in an actual comic book. But Spencer told me that didn't matter - he liked my work and wanted me in the book. So I agreed, picked out a few illustrations, wrote up a bio and a short piece about my process, and sent it in.

Over the past few years, I kept an eye out for the book. Spencer and his co-author Judith Salavetz have published a bunch of books - on movie posters, rock posters, album cover art and more - so I fully expected the comic-creating book would come out someday. I even bought the authors' book Pure Animation in 2008, mistakenly thinking it was the book I was to be included in, but when I got it home and realized I wasn't in its pages, I assumed that this was the end - that their book on comics had come out, and I wasn't in it.

Then last week, an e-mail hit my inbox telling me that Creating Comics: 47 Master Artists Reveal the Techniques and Inspiration Behind Their Comic Genius was finally coming out, and asking me to confirm the address where my comp copy should be sent.

I haven't seen the physical book yet, but I quickly did a "Search inside" on Google Books and was stunned - first at the title ("masters"?! "genius"?!), and then at the other artists included. Paul Gulacy, Michael Golden, Danny Hellman, Tara McPherson, Paul Pope, J.J. Sedelmeier, Ward Sutton, Mark Texeira… and Jim Steranko?! High-profile people who actually work in the comics industry?! At the risk of sounding like I have a low self-opinion, I have to admit that my first thought was, "I don't belong here!"

But it's fantastic to be included, and I am humbled. I hope the short piece I wrote is interesting and helpful to someone out there. Now I feel like I need to generate a few comic book concepts and try to get them published, if only to justify my place in the book!

Creating Comics from Rockport Publishers on Amazon.

And a great interview with the authors and some of the contributors on Red Velvet Media.

The AlphaNumerizer

2010-03-12T18:00:00.005-05:00

Here's another Flash application for young kids - The AlphaNumerizer. I tried to find a simple tool for my son Nico. He's a year and a half old and he loves letters and numbers - seeing them and hearing them pronounced makes him very happy (in fact, he's playing with my wife's alphabet cookie cutters as I write this).

Every letter/number game I found online was more complex than what I was looking for - most commercial educational sites clutter the screen with lots of links to additional content and branding elements, and many of their tools and games have animations and other images that supplement each letter as it's typed. That's fine (and probably better suited to kids older than Nico), but I didn't want those kinds of visual distractions - I tried a couple with Nico and I actually had to point to show him where the letters were on the screen.

So I built The AlphaNumerizer. It was a very quick Flash build - about four hours of work total. The audio was recorded on my new Blue Mikey external microphone for the iPhone. It's an excellent quality mic - you can hear the clarity on the samples. I gave the audio very little compression when exporting from Flash - so it's a fairly large file for such a simple application (about 500k ) but it's worth it for me in terms of the quality.

I used typical color scheme, though a bit desaturated - I don't like the kind of overblown colors that you usually find in websites and games for kids. I went with VAG Rounded for the typeface - it really represents the letters and numbers in a nice, traditional typographic style but with rounded ends, which keeps things looking kid-friendly. We wouldn't want kids to get hurt on sharp-cornered letters or - heaven forbid - serifs.

Nico likes when I use the aggressive, excited voice I wound up using for the AlphaNumerizer - we have foam letters that he plays with in the bathtub, and the way I pronounce those letters when I hold them up for him is the same way I voiced them in this application. I exaggerated the pronunciations while still keeping them as clear as possible.

I put the featured letter on a colored card and animated it so it would fly in quickly, slowing to a gentle stop. I also added a timer so it would fade out after a few seconds, essentially clearing the slate.

After I got the basic functionality working (I spent an hour wondering why only certain keys worked while I was testing in Flash before I found out the Flash test environment was "stealing" my key presses - I had to disable the keyboard shortcuts to fix that), I thought about tracking which keys had been pressed. It seemed like that would be a helpful feature, so I added a little strip of letters and numbers at the bottom that fade out as each key is pressed. I kept them small so as not to distract from the main huge letter, and added in another function that fades them back in when the mouse rolls over them.

And besides a title bar and an About section, that's the whole thing. Some early testers have suggested adding a other features, like detecting when certain words are typed. I'm not sure I'd go that route, but if I did, I'd still keep this version as it is. There's something nice about a full screen devoted to one primary element to focus your attention on. Now if I could only find a way to prevent Nico from hitting keys that get him out of the browser window...

Check out The AlphaNumerizer.

BeatMaker

2010-03-07T06:28:00.004-05:00

BeatMaker wasn't created for a client - I developed this little Flash application a couple years ago to help a friend's five-year-old daughter, who was then starting to play the drums, understand the basics of rhythm and counting time.

The interface is simple - the screen contains on measure of music, broken down into eighth notes, with three instruments - closed hi hat, snare drum and bass drum. It was tempting to add more drum sounds, but the idea here was to allow simple beats to be created - not to make a virtual drum machine or anything so complex that it would get in the way of learning.

Each note is clickable - clicking toggles the note on or off. There are four speeds ("Slow", "Medium", "Fast", and "Crazy Fast") and there's a voice (my own) that counts each note in the measure. It can be turned off so the child can try counting on their own. A vertical line scrolls in sync with the counter, so kids can connect the counting to the current position in the measure.

I've included sixteen sample beats to help give kids an idea of how each note can be arranged. There's also a Clear function so they can wipe the slate clear and start from scratch (rather than manually turning each note on or off), a Random feature that creates a totally random beat, and there's a Print function so favorite beats can be saved and practiced later - even if there's not a computer around.

That's it - nice and simple. Check out BeatMaker.

Make the Load Lighter: Indie Rock for Haiti

2010-02-06T13:01:00.013-05:00

My band cuppa joe was fortunate enough to have been asked to contribute a song to the Dromedary Records compilation "Make the Load Lighter: Indie Rock For Haiti". The digital-only release was put together in a startlingly fast two week period, and features contributions from fantastic bands all over the world.

Taniqua, the song we contributed, was recorded in 1995 and was never widely available - so all the better to have it included on this special project. We were proud to be included - especially considering that all proceeds are going directly to the volunteer organization The Voice of Haiti to benefit earthquake victims.

Here's the full track listing:
1. Footstone: “For the Boss”
2. Boss Jim Gettys: “With a Smile”
3. Cuppa Joe: “Taniqua”
4. Moviola: “Calling on the Line”
5. Three Blind Wolves: “Sex is for Losers”
6. Paula Carino: “The Great Depression”
7. Wallendas: “Adrianne”
8. The Neutron Drivers: “All Around the Sun”
9. The Dark Brothers: “Knee Deep in Sin”
10. There Will Be Fireworks: “Foreign Thoughts”
11. Gena Rowlands Band: “F*ckups of the World Unite”
12. The Mommyheads: “Spiders”
13. Farewell Singapore: “Blue”
14. Jenifer Convertible: “St. Pete”
15. lions.chase.tigers: “To Their Blood”
16. Stuyvesant: “Salieri”

"Make rhe Load Lighter: Indie Rock For Haiti" is available for $9.99 from iTunes, Amazon and directly from the Dromedary Records website. You can preview the full album on Dromedary's website, and individual songs are available for $.99. Check it out.

Premium Music Solutions - Interactive City

2009-11-09T07:02:00.001-05:00

The Premium Music Solutions home page - an interactive city with each building representing a different genre of music being promoted. Click to launch website.

After about four months of development, www.PremiumMusicSolutions.com has launched. I'm excited. It's been some time since I did the first proof of concept of the Christmas village at the center of the city, with its blinking lights and falling snow. The rest of the city was finalized months ago, but the client decided to hold off on the site going live until the second phase - building the interiors of each venue, which house the full song information - so everything would go live at once.

One of the six venue interiors - this is Club T, featuring disco, club, and other dance-friendly music. Click to launch website.

The song data is all XML-driven so they client can make changes and updates on their own, without my intervention. As always, the handshake between Flash and XML - making the information flexible enough to accomodate, say, multiple pages of of songs - is always the most difficult technical piece, but it pays off in the end. Now the client can maintain all of their own content - an efficiency and cost-savings.

Another minor technical feat: the interiors of the venues all use one Flash file. Each venue has its own HTML page with a single FlashVar, "venue", passing down a value of 1 through 6 to the .swf file. The .swf then goes to the appropriate background image for the venue, and pulls in the appropriate XML file based on that value, which then propagates all the song data. This is also an efficiency issue - I only have one file to maintain - and also helps the site load quickly, since once the first interior is loaded, all subsequent interiors load near-instantly, as they're really just opening the same .swf.

One other "trick" I tried, which I've seen before but hadn't attempted - actually a trick in two parts: The interiors of each venue show large text buttons for the other five venues, but not a link for the venue you're currently in. A small thing, perhaps, but it's nice to only present the user with the options other than the one they're seeing. And part two - instead of having an off/over state for those buttons (they all seemed to important to keep "dimmed" when they're off), instead, when the user rolls over one of them, the other five temporarily dim.

Now go check out the traffic lights and cars on the home page. Yes, they really work. Now it's time to add in some pedestrians.

Me Make Monster - Story Contest

2009-11-02T05:30:00.005-05:00

In an effort to spread the word about my project, Me Make Monster (which lets you make a monster, then get it printed on t-shirts, mugs, and other Zazzle products) I've just launched a Story Contest.

The way it works is, you visit the site and make a monster, giving it a name. Then click the "Enter Our Story Contest" button. This takes you to a new page, where you enter a little info (including the name of your monster), and then write or paste in your story.

The contest will run for a month, and I really have no idea what to expect. As far as the stories themselves, anything goes - though I'm suggesting people write about a few specific things regarding their monster, if they're not sure what to cover:

its origins
powers
allies
enemies
weaknesses
secret lair/domain
how it feeds

I'll be awarding one $50 Zazzle Gift Certificate and two $25 Zazzle Gift Certificates in each of four age groups, so feel free to spread the word and try it out for yourself. The link to the contest is right here:
http://www.memakemonster.com/contest.html

Winners will be announced on December 15th - I may even read the winning stories aloud, accompanied by some simple monster animation. That seems like it would be cool.

Me Make Monster Animated Commercial and Theme Song

2009-10-27T20:26:00.004-04:00

The first Me Make Monster commercial has launched, complete with a retro 80's-style theme song! Click below to check it out!

Or check it out at:
www.memakemonster.com

The theme song, 34 seconds long, was composed in GarageBand, using all MIDI instruments except for the voice, which I tripled to thicken it up. The song's feel was modeled after the early- to mid-80's Saturday morning commercials of my youth - very aggressive, filled with attitude, Eddie Van Halen-inspired guitar noodlings and heavy beats.

I kept the lyrics as streamlined as I could, conveying the customized monster-making functionality of the site, and the ability to get those monsters printed on producsts, in as few words as possible.

I developed the commercial all in Flash, and kept it free of gradients so there wouldn't be any nastiness when the piece went from Flash to Quicktime to Flash Video, or whatever other compressed format it'll be converted to.

The piece has been integrated into the site itself, and should set the tone for the site as being edgy, cool and fun - especially for the 8 to 12 year old boys I'm targeting. I hope they enjoy the sixteenth note guitar triplets. I'm sure they will.

Me Make Monster! Launches

2009-10-15T05:26:00.004-04:00

Click to make some monster stuff.

I've launched a new project - a new venture, if you will - and it's called Me Make Monster! I'll create a more detailed blog post in the future, but for now I invite you to check it out and play around with it. And hey, if you have a kid - especially boys 7-10 - and you get them to check it out, I'd be especially interested in what they have to say.

I've kept the purpose of the site very simple - you make a monster out of various parts, name it, and then you apply your finished monster to a variety of products on Zazzle. The products are created on the fly using Zazzle's API, which imposes a high-res image (generated from the vector monster parts in Flash) and adds it to templates. That was certainly not the fun part of this project, but working it out meant a very smooth handoff from the MMM site to Zazzle, which will hopefully entice customers to make a purchase.

As far as the monster is concerned, you can select pieces for the head, eye brows, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, body (really the torso), arms, legs, and "extra", which can be a tail, wings, and other stuff that appears behind the monster - essentially attached to its back. For some parts (eyes, brows, nose, mouth, ears) there is a blank option - essential for creating some specific monsters, like a Mummy - Mummys don't have noses, in case you didn't know.

You can also select the color (one color per monster only) and a texture (which can also be blank). For each piece except the body/torso, you can enlarge or shrink that piece, and move it up and down - all within certain tolerances. There's also a Reset button that brings it back to its base position and size, and a Random button that selects a random body part, size, and position. I've also added Reset and Random buttons for the full monster - clicking the Random All button is a great place to start - you can keep going until you see a monster you like, then jump in and start tweaking it.

Something I wrestled with was hair and clothes. At first I was going to exclude both because of technical resasons - I wanted the body parts to be varied, so I knew Frankenstein's Monster hair wouldn't fit on a Dracula-style head. Same thing with clothes. But I eventually I decided I really wanted to add those features - I couldn't make all the kinds of monsters I wanted to without them. So I created those functions, but as purely on/off options - each head and body part has one discrete hairstyle and clothing option. That way I don't have to worry about elements fitting - or not fitting.

I thought about going with a sequential setup - like Mad Men Yourself, where you select one body part at a time, and move forward and back. This may have been easier for the core demographic I'm targeting (boys 7-10) but it also slows things down, and because it doesn't present all of your options at once, it can be less satisfying to use. We'll see - I've got some beta testers playing with the site now - hopefully their feedback on the interface is encouraging. I trust 'em.

There were some technical hurdles to overcome (and some I'm still overcoming) but I wanted to get the site up and running first, then start cleaning things up. So - it's up! Check it out if you're into monsters (is anyone not into monsters?!) and let me know what you think.

www.MeMakeMonster.com

Xipwire - Informational Chart

2009-10-01T05:59:00.013-04:00

Informational graphic. Click for larger image.

I'm in the process of finalizing my work for Xipwire, which I've mentioned in a previous post covering the logo design phase of the project. Xipwire is a startup service that allows its users to text funds to each other. So you go out to lunch with a friend, you wind up owing him $13 but neither of you have change - no problem, if you're both signed up on this service. You text him the $13, it comes directly out of your (very secure) bank account, and the next time your friend logs in, it's desposited into his account. Very simple, very safe, and very efficient - and that's what I needed to convey in this graphic.

The client created a rough version of the chart as a way to get his thoughts together, and to guide me as I recreated and refined it:

He'd used a combination of clip art and found graphics to work this out, and it certainly got the basic information and ideas in place. I started from scratch, using Freehand (they'll have to kill me to stop me from using that program) and strictly adhering to the same color scheme and gradient effects I'd created for the basic website structure. I'm hardcore when it comes to that, and I really feel that when most people who aren't designers work on these kinds of charts and graphs for themselves, the strong tendency to use a variety of colors is what makes them look unprofessional and non-cohesive. Using one font in one color/size/style is always going to look better than varying each sentence and element. Don't even get me started on the overuse of bold and italic!

It was fairly straightforward, though as I told my client, there are always infinite ways to go when representing a human form. Here is the first pass on Violet and Dash, the two avatars he wanted to represent the Xipwire process:

Dig that soul patch on Dash, eh? My client liked the fun, cartoony look, but feared it might be a little too lighthearted, so he asked me to represent the characters in a more (but not totally) realistic style. I took another pass and came up with the current version, which he liked even more, and approved with no changes:

The two characters are almost perfect mirror images of each other, to keep the feel of the chart more iconic and less like a cartoony illustration. I did shrink Violet's nose and chin (women universally have smaller noses than men, right?), darkened her upper lip and gave her a bottom one, thinned out her eyebrows, and added the cliché female adornments of long hair, earrings and eyelashes. A part of me always struggles with these kinds of elements, but in the world of icons, there's no room for subtlety. I really hope I never have to redesign those bathroom door icons, because I know the idea of the skirt-wearing woman icon would drive me batty.

What else? Besides the text, boxes and lines, there are three main icons. The wallets, which needed to convey security (I used a lock - not quite groundbreaking) and also had to show that multiple credit and debit cards can be linked to Xipwire for a single user:

And the bank/credit card icons, which had to indicate Visa and MasterCard logos without getting too close for comfort (or lawsuits). I visited seventeen banks and financial institutions for research on the bank icon. Not really. I just made it up.

If a real bank ever looked like that, it would be pretty freaky, wouldn't it?

And, I needed to render a laptop icon. If I were just drawing a laptop on its own, I'd almost definitely have showed it from a more interesting 3/4 view, but because of the symmetry in this chart, I kept the angle dead-on straight. I toyed with the idea of adding keys, but you can't really add all the keys on a laptop in an icon only 70 or so pixels wide, and it would bother me if Ionly showed a dozen or so keys. I had a hard enough time using only 12 buttons on the cell phone. So I made a keyless keyboard - maybe it's a future Apple innovation. It seems to work, though:

And that was it. It's approved and going on the page of the site that explains the process, hopefully making the service ultra-clear to potential users, persuading them to sign up. That's called "conversion", and it worked on me. I signed up - now I just need to wait for Xipwire to get to its Beta stage so I can start texting money to people. That'll be fun. I can't wait until I owe someone $13.

Blog Problems and a Bonus Music Video

2009-09-08T05:25:00.007-04:00

This is my first newsy kind of post - and unfortunately, it's not a positive one - though it could be worse.

I had a problem with my server over the holiday weekend - the server that hosts most of the images for this blog. Unfortunately (man, I hate that word) most of the old files were deleted from the server.

However, it's not a huge deal - the main images on each post are embedded in Blogger - but if you go to play a song, watch a Flash movie, or view a larger version of an image, that probably won't work.

Don't fret - I have the files stored locally - it's just a matter of restoring them to their proper online locations, one by one, and testing - which I'm doing now, starting at the most recent posts.

So if you see anything weird, my apologies - it's only temporary.

In the meantime, you can check out this music video - that's me on drums. Long story, but I recently reconnected (via Facebook) with a guy named Al, who was the owner of the record label, Dromedary Records, a small label that put out music by my band cuppa joe in the early 90's. It was his 40th birthday this week, and so Doug (that's him with the guitar there) wrote this song about the number Forty, in honor of Al. The video was a surprise for him at the party. Enjoy - and please don't mind the inside jokes.

Slippage

2009-09-04T05:54:00.007-04:00

When I started writing Attract Mode, I'd planned to keep that screenplay short - maybe 12 to 15 pages, with only 3 or 4 locations, lots of dialogue, and a few props, so I could shoot it myself. Ha! It grew to over 30 pages, and at some point I let the reins loose and wrote a couple sequences in a large arcade game repair/sales/rental/party venue - based on a real place somewhat near me. I thought I could approach them about shooting on their premises, maybe bartering in some free commercial work for them.

All that was pretty ambitious - really, too ambitious, since I haven't nearly done the quantity of shooting and editing that would give me the confidence to round up a full cast and even a small crew, and secure location shooting. I needed to go way, way smaller - and shorter. Some people say for your first "real" short film, anything longer than three minutes is too long. That sounded ridiculous to me, until I shot Robot Roundup, devoting about 30 hours to the project - and it featured a baby (my son) who doesn't have any lines, an overdubbed horse and robot - all fairly controllable elements.

And yet, though I was mostly happy with the final outcome from a technical point of view, there were compromises galore along the way. I definitely needed something much more modest, that I could conceivably shoot in one or two locations in my own house, with minimal characters and camera angles. Something that warm me up from a technical point of view, forcing me to work with a people who were performing, existing settings and getting the sound, lighting, and camera work right.

So, I wrote Slippage. I had just watched Primer (see the trailer below) for a second time, so time travel was on my mind. I kept the story very dialogue-heavy, inserting lots of science-specific terminology - some readers said too much, but I wanted an authentic feel, like Primer has. And there's a little twist at the end, or really a payoff - probably expected, or the story would be a little too dry.

Interestingly enough, I saw a documentary on the Higgs Boson - the MacGuffin of the story (if a five-page screenplay can have a MacGuffin), only after finishing the screenplay. It was really interesting and filled in a ton of information I didn't know about that subject, but I didn't change the script to reflect that newfound knowledge. I thought it was tech-heavy enough, and I didn't want to overload it with even more jargon.

And I still haven't shot it, sadly - having a baby does not add to one's available free time (not that anyone ever said it would). Hopefully that'll happen this fall, before it gets too cold - that's important, since almost all of the story would take place in my back yard.

Slippage

Bond Opening Parody

2009-09-03T07:08:00.006-04:00

Oh yeah - this project. Another one that I forgot about, for the most part, until I found it in my hard drive.

This animation was created for a large corporate client who does a lot of fun internal projects like this. I don't think I ever got the full story, but they had an executive who they wanted to mock (always a good thing) and there was some connection between "Agent 007" and "Agent 88.00" (some kind of nickname for the guy), so they wanted to James Bond-ize him, and asked me to help.

It wasn't a complex project, which was good because the turnaround time was either two or three days from when they called me - the animation was to be shown at a large departmental meeting. The client sent me a photo of the executive, and I was happy to see that his expression was nice and grim - it really fit the Bond mood, especially when I stuck his head on a tuxedoed body holding a gun in Photoshop.

I studied a few openings from different Bond films on YouTube. They were all similar, with some minor variations between them. I boiled it down to the basic elements, created them in Freehand, and animated them in Flash - adding a classic version of the song. I think the only change the client requested upon seeing the first version was that I add an actual bullet flying at the viewer. I don't know how well that registers, but it's in there for a few frames.

I finished just in time for the deadline, and the client was happy. I'm not sure how the executive who was the subject of this lampooning took it, but hopefully he had a good sense of humor about it. It's not like we made him into Austin Powers or anything. James Bond is always cool.

Click the "Play Movie" button above to view the animation.

Watch the first 30 seconds of the clip above for a comparison.

Balloon Buster

2009-09-02T05:36:00.008-04:00

Balloon Buster game. Click to play in a new window.

I decided to create this game purely as a self-promotional piece. I was getting more Flash game work around 2005, and I wanted to have an example of a simple online game that I created to show potential or existing clients, as a way to demonstrate my abilities. I decided to leverage an existing animated version of myself that I'd already been using on my www.stevespatucci.com website, so as to give myself a little head start on the game.

This pea-soupy green is my favorite color, and as it was already the color of my animated self's shirt, I decided to stick with it and let it dictate the color scheme of the game. That may sound lazy, but with an open-ended project like this, every limitation helps move things along.

I worked out the concept - a retro-style shooting game where you throw water balloons at me, Steve, disguised (in some cases, poorly) as different characters - real people, archetypes and fictional characters - in the windows of a building. You have to hit the Steves while the windows are open. And, you get a bonus if you hit the floating slice of key lime pie (a prize also determined by the color scheme).

I made up a couple more rules: I couldn't alter the cartoon of me lying underneath the disguises - I could only elements on top of it. And, I would only work in the existing color palette. I just started brainstorming, and worked out way more characters than I expected - I actually had to add more levels to the building to accommodate them. Since there are four characters on each level of the building, sometimes I'd think I was done... then I'd realize there was one more character I just had to include, and I'd add that character in... then I'd have to add three more to fill out the level. It should go without saying that the game took longer to complete than I anticipated because of this pattern - maybe a month total.

Here are all the characters, from top left to bottom right:
• magician
• party guest
• spaceman
• beatnik
• clown
• Indiana Jones
• Peter Criss (from Kiss)
• generic superhero
• Roman gladiator
• redneck trucker
• 1920's accountant
• soldier
• Robin Hood
• Fidel Castro
• Frankenstein's Monster
• pirate
• old-timey aviator
• devil
• Hannibal Lecter (from The Silence of the Lambs)
• Tin Man (from The Wizard of Oz)
• Rebel fighter pilot (from Star Wars)
• Kermit the Frog
• Amish guy
• The Pope
• chef
• Jason Voorhees (from Friday the 13th)
• Mickey Mouse
• Austin Powers
• Albert Einstein
• pilgrim
• Storm Shadow (from G.I. Joe)
• The Statue of Liberty
• Salvador Dali
• Batman (Christian Bale movie version)
• Chinese man
• The Cat in the Hat
• nun
• viking
• Napoleon Bonaparte
• Alex (from A Clockwork Orange)
• Sherlock Holmes
• George Washington
• old timey bowler-wearing guy
• late 60's John Lennon
• 50's greaser
• Marvin Martian
• Rorschach (from Watchmen)
• Andy Warhol
• Harry Potter
• Rastafarian
• court jester
• Willie Nelson

Closeup of the game. That's me as Indiana Jones, Peter Criss
from Kiss, a redneck trucker and a 1920's accountant.

I developed the basic game engine in Flash fairly quickly. At first the fact that the balloon you're throwing covers up the screen briefly (as it's a first-person view) felt wrong or confusing, but after a little test-playing I liked it - it only blocks your view for a brief moment, and it adds to the challenge - if you just keep shooting, you won't see where the characters are on the board.

Someone who played it asked me once where "you" (the player") are - it's not shown (since you're in "your" head) but in the instructions, it says you're in a hot air balloon. I guess I was really into balloons when I developed the game.

I created three levels - the harder the level, the quicker the descent, and the more the building moves side-to-side. The theme song, created in GarageBand, is meant to emulate early 80's game songs - simple, repetitive, and low-fidelity.

Oh, and there's a little bonus - if you hit every character you get a little surprise at the end of the game. I'm not telling what it is - you'll have to complete it (at any level) to see it.

After developing Flying Spaghetti Monster - The Game, I knew that if I posted the game file to one of the online gaming sites (that all "share" the game file generously), it would be all over the Internet in days. And it was - which is what I wanted (all part of my master plan). When I track hits to my websites, I get a few hundred a week from Balloon Buster - and mostly from all the other sites that host it (and not my own). Granted, I believe they're mostly from people looking for more free games, but occasionally someone does inquire about my game design services. There's no such thing as a bad link, I always say (not really, though I do believe it).

As with all of these games, some people said it was fun, some said it was boring, and some people cursed me out and called for my death... anonymously, of course. Ho-hum. If I created a game featuring 25 levels with different gameplay on each level, and hundreds of characters, weapons, backgrounds - people would say it's too complex to play online. I may sound jaded, but feedback for online games is some of the most pointless feedback you'll ever read. Here are some of the highlights from one of the many online sites that host the game:

"wow, that game was good.............NOT!!"

#6 anonymous (3 weeks ago)

"this a effin bullshit this game is"

#5 anonymous (8 months ago)

"this is really bad"

#4 anonymous (8 months ago)

"gay"

#3 anonymous (8 months ago)

"ur a f*kin pleb"

#2 anonymous (2 years ago)

"this the the gayest sh*t i have ever seen"

#1 anonymous (3 years ago)

I just wish the #2 anonymous person would have been more clear - am I the pleb, or one of the other comment-givers? It really bothers me.............NOT!!

And a few positive pieces of feedback, not surprisingly from NewGrounds, probably the best (and maybe the oldest) online gaming portal, where people usually try to be constructive in their feedback:

"Nice job on the art, your use of green is really nice. The controls were great too, which made the game more addicting than it really is. Music went nice with the theme. You definitely have talent. Keep up the great work =]"

"Fun game you have here, the 'CONTROLS' were nice and smooth, and the shooting was good, the color tone could have had a mixture and more color but it was still cool, a fun and addictive game, so nice work, keep it up..."

"it was a neat little game. a bit easy and repetitive, but it was fun to play and it had a good concept to it and your efforts in this one were good too."

I know. It's more fun to read the negative stuff. I agree.

After all that fantastic feedback, click here to play Balloon Buster.

GarageBand Two-Track Recording Setup Diagram

2009-09-01T09:17:00.008-04:00

My old, pre-Logic, two-track mixer/GarageBand recording setup. Click for larger view.

This is more of an example of an informational graphic than an explanation of my audio recording setup (I've since upgraded), but it really works as both.

I started recording with GarageBand around 2005, when version 2.0 came out. At first I used a crappy USB mic, just plugged directly in the the computer, but the results there weren't really worthy of using a professional multi-track recording program, so I bought a small, cheap two-track mixer and worked out a simple set up.

GarageBand can record up to eight simultaneous tracks - but to do that, you need a real mixer with a Firewire interface - if you're only going into the 1/8" audio jack, as I was with this setup, you can only get two separate tracks into the computer at once (using kind of a trick that I'll explain below) - and as I started to ask questions on audio recording forums, I got a lot of non-helpful answers (and that's being kind) - because anyone with an 8- or more channel mixing board is not using GarageBand - they're using Logic, Reason, ProTools or other more high-end multi-track recorders at that level, so they couldn't really help me out with my setup.

What I eventually learned was that, using a two-channel mixer like I had, you could pan one track to the extreme left, the other to the extreme right, and they would then come into GarageBand as two separate tracks, recorded at the same time, that I could then mix as I pleased. So I could record a simple drum/cymbal setup with brushes using two mics in different positions, or two guitars, or bass and guitar, or vocals and guitar - all using two tracks. That's all I wanted, and it worked well.

The image above is actually the second version of my setup - eventually I figured out a bit more in terms of monitoring the recording (either with headphones or a small amp - or both) and how I could could control the output, and add in MIDI instruments. It got pretty elaborate, though I hope it's easy enough to follow - especially for anyone looking to emulate it. I used FreeHand for all the elements and layout, keeping it simple with only black and white outlines - very "technical drawing"-style.

I posted the link on a few audio forums, where some people found it helpful, and others were surprised at the level of detail I went into - but I wanted it to be totally clear, especially when dealing with audio, where the lack of a single adapter can throw everything off and cause confusion, a trip to a store, and delays. I did receive a couple "thank you"'s from people just getting into recording, who wanted to create a similar setup who couldn't find much help elsewhere. That made me happy.

When my wife and I bought a house in 2006, the basement became mine, and I started setting up a recording studio, which is far from complete - I'll have to detail that in a future post. When I started in on the basement studio, I wanted to be able to record a few instruments and my full drum set at once, so I got lots of mics mics and cables, an 8-channel Mackie mixing board, MOTU Firewire interfaces, and I started using Logic, Apple's high-end multi-track recording software.

It's a much more elaborate setup, and the software had a huge learning curve (I'm definitely still learning, even after reading three books on the subject) but it paid off nicely - I can do much more than I could with the original GarageBand setup. But that original arrangement still comes in handy - I have a very similar setup in my office now, which I use for more limited voiceover or simple recording situations. It's nice to have the flexibility to whichever setup is appropriate - though my neighbors are definitely partial to the smaller one.

Control room setup - small 8-channel control surface at left, MIDI
keyboard, MIDI drum surface, two 20" Apple Cinema Displays, small
mixer and mic for playback (control room talking into external
headphones while recording is in progress), reference monitors and
my old Mac G5 holding it all together below.

Main instrument recording area. Eight cables lead from the channels
in the mixing board into the Firewire interface, which goes into the
control room via a single Firewire cable.

Drum recording setup - there are seven mics total - one for snare and
hihat, one for the kick drum, three for the toms (one between each set
of two), and two overhead condensers.

Skinny Sneakers

2009-08-31T06:57:00.014-04:00

Skinny sneakers sketch. Click for larger version
(they don't get any less skinny, though).

It's rare that I just sketch for sketching's sake these days - the closest I come to doing that is doodling while I'm on the phone, which sometimes yields some good results - only sometimes, though. But most of the time I'm sketching these days, I'm doing it for a project - roughing out ideas and getting layouts into shape. That's kind of a shame, but it's the result of being busy with client work, which is nothing to complain about.

The skinny sneakers piece was done when my band Restraining Order was in the studio in 2003, recording our five song E.P. Five on Blue. We spent a lot of long Saturdays in that studio, and once the basic tracks (drums, bass and a guide guitar) were recorded, it tends to then become only one band member at a time doing the recording - which leaves the rest of us plenty of down time in the control room.

Closeup. Isn't messy linework nifty?

We try to make that down time useful - tracking changes we've made or need to make to the songs, working on the track order, liner notes and other information for the CD packaging - but all of that doesn't take very long, and we wind up just b.s.ing and eating pizza for hours on end. Bands like pizza.

Somewhere in the midst of that down time, I grabbed my pen and paper and started sketching my bandmate Phil's Converse-covered feet. I'm not usually good with sketchbooks - I feel too much pressure to fill them with only great drawings - I'm way too conscious when I start working a sketchbook (especially if it's bound, and the pages can't be removed without ripping them out, leaving a noticeable torn edge - I hate that) but here it worked out pretty well. I was in a Zen state of relaxation, and the drawing came out nicely, I think.

Eventually, when I started mining my past work for use on my Print On-Demand stores, I found this piece and wondered if it would work on any product. It's more arty and less designy than most of my other pieces, and there's no real theme or clever double-meaning - but I still used it, adding it to (among other products) a greeting card design. The inside of the card says, "What's swingin'?" - because that one foot is swinging, you see.

I've sold a couple so far - probably from fans of Converse, or maybe sneakers in general. I've always seen sneaker loyalists as the biggest untapped resource in this country, and now it's proving to be true. I win.

Skinny Sneakers greeting card on Zazzle

Video Productions by David

2009-08-30T06:27:00.016-04:00

I'll have to post a more complex logo design project soon, because some of the recent ones I've selected - like this one - were really simple.

A local videographer found me and asked me to develop a logo for his company. He had a very specific idea in mind: since his name is David, and his company is named after him, he wanted a representation of Michelangelo's statue of David, facing to the side, looking into a video camera. He also knew he wanted a subdued color, and he referenced one of my other logo designs in terms of the style - he wanted a simple, high-contrast representation of David and the camera.

And that's what he got. He gave me these images of camera for reference on the style he wanted to show in the logo:

And I used this image of the David statue for reference:

Before I did the final rendering of the image, I composed a rough layout for the client, so he could see the basic layout and approve that before I got into the more detailed work of rendering the image:

When he saw this, he was generally happy - he liked the formality of the layout and typeface - but he asked that the colors be reversed, and that the camera be placed on a tripod. I then worked out this version of the logo, in three color variations:

He liked the blue, but he had one minor request - he wanted the camera to be a little bigger - so it didn't look so much like a consumer-grade camcorder. Here's the final logo - it's a subtle change, maybe a 105% increase on the camera image:

And that was it... until we started working on the website. Once my client saw the above logo in the original website layout - positioned in the traditional upper-right location - it looked "off" somehow - he thought it might look more natural if David were look at the text, so we switched the locations and changed the layout a bit, removing the color boxes.

Here's the web version:

Video by David website - click to visit.

The original logo was still used on business cards, brochure, and other marketing materials.

The website was laid out in DreamWeaver, integrating a header and navigation bar I developed in Flash. My client provided the images and sample video files... which should probably be updated to Flash Video and integrated into the site, but at the time he preferred Windows Media Player files. Yeah... it might be time to check in with him for an update.

Check out www.videobydavid.com

Microindie

2009-08-29T14:12:00.008-04:00

Microindie Records is (as you would guess) a small, home-run record label that specializes in smallish runs of great records and CDs. I came to know the label's owner Mike back in 1995, when, under a different label (Drive-In Records), he put out my former band cuppa joe's 7" single -which I mentioned in a roundabout way in a previous post)

Mike created Microindie as an offshoot to Drive-In in the early 2000's, and in 2005 he asked me to design a logo for the label. Being a small label, they didn't have a huge budget, so this was the kind of logo project where I do all the exploration work on my own, and give the client a final design - which Mike was fine with. I still did lots of sketching - I just didn't follow through with the alternate concepts, and didn't have get those concepts in shape for a client to see them.

I think Mike suggested, or even specifically requested, a vinyl record coming out of an envelope - or maybe not. But either way,it seemed logical way to go - the label does a lot of mail order work. So here's what I came up with:

Yep - record coming out of envelope. Lo-fi typefaces, and a little ruler-like line with tic marks, to indicate the micro-ness. I gave him the full color version, one-color version (seen here in all-brown and all-black variations), and a grayscale verison. I'm not sure if he used any of the versions besides the full color, but hey - at least he had them available.

This was a two-color logo - I picked out the browny-orange color and only used tints of that color and black. Were this logo ever used in offset printing, with spot colors, that would allow the extra tints (which kind of register as different colors) to be printed at no additional cost. That'a real long shot, though - but as I've discussed before, using this kind of setup really unifies the logo nicely, color-wise.

Tray card for the bearsuit CD "Cat Spectacular". Yes, Microindie does
more than just records.

Mike was really pleased with the logo. He had a couple releases in the pipeline already, and I'm pretty sure the first release was the one above - an album by a British band named bearsuit. It was cool to see the piece in print, especially so soon after I designed it (a few weeks or so) - and I get nice little care packages of CDs from the label every so often. Free stuff is good.

My Girl Won't Recycle

2009-08-28T06:53:00.014-04:00

The single cover, seen by at least a dozen people.

I the late 90's, I had an idea for a song about a young woman who had many positive attributes, but one fatal flaw: she would not recycle. I worked out the first verse and part of the second, writing it down in a notebook... where it sat for a few more years until 2002, when I finally fleshed it out in hopes of having my band Restraining Order learn it so we could perform, and ultimately record, the song. Here are the original lyrics:

My girlfriend wears her safety belt
She never lets it slide
She's always thinking of her health
When we go for a ride

She stays away from MSG
In her Chinese food
But if they inadvertently
Add some, she's never rude

Just one point of contention
That I feel I must mention

My girl won't recycle
She won't reuse - she won't reduce
My girl won't recycle
What the hell is her excuse?

She's quite aware of homeless pets
Funds all their charities
Sends money every chance she gets
She just can't deny their pleas

And when she's tired of her clothes
They go in plastic bags
Salvation Army always knows
She brings the finest rags

She's so considerate
There's one thing I don't get

My girl won't recycle
She won't reuse - she won't reduce
My girl won't recycle
What the hell is her excuse?

She backs up all her files
So careful changing aisles
Participates in walk-a-thons
Covers her mouth when she yawns
Gives blood when time allows
Drinks milk from free range cows
But why can't her plans
Include reusing cans?

Too many ugly contradictions
Just one thing left to do
Since I can't change her predilections
She'll be recycled for someone new

She's normally so nice
Except for this one vice

My girl won't recycle
She won't reuse - she won't reduce
My girl won't recycle
She has no excuse
My girl won't recycle
She won't reuse - she won't reduce
My girl won't recycle
There is no excuse

The tune was titled "My Girl Won't Recycle". I recorded a demo on a very primitive piece of Mac Recording software called Easy Beat, which I loved at the time, because it was the only MIDI software I had - this was a few years before GarageBand was released. The sounds are pretty crappy, but it hardly matters for a demo - this is just a guide for the band to learn the basic structure of the song, and for our singer to learn the lyrics - and for those purposes, it worked fine.

Here's the original demo, followed by the Restraining Order version below:

My Girl Won't Recyle - original demo version:

My Girl Won't Recycle - final studio version:

I recorded the vocals for the demo right after waking up one morning, at around 5:00 (I was going on a weekend trip to see a friend and wanted to get it done before I left) - my voice is not usually so hoarse and ominous-sounding.

Of course, many things change when a band records a song. For one, my demo only had simple bass, drums and "guitar" parts (which really sounded more like an old Casio keyboard), but our band has a couple guitarists, as well as a sax player - so the arrangement was changed - I think for the better.

The tempo also increased dramatically - also for the better. The demo is pretty dirge-like, which wasn't necessarily my intention - it just came out that way. That felt natural when only the demo existed, but after hearing the band version and playing it live a bunch of times, the faster, upbeat version is the "real" version to me now.

Another big difference: the intro. I don't remember ever hearing "Judy In the Sky with Glasses" before, but the few people who heard the demo thought the songs' beginnings were way too similar, so the band worked out a totally different intro, with some dramatic guitar/sax interplay.

Also, once we got into the studio, our singer Jason realized that he couldn't fit in all the words in that last verse (the word"predilection" was especially hard for him to deliver at the new, faster tempo) - so he and I worked out a new verse with less syllables:

Although it may seem to severe
I know what I must do
My waste reduction plan is clear:
Recycle her for someone new

He also suggested changing one instance of "What the hell is her excuse?" to "What on Earth is her excuse?" to better tie in the environmental theme - and so we did. That was a cool idea and a nice way to vary the lyrics a little.

I did the sound effects in the bridge - the girly "Excuse me!" (for the aisle-changing reference), the yawn (for the mouth-covering reference) and the cow sounds. I love doing cow sounds.

The song came out on our five-song E.P. Five on Green (also available on iTunes) and garnered a good reaction from both those who heard the recorded and the live version. People like the funny, I guess.

I thought the song had potential to get us some publicity, so I created a single cover (using the same "mean girl" drawing I used on my Staring Problem products (I like to recycle for real, y'all), burnt about 50 copies of the CD (with only "Recycle" on it), and starting sending it out to people. I don't remember my distribution list, except I did send a copy to the Philadelphia Recycling Office.

That was a pretty bold move, but it paid off (I guess they're not used to receiving music submissions at city offices) - someone there liked the song and sent it to a P.R. firm who handled only environmental companies and causes. That agency was putting together an Earth Day celebration at Citizens Bank Park (home of the Phillies), and they asked us to play for a bunch of school kids who were being rewarded for their school's recycling efforts by having a day just for them at the park.

So we "kidfied" many of our songs ("Wars We Need to See" became "Smores We Need to Eat" - not very environmentally-themed, but much more kid-friendly as kids don't tend to like warfare) and spent the day performing. The Philly Phanatic actually came out in the middle of one of our sets and joined us. He came marching out during "This Land", and everyone went wild. The Phanatic alternated between conducting the band, mock-grabbing our instruments, and generally causing havoc amongst the kids. He really is a great performing, getting a huge reaction without even being able to speak. We were all very impressed with him - he's now my second-favorite green creature. And - we were on the evening news on at least one station - our biggest clam-to-fame thus far (unfortunately).

Restraining Order at Citizens Bank Park for Earth Day 2006. And no,
unfortunately, we aren't still in touch with the Phanatic.

It was a nice little run, all from one song idea. I should write another one, maybe about getting free drums, in the hopes that it will yield free drums in real life. I'm always prepared for more drums.

Adam West-Style Batman Sketch

2009-08-27T07:41:00.002-04:00

A little Batman sketch, absently done on the phone while I was talking to my wife. I do a lot of phone sketching, and sometimes they turn out pretty neat. It's always surprising - I'm barely conscious of what I'm drawing while I'm doing these sketches, but that probably only helps with the fluidity.

The full body version is a little awkward, though:

I actually finished the sketch post-phone call, and I was a bit too conscious of what I was doing at that point - kind of like a hypnotized person coming out of a trance ("Where -- where am I?"). His right arm (the one on the left0 is a little forced. Looking at the cropped version at the top now, it seems I should have had Batman bound in some way - it would have paid off the anguished, struggling look on his face, and his body position (especially the upper arms) would have worked better if they had something to struggle against.

The Adam West-era style was probably subconsciously influenced - a friend recently saw him at the Monster Mania convention (I went a couple years ago) in my town, Cherry Hill, and said he was very entertaining. I guess that stuck in my craw (or is it "gullet"?). Had someone mentioned seeing Christian Bale, this whole sketch may have taken a decidedly different turn.

After sketching and scanning, I cleaned up the pencil work a little - the slight tone is actually the tone of the paper (I deleted it outside the figure) and added a blue tint. If I ever add linework and true color, guess where I'll post the updated version? Right here, on my blog. That's the answer.

The Jim Henson Company Proposed Website Redesign

2009-08-26T06:49:00.009-04:00

Here's something weird - about a year ago, I visited the Jim Henson Company website, and I was not pleased with what I saw. I'll get more in-depth on Jim in the future, but suffice it to say, he's a a hero of mine - maybe the only person I look up to or idolize, and not just as an artist, but as a human being. So when I saw the Henson.com (it's since been redesigned), I just didn't feel it was worthy of the man or his legacy.

The layout back then was simple, but inelegant, and broken in many places - links didn't work and images were missing. And for some reason, whoever put the site together (in previous and current versions) likes using Jim's "Henson" signature truncated at the top of the page. I do not approve.

The whole site is very 90's - it's not elastic in its layout - the content sits in one narrow area in the center of the page, no matter how wide the window is. The Flash elements have no smooth transitions (something Flash is ideal for), and I swear the frame rate on the Flash elements is too low (probably at the default of 12 fps) - an error that screams amateur. I'm not usually so critical of others' work, but this is Jim Henson here - maybe no site could ever be good enough for me, but I know it could be better than this.

Archived versions of Henson.com

Click image for larger view.
Page Two Concept | Page Three Concept

So I did something a little wacky: I created some static layouts for a redesign, found the contact information for the company's Marketing Manager, and sent him links to my work with a short e-mail saying that I'm a designer, an admirer of Jim Henson, and I'd like to improve the site.

I kept the layout very simple, leaving the full Jim Henson signature intact and (after finding a vector version of the official Kermit image/logo) extracting the true Kermit color for the background. I found a few images and treated them with the color as well.

And... I never heard back from them. Or not "back" - I just never heard from them. The current redesign of the site went up a few months later - probably with no connection to my e-mail or proposal - as much as I'd like to believe I shamed them into reworking the website, I'll assume they were already planning the update. It was a step or two in the right direction, but still a long way from what a Jim Henson website could and (in my opinion) should be.

I believe this is the first time I ever did this - proposed a redesign for a company (especially a big company) out of a combination of disappointment at the current site and enthusiasm for what it could be. I doubt I'll ever try something like this again - not because it didn't work out, but because there's really only one Jim Henson, after all.

WCS Brochure

2009-08-25T06:53:00.006-04:00

Brochure front and back exterior (top), and interior
spread (bottom). Click for larger image.

I used to a lot of print design in the 90's - brochures and booklets, full stationery systems (letterhead, envelope, and business card), ads for newspapers and magazines, book covers, DVD and CD packaging, flyers, posters and more. However, over the past ten years, that work has declined significantly - and the print pieces I do create these days are often handed over to the client for production.

I guess you can owe this decline to a couple factors. First, I trust you may have heard of the Internet. Many of the business I develop logos for these days are almost completely web-based - they still need business cards (I always use VistaPrint these days), but it's rarely worth their time to create offset-printed envelopes (if anything, they print their own labels) or letterhead (a Word template almost always suffices). Aside from those essentials, and some more straightforward business forms and documents (estimates, invoices, even fax cover pages!), these clients don't need much in terms of printing in the 2000's. For more specialty pieces, like display materials (large posters, banners, table tents) they're more than likely to hand the project over to a vendor who may have an in-house design department (or even a single designer) who can put together a design - and then it gets printed or produced under the same room. Who can argue with that kind of convenience? Not I. And small businesses are much more likely to advertise online than in more expensive print publications with longer lead times, less focused audiences and increased fees. What I said in 1993 still holds true: "The Internet is Good." (I never really said that in '93 - '96, maybe, but not '95).

The other factor is home-based printing. Up until the early 90's, consumer-grade printers either really sucked, or they were really expensive - sometimes both. But nowadays, you can get a more than decent inkjet, LED or laser printer for your home business for a reasonable amount of money, and produce your own printed materials in quantities too small for a commercial printer. Even brochures, booklets, and other material requiring specialty finishing (like folding, trimming, or binding) is achievable. If I were a teenager now, I'd have a publishing empire going full speed.

Detail from interior spread. Do you wish the text was larger, so
you could read it? If so, then you are a nerd.

Where am I going with this? The piece here, for a water consulting firm named WCS, was created about four or five years ago, when I was still getting a decent trickle of print work. As is often the case, the client did not have an unlimited budget, so they asked for a two-color piece. I designed the piece in Adobe InDesign, selecting a fairly straight blue spot color, which I used along with black. Initially I tried making the photos into duotones, which means they're created using a percentage of black and the spot blue - but (from what I remember) I was reminded of the crappy, cheap textbook photos of my youth, and so I went with all-blue photos - which are called "monotones", by the way - as if you couldn't have guessed that.

I didn't assist with the printing of the final piece - the client went through a few rounds of text changes (quite a few, as I recall), but once it was finalized, I handed over my InDesign files, as well as a .pdf, and they - I assume - took it from there. This was another of those nebulous projects where I never hear from the client again after my role is complete - I can only assume the client, or one of their vendors, went off and printed the final brochures. I hope they didn't get nutty with my source files and switch the photos back to duotones - that would hurt my feelings.

Future Story Ideas

2009-08-24T02:58:00.001-04:00

Here's a "living blog post" to remind me of the ideas I've had for future stories, be they feature length screenplays, short screenplays, short stories, prose books, children's books, audio plays, or as-yet-to-be-determined ideas. Some of these are pretty rough and some are just nuggets of ideas, but I'm okay with that - they'll be smoothed out and extended once I take them out of the drawer.

Malformed
A pre-teen boy living in a swampy backwoods village gets severely injured. For the first time in his life, his mother is forced to bring him to a hospital. Once he returns home, he is followed by a strange woman who appears outside his window. When the boy seeks out the mysterious woman, he learns of a dark episode from his childhood. Fun Fact: While I was working out this premise, I didn't have a title - then I got a "malformed request" from a website's contact form. Nice timing.

(Untitled - maybe "Backroads")
When I was younger, my Dad told me about a trip my family took, to a friend or relative's house in rural North Jersey - a part of the state we'd never been to before We arrived late in the evening on a Friday, after the sun had set (so my Dad didn't have a good sense of the area), and were invited to stay for the night. After dinner, I got violently ill - vomiting and shaking, with deep fever-like symptoms. My parents called around and got an emergency number for a pharmacist who worked out of his house. This is the mid-70's (a perfect time for horror - no cell phones or GPS), by the way. My Mom stayed with the friend/relative while my Dad drove me at night down dark, unfamiliar roads trying to find the pharmacist's house. When he finally found it, the pharmacist was very strange, and had this big parlor-like room where he kept his drugs, which he was in no rush to dispense to my Dad - but eventually, he did. I'm pretty sure I remember laying in the back seat while my Dad was driving around in a panic, trying to find the place. It may have been a fever dream, I may have just imagined it after hearing him tell me about it a few times, but I know there's at least a short horror story here. A sick kid, unfamiliar area, strange guy who you're depending on for help... seems perfect.

The Sleepover
A 12-year-old boy recovers from a long-term illness. His parents are let him have a celebratory sleepover, inviting a dozen or so of his friends. In the excitement and confusion, they don't realize that one of the boys doesn't really know their son (though he does seem familiar) and no one can remember inviting him. Once the parents are upstairs for the night, the uninvited boy begins causing chaos in the house, telling the other boys about the secrets of adulthood and daring them to do unthinkable acts before dawn.

(untitled - dual-photo story)
One of the idea nuggests: A character visits another person that they don't know well (maybe a friend-of-a-friend, or someone hosting a party) and sees himself/herself in one of the framed photos on the wall (possibly at a theme park), with a camera - he/she reveals that he/she has the reverse photo at home. Not sure where I'd go from there, but I've always thought this kind of coincidence must happen (especially on sites like Flickr) - I also think the idea is somewhat influenced by Smoke, a favorite movie of mine. Inspired by two family photos from my own family, from a Disney trip - two of us were taking pictures of my nephew meeting Mickey, from opposite sides, and got each other in the frame.

Overgrowth (in progress)
Right after we bought our house and moved in, I was sitting in our living room and checking out the property out on Google Earth. I saw a strange structure in the back yard (the satellite photo was a few years old), then turned right in my chair, pulled up the blinds, and saw a mound of oddly-packed dirt in the spot where this structure once stood. It got me thinking of a story idea, and I've recently begun working on it as an audio play:
A young guy who sells things on eBay for a living is asked by his father to move into his recently-deceased Great Uncle's house to sell off the belongings. Once he's there, he finds satellite evidence of a structure in the house's foliage-heavy back yard, and then runs into a strange retiree who was very close to his Great Uncle. Things unravel from there.

Possible titles: Data Loss. System Recovery. Failure.
A girl computer tech gets assigned data recovery on a client's computer. She starts working on the recovery, then finds out from her manager that the client has died. The girl begins looking through the data she's recovered and getting to know her deceased client.

(untitled - maybe "Scheduled Posts")
Probably too close to the above idea for both to work. A man dies, and his wife discovers that he has written months' worth of blog posts, each scheduled to be published daily. She is given the opportunity to receive these posts all at once, but declines, instead enjoying the simulated daily updates from their loved one. (this may be too small an idea - could be incorporated into another story as a subplot)

Prussian Blue
A 20-year-old young man goes to a family funeral for his Great Uncle Through interweaving anecdotes from different family members and friends, he discovers that as a little boy, he was responsible for his Great Uncle losing one of his eyes. The fake eye he wore, by the way, was colored "Prussian Blue" - a color I once read on a tube of paint in college. I started working on this story idea in 1993, and then saw a novel with the same title and, stubbornly, gave it up. Now I see on Amazon that there are a few books and audio books with the same title - I should have hung in there.

The Border Guard
Children's book. A little girl in a divided city saves the life of a scary guard who controls the passage between the two halves of the city. In gratitude, he gives her a week to decide who she'd like to take with her through the gate - and there will be no return. I began drawing the main characters... also back in '93.

I'll post updates if/when any of these gets some progress - Overgrowth will be the first.

Interactive Creature Maker prototype

2009-08-23T12:23:00.003-04:00

Click above to play . Click on a piece once to grab it - then drag it so the blinking dot is laying on top of one of the dots on the body - then click again.

Wow - I totally forgot I did this. This little piece was an experiment when I was working on my project Jabloo, trying to find my way. At first I was thinking along the lines of an interactive world where you created your main character (like a lot of other game - Spore, most directly) and then use that creature to navigate a world.

I didn't get far before I decided to change directions, but I did work out a little system in Flash to allow the user to pick up a body part and lay it on one of the articulation joints. The interactivity is a little odd - instead of clicking and holding (really, dragging) you click once to grab, click against to release. If you're on a joint, it secures to the body - if not, that piece goes back to its original spot. If you drop a piece on a joint that's already holding a piece, that piece gets replaced.

You can also change the global colors of the piece - I had to make the shadows transparent so that they show through to whatever the main color is behind them. Each joint on the body has an optimum rotation angle, so the pieces always snap to a logical position. And the shadow has to be a generic shape - with a 2D application like Flash, there's no realistic way to make the cast shadow of the creature reflect all the body parts the user chose.

Well, have fun with it. Sorry there's no background, or animation or anything more than some random body part assembly. If I ever add to the piece, you, blog reader, will be the first to know.

Studio Crossroads

2009-08-22T16:33:00.011-04:00

When my band Restraining Order recorded our first CD Last Time You Took Me Back, we chose a local studio called Studio Crossroads. The home studio (though that term does it a disservice) was owned by the father of a friend of my niece, and I didn't have high expectations when I originally checked it out, but it was an amazing studio, home-based or not.

The studio consisted of one large recording room where you could easily fit an eight-piece band and all their gear. Off of that main room was a control room (with a hallway that lead to a waiting area and bathroom), and four smaller recording rooms of various sizes - one big enough for a large drum set, a couple good for guitarists and amps, and one small enough for a single vocalist.

All of the rooms were guarded against electro-magnetic interference, and none of the walls were parallel - a difficult engineering feat in a home studio, but an ideal way to avoid harsh sound reflections. All of the walls were wood paneled, and the lighting was offset - it was a very relaxing environment in which to record.

And not only that, but the owner/engineer Mike was a great guy to record a CD with - we should know, as we were in there for six months, recording and/or mixing once or twice a week over that period. He was technically proficient, but more important for us, Mike was an excellent sounding board for us band members, helping us come together when the road got rough.

I took my Canon AE-1 into Studio Crossroads several times, for what was perhaps the last serious photo series I ever took before going digital. I find it much easier to get shallow depth of field with an analog camera than with a digital camera - in fact, I usual cheat digitally and just blur part of the image in Photoshop. It's never the same, though.

Here are a few of those photos - unfortunately, they don't show the studio itself as much as some of the house instruments and gear in closeup. But music gear is still cool, right? I thought so. Originally these photos were just for me - then Mike asked me if I could develop some marketing material (brochure, website, logo, business cards) for the studio to help promote it, so I thought I could use these images. Then he thought about it more and realized he already had all of his available time booked with bands waiting for availability, so it didn't make sense to promote the studio - so the marketing material never materialized. Don't be too sad - just a little.

Click for larger versions of each photo.

Indie Music Magazine Illustrations

2009-08-21T06:20:00.010-04:00

In the mid-90's, I did a lot of black and white band illustrations for a few independent music/pop culture magazines. I'm not even totally sure which magazines each of these was for, but I believe most of them were done for Carbon 14, which still seems to be in existence (and has a now-coveted 3-character URL - impressive!).

These pieces were all done in a flurry, and I don't believe there was any payment involved other than one or two issues of the magazines in which my work was featured - which was fine back then, as I was still developing my style and getting used to doing this kind of work. Still, I had to turn these around quickly, and they were all illustrations of real people, which took me much longer to work out (though the average person wouldn't be familiar with these musicians' faces, so if they didn't look perfect, I doubt there would have been any protests).

Though the Internet was around back when I did these pieces, it was in its very early stages and I didn't have access - the magazines probably didn't, either. So since these were done essentially for free, and in a short timeframe, there was no approval process - I'd get 8x10" glossies of the band, possibly with photos of them in other magazines, and I'd sketch and then ink them with my brush-tip markers. Then I'd send the final pieces into the magazines, and they'd print them as-is. If only things were always so simple and direct.

A band called Sinkhole. I really like the way the guy on the left turned
out, though I think I'd be scared to meet him in person. I can't be sure,
but this may be the same band.

The Refreshments, who had one big hit in the mid-90's.

A cool little band named Betty Goo. I gooified them. The top
photo on this page is the one I used as reference, way back in '96.

Ben Folds Five. Get it - "Folds" - like in Poker? And I drew
them in playing card costumes? That's supposed to be clever, people.

From a computer advice column. The logo is
supposed to be shown on a mouse pad,
though I'm not sure it totally registers as one.
From Escargot zine.

As always, some turned out better than others. The one guy's arm below, drinking from the soda bottle, is particularly effed up - but I still take responsibility for them, and I resisted the urge to clean them up in Photoshop before posting them. That's got to count for something, right?

TuxScout

2009-08-20T04:46:00.016-04:00

Final logo. Click for larger version.

This project is from the same client who I'm developing the Xipwire logo and website for - he might describe himself as a "serial entrepreneur" (an admittedly overused term), as he's developed several web-based businesses over the past few years - including five we've worked on together.

TuxScout, which is no longer in operation, was a web-based resource for Linux developers. If you're not familiar with Linux, it's an open-source operating system, and its mascot (all OS's should have a mascot) is a penguin. Therefore, most products and services having to do with Linux incorporate a penguin in some way. It's not necessary, but in researching the project it felt like anything non-penguin would be a mistake.

My client, who would be programming the website himself (as he always does), asked me to design a logo and website layout for TuxScout, with emphasis on friendliness. Here's what I came up with...

As you can tell from the top of this post, this was ultimately the winning concept. I was going to attempt to be dramatic and show this one last, but instead I decided to present the four options in the sequence the client saw them. It usually turns out that the first concept I show is the winner - I wonder if that has more to do with me showing what I perceive to be strongest first, or a client's predilection toward what they see first?

Regardless, the client liked the speedy quality of this one best, but he had some change requests: a little more of a 3D look (like the second concept, below), removal of the rear fin (for streamlining purposes), larger text and repositioning the text away from the penguin's belly. The dimensional effect definitely took this away from being a typical corporate logo (as you can see above) and into more of the friendly mascot/character realm (as you can see at the top of the post) - I still don't know that I prefer it either way, and though I often fear that the subtleties of a 3D version might be diminished in other uses (like when printed small on a business card), it wasn't an issue here as I don't think any typical corporate collateral was ever created.

On to the unused options:

This was even more of a mascot, and damn - he's fat. The font is fun (maybe too fun) and the gradients throughout give this one a CGI-generated look. The client liked that look, but wanted it applied to the more dynamic figure and pose in the final option.

A departure - an old-school pixel-based character. This might have appealed to the Atari-loving Linux developers, but ultimately my client thought it wasn't totally representative of the look and feel he was going for. I did find a use for it, eventually, which I'll show at the bottom of this entry.

And this one - a completely 3D isometric view. Maybe I was playing Zaxxon right before I came up with this one? I think the client liked it more than me, only because it was so different, but in the end its odd angle might have proven too difficult to integrate into the website, so it was not selected. Looking at it now, I feel like I should have kept all features cubic - those round eyes and conical beak are just too different from the rest of the shapes.

Once the tweaks were made to finalize the logo, I developed a website layout that my client put together himself. This was the sixth and final iteration, though it's not a screenshot of the actual site (which I don't have), so all the text was just temporary to give a feeling for how things could look. From what I recall, the final site didn't stray from this layout very much - the text size may have been reduced a bit, though. "Friendliness", again, was the theme here.

And so the site went live, had a lot of activity in the beginning (especially in the Job Market area, which was the meat and potatoes of the site), and then it slowed off and eventually died, and my client took it down. Such is life in the internet world. It's a pity it didn't really take off so it could still be around today, and I could post a link here. Now you just have to use your imagination.

When looking through the unused logo options, I really thought I could make use of that pixel penguin. I actually posted it to Zazzle but used "Linux" as a keyword tag, and they deleted my product. That was dumb of me - I've considered re-posting it without the tag, since the image alone has nothing to do directly with Linux (I just wanted to attract those developers), but I didn't want to get in trouble again (they may keep records of such things) so I instead posted it at CafePress and Skreened, now targeting the many penguin lovers of the world. I know they're out there... somewhere...

Pixel Penguin shirt on Skreened

Rosies

2009-08-19T05:23:00.004-04:00

Illustration parody of Rosie the Riveter. Click for larger image.

Once more, an atypical project - but maybe since I've posted so many of these "oddball" projects that I don't think of as being typical, I have to acknowledge that the weird ones come along more often than I think or remember. I'm coming to terms with it.

An agency approached me (that sounds funny - like they snuck up on me or something) and asked if I could help them create a parody of the famous WWII Rosie the Riveter illustration, which you've certainly seen, but just in case you haven't - here it is...

Now, the agency took a stab at it on their own, and they didn't do a bad job, in my opinion - I think this could have passed as the final product...

...but they just didn't like it enough to present it to the client - who, as you may have figured out by the logo, owns a tank cleaning business named Rosies - hence the poster as the inspiration source. It wasn't a far reach in terms of parody, but it was appropriate. So I selected a subdued color palette and started rendering in Freehand, using my Wacom tablet.

Super duper closeup detail.

The funny thing is, I didn't have much direction other than to follow than the comp the agency provided and a few rounds of feedback on my work - which was fine, but as I look at it now, their version is a burly man with ruddy skin, his eyes mysteriously hidden by the hat like the Marlboro Man. My version looks like Joel Grey in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (and why did the adventure never continue, by the way? I loved that movie when I was a teenager), but with huge biceps. I asked if I should avoid linework, to make this vector version look more like the original painting, but the agency and client wanted line - so they got line, and a chunky line at that.

So the agency liked the piece, and the client liked it, too. But the real question is: would Joel Grey like it? I hope so.

MMC Lifestyle Coaching

2009-08-18T05:57:00.026-04:00

This logo project came from a woman who had started her own lifestyle coaching consultancy. You want to improve your career, your social skills, your love life? You call her, and she helps you create a plan, then works with you over the course of several weeks or months to execute that plan. At least she did - it looks like the website is no longer live.

My client wanted her business's logo to show the qualities of strength, growth, power and potential (makes sense, right?). The company name, as you may have guessed, was based on her initials. I did some sketching and type work in Freehand, and came up with five original concepts for her:

This first one was a little impractical - that hard edge on the right, where the "M" and "C" hit, creates a nice opportunity to work with the negative space on other uses (business cards, letterhead) but without something to the right to give it balance, it looked too heavy on the right - and with something to the right, like the "Lifestyle Coaching" descriptor, it was too linear and would take up too much space or require it to be significantly shrunk to be used.

This second option came from some sketching. I sketched a kite, then drew two lines symbolizing gusts of wind lifting it up (get it? potential and growth?). The gusts were initially a second color and they looked harsh and heavy (I'm pretty sure wind is not supposed to be heavy) so instead I cut them out of the kite shape, adding little serify-shapes at the kite's edges to give the gusts a little more emphasis. The client liked it - she also pointed it, it looked like three cats. Nothing wrong with that, though.

This third concept was a pretty straightforward representation of power - probably a bit too straightforward, and either the client or I (can't remember), after reviewing it, felt it looked too masculine. It probably needed more subtlety, too.

This one was meant to show growth - I was thinking of Best, that chain of stores that went out of business about ten years ago. It's nearly impossible to find a logo - googling "best" plus "retail" or "store" just brings up lots of "Best Buy" images. But I remember seeing that logo when I was younger and thinking it was weird - each letter was a little bigger than the next. Then I read an interview with the designer, who said that was meant to show the quality of "best" - the "T" was the largest, and therefore (I assume) the best letter in the logo. Never noticed that before. I think it worked better here, with the two M's - the second M was the improved version of the first. That kind of left the C stranded, though - and the colors wound up being too feminine. I could have changed the color scheme, but that wasn't necessary because the client liked this concept most of all:

That doorway in the space between the serifs won her over, and this is the logo she chose. I was cool with it - I think it represented her company best (ha ha). Her only request was to darken the blue, which I did (see the top of the post). And then we were off to the races (never spoke or typed that phrase before - it feels weird).

After we finalized the logo, she applied it to the website (which I didn't design), and I developed business cards and a letterhead template for her. Here's the card:

Such a formal logo seems to require, to me at least, a centered treatment. Or, at least, you can't go wrong with centering. As I always do, I provided her with logo files of different file formats, resolutions, and color styles - a two-color version and an all-black version. I believe she used the all-black version for t-shirt embroidery, though she had it stitched in white on blue shirts, which looked pretty sweet.

When I opened my Zazzle store a year ago, I started looking at all of these unused logo options I'd created over the years. Since the client only pays for overall development and the buyout of the final logo, but not the unused options, I'm free to use these as I please - and I have. The type-based logos obviously are too specific to work, but the image-dependent concepts were cannibalized for business card templates and other products.

I think Zazzle's strongest feature is its ability to allow customization to its products through a very user-friendly interface. And while that feature works well on t-shirts, hats, bags, and other promo-type products, I find it's most useful on business card templates.

The way it works is, store owners like me set up card templates. I upload, size and position the image, then set up the lines of text I'd like to include. The typeface, color, size, position of the text are defined by me as well. Finally, the templates are tagged with keywords like "growth", "strength", "potential" - words appropriate to the design that help potential customers find a template that suits their needs.

Once a customer finds a card template they like, they fill in their information in a form field and the thumbnail of the card is updated on the fly. This is very helpful - the customer instantly sees exactly how their final card will look. If it's allowed by the store owner, they can delete text fields, move and resize the logo, pick a different typeface and color - but my experience is, most of the users trust the design and use it pretty much as is. If they were interested in designing their own card, they'd probably have done that instead. Maybe they even tried to do so in Word - if they did, my guess is they ran away screaming.

There's an ethical debate in the design community about these kinds of templates. Some designers say that providing custmoers with pre-made options that they can buy in (for example) 100-pack for as little as $20 or $30 plus shipping (the price depends on the percentage the store owner sets - I set mine at 30%, in case you're curious) impacts the need for design services. Horse pucky, I say - I can virtually guarantee you that anyone paying such a tiny amount for a card with a pre-made logo is not going to consider spending upwards of $2000 for a full identity design. It's inconceiveable (just watched The Princess Bride last week - couldn't help it).

As an example, my biggest seller by far is a fitness logo targeted at personal trainers - sometimes I sell a couple batches per day. I very much doubt that a personal trainer working out of a gym with a handful of clients, is going to want or need to contract the services of a designer for their logo and identity system. Maybe a few superstar trainers will go that route, or those expanding their services - but for the most part, the people who use these templates are happy with something that looks nice and represents them well.

The downside for these customers is that anyone else in the world - even their competitor in the same city - could be using that same template. And they don't have the ability or right to use the logo anywhere on their own - they're only purchasing the finished cards - nothing more. If they were to scan the card and use the logo? Well, for one it would look horrible. And it would also be a legal violation of my rights. That would be bad - I hope it never happens, though I doubt I'd find out about it if it did.

And not to toot my own horn, but I haven't seen anyone else use a Print On-Demand site to create a full line of customizable products with the same images, as I've done. Maybe I just haven't run across them yet, but I do a lot of browsing on Zazzle. Each of the logos in my Business Products product line is available on t-shirts, baseball caps, canvas bags, mugs, keychains, buttons, mousepads (do people ever get tired of giving away mousepads?), and the card templates themselves. This way, a small business owner can get a few customized shirts for themselves and their employees (if they have them), or they can buy the other items for office use or for promotional giveaways. It works out nicely - I've spent many hours setting up all of those templates, but now they're available for purchase - and I have sold quite a few. Passive income is nice.

So here are two of the unused designs from this project, transformed into business card templates. At this point, I've sold a few of the lightning bolt template, but none of the kite. Maybe it's too abstract for people, even though I mention the wind gusts in the item description. Perhaps I should market it to cat lovers instead.

Kite/Wind Business Card Template on Zazzle

Lightning Bolt Business Card Template on Zazzle

Simmer Down

2009-08-17T07:15:00.008-04:00

Simmer Down with Sharon. Click for the full animation.

Another half-completed idea. I created this in 2004, not long after meeting Sharon, turning her real-life career as a pastry chef into an animated mockery. Not really. But it was a fun little experiment in creating an animated version of the woman who would become... my wife (I tried to make that sound dramatic)

Umberto, the irrepressible spatula with the overdone Italian accent.
I did the voice, and I'm 100% Italian, so it's okay - I cannot get in trouble
for the ethnic stereotyping.

And yet, it's really more of a rough idea awaiting completion, which will hopefully happen someday. The lip synching for Sharon is rough - I just created some semi-random movement and never got around to finalizing it. In fact, the sound is a clipped, giving it a static quality when the sound peaks. Blech. The theme song was done in Easy Beat, a program I used for music recording pre-GarageBand, so it's pretty weak. And Phillipé the Whisk is only shown in the intro - the scene ends abruptly and he's not even shown. Poor Phillipé.

I did enjoy voicing Umberto, brief as his lines were, and his interactions with Sharon seemed pretty funny. And I like the way the kitchen "set" turned out. So I'll consider this post a kick in the butt to revisit this project someday and at least get one episode done. Then Phillipé can finally have his moment in the spotlight.

Tails in Training

2009-08-16T06:52:00.027-04:00

This logo was created fairly quickly, and without any other options presented to the client, who had a very low budget to work with as well as a very tight timeframe. In a case like that, I do the exploration work on my own, but the client never sees it - they only get one concept with minimal adjustments allowed. Less money = more control; less time = less prep work shown to the client. In many cases, this works best - and the alternative for the client is they'd be creating their own logo (probably in Word or Paint) or using some clipart, or even not having a logo at all (which sometimes isn't the worst case).

The client wanted earth tones (makes sense - dogs are pretty earthy) and a less formal look, so I used a font that had a cut-out kind of quality, and rendered the dog in similar rough shapes. I went with three colors on the main logo (something I rarely do - I'm typically a two-color guy) to give me a little more to work with the shapes in the dog illustration.

Color break, with tagline and slogan. This shows the client, and any
vendor they work with (most commonly, offset printers) how many
spot colors were used, and where they're located.

I developed a four page set of guidelines for this logo's usage, which you can view here as one long image (you may need to click once to zoom in). Because many of the logos I do are for startups, who will rarely be printing the logo using offset printing (some web-based businesses may never print the logo at all), I rarely produce these guidelines. But they are helpful, even if a big chunk of it is just a listing of what not to do. Some people need that most of all.

From page 1 of the logo guidelines - think of these as the logo "no-no's".

I'm always amazed, even after all the years I've been working as a designer, at the things people will do to a logo - especially people who've paid for that logo's development. I'll come off sounding like a jerk here, but I'm going to speak freely: if your instinct when working with a logo is to stretch it out horizontally or vertically to fill empty space, to cut it up, to change the colors around, to put it on a crazy background or stick it inside a shape - then you shouldn't be working with the logo. Or at the very least, you should consult a designer for some strict guidelines, and then follow them to the letterœ. Trust me, the best logo in the world will look like crap if you stick it into Word or PowerPoint, then grab one of those side handles and pull it across the page to become your header. And when people view it, they'll think less of your company instantly - whether or not they can articulate why they feel that way - and you've lost.

I'm often disappointed when I see what small businesses do with their logos. Better to not have a logo at all then to have something that degrades the image of your company each time it's used. I don't want to get too negative here, but I'll say this: working with an experienced designer will benefit your company's image in ways that you may not immediately recognize, but will pay dividends in the future. If you can't afford to hire a designer to develop your logo, check into consulting options - if anything else, for possibly a few hundred dollars, you might have someone to keep your worse instincts in check.

And since I mention Word and Paint above, I'll add this: you can't develop a logo in Word, or Paint - not even Photoshop. I mean, you can - but you shouldn't. It will be a problem in the future, if your business is to grow. You need a vector-based logo, developed in Adobe Illustrator or a similar vector-based design application. I'll tackle the reasons why in a future post, but trust me - it is a necessity. I've been hired by firms who started out with a raster-based logo, created at 72 ppi in Paint or Photoshop, and asked me to create a vector-based version. And usually, most often even, it's more time-consuming and expensive to do it that way - you have to accurately match fonts and precise shapes in a very tedious way.

As with anything, spend more time and money up front and you'll do better in the long run. When I was a younger designer, I was nicer to clients and potential clients about this. Now I'm not - I'm very direct, and I smack them around a little when I think they need it - which is often. Melodramatic as it may seem, I've seen too many people suffer over the years because they made poor decisions early on, based on money, and no one stepped in to tell them the downside to those decision. Even though as the designer I have a vested interest in getting clients to spend more money, and it may look like I'm trying to upsell them, I don't hold back - whether they use me or someone else, it'll always be an improvement over creating the logo themselves. I can live with that.

One-color version on colored background. I provided a separate version
of the logo for one-color uses like this. Besides making all the elements
one color, some shapes are removed, and pieces that overlap in the
full-color version (like the text) are given space between them. Just
printing the full-color version in grayscale wouldn't look anything
like this.

Two-color version on colored background. This version offers a little
more natural variation - the words are in two colors, so no space is
needed between them.

Back to this logo: here's one benefit of vector-based design right above. If you had created a logo in a raster-based program like Photoshop, with all the shapes and color on one layer, you would experience hell if you wanted to change the colors. You can select colors and alter them, but all the little edges would get messy and ugly. And if you wanted to lay your logo on top of a colored background, as I've done above, you'd have to cut out all the white and you'd end up with similar edge nastiness. Using Illustrator, I created color variations in literally seconds - just swapping out one color for another. It's really beautiful and efficient - when anyone who's tried to do something like this on their own sees me working in Illustrator, they say things like, "Oh man - that's how it's supposed to be done!" and also, "You won't believe how long it took me to do that - and mine still looks bad!" Vector is good.

So check out those guidelines to see all the rules and color options I provided. In the end, once the logo was handed over, the client immediately decided to drop the image of the dog altogether and just use the type. What a world!

Nico's Monster Hunt

2009-08-15T07:27:00.022-04:00

I guess I'm going a little crazy for my son Nico's first birthday party, which is under a month away. They only turn one once, from what I hear.

I'd previously posted an entry about the monster invitation I created (my wife came up with the theme, believe it or not) and since then I've printed the invitations, along with a directions card, and sent them out (purple envelope with monster-face sealer sticker) to about 55 families.

Besides the invitation, I've printed more monster face stickers on Zazzle (as part of the giveaway), and a custom shirt for Nico to wear to the party featuring this design.:

I've also printed banners with the five monsters wishing Nico a happy birthday (each including a corny joke), and a series of signs with each monster offering Nico birthday advice. I put together a 14-song CD with rockin' versions of Monster Mash, I Put a Spell On You, Purple People Eater and similar monster-themed songs, designed and printed labels for the CDs, burned 70 copies, bought purple clamshell cases and assembled them all - another party giveaway.

And we have purple and green balloons, streamers, pom poms, monster cups (the main giveaway), paper plates - even Frankenstein's Monster and Wolfman piñatas (the Monster is, fortuitously, mostly purple and green) - it's become quite a project. My wife, who is designing a Mad Hatter-style cake featuring all five monsters (she's a pastry chef) has already suggested that his second birthday party be a quiet, intimate affair - I'm in agreement.

So, besides all of the above, we're working on activities - all monster-themed as well. You can't have a theme party without constantly reinforcing the theme, I always say. We're counting the piñatas as one activity, and we're going to play Hot Potato with a Frankenstein's Monster head for a second game. For the third activity, I'm developing a fairly elaborate game - Nico's Monster Hunt.

I want the kids (there are sixty kids invited - and about ninety adults - that's why we're having the party in a huge park) to have a little adventure, and a monster adventure at that. So I've created something kind of like a scavenger hunt, but instead of having the kids collect things (I didn't want to buy sixty of five items), it's a clue-based adventure.

The kids will get a flyer (I've pieced the elements together below) with instructions, a map of the park that I illustrated, and a spot for the answers to be filled in. Here's the setup:

The kids will use the map to walk around the park (probably with their parents, unless they're brave) using the five numbers to locate five semi-hidden signs. Each sign will have a clue that they'll have to figure out, filling it in above. And here are those clues:

1
The monster made by Frankenstein
Beyond this hill made his decline
And as he stumbled past this spot
He feared a stick t'was flaming hot

What did Frankenstein's Monster see here?

2
The Wolfman running in the night
Silhouetted in moonlight
Suddenly he howled in fear
From a bullet he found here
What kind of bullet did The Wolfman find?

3
Dracula, the king of dread
As a bat flew overhead
But when he landed in this tree
He lost his best accessory

What did Dracula drop here?

4
The Mummy, wrapped in dust and gloom
Walked here from his ancient tomb
He fled as soon as he could see
An insect just as old as he
What scared the Mummy off?

5
The Creature From the Black Lagoon
Swimming here one afternoon
Found beneath his scaly fin
A mesh of strings to reel him in

What made The Creature From the Black Lagoon swim away?

I'm not giving away the secret word, sorry - you'll have to work it out on your own.

Developing the puzzle was more challenging than I anticipated. The rhyming of the clues came fairly quickly, but I had to make some adjustments once I'd worked them all out. I gave no forethought to what the final answer to the whole puzzle would be as I was developing the clues - I just figured I'd make a five-letter word out of the answers, which I did - but the words I was coming up with had no connection to the theme. "Ropes" was one I kept arriving at - but how do I make "Ropes" the big answer? I couldn't make it work.

Then, when I figured out a word I liked for the final answer, it required one of the clues to be adjusted. Initially, The Wolfman saw his reflection in the moon (a nice, iconic image - I'm trying to give the kids the impression that the monsters were all recently in the park - I want them to have that warm, spooky feeling, which is hard to pull off in a beautiful outdoor environment, mid-day) - but "moon" didn't have the "r" I needed, so adjusted it to be... well, the final answer. All things considered, it wasn't too big a change to make, but I did feel a little sad that I had to lose the moon for The Wolfman. I hope the kids understand.

For the park illustration, I used Google Earth as a reference - but as you would imagine, it gave me too much detail. So after reviewing the satellite image, I grabbed a letter-sized piece of paper, folded it in half, and using a thick brush-tip marker, sketched it out from memory. Then, I compared it to the aerial view and made some adjustments.

I kept the view a bit distorted - not straight above, but down a bit, yet distorting some of the views of the objects so they're more easily recognizable. And I tried to include just enough landmarks so that the kids (and the parents) would be able to find the 8.5x11" signs on a stake in a sand pit (The Mummy = sand), nailed to a tree (for Dracula), by the edge of the lake or wherever they wind up being placed.

I originally considered making the map in full color, or even two color (tints of purple and green), but then just went with tints of the green. Besides being the fastest option, I think it works best this way - giving the kids just enough detail to get their bearings in the park.

Map detail. Click for full, larger view...
you amateur detective, you.

I used the same technique for the map illustration that I did for the invitation - hand sketching and inking with brush-tip markers, scanning, Live Trace in Illustrator, recoloring and final layout in Freehand. Someday I'll break myself of using Freehand, but probably not any time soon. It's the best.

I'm going to head out to the park next week for a test-run, and to make sure my sign/clue locations will work, and that the map is accurate and workable. I don't want the kids getting mad a me for a misplaced bush or something similar - that could get ugly.

I enjoyed making this whole puzzle - it gave me new respect for designer/illustrators who develop these kinds of pieces for publications like Nickelodeon Magazine and Highlights (who gave me the worst rejection of my life in the early 90's - "We don't use material of this style - please do not ever resubmit your work again in the future." - yes, seriously - it gave me a horrible impression of them after loving their magazine throughout my childhood, and every time I see a copy in my dentist's office I recoil).

Maybe puzzle-making is something I'll pursue in the future - in the meantime, I hope the kids and parents at the party appreciate it - and Nico, once he's old enough for it. I'll have to take him back in a few years and recreate it for him, once he has the word "scarab" in his vocabulary, I know he'll be ready (there's your freebie clue).

Croc and Boy Sketch

2009-08-14T05:02:00.001-04:00

A crocodile and a little boy. Will this become the Calvin and Hobbes
ripoff I always knew I had in me? I do not even know myself.

Just a little sketch today - a lite snack for a Friday morning.

Pencil sketch detail, slightly cleaned up in
Photoshop. This guy needs a name. Any suggestions?

I have no idea what this is about - I just did the sketch with no pre-planning ("pre-planning" seems redundant, doesn't it?) I really liked their proportions, though - maybe I'll ink them up and work them into a little strip. It could be my Calvin and Hobbes - or maybe something more like Copper, which I love a lot, too. And then I'll submit it to Universal Features Syndicate. Not really. I'd just post it here.

Mother Goose Learning Center

2009-08-13T07:11:00.014-04:00

Click for a larger version.

When I was a young design student, I had a class assignment to develop a logo for a fake product whose name was something like "White Night Sugar". I remember I created three rough pencil treatments for the project. Two were pretty simple, mostly type-dependent treatments, and the third was a fairly elaborate rendering of a knight on horseback. I was pretty impressed with myself - as I recall, it was a decent rendering, though very detailed.

My teacher walked around the room critiquing the designs, and helping us select which one to move forward with to a complete design. He looked at my three treatments, complimented me on the rendering of the knight drawing, but told me it was "too illustrative" and suggested I pick one of the other two simpler pieces to follow through on.

I was a little pissed - I was a Graphic Design Major with an Illustration Specialization, so I could draw better than most of my classmates, and I suppose I enjoyed projects where I could use that skill. Over time, though, I realized I was creating overly complex logo designs, and I needed to tame that instinct. I don't have that knight logo project anymore, but I'm sure if I saw it today, I'd agree with my teacher completely. I feel as strongly now as he did then, that a logo should convey a concept with a minimum amount of detail - the more shapes, colors, text and complexity you add, the piece begins looking less like a corporate identity and the more like an illustration - and the more difficult it becomes to reproduce on different media (clothing, signage) and at small sizes (business cards, websites).

That brings me to this project, a logo design for a preschool childcare facility. I didn't work directly with the client - this was another agency-driven project. The agency came to me because the client specifically wanted an elegant, illustration-dependent logo. But now, being gunshy about such things, I tend to push too far in the opposite direction in trying to keep things simple and stripped down. I submitted three concepts total, and the other two were much simpler, but this is the one the client chose. And I'm okay with it, despite the fact that it's a pretty detailed goose - the colors are limited, the shapes, though realistic, are still pretty simple - it was a nice compromise.

Detail of the logo. Just two colors - but I used tints
of those colors, for maximum effect.

And speaking of the colors, I did something here that I tend to do often - I used only two colors, but I used tints those colors as well. This is an old-school offset printing-based technique for saving money in printing, since if you're printing a logo (let's say it's a pear image with text next to it) in two colors (black and green), and you wanted to include a lighter green (for a highlight), you could still get away with using those two spot colors - you'd just print the highlight as a percent of the green. However, it's very doubtful my client here would ever print their logo, especially using spot colors (they'd probably just go process, as in CMYK printing) - but I still use the tint technique to limit the colors, thereby unifying the design. Now you know - please don't go stealing my secrets.

An aside: for those of you who don't know (and who might care) - and this is real design/color theory nerdiness - here's the proper use of the terms "tint", "shade", and "tone":

tint: when you add white to a basic hue, lightening it
shade: when you add black, darkening the hue
tone: when you add both black and white (or, of course, gray) to a hue, desaturating it

So you see, when people say they like different "shades" of a color, they typically mean variations in the hue - which isn't technically accurate. But if you go around explaining, "Actually, a shade is adding black to a hue", they may punch you in the nose, so don't try it. I don't want to get in trouble. I've already had my own altercations concerning color theory, and I don't want to go through that again.

The only sticking point on this logo was the hat - after doing some research on traditional images of Mother Goose, I first had a bonnet on her - but the client thought it looked too old fashioned. We then went with a wide-brimmed straw hat, but that didn't look right, either, so I found a picture of this hybrid bonnet-hat style, rendered it, and the client was pleased. I didn't consider myself a hero; I was only doing my job.

The alternate bonnets - the first one in an earlier
color scheme, deemed too masculine - also sans
tinted highlights.

And that was the end of my involvement - I submitted the logo and the client was reportedly pleased. My wife saw the logo recently (I think it was online) and went crazy, screaming, "That's your work, my husband! I am so proud that I married you!" And then she baked me a blueberry pie. Not really. I wish that's what happened, though - maybe someday my logo work will earn me pie.

One More Quarter

2009-08-12T05:56:00.013-04:00

I've been repurposing a lot of of my old band art - album covers, CD covers, images from flyers, t-shirts, even unused images - I'm pulling out all the stops. Most of this stuff was rarely seen when it came out, and much of it is out of production, so I'm happy to keep it alive via my various Print On-Demand stores.

This piece, which I now call One More Quarter, was originally done in 1995 for my band cuppa joe's 7" vinyl single Archipellago/Love Peace Anarchy Infinity (those were the song titles), released on Drive-In Records. I designed it to fit in the square format, alongside some handwritten text. The image was printed in one color (purple) on textured peach recycled paper. I liked the way it came out - the final product had a nice handmade look to it.

Archipellago/Love Peace Anarchy Infinity 7" vinyl single
cover- still for sale ten years after its release.

As far as the concept, it was a typical "romantic intentions gone wrong" image. Both songs on the single were about romances that didn't quite work out (what else is new, as far as song subjects?) so I took my cue from there.

The illustration was done with my trusty brush-tip markers, which was then photocopied, and then Zip-A-Tone was added for tone. If you're not familiar with that product, it was popular in the 70's and 80's, though scanning and digital production pretty much killed it. You bought it in sheets that were tacky on one side, and you'd lay it down on top of your finished image, then you'd cut it to the areas you wanted to fill and pressed it into place. Using it made me feel like a pro.

Detail of the illustration. Check out that crazy Zip-A-Tone!

Zip-A-Tone came in different variety, based on the percent of tone and also the screening size (how close the center of the dots were to each other). It was an efficient way to lay down tone, allowing the art to be shot as line art, and not grayscale - so the final printed piece was always totally crisp. It was a bit of a pain to use, but I do miss it - I admired a lot of cool Zip-A-Tone-based art when I was younger, especially in the many black and white horror and science magazines that I hoarded.

Would you like to hear one of the songs, Archipellago? Here it is:

I played drums AND tambourine on that one - but not at the same time. That's what they call "the magic of multi-track recording". We even called in a small string section for maximum bittersweet sound quality.

Recently, I started applying the image to shirts and other products, and I worked well. I was initially worried that the dot pattern wouldn't reproduce well, especially on clothing, but I ordered a sample shirt and it turned out just fine... even if it does make me look a little lovelorn. I can take it.

One More Quarter on Skreened

Doggystyle

2009-08-11T06:45:00.004-04:00

Yes, this is a real logo project. An agency came to me with a request for an illustration-heavy logo. The brief was simple: their client was starting a retail chain named "doggystyle" (one word, all lowercase) and wanted a logo showing "a horny-looking dog humping the letter d". Well, you can't say they weren't clear about what they wanted.

I took a first pass, keep the single color dark and bold:

The client was happy for the most part, but thought that the expression wasn't quite horny enough (seriously) and they felt like the part of the rear leg shown behind the lowercase "D" made it look too much like the dog was climbing the letter, and not trying to have intercourse with it. Not wanting anyone to get the wrong idea, I made modifications and worked out the version at the top.

An alternate version, ruled too tame.

I would say the problem with this name, if you're marketing and/or selling dog products, is it's so perfect... except it's so vulgar. But these people expected to get some mileage out of the controversial name and logo, and who's to say they were wrong to do so? Not little old me, the designer. I try to leave my moral compass out of these projects.

And in the end? From what I recall, the client got cold feet and changed the image (not using me for the new logo), and possibly changed their store's name as well - I can't remember. A quick google search did not find them, though it did find some other even more controversial images not quite suited for this blog. Sorry people - it's only a couple clicks away if you need it.

Shoplifting for Santa

2009-08-10T05:10:00.000-04:00

An excerpt from my forthcoming book, "It Must Be Me":

I stopped believing in Santa at a young age - I believe it was the Christmas when I was four. I remember I'd been questioning the logistics of the whole delivery system, like lots of kids, and I was feeling some doubt. But then my sister made a comment one night when she walked in the door - she said she'd just seen a sleigh on a nearby rooftop as she was getting out of her car. Then she cupped her hand to her ear and looked around excitedly asking, "Are those sleighbells I hear?!"

My sister then suggested I look out the nearby window, which I almost gave me a head injury. I pulled back the curtain, but the only sight that met me was the blackness of the night sky. She was really trying to sell the story, though, and she said, "Ohh... we must have just missed him!" Our parents were in the room, and they chuckled at her comment. There was something in my sister's voice and expression then that got me thinking "something ain't quite right here." It was all just too convenient, and the conspiratorial tone ("Maybe you'll see him next year!") in the room sickened me. I decided right then and there that Santa was a sham, and I wasn't having any more of that particular myth.

I was forthright with my parents and told them that I didn't believe, but they must have felt some guilt because they tried to push Santa down my throat even harder. That Christmas I merely endured the concept of Santa, feeling somewhat more enlightened than my peers - how gullible they were. But it wasn't until a year later that I really made an issue out of it.

My father was the Electronics Department Manager of a regional department store, and it fell upon him to book their location's Santa every year. I overheard my mother saying to one of her friends that my father had prepped this year's Santa, telling him I was a non-believer. "Oh, so that's how it's gonna be?" I thought. Not really - I was only five. But now alerted to the situation that awaited me, I set about forming a plan.

On our way into the store, my parents were attempting to subtly manipulate my brain into being more receptive, telling me, "We know you don't believe in Santa, but you're going to meet him today, and since he knows everything, wouldn't he be upset to hear that a good little boy like you doesn't have any of the Christmas Spirit in him?" and other similar propaganda. I was strong and did not relent. I nodded, sure in the knowledge of what I was about to do.

As we entered the store, I noticed my father's co-workers and employees paying special attention to me - this is always more obvious to a child than adults allow themselves to believe. "So are you excited to meet Santa, Stevie?!" one giddy woman asked.

Oh yeah - bring him on. The line for Santa was long, so my parents let me walk through the toy section to kill some time. Big mistake. Since my father was a manager there, I was allowed to roam relatively freely. I knew what I had to do - I'd been pre-visualizing it for days. I selected some of the low-hanging blister packs of action figures. "Yes, these will do nicely," I thought. By and large, there were few security cameras, even in big department stores, during this time - so after a quick over-the-shoulder check, I ripped open four or five of the action figures, removed their heads with a quick plucking motion (I'd practiced) and stuffed the decapitated doll parts into my coat pocket. I sure was pretty devious little brat when I felt I'd been wronged.

With a cautious look, my parents brought through the line to see Santa. Within half an hour, I stood before, then sat on, "Santa" himself. Pity this poor man, hired to portray Santa for just a short span of time each year. He had a lot of patience - I'll give him that. But he was trying to take me on a trip that I just didn't want to be on. I didn't despise him - I despised what he stood for.

He did a bit of ho-hoing and got down to business:

"So, Stevie - I hear that you don't believe in me!" The condescension was oozing out of him.

"That's right, Santa," I replied, trying not to sound too snide.

"That's a real shame. Can I ask why you don't believe?" He was really laying it on thick.

"Well, is it true that you know if I've been good or bad?" I asked.

"Oh, yes - yes it is!"

"So - have I been a good boy or a bad boy?"

"I've been keeping my eye on you, Stevie, and I know that even though you don't believe in me, you've been a very good boy this year!"

The setup complete, I removed the action figure heads from my coat pocket and held them to his overly roughed cheeks.

"Then why did I just steal these?!" I asked nice and loud, for all to hear.

The proceedings came to a screeching halt. My father's employees suddenly had to be in another location of the store. Santa, as far as my brain can recall, did not respond verbally. He may have stammered a bit, but his rhetoric had been stifled. A red and green-clad worker ushered me off the platform.

My father was at a loss for words as well. My mother may have managed a shameful, "Oh, Stevie!" but there was no lecture as we made our way out of the store, moving through throngs of other parents actively shunning us. Nor was there any discussion on the drive home. Only years later did they discuss the event, and even then it was in hushed, halting tones. I have to say, I believe a lesson was learned that day, and I made sure it wasn't learned by me.

R-Rated Storyboards

2009-08-09T06:17:00.003-04:00

Some wild storyboards. Click for an uncensored larger version.

I'm continuing the run of wacky, unusual projects from my past. An agency came to me and asked if I could develop some very short, simple storyboards. You know how high-profile American celebrities sometimes do those foreign commercials, thinking that it does no harm to their careers because no one will ever see them (before YouTube, that is)? Well, I did these storyboards for an American company, but for a short foreign commercial (animated? live action? I have no idea) that I was to have no involvement in beyond storyboarding. No problem.

I must have been pulling a Warhol on the client, showing them multiple
color variations of the same image.

The client specified that they wanted this flat, vector look for the storyboards. They also specified that the girl should lower the dictionary in one of the panels, revealing her unclothed upper half. Pretty weird - the company was a fairly high-profile online reference source. Who the heck knows why they wanted nudity, but the agency did tell me that the client thought it would go over well in Japan, which is where this commercial was scheduled to run. Who am I to argue?

Magenta girl. Pretty cute, eh? You want to date her, don't you? Be honest.

You can click this one for the full view, too. I won't judge.

I did it. I drew the naked lady and I was not ashamed - it was client-specified, after all. And as with many of these projects where I was an intermediary, shaping the final project but not delivering the actual piece, I never saw the end results. I wonder if they hired an actress, or made my vector lady animate? I will probably never know - and I'm okay with that.

Red Fox Validation

2009-08-08T07:44:00.008-04:00

A few years ago, I designed this logo for a validation company, which is a firm that calibrates and oversees engineering processes - something I never knew existed until I was asked to develop the company's identity.

I'm sure I presented other logo concepts, but I couldn't find any of the "losing" concepts when I searched in the project folder. I think this was the clear winner, and I remember telling the client as much when the original concepts were presented - something I really don't do often, but hey - they asked.

I think this concept just worked too well to not be used - you have a strong, simple image that represents the fox, a big "V" for "Validation", and the client had asked if it were possible to have some kind of a check mark (representing the approval of a process) be included - check (get it?). It was all there, and I would have been hurt if they hadn't used it. Maybe I would have sought out a similarly-named firm to sell the logo to, like Red Fox Vegetables or Red Fox Vitamins, if either companies existed. If not, I would have been obligated to create those companies and run them myself.

Here's a long version of the logo, which the client also requested. It was a little awkward, because it was close enough to being symmetrical that it seemed like it should be, with the image at the center. But even though I played with the kerning a bit, I couldn't make "Red Fox" take up the same space as "Validation" without it looking even more awkward and off-balance. I've had to live with it.

I also wanted the full "Red Fox" text to be red, so it would balance the longer, black "Validation" at right, but the client wanted only the word "Red" to be colored red - which makes sense conceptually, but the uneven use of color still bugs me a little in the long version.

The website, which is no longer live (I believe the company was purchased by a larger firm, who discarded the original name) was, as always, built around the look and feel of the logo. I didn't develop the actual site, but the client had requested that I develop some static layout concepts, like the one below which was eventually used.

Red Fox Validation website design - it's no longer live, sadly, but it
lives on in .jpg form.

This was an easier logo project than most, because I hit on the best concept early on. That's almost a curse, because you're forced to develop additional concepts that you really don't expect to be better than the original, and that you hope won't be selected by the client. Luckily, this one worked out. I'd like to think it was all due to the client's excellent perception of the image they wanted to portray, but I've got to admit that my Jedi mind tricks may have helped - just a little.

Remembering Blake Snyder

2009-08-06T15:42:00.008-04:00

If you're not a screenwriter, you've probably never heard of Blake Snyder - but if you are, it's likely you've been hearing his name quite often over the past few years. His books Save The Cat! and Save The Cat! Goes to The Movies caused quite a sensation in the screenwriting world, and Blake capitalized on their success by building a worldwide series of seminars and writing groups based on the concepts he laid out in his Cat! books.

Blake passed away from cardiac arrest on Tuesday. I learned in his obituary that he was in his early fifites, but if you were to guess his age by the enthusiasm level he conveyed in his writing and teaching, you'd probably place him as an energetic teenager. Whether it was his own website updates, in audio interviews, as a guest on writing podcasts, or at one of his own seminars (which I never got to attend, regrettably), he was clearly a great encourager of other writers, and seemed to get no greater pleasure than helping a writer make a breakthrough in their screenplay.

The Save The Cat! series (a third book is scheduled for publication in October) had a unique way of looking at movies, breaking down their hidden codes and structures. Blake took a deep look at movies and created his own categories like "Monster in the House", "Golden Fleece", "Buddy Love", that defied traditional genres like Horror, Action, and Romance and gave screenwriters a fresh way of thinking about their stories. I've recommended or loaned the Cat! books out to quite a few people, many who weren't screenwriters but who just enjoyed reading Blake's breakdowns of existing movies.

Blake at an Save The Cat! book signing.

Blake also did something pretty unconventional in his first Save The Cat! book - he published his e-mail address and asked writers to send him their loglines for some critique. A bold move for any author, but especially bold considering how generous Blake was with his time. I took him up and e-mailed him (as many people did) when I was working on my last screenplay, and he got back to me within a day with lots of good thoughts on how I could improve my logline. We exchanged a few e-mails, with Blake giving me some nice insight into my idea and how it could be tweaked and improved. I was much appreciative of his help.

This is the only video I was able to find of Blake on YouTube (though I hope and assume more will turn up in the coming weeks), and though it doesn't feature Blake prominently, you can get a sense of how patient and humble he was in working with other writers. He'll be missed.

Hatch

2009-08-06T05:48:00.005-04:00

Click for biggerness.

Another weird one. I was reading a lot of Moebius at the time I did this - sometime around 1993 or 1994. The influence is clear - I never really worked in this crosshatching style before or since. I usually avoid adding any kind of linear tone to my illustrations these days, though I did flirt with a horizontal messy line crosshatching style around this same time.

This piece was different, tough - I think I created it as a possible piece of art for my band cuppa joe - I can't remember if this was supposed to be a CD cover, a 7" vinyl single cover of something else. Regardless, I got a bit spacey (obviously), which was not too appropriate for our homegrown musical stylings, and the illustration never saw the light of day... initially.

Closeup of the illustration. Look at all the pretty, intersecting lines.

A quick aside about Moebius: In the early 90's, I was very much into him - as I still am, but I'd just discovered him then. And as he lived in France, I didn't expect I'd be seeing him anytime soon. However, at the end of my senior year of college, I decided to get my long hair cut off, so I went to a salon in a mall in central New Jersey (don't laugh) and asked them to give me what would be my "college graduation cut" - the shortest, most militaristic hair style of my life. It was also the longest haircut of my life, given by a guy who, ironically, had even longer hair than me.

Here's the kicker: while he was in the middle of my lengthy hair cut, my stylist and I were talking about art. This guy mentioned he was into comic books and asked me if I liked Moebius. I said yes (of course) and he looked at my curious and said, "Then man, I'm surprised you're not across the street seeing him! I'd be there if I wasn't working." Turns out Moebius - from frickin' France! - was making an appearance at the comic book store across the highway. I couldn't escape, though - I was mid-cut - and by the time I was finished and rushed to the store (five minutes away!), Jean "Moebius" Giraud was gone. I hate that story - I could have picked any other day to get my hair cut! Why then?!

So anyway... the reason I think this image was an alternate concept for my band's CD cover is the concept. The CD was eventually called Nurture - this was the actual cover I designed:

Actual Nurture CD cover. No crosshatching here.

You can see that either image works for the concept of "nurture", but in pretty different ways. And I was definitely locked into the same color scheme. I think the idea of such a sci-fi image just didn't work for our music - especially an image containing some nudity, allthough mild nudity (I was reading lots of Heavy Metal at the time - this is pretty tame by comparison). The other possibility, though, is that I did the alien-egg-hatching image after the CD came out, just riffing on the concept of nurture. Who knows? I can't remember. I also did a similar black and white image of a human woman breastfeeding an alien. I guess I was into aliens and motherhood back then.

For years the Hatch piece sat in my portfolio (a physical portfolio, pre-internet), most likely offending sensitive female art directors everywhere. Once I stopped using a physical portfolio, the piece pretty much disappeared. And then when I opened my online Print On-Demand stores, I decided it might appeal to some of the more spacey folks out there. I've sold a few mousepads and a couple t-shirts - here's one of them.

Check out the full Hatch product line on CaféPress

Finger Snapping Sketch

2009-08-05T06:07:00.002-04:00

Click for larger image - don't get your hopes up, though. It's
not going to be like The Da Vinci code where you see, like, secret
clues in the artwork.

This is a weird one. A few years ago, I got a call from someone who identified himself as an agent representing a celebrity. But he wasn't that person's agent in the traditional sense; he was only representing them in working to get a book published. However, he wasn't working with the publisher or any literary agent - he was just hired as what I would call a project manager, helping to put a book together. Like I said - weird.

It took a couple phone calls and e-mails to get the name of the celebrity out of him (I didn't beg) - I won't post the name here, but this person has a very specialized skill set. You can probably figure it out - you're smart. The book was to be a kind of fake biography of this person's life, and how they affected history with their special skill of finger snapping. Think Forrest Gump, but less heartwarming and without that rarely-quoted line about the chocolates.

The agent liked my work (hopefully he wouldn't have called me if he didn't - that would be mean) but asked politely if I'd "audition" for the book, and do one sample sketch. Like most illustrators, I'm generally against that kind of spec work, but (this is how I justified it) they seemed to be down to two or three potential illustrators, and it felt like a fairly reasonable request - they only wanted to see a sketch, not a finished inked and colored illustration. And, there was a semi-high profile project at the end; a full book with many illustrations - it would have been pretty fun, too. I gave in and did the sketch above, based on one of the concepts provided to me (a child version of the book's subject, as a Boy Scout, starting a fire by snapping his fingers - if you couldn't get that from the drawing).

This is what a portion of the image looks like when blown up a bit.

I submitted the piece and I think I actually wound up calling the agent a week later. He said his celebrity liked my work but was still deciding on which illustrator he was going to use. And that's it - I never heard back after that. Pretty anticlimactic. I'd almost forgotten about the whole project (understandably) since it never made it to a complete illustration, and therefore I don't use it on any of my sites. So you, blog readers, are seeing something very rare. And hey, if another project comes along that covers this same subject - finger snapping Boy Scouts - I'm going to be well ahead of the game.

USA Today Holiday Promotion

2009-08-04T06:31:00.003-04:00

Click for larger image. You'll be able to see the doggie's nose in more detail.

I've shown examples of two fairly recent illustrations that I said I felt pretty happy with, in terms of using Photoshop and my Wacom Intuos graphics tablet. I mentioned that in the 90's up until around 1999 or 2000, I was using only traditional materials - brush-tip pens for linework, which was photocopied and then colored with PrismaColor markers. Then I plunged into the world of digital illustration in the late 90's, first using a $99 Wacom Graphire, which was still totally fine for my purposes. I was really happy with how close I could come to my traditional style, even after only a few weeks, but in retrospect I think I sacrificed some of the imperfect qualities of natural media (especially the coloring) in these earlier digital pieces.

I did the piece above in 2000 for an agency who were developing an online campaign for USA Today. They just wanted a simple illustration that would look good when reduced - a little scene that promoted the newspaper's doorstep delivery service. I did a sketch, it was approved, and I proceeded to create the digital rendering.

Detail of the lady's face. Pretty smooth colors - maybe a little too smooth?

It took me a few illustrations to get the right feel for creating linework with the Wacom. I also remember messing up many times, not locking layers and creating nice, solid black lines... in the sketch layer. I got over that pretty quickly. I like some random, chunky variation in my lines when working with a brush-tip marker, so it was fairly easy to replicate that feeling with the Wacom.

The only real issue I had was what I call (in my head) "pulling" - there are some directions that, when I'm inking on paper, don't feel natural when the page is oriented perfectly vertically, so I rotate the paper a bit to get into a better position. I can't do that with the Wacom, so I found myself at times (especially on big, round shapes) drawing some of the lines at the wrong angle (but one that felt oh-so-right), then cutting, pasting, and rotating that linework to make it blend. That was pretty painful - over time, I got better at making it work without using that technique.

Awwww! This guy was modeled after
my Mom's dog Bandit at the time it was drawn.

Coloring with the Wacom allows for a lot more experimentation, which is not necessarily a good thing. In the "good old days", I'd lay down color with my PrismaColor markers, which I knew intimately in terms of their blending qualities. In the very early days - say, up until 1996 or so - if I made a mistake, I'd have to live with it or start the coloring over. Then at some point, I had a computer with a scanner and I'd sometimes recolor part of a piece I wasn't happy with on a separate photocopy of the linework, then use Photoshop to meld the two pieces together. Ouch - that was even more painful.

By the time I was able to color digitally, it felt like taking the training wheels off - it was freeing, but possibly a bit too freeing. I was putting a lot of color elements on their own layers, allowing myself near-endless amounts of time to adjust colors. And that's time I did spend, tweaking things a bit, then tweaking other colors to fit the newly-adjusted elements... I was taking days on just color. Also, it was too easy to keep darkening and lightening without using different colors for the shadows and highlights, so elements weren't varied in hue as much as they would have been with markers.

Most significantly, I was able to create totally smooth color transitions, highlights, shadows and gradients, which winds up giving the piece a very airbrushed look. I liked that look back then, ten years ago - probably because it wasn't a look I could get with my markers - but now it looks too smooth and perfect to my eyes, especially when combined with my idiosyncratic linework. It wasn't messy enough, to put it simply. I remedied that over time, but this piece is a little to stiff for me.

Oh, and the lady has man-hands - I must have been watching Seinfeld when I was sketching this one out.

The offending digits.

So there you go - some self-criticism, just like you requested (not really). I have to use it in moderation, in case my clients begin reading this blog - I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, especially anyone who hired me to complete a job - one they may still be happy with. I don't hate this piece (I don't expect I'll be posting anything here that I've come to truly loathe - those pieces do exist, though) but I think it could have been improved. That's a pretty common feeling when looking at old work, though. I am large; I contain volumes. And trebles.

Science Geek

2009-08-03T04:00:00.000-04:00

Science Geek was a zine my friend Doug and I put out in the 90's. Doug and I were also both in the band cuppa joe during this time, but I guess we didn't feel like we spent enough time together so we joined on this project, too.

If you're not familiar with zines, here's the skinny: as you may have guessed, the word "zine" comes from "magazine", and that's what they often are: stripped-down, self-published magazines. The 90's were probably the golden era of zines - desktop publishing software and the widespread availability of copy shops like Kinko's really kicked zine publication into high gear, though by the end of the decade the Internet had diminished zine activity significantly. Why spend all that time and money printing these things, not to mention stocking inventory, shipping costs, promotion, and all the other hassles a physical object entails? Still, zines have their charms and they're still being produced - there's a certain satisfaction to holding something in your hand that was created with such care and craft.

Zines cover all kinds of subjects, though most are personal in nature. Doug started Science Geek while he was just beginning to work as a teacher, and used it as a forum for his writings on teaching, as well as a means to interview bands, review music and other zines as well (a common practice). For the first couple issues, Doug wrote his pieces, printed them out and cut-and-pasted the layout. He asked me to do a few illustrations and comics , which were reduced on a photocopier and worked in. Primitive times, kids.

Those issues were printed on 20 lb. copy paper, black and white only, and were stapled on the side. They didn't look super pretty, but what they lacked in polish they made up for (we hoped) in warmth and readability. Those early issues generated a lot of nice feedback. We had a post office in Trenton (the same post office involved in the 2001 Anthrax attacks, unfortunately) and fielded orders (usually with $3, postpaid, in cash) from there. We also sold issues at cuppa joe shows, and even at other bands' shows. We had no shame.

Then in 1995, Doug joined the Peace Corps and went off to Kenya. He asked me to handle Science Geek duties in the states while he was away, and I agreed. He wound up writing out the third issue on an old typewriter in his hut in Africa, mailing me the pages, which my mother or I would transcribe (we also recorded an album in this lo-fi manner!). I'd then do the illustrations and lay out the issue. It was a wild way to work, and certainly not the most efficient, but it was satisfying to see the printed issue and know what went into it. Doug's adventures in the Peace Corps, and just being in Africa, gave him a unique perspective as a teacher and writer, and we started to see some positive reviews at this point. We also managed to obtain international distribution through Tower Records and a number of other distributors by the time the third issue was available, which was both awesome and nightmarish as anyone who's dealt with distribution of any kind can attest.

That third issue had, for the first time, a color cover. By the fourth, we were using 11x17" paper and saddle stitching (stapling in the middle) so the zine looked and felt more like a "real "magazine. The fifth issue (cover shown above) was the best quality we'd produced, being laid out in (whoo-hoo!) PageMaker - and it was the last. All good things, you know. It was a satisfying thing to put together, but it was a ton of work each time - it took almost a full year to put out each issue, not to mention promoting the publication, working with advertisers (we sold ads to record labels, bands, and other zines) and mailing out issues. I think we just needed a break. I miss it, though - but I have enough copies of all five issues in my closet to keep Science Geek from feeling too far away.

Here are a few sample images from Science Geek - band illustrations, comics, spot illustrations, and them some reviews and a sample story that Doug wrote when he was in Kenya. Enjoy. I'm sorry you can't hold them in your hands, like the real zine. Maybe print them out and fold the paper, to simulate their original format.

A couple illustrations of bands we interviewed - this one
is Small Factory...

...and here we have The Wedding Present in a more conceptual style.

A short comic about my mall bathroom experiences.

This is the kind of illustration we used to fill in
the empty space that often wound up in the backs
of each issue.

Illustration from an article about being the new guy
in the workplace.

Spot illustration from an article about an African witch doctor. Yes,
they are real.

Just another little spot illustration.

Click for larger image. This was Doug's prediction about
how he'd feel after returning from Kenya after two years.

Portrait of Doug as the uncoordinated American.

Click for larger image to learn some horrible things
about my childhood.

These were all real t-shirts Doug saw while in Africa. So now you
know where your cool, kitchy clothing goes after you donate it.

A few decade-old reviews...

“[Doug Larkin’s] writing is plainspokenly evocative, examining human behavior (much of it his own) with both a scientist’s reason and less objective qualities like insight and affection. If you’ve ever been on the fence about the value of zines, try Science Geek; fun and sweetly poignant, it’s enough to knock you on the right side.”
CMJ Monthly

“...totally great...Doug’s reviews and writing are without pretension and his enthusiasm for science is invigorating.”
Wind-Up Toy

“...what makes this zine so charming is Doug’s ability to make such a dreaded subject like science fun and interesting."
Carbon 14

“It’s a damn good thing that there’s a zine like Science Geek...huge and funny and even educational...the hands-down coolest thing since computational biology.”
Permission

“What a fantastic zine...sometimes you find a zine and it seems like the publisher created it just for you.”
Factsheet Five

Photo Wall
from Science Geek Issue 4
© 1999 Doug Larkin

The wall above my desk is covered with photos. About half of them are from home and the rest are pictures that have been taken here. Every time someone comes into my house, they are immediately drawn to them. In a way, it's really good because it always starts an interesting cultural exchange about family and friends. The two biggest draws are the family portrait and the picture of my family's snow-covered house. I always think that the Kenyans would be more surprised by the snow but instead they always make a remark about the size of the house. It's just a middle-class suburban home, but here they have nothing like it.

One day Miss Simiyu and Joanne the lab assistant stopped by and were looking at the pictures. Joanne paused in front of the family portrait and had me identify each family member. After I did, she kept staring.

Finally, she disengaged herself. "Ah," she said, "all you wazungu look alike".

Miss Simiyu tapped her playfully. "Shut up." she said, "They probably say the same thing about us!"

Another time Mr. Makokha was over looking at the wall. I had also hung up a card from my friend Diz on the far end. On the front of the card was a picture of Chewbacca, taken from a scene in the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back. Mr. Makokha came to the card and asked, "What is this animal here?"

"It's called a 'Wookie'. You don't have them here?"

"No, I've never seen them in Africa. Do you find them in your place?"

"They're not here? They must just be indigenous to America then."

"It looks like a mammal. Some sort of primate perhaps..."

"Yes, I think so." By the time he left, I'm pretty sure he knew I was joking.

For continuity's sake, when I got the Captain Kirk postcard from the classic Star Trek episode I hung it up underneath Chewie. My friend Joseph from the village fell prey to that one.

After he asked me all about Wookies, he pointed to the picture beneath. "What are those things called?" he asked.

"Those," I said shamefully, "are called 'Tribbles'."

My Tail Is Long

2009-08-02T07:15:00.007-04:00

Click for larger image. Sorry, you won't see anymore of his elusive tail.

I have no idea where this one came from. I just drew the eyes in FreeHand one day, and started adding features. Eventually I had a head. Then I cloned the ears and made them into tail spikes. Water, sky, super-de-duper simple clouds, a reflection, and I called the image done.

Then I added some text in the same simple, unplanned style - I just typed some words, making each line shorter, mirroring the tail. The text suddenly made the sea monster seem neurotic, which fit in well with his wide, lidless eyes. The guy needs help.

Absolute symmetry, they say, does not occur in human faces - but my
sea monster possesses this attribute. Oh - except, I guess, for the higlights
in his eyes. Darn.

As I've mentioned in other posts, I sometimes feel guilty when working in such a simplistic style - but it's very freeing, and it isn't always any faster, either. I need to work on those feelings. Maybe I can find a support group.

I didn't do anything with this illustration for a couple years, and then I opened my Zazzle store and applied the graphic to a bunch of products. I've sold a few My Tail Is Long t-shirts in kids' sizes, but I think it works best on a mug - I like the way it wraps around the product. If you spin it fast enough, it gives the illusion that the creature is swimming past you (this works especially well if you've been drinking).

My Tail Is Long mug on Zazzle

I've started working on another monster in this style - maybe there's a future animation project or book in the future, filled with imaginary creatures, each with unique personality disorders. Could be fun - fun and therapeutic at the same time.

Cute Shopping Girl

2009-08-01T06:49:00.005-04:00

I remember almost nothing about this illustration. Weird. I was hired by an agency I do a lot of work for, and I think I had to turn it around in two days. I never even knew who the client was (a local P.R. firm) until a year or so later. I don't even think there was time for a sketch - the illustration was to be used for a holiday promo, and it had to get done quickly. I went straight to vector, which is an odd way to work, but I was crunched.

Perhaps because of the time situation, and perhaps because the client wanted something on the simple side, I worked in shades and tints of one of my pet colors, a magenta-ish-purple. I kept the background super simple as well - some part of me always feels guilty for drawing a city skyline this way, but I got over it.

The girl's nose and cheeks are red from the cold... or so I made you think
with my rendering techniques. It's all an illusion!

Somehow, this flat vector style applied to my more cartoonish drafting (using the big head style) seemed to give the piece a Mitch O'Connell kind of feel. That wasn't something I was shooting for - in fact, I'm really just noticing it now. I love that guy's work. Maybe he and I can become best friends or something.

I turned in the illustration, the agency was happy, and eventually I learned the client was pleased as well. I never saw the final piece this was used on (I think it was a client "thank you for doing business with us this year" kind of postcard) and I moved on. No revisions, no significant feedback from agency or client other than "looks good!", no problems after I submitted the piece... I guess there's no real story here. Time to move on, people - I'll try to post a controversial one next.

The Darjeeling Limited

2009-07-30T21:17:00.006-04:00

Click to view the site in a new window. Some functions have been
disabled. Don't be too sad.

I was enlisted to develop the Flash website for the film The Darjeeling Limited by the same agency who'd asked me to created the Deviated Discharge game for The Heartbreak Kid. They're in L.A. and they're very specialized - they only do movie websites. Must be nice, eh?

Because of the tight deadline (about three weeks), the number of people involved in the project (including Wes Anderson himself), and the scope of the site itself, this project wound up being the most complex website I've developed - by far.

This was first movie website I developed, and I was told by the lead agency that it's very uncommon for the director to be so heavily involved in its development - but that was exactly the case with this project. Besides getting input from the studio (Fox Searchlight) and the lead agency I was working for, Wes Anderson had already contracted his favorite design studio (he apparently uses them on all his films) to develop the overall look of all the film's promo pieces, both print and online. There was also a third agency involved, developing just one section of the site ("Explore TDL"). And I was the set of hands putting it all together in Flash... and dealing with lots of questions and problems along the way. Par for the course.

I never communicated directly with Wes Anderson, but at a few key milestones in the site's development he'd go to his agent's office in New York, review the site's progress, and compose notes. His agent would forward his e-mail to the lead agency, who would then forward it to me - stripping out Wes's original e-mail address before they hit "send". I guess to prevent me from forming any direct communication with the guy. Maybe they were scared I'd add him to my famous Tuesday morning knock-knock joke distribution list. Maybe.

The website was a pretty messy affair - integrating elements provided by so many different sources, in a tight timeframe, is never going to be pretty. Working on the little music player, for example, required hours of testing and modification - especially programming it to fade out quickly when the user views the trailer, so the sounds don't overlap. I listened to the beginnings of those songs so many times that when I eventually saw the finished film, I had some strange Pavlovian reactions each time a tune began, quickly visualizing myself in front of my computer at 2 a.m. trying to debug some ActionScript. It made it kind of hard to enjoy the performances of Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, et. al.

Eventually the Flash site was completed and integrated into Fox Searchlight's main site, which contained their global navigation and some additional, changeable elements below the Flash piece, like news, contests, and other press pieces about the film. The site went live a couple weeks before the movie opened, and no, I know what you're wondering - I was not invited to the premiere. I'm not bitter, though.

I almost designed another movie website for this agency a few months aftering finishing this one. They asked me if I had time to develop a simple website for what they described as a "little indie with Jason Bateman". The timeframe was initially to be two week so I agreed to take it on, but then they cut it down to one week. I had to pass on the project - that's too quick for my blood. I need to sleep a little between projects. And of course, that little indie turned out to be: Juno - a much more well-received film than The Darjeeling Limited. Grrrr.

Incident At: The Video Store

2009-07-30T06:47:00.010-04:00

Click for larger image and this unpleasant episode from my past will be readable.

I did a lot of black and white illustrations for small press and zines (more about zines in a future post) in the 90's, and I had a lot of fun doing it. They usually didn't pay much, or anything (though you usually got a few copies of the issue your work appeared in), but that's understood when the publications are barely breaking even - or not even doing that. In return, you were given plenty of latitude in the work you were providing, if not full creative control. When you're starting to do illustration work commercially, that's a fair trade.

I did the piece above in 1995, after a somewhat depressing experience renting videos on a Saturday Night at Tower Records in my lonely single days. Man, I was lame. I drew the comic the night it happened, as I was watching whatever movie I'd rented, and inked it the next day. It looks a little rough, but hey - so was the incident itself. I don't believe I'd planned to try to get it published anywhere, but at the time I knew a guy named Brandon Stusoy, who published a great personal zine called Whitebread - that's where this comic eventually appeared.

The panel containing the core incident -
female anatomy contacting my shoulder
unintentionally.

I think I mentioned the fact that I'd drawn a few black and white single-page comics to Brandon, and he asked me if I'd send him some samples. I did, and this was the one he really related to. Whitebread was full of very candid stories from his personal life, often painful and embarrassing - so "Incident At: The Video Store" seemed to be a perfect fit for him. He asked if the piece had been published anywhere, I said "nope" and he asked if he could use it in Whitebread. I agreed - why not? I was fairly immune to humiliation at this point, and having others share my pain was always a nice way of diluting it.

I notice now that the "Incident At:" portion of the title seems to have been left open-ended on purpose - from what I remember, I was trying to give myself a chance to build a series of these comics of unpleasant personal encounters for the future. Never happened - though this was probably the seed of what would (and still will) become It Must Be Me, my book about the many weird encounters I've had in life. Though I didn't know it at the time, this video store incident was, unfortunately, only the beginning.

The Mystery of the Small Town Ruby

2009-07-29T05:32:00.002-04:00

Click for larger image. You know you want to.

I've done a lot of work for jewelry magazines - something I never planned to do, but it just kind of happened and I ran with it. This particular jewelry-oriented article was about the history of one little ruby, which went through a series of wacky The story was kind of like The Red Violin, except you can't play the ruby, because it's a precious stone. I mean, I guess you could, but it would sound pretty bad.

Original sketch, done with a real pencil. Sickly green tone added in Photoshop.

I took a couple risks with this illustration - minor risks, maybe, but I did stray from what I might typically do. For one, because of the episodic nature of the article, I decided to include three thought balloons in the illustration. I don't believe I've ever done this in an editorial illustration before, but it seemed to call for it. So in they went, next to the fictional investigator I created to symbolize the searching element of the piece. I am all about symbolism - me and Dali.

These are lines. Thick black lines, made with ink... digital ink, that is.

Then, to emphasize these three word bubbles, and to prevent the background from competing with them too much, I gave a very heavy greenish-brown tone to the background, only letting a tiny bit of the color details there to come through. I also thought this would let the ruby itself - shown in four places - gain more emphasis. So down went the color in a fairly heavy manner.

Detail of the hapless private eye. The man has no hap.

I think it worked. The story went back to the late 1700's (where the ruby was thought to have been first sold), and I felt like the kind of dark, slightly grungy greens, yellows, and browns all lent a feeling of that era's mood. I even added a greenish-yellow layer in Photoshop over everything, which made the skin colors and other hues a little queasy-looking.

I liked it - it was a change for me, but a change determined by an unusual subject and article. However, I'm not sure if the magazine liked it. This was the last piece I did for them (back in 2007), and unlike every other piece, I never heard from the Art Director after the issue was printed. Usually he'd e-mail or call to let me know how good a piece looked printed, or how happy the editorial staff was with the illustration - but here, nada. Maybe I pushed it too far (or maybe I'm just being paranoid) but I'm still pleased with how the piece turned out.

Mistha Bleedsworthy - Storyboards

2009-07-28T05:00:00.004-04:00

I did my first set of storyboards when I was in college. I was part of a screenwriting group, and our teacher was planning to head off to Germany to shoot a short film he'd written. Somehow it made sense for him to plan the project remotely, locating cast and crew (pre-Internet) by telephone, newspaper and letter-writing, and then fly to another continent to actually shoot the film - a fifteen-minute black and white art piece, with only two non-language-specific words spoken. But hey, it's not my place to say whether or not this was logical - not then, anyway. Maybe the movie was just a ruse for him to sample some fine Teutonic beer.

Because I was a Graphic Design/Illustration major, this teacher asked me to develop storyboards for the film. I agreed - possibly because the film was titled "Watchman", one letter away from my favorite literary work, but also because it seemed like it would be a good experience - and it was. I still have the final pieces - I'll have to photograph them sometime. I say "photograph" because my teacher, the writer/director, insisted the storyboards be rendered on humongo 30x40" boards. He wanted the cast and crew to easily be able to reference the images while they were on set. Not a bad idea. I have a VHS copy of the final film - it was a moody, arty piece, kind of like Wings of Desire, but much more entertaining because it wasn't a pretentious piece of crap (uh oh).

The other interesting fact about those storyboards is that my teacher insisted that I draw them while he was present, so he could essentially direct me as I was working. That was pretty challenging. He requested very finished-looking renderings, so it was an especially long process with me going to his house in Philly for several weekends, drawing out multiple rough versions of each panel on a small sketchpad. Once he was happy with one of those roughs, I'd redraw the panel on the board using charcoals. Sometimes we only got through a few panels in one six or so hour day. Good thing it was a short film. I think he paid me $50 for the whole project - what was I thinking?! I didn't even get any of that beer...

Anyway, those movie storyboards are not the subject of this post, but the there's a very roundabout connection. When I joined that screenwriting group, I convinced another friend of mine (also a Graphic Design/Illustration major) to join with me. My friend Allen was and still is, the most creative person I know - and I know many creative people, trust me - but it just oozes out of this guy. While our teacher was enduring my in-progress screenplay about an assassinated American ninja who's brought back to life in the future (only to fight, of course, the ninja who killed him), Allen was presenting a concept for a screenplay called Mishta Bleedsworthy which our teacher absolutely fawned over. It was a well-deserved fawning.

Mishta Bleedsworthy was Allen's concept not just for a movie, but for an entire world. The story's titular (hee hee) character was a member of The Epitomes of Stuff - an unseen group of entities in a parallel universe composed of offices sitting on interconnected tiny planetoids. The Epitomes rule over different aspects of our world using their powers, all while working through their own dense bureaucratic system.

Exterior and interior shots of the Realm of the Epitomes of Stuff.

Willoughby Bleedsworthy (referred to as "Mistha" by his four-foot Chinese Cowboy assistant Neddy, who has a serious lisp) is the "Epitome of Doors, Gateways, Various Entrances and Exits, Holes, Paths, Bridges and Links, Both Tangible and Intrinsic" (Allen's description - pretty wild, eh?). He's part Willy Wonka, part Baron Munchausen with a bunch of other fictional characters thrown in. Besides Bleedsworthy and Neddy, the cast was filled out with Kishwa (Bleedsworthy's friendly anthropomorphic tie), the Epitomes' long-suffering Headmaster Szogfn, the identically-cloned Bettys who conduct communications in the Epitomes' realm (each using their own method - semaphor, finger painting, interpretive dance), and the tyrranical Epitome E.G. Wadsworth, who hatches plans to thwart Bleedsworthy and Neddy from beneath the fish bowl in which his head is imprisoned. Yes, the story was epic - so epic that it took over fifteen years for Allen to complete the screenplay (I believe he's working on a sequel now). The final document had a Monty Phython-like irreverence and was a blast of messy fun.

In the late 90's, while he was still working on the Bleedsworthy script, Allen surprised me by joining the U.S. Army - he's still enlisted. Right around that time, I was taking a traditional animation class. I asked Allen if I could take the Bleedsworthy concept and create a television series proposal from it, to use as a class project. He agreed, which was quite generous of him - this was his passion project. And besides being a writer, and a musician (I saw him learn to play the drums right in front of me once, over the course of a few minutes - it was like that scene from Close Encounters where we Earthlings learn to communicate with the aliens through music), Allen is an excellent cartoonist - he'd already rendered most of the Bleedsworthy characters on his own. I was a little nervous for him to see my renditions, which you can see here:

Character rotation, model sheet and prop sheet for Mistha Bleedsworthy.
His tie sticks out like that because it's alive!

He gave me permission to work up my own versions of the characters and environment, which I did over the course of about six months. I created model sheets, prop sheets, backgrounds, storyboards, a sample episode script, season overview and other materials. To my relief, Allen liked what I did with his project - I sent him drawings and other documents while he worked his way through basic training.

I then put together a package and sent it out to about fifteen production companies, who all responded by saying: no. Actually most of them didn't respond at all, or just gave their answer by sending my material back unopened with a form letter. I didn't cry, though - the idea of someone with no history in television or animation creating a full series, based on an original concept with no commercial tie-ins (comic book, novel, children's book) is beyond a long shot. But it was a great exercise - by the time I had everything completed, I had much more respect for anyone who's ever got a cartoon on the air.

So here are my Mishta Bleedsworthy storyboards for a couple interconnected scenes. You can click the image below to view them as one large image (sans dialogue or description), or view one panel at a time by clicking the interactive piece at the bottom of this post. Or don't click either - after all, I'll never know.

Click the image above for full storyboards in a new window... or click
below to view one panel at a time.

My Beloved Batman Shirt

2009-07-27T13:00:00.001-04:00

Here's another piece I wrote for my friend Rob Kelly's blog Hey Kids, Comics!, which collects readers' fond memories of discovering comics. This story features me as a mop-topped five-year-old, remembering my favorite childhood shirt. It's not an Izod - that came much later, after my lengthy and shameful Garanimals period. We all have skeletons in our closets; mine just happened to be color-coordinated kiddie clothes.

My Beloved Batman Shirt

Why Reinvent the Flex-Shaft?

2009-07-27T05:00:00.021-04:00

Click for larger image and you'll be able to see the instructor's
five o'clock shadow in more detail. And you know how awesome that is.

I swear that I really understood what a flex-shaft was when I was working on this illustration. The magazine article was really about a few different educational programs for jewelers, but the Art Director wanted the visual to play off the title, actually depicting a class learning about the flex-shaft, a jeweler's tool used for grinding down materials. I wish they would have given me one for free - it seems cool.

A quick google search showed me all I needed. And you can see just how knowledgeable I became by looking at the text on the chalkboard, where I just scribbled lines (instead of actually using real text descriptions) for each broken-down piece of the tool. Never let it be said that I don't take the easy way out (actually, I just don't like too much text in an illustration - it's distracting).

Original sketch for the illustration. Not sure why I didn't finish drawing
the teacher's legs. That was pretty lazy of me.

Using Photoshop and my Wacom tablet, I sketched out a classroom environment. The Art Director for the magazine had requested (as he usually did) a horizontal layout, so I kept the instructor near the center and spread a few students across the environment, making them all look either frustrated or disinterested, as students should be represented. I really cheated the girl on the left, facing her away from the teacher - I wanted at least one of the student's faces to be clearly visible to the viewer, so her angry expression could be easily seen. That's just how I am.

From what I recall, I only supplied one sketch (the timeframe may have been short for this project - possibly a couple weeks) and it was quickly approved with no changes. I rendered the linework with the Wacom/Photoshop combo, tracing over the sketch layer. I always make sure to lock the sketch layer, and then the line layer when it's complete, so that elements don't get mixed up. This Art Director liked to enrich the black line by adding 30% Cyan to it - keeping the line isolated on its own layer made that super easy.

Linework for the illustration, all created digitally. The blackboard
drawing wasn't part of the this - it had its own layer with a diffusion
effect, to give it that chalk-on-board feel.

I hadn't done a digital illustration in a while at this point. My services tend to fluctuate - sometimes I'm working on a few illustrations at once; other times, I'm doing only logo design, or website design or other types of projects, and I've got no illustrations going on. And that's not a bad thing, either, because that little dry spell made me more open to experimentation when this project came along.

Detail of the instructor. He may have been modeled after
a teacher friend of mine, but I'm not copping to it.

Some of my previous digital illustrations were too smooth in the coloring and tonal work - I felt like I was trying to replicate the look of the Prismacolor markers I'd used before "going digital", but in really examining my old and new work side-by-side, it was easy to see that the marker-colored work wasn't totally smooth, even though they're a wet media. The little imperfections - areas where one marker's color bleeds into another and creates a visible stratification - might have been aspects of hand-coloring I wanted to minimize and avoid while I was working that way, but in reviewing the older work, I couldn't deny that those touches added some depth and personality to the piece - aspects that my earlier digital illustrations usually didn't have.

So I let myself be messier on this one. I didn't create discrete layers for every little color or element (though in checking the Photoshop file, it seems the five o'clock shadow did have own layer - I guess I really wanted to control that one). I created a brush with a harder edge than usual, and just let things bleed (get it? like the way markers bleed). I liked the results - it took a little longer to build up the layers of tone and shadow, and a couple areas look like too harsh a transition to my eye now (like the gradient on the blackboard), but all things considered, it was a nice leap forward for me. I've done a couple other pieces in this style since, and I used what I learned on this one. Because I allowed myself to grow, I rewarded myself with ice cream. I think I totally deserved it.

Following Lights Into the Forest

2009-07-26T06:00:00.004-04:00

Click for larger image - you'll be able to actually read the text.

This was a weird project. My band cuppa joe wasn't very active in 1998. We formed at college in 1991, and put out some self-released cassettes, singles and then full-length CD on Dromedary Records until 1995 - that's when Doug, our singer/guitarist/songwriter, joined the Peace Corps and went off to Kenya for a couple years. He returned in 1997, got married to another Peace Corps Volunteer, and then re-upped with his new wife and set of to Papua, New Guinea in 1998 for more fun.

In that little year or so span, we got a new bass player (our third), played some shows and recorded a few new songs. This was around the time when it was becoming more common to be able to burn your own CDs, so we decided to put together our new songs, some old unreleased tracks, demos, and a few live tunes into our own self-released "best of" collection. The CD, which wound up being packed with 24 tracks, was to be named "Following Lights Into the Forest" - a title Doug came up with, I believe, while in Africa.

The title seemed to suggest to me an old English fantasy/magic story, so I came up with a concept where the five words of the title would be "pulled" from the text of a bigger story. I laid out the title on the lower left of the CD booklet, balanced it with our logo in the upper right, and then proceeded to fill in all the surrounding text - all in Courier, for an old-style printed look.

I didn't plan this out very much - I had the vague idea of a story about a group of young travelers on a quest for a magical object. In the chunk of the story depicted on the cover, they encounter an apparition while passing through a clearing. I knew the text was going to bleed off the left and right edges, so I didn't feel the need to fully compose it beforehand - I just wrote out individual sentences, making sure the words in the title fit into the sequence. It was fun.

The varied color of the text was created by placing a photo of a lush forest scene in the background of the cover, then revealing it (at a much-reduced percentage) through the text. The swatch underlying the white-lettered title is also a chunk of the same photo - this time, at 100% opacity. I liked the effect - I don't know if a single person ever bothered to try to read more than a few words, but the fact that it was there gave the cover concept and album's theme some added depth.

The CD's tray card interior, for under-CD printing.

The final CD contained very similar imagery - the same typeface, colors, and another chunk of the forest image. The inside of the tray card - the part that goes under the CD (if you choose to use a clear tray, as we did) was a collage of band photos over the years - each picture of me with 1,000 times more hair than I currently have, though usually in a much dorkier style.

We printed covers, tray cards and CD labels, put the whole thing together ourselves and sent or hand-delivered copies to 100 or so friends and family. We even got some play - eight years later - from Jon Solomon's awesome Local Support podcast. Here's the song he chose to include: P.D.A., from Following Lights into the Forest:

Woobner

2009-07-25T07:01:00.016-04:00

Click for larger image. Do it. You know you want to
see more of the classy lady.

Woobner was a comic idea I created in the late 90's. I say "idea" because it was never completed, and I can't remember why. I had the first issue written, the first few pages drawn, inked the first couple pages and colored the first - not the best process. I guess I was going for a "proof of concept" - I wanted to make sure it looked good before I got too far into it. Stupid.

First page inked, no color. But you could have
figured that out on your own, couldn't you?

I do like the way Woobner looks now, though, so I wish I would have finished it - at least one issue. The story was about this freakish little character (named Woobner, of course - I stole the name from some co-workers at the time who made up the term as kind of an all-purpose insult - "You're acting like a Woobner!") who, for no clear reason, was very popular with the ladies (hmm... was I projecting my own fantasies?). His personality was a lot like Pee Wee Herman's, except he was bitter - bitter and jaded.

Even though he looked like a little elf with a skate rat's hairstyle, Woobner worked as a male model (comedy), but that was actually a cover for a his sideline as a spy. He was part MacGyver, part Austin Powers, with a little bit of Maxwell Smart thrown in for good measure. He also had a sweet girlfriend who kept him in line (surely more self-projection).

Panel detail. "Frig" was to be Woobner's catchphrase... even though
it's just a single word.

Before I began the project, I'd been in touch with an editor from Fantagraphics, a great independent comics company who published two of my favorite books at the time - Eightball (which spawned the movies Ghost World and Art School Confidential) and Hate. I think I'd sent this editor Science Geek, a zine my friend Doug and I put together (he wrote it, I illustrated it and laid it out), as well as some other black and white illustration samples.

The editor, whose name I can't recall, liked my work and sent me a nice handwritten note asking me for some examples of full comic stories. I'd done some short one- and two-page comics in black and white, but nothing longer. Woobner was designed to be a full-length example to show that editor.

Another panel detail. I must have been reading a lot of
Little Annie Fanny around this time.

I used my traditional pre-digital technique - brush-tip markers over pencils, photocopy (onto 11x17" 20 lb. paper, for this piece), and color the photocopy with Prismacolor markers. I also lettered the page by hand, using the same markers, which gave the words a nice integration into the rest of the linework.

During this time, I was still experimenting with the size I'd work at - specifically, how much larger than the final piece I'd lay out the page. Sometimes I'd shoot too large, and when the piece was reduced, the linework was a little too thin and too tight. Other times I'd start too small - too close to the final size - and I wouldn't have that extra little bit of space for the smaller details. Here I think I got it just right - the linework was just chunky enough for my liking.

The colors were less blended than I was shooting for, but for the most part, I like them, too. At the time I was working on Woobner, I was aiming for a totally smooth, modeled, Richard Corben kind of look, but the different levels of color now look charming and hand-created to me - a lot of digital colorists shoot for the same "imperfect" effect. The wet edge - where the markers hit each other - looks more pleasing to my eyes now than it did then. That's what an oversaturation of digital work does to you, I suppose.

Perhaps someday Woobner will live again - or at least, maybe the first issue will be completed. It could be a one-shot. Or a web comic. Or even a musical. Hey, if The Last Starfighter can be made into a musical, I think I've at least got a shot.

Flying Spaghetti Monster - The Game

2009-07-24T06:00:00.002-04:00

Click to play in a new window.

If you haven't heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster internet meme, then you're fine. No, really - it was a big thing in 2005, but now it's pretty much run its course. I won't bother explaining the deeper workings of this pseudo-religion (really "parody-religion") - a guy named Bobby Henderson created it as a goof, and it took off all over the Internet. "Pastafarianism", as it came to be known, is centered around a diety made of spaghetti and meatballs. Pirates are also part of the mythos. There's even a version of Heaven containing a beer volcano and stripper factory (don't be mad at me - I didn't make this stuff up) - pretty silly stuff.

When the Flying Spaghetti Monster thing was still taking off, I contaced Bobby to see if it would be okay for me to create the official FSM game. I even worked up a sample conceptual image for Him to review. He was very enthused and gave me the go-ahead immediately, and I got to work.

Within three weeks, the game was complete, Bobby posted it on his site, and people began playing. I posted it on a couple online gaming sites, and pretty soon people began stealing the source Flash file and distributing it to gaming portals everywhere (yes, without my permission - good thing I developed it as a self-promotion, for no charge). I get dozens if not hundreds of hits to my site every day from people clicking the link embedded into the game. Web analytics are fun.

I've never created anything with as wide a reach as this thing - before or since - so it took some time to get used to all the feedback the game generated - much of it negative. I made the gameplay fairly simple - you, as the Flying Spaghetti Monster himself, float above a scenic landscape, pressing the mouse button to fire one of your "noodly appendages" down to the ground. If the tip of the appendage hits one of the 25 people roaming the land, they are converted to a pirate. Convert all 25, and you win the game. There's a timer, a couple bonuses, and evil darkly-clad administrators roaming amidst the people - points are deducted if you hit them.

And that's it. But for some reason, the game play stumps the majority of people who play it - at least initially. See, you move the mouse left and right and the Flying Spaghetti Monster moves across the screen - the screen scrolls as well. But if you move up and down, your character also moves up and down - and your position in the sky determines where vertically on the ground the tip of your appendage will strike, which in turn determines whether or not it actually hits the people on the ground.

Most people who play for the first time don't consider this vertical positioning (your shadow moves with you, as an additional targeting tool. People get very frustrated with this, often posting comments like, "This game is IMPOSSIBLE!" and "I can't convert ANYBODY!!! HELP!!!" until some nice person (not me) comes along and advises them to consider their up and down movement when they're playing. It would have been way too simple a game if you only had to move left and right, align yourself with the people below and press the button - but for whatever reason, that doesn't occur to people. Maybe I should hold a press conference or something. Ah, too late for that.

And speaking of player feedback, the comments the game has generated (currently at 558 on the official Flying Spaghetti Monster site) have ranged from really positive...

"I love this game, and enjoy the challenge of converting the non-believers while simultaneously attempting to improve my score and skills" (sounds like it was written as a school assignment)

"Bravo on the game. I thoroughly enjoyed it."

"This is heaven on earth! Thank tou (sic) FSM for giving us the wisdom and knowledge to create this wonderful game!" (hmmm... I didn't know "we" created it)

...to the moderate...

"Quite amusing and decently challenging without being impossible. I just wish there were more levels or the game was longer."

"Great game, but it needs more levels. It`s great fun, and really improves your eye-hand-coordination. " (okay, so I probably should have made more levels - quite a few people mentioned that - of course, many more were happy the game was short and able to be completed)

"i thought it was a little hard. then again, i suck at video games so who knows?"

...to very, very negative...

"This game sucks!!!! While the rest of the site aint bad the game needs improvement. I will sodomize the monster" (that seems a little unnecessary)

"IT DOSNT (sic) WORK FOR ME THIS GAME SUCKS!!!!!!" (read the instructions, bud)

"wtf that is the most retarded thing i have seen in my life who ever made this should kell (sic) themshelfs (sic)" (I'll take it under consideration... mmm, no - not gonna do it)

I even got this private message sent to my Newgrounds account, where I also have the game hosted:

"Your addiction to the so-called oh-so-glorius (sic) Flying Spaghetti Monster, or FSM for short, plain disgusts me. Sure, you're allowed to make up your own religion [wasn't me, bud], sure you're allowed to follow this twisted immage (sic) of a wannabe god, sure I can't stop you... And so on and so forth. [he got a little lazy there]

FSM is a lie. If you think different, please prove his existance, (sic) the reason of the religion, some stories behind the creation of life... Stuff like that. I'm waiting, Steve. Waiting in excitement.

~Dottorius Sigma, mouthpiece of Ender."

For the record, the opening of this piece seems lifted from the Star Wars quote about "your sad devotion to that ancient religion...". I took it as a joke, but I still held off on responding.

Ever since the game came out, I've been receiving screenshots and even videos of people completing the game and getting into "Heaven". That's pretty fun - reminds me of my own youthful video game fascination (some people even send me screenshots and videos of them not winning, which is a little harder to get excited about).

The game was featured on an episode of Attack of the Show, though I never got to see it. From what I heard, they got a good laugh out of it and talked about the game for a good fifteen seconds - but I'm not complaining. Oliva Munn wound up contacting me to develop a Flash game for her. Okay, not really. That would have been pretty awesome, though. But that show, and some online publicity the game received, helped me get a few paid Flash game projects. So you see? It was all worth the abuse.

And the only nearly unanimous feedback I received was on the game's music, which I composed in GarageBand early one Saturday morning. Even people who hated the game loved its theme song. That softened the impact of some of the harsher feedback and death threats. People asked for an .mp3 file and I obliged, making the song available publicly to appease the Pastafarians who hungered for it. It's not as satisfying as a good marinara sauce, but then again, you can't dance to sauce.

A Gift From Scotland

2009-07-23T05:42:00.008-04:00

An excerpt from my forthcoming book, "It Must Be Me":

I have a sister and two brothers, all significantly older than me - seventeen to nineteen years. Yes, I was not created on purpose. Some call it an "accident"; I refer to it as "unintentional conception". It makes for some interesting familial situations.

Because of this, when I was a little kid, my siblings were all off doing adult things like drinking soda straight out of the bottle, wearing deodorant, and joining the armed forces. The younger of my brothers, Mike, did the latter and entered the U.S. Navy, who sent him off to Scotland.

No, he did not locate Nessie (though he did spend a day of his shore leave trying to her), nor did he develop a taste for haggis with a whiskey chaser (unless he kept it hidden). He did, however, purchase a child-size kilt and tam (a Scottish hat), which he sent home for me, his little brother. Mike probably thought it would be cute. Instead, it traumatized me for years.

I never wanted to wear the foreign clothing. I think my father protested as well, but mt mother explained that Mike had been nice enough to buy these things for me and to send the package across the planet, so the least we could do was to get some photos for him. So my parents and grandparents (who lived with us) trotted me out for an improvised photo shoot in our back yard. It became another opportunity for me to be exposed to public ridicule.

The problem was that a kilt looks a whole lot like a dress... oh wait – it IS a dress, except it comes from Scotland, where it is commonly worn by men. That's fine if you live in that particular country, but while I was old enough to know that the difference between a dress and a kilt was negligible at best, I had not quite reached the age of understanding about what a country is, or how social mores differ in other lands. That would be asking a bit much of a five year old.

It was no surprise to anyone that I started crying once I put on the exotic attire. My mother kept insisting, "Every boy in Scotland wears a kilt like you are, Stevie!". Maybe if she'd pulled out a globe or a Mercator Projection, that would have helped. A travel book with large illustrations may have even done the trick. But instead, I was struggling with the concept that my parents were trying to turn me into a girl, and simultaneously having a hard time grappling with the idea of different nations and their customs. The tears kept flowing.

The vultures got their precious photos, but that wasn't enough for them. For some reason, my mother wanted to parade me in front of the house – ostensibly for the amusement of the neighborhood. I was still sobbing, but she told me everyone would love my new outfit. Her words did not prove to be true.

The older people in the neighborhood said I looked adorable, and that calmed me down a bit. But then my "friends" – some older kids I looked up to – walked by. They were not especially receptive to my freshly imported clothing, especially the kilt, which to them was not very different from what they called it - my dress. They openly taunted me, asking "Who's the new girl?" while t pointing and making me cry even more. I quickly decided that I should probably stop looking up to these cretins.

After an interminable period of time, my parents brought me back inside the house. Unable to contain my indignation any longer, I yanked off the kilt and threw it on the floor. My father told my mother I'd never be wearing "that thing" again. I was happy, though the photos still survive. Years later, my brother heard the story from me, and apologized. If only he'd had better luck at Loch Ness... a package from Scotland containing Nessie (or at least a photo of her) would have made me so much happier.

The horrible evidence. If only they'd taken a closeup, you'd be able to see the tears.

Love Is In The Air - Part Two

2009-07-22T06:50:00.002-04:00

Click image for larger version. You can even see a fancy animation
showing the sketch fading into the final image!

I've finished my wedding invitation piece, and the client was delighted with it, as was her fiance. I was a little worried that the fanciful color scheme - especially the trees - would cause her concern, but she really liked the effect. The only revision she requested (actually, it came from her fiance) was that the flowers get more definition - the original version of the bouquet was more amorphous, but in the final version I defined the shapes as roses.

In my first pass vectorizing the piece (using the long-defunct but much-loved Freehand and my trusty Wacom tablet), some of the pieces in the front - the stone pilings and stand for the sculpture - were gray, and the ground was kind of a concrete color (which is what it really looks like - see comparison below) but those literal colors were boring and didn't convey the kind of romantic, whimsical feel my client was going for - so I deviated.

I kept a jazzy, loose feel to the structures - it didn't make sense to create totally perfect perspective and angles for a piece like this. I think that kind of treatment would have come off as looking too technical and less artistic. Elements were simplified into mostly monochromatic versions of their real-world counterparts. I also reduced the width of the water so it could fit completely into my piece - I didn't want anything to overshadow the couple. I considered adding the fountain's spume, but it was another element that might have competed with the bride and groom - and I really needed the sky color to provide contrast behind the bridal gown - a light or white fountain shooting up there would have been a problem.

My only regret is, because of the bride's dress and the shape of the letter, the L is pretty heavily obscured. I couldn't find a way out of that one, so I've got assume that the ubiquity of the landmark, combined with the fact that people know how to spell the word "love", will help the viewer's mind complete the image.

And here's a comparison - my version versus reality. I've already designed the invitations and RSVP cards, using a couple different croppings of the piece. Maybe I'll even get invited - if not, hey - I'll just print an extra invitation. Don't tell.

Gator Wrasslin'

2009-07-22T05:40:00.000-04:00

In the mid-90's, pre-internet, I was trying to get my illustration career going. Because I did a lot of simple pen and ink (actually brush-tip marker) work at this point, and because digital printing was still fairly uncommon, expensive, and not the quality it is today, I did a lot of black and white promotions for my work. This one - "Gator Wrasslin'" - was one of those pieces.

While some may question the logic of representing yourself in an illustration sample (hey, it is a self-promo), I was so happy with the line quality on this one after I did it (originally with no intention of showing it to anyone) that I added my name and some rough-hewn text that said "Gator Wrasslin'", printed it on a postcard, and sent it off to magazines, newspapers, and other publications that I thought really wanted to see a drawing of me in a tank top, rubbing a reptile's belly. It was a short list, but a good one.

I think I toyed with the idea of coloring the piece, but thought better of it. For one thing, I spotted the blacks a little more thoroughly than I'd done on previous pieces, and that made me more confident that it would stand on its own. That also would have made it tougher to color - filling in those areas, all surrounded by solid black, tends to look like an afterthought to me. So colorless it remained.

I did manage to get a few magazine projects from this. One Art Director told me I had a "sensitive line style". That was a very nice compliment, but seemed slightly creepy when I thought about it too much. Eww...

If I were to do this again, I'd have kept the gator's belly white and not filled it in. I may have also removed the machete from my teeth - it looks kind of cool on its own, but I'm not sure if it really goes with the theme - am I wrestling the alligator, or preparing to fillet it? And I definitely would have given myself long pants and at least a t-shirt. No one needs to see all of that body hair, no matter how nicely rendered it may have been.