Vital Market Research

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.

Video Productions by David

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

My Girl Won't Recycle

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.

Rosies

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

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

Croc and Boy Sketch

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

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.

The Mystery of the Small Town Ruby

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.

Why Reinvent the Flex-Shaft?

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.

Woobner

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.

The Dimness Interval - Main Theme Music

Because I am a weirdo, when I'm working on one of my own projects, I tend to use one creative medium to inspire me in another. So if I'm working on an animation project, I may write biographies on the characters. If I'm working on a short film piece, I might create storyboards or a title sequence. In this case, I've been working on a screenplay, "The Dimness Interval", for a number of years, and I decided to compose a main title theme to help me focus on the tone of the story, and to generally inspire me to keep plotting and writing.

The story, revolving around a teenager who invents a revolutionary medical process, is pretty epic in scope - a dark, sweeping, and ultimately tragic tale. I had a few main themes from the story that I knew I wanted to convey - concepts like the price of power, betrayal, and familial regret. Yeah, big stuff. I was also thinking a lot about Joseph Campbell's "The Hero's Journey", and specifically two stages - Call to Adventure and Refusal of the Call. With all that floating around in my head, I opened GarageBand, selected a few instruments from the Orchestra Jam Pack and just started fiddling around.

I got lucky. With no forethought, I laid down the ominous violins in the intro, and that immediately set the tone I was going for. A little tympani came next, and then the primary melody line with some legato violins. My fingers tapped out those notes almost instantly, and once I had them worked out, I had the basis for the song in under fifteen minutes.

Other instruments worked their way in - a tight, reverby snare drum for the military subplot. Sleigh bells to represent the main character's home town. A soft, high English horn for his mother, and her warning. Trumpets for that Call to Adventure feel. Tubular bells for the religious opposition. I let the story elements dictate the sounds - seems like the way to do it.

This isn't a testament to hard work (though I did spend many more hours putting together the rest of the song, tweaking the instrumentation, effects and arrangement), because it came so quickly. And it certainly isn't a result of my music composing prowess, which is quite limited - I'm a hunt-and-pecker when it comes to the keyboard. No, I really just had a near-perfect moment of creation, and the final piece wasn't just a song I liked, or was happy to have written - it was the one-and-only theme song for the movie in my head. And now when I listen to it, it sets the mood for me and helps me write. How weird is that?

The Dimness Interval - Main Theme:



The story begins with the main character and three of his teenage friends riding a snowmobile down a dreary, rural Michigan mountain. A university, closed for winter break, lays below them (and factors into the story). This is where I visualize the song being used - opening credits, aerial shots of the mountain and sprawling landscape below. The photo below is the closest I've found yet to what I've written - and it was actually taken in Michigan.


Now if I can only get past 32 in the latest draft of the screenplay.