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November 08, 2009

 

My first artbook!

Yes, you read that right!  This week I published my first (of many, hopefully) artbook via Lulu.com.  The experience was great and taught me a lot about how to work on illustrations for books and just about how I work.





There's a 7-page downloadable PDF preview available in deviantART, so check it out and enjoy!  The book itself is on Lulu.com, viewable here.

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November 04, 2009

 

@Wired Poster Post-Op

I was recently given the chance to design an event flyer for @Wired, an upcoming multimedia poetry event in Houston.  Here I'll be walking you through the (abridged) process of taking the poster from initial brief to final graphic. 

As always, we start with the sketches.  Here I was trying to find a single way of encapsulating the various ideas and themes of the event.  RadamesO gave me an event description to work from as I brewed the initial batch of ideas.  The key words I focused on were wired, social media, poetry, music, and technology.


As you can see, a problem with several of the posters is that they were too heavy on the music side of the theme.  Cool though they may have been, they were the wrong look for the event.

Eventually it was agreed that the Twitter-inspired layout from the second set of thumbnails was where it was at.  It kept with the "social media" and "technology" themes and left plenty of room for each performer to put in info about their particular performance.

Once the basic design was decided upon, it was up to me to start assembling the poster.  A few screencaps of Twitter and an afternoon in Photoshop later, the first draft was completed!





Once the skeleton was assembled, I started adding in the text.  (And learning a lot about Photoshop's text-formatting options!)



Finally, there were some tweaks to be made.  (Read: There were 10 rounds of back-and-forth edits to the wording and the images.)   But, it was all worth it when the final product emerged.



So there you have it.  An awesome poster for a sure-to-be awesome event.  For more info check out the @Wiredpoetry on Twitter and on Facebook (and see more of my graphics in action!)

(Many thanks to RadamesO, ThePoetMendez, ByronJonesPoet and BrigitteZ for the great experience!)

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October 28, 2009

 

Midweek Princess (ACEO)

My first ACEO, done as an inclusion in a present for a friend . . .


This was actually quite fun to do, even though I usually get in terrible fights with markers. Maybe this is a portent of more mini-art to come?

(Digi-love for the first person to guess the character!)

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October 15, 2009

 

Deadly Nightshade, WIP & Wayback

Since a couple of you guys got a kick out of Papaya's development, here's a peek at another character from that 'verse.


Nightshade is, theoretically, the main character. I say "theoretically" because Star far outstrips her in popularity. (Ironically enough, Star's design has also been the most stable over the years.)

Mort popular or not, here are a few glimpses at Shade's sordid past. She started out (2004) as a gothy version of Priss Asagiri, then (2005, 2006) she got a haircut and remained goth, now (2009) she has effectively dropped the goth but kept the haircut.

Nightshade, circa 2006. (Yeah, she can play that thing.)

Circa 2005. With, for some reason, a beam weapon.

Circa 2004, gasp!! (This was actually one of my first digital pieces, too!)

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October 07, 2009

 

Sing My Song


Meet Papaya (AKA the WIP from two posts back) she has been a resident of my gray matter since some time in high school, though I've never really gotten far with her in the past. Hopefully this signals a change in that, eh?

For the sake of entertainment, I thought I'd dredge up some older versions of Miss Papaya. Originally she was a cheap knockoff of Dota/Dotta from Sorcerer Hunters, but a hairstyle change and five years will do a lot to reform a character (or so I hope!)

Circa 2005

Circa 2007

Circa 2007
(Left to right: Star, Nightshade, Papaya, Tamarisk, Sage)

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