| iconography |
[27 Apr 2009|01:39pm] |
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mood |
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phlegmatic |
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music |
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fredo viola |
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I have been designing icons to replace the ones in my Quick Launch bar. Here are the icons:
(Feel free to guess what they are. The one on the bottom left is a file renaming program called Rename and the one on the bottom right is supposed to replace the heinous Nero Express icon, but the rest are fairly common applications.)
And here's how it looks on my desktop:
I did this for two reasons:
1) I'm an obsessive control freak and it behooves me to customise my desktop to as exact a specification as I can.
2) I think it's good practice designing something that's going to be reduced to 16×16 pixels.
At that size any extraneous detail is going to get lost and/or make the image more confusing to look at, but you still see some absolutely dreadful icons that have far too much going on and make absolutely no sense. I also think that if it's your own system, the degree to which the icon actually represents the functionality of the application it designates is much less important than an easily recognised and distinctive icon.
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| MONSTER SQUAD |
[23 Feb 2009|07:48pm] |
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Some more monsters for you there. Still needs a bit of work; the werewolf is ALL OVER THE PLACE and the mummy could do with a bit more decoration. And, my word, those colours do not work. I'm trying to work up a design for submission to Threadless, you see, and they limit you to no more than nine colours. As it stands I'm having difficulty creating such a limited pallette that works for all three characters, but I'll come up with something I'm sure.
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| !!! |
[19 Feb 2009|07:17pm] |
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mood |
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thickening |
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music |
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Adam & Joe BBC6 podcast; hilarious! |
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VAMPIRE ATTACK! Except I'll probably fuck it up again and the bloody thing won't appear. There's supposed to be a vampire there, anyway. I'm trying to design a t-shirt for submission to one of those communal t-shirty design websites, and it's going to have a bunch of monsters on it. IF, crucially, I can be bothered to do the rest.
I had an interesting experience in Cheltenham recently, which I may relate at some point, but then again I might not because it is DEEPLY EMBARASSING and would probably make people unnecessarily worried about my mental health.
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[23 Jan 2009|01:59pm] |
Hmm. Reposting this as I stupidly had it saved as CMYK before. Apologies if that means it's showed up twice.
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| ARF! |
[23 Jan 2009|08:16am] |
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mood |
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bleary |
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music |
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arcade fire |
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ARF ARF!
Hmm. Seems a lot more bright and reddish than when I was working on it. Might be due to CMYK/RGB issues. Ach well. That's what makes the world go 'round, I suppose. TIME FOR BED!
EDIT: or not. Ho-hum. Well, I did this pretty much entirely in Illustrator, besides the background - which I cobbled together in Photoshop - and a few initial biro/pencil sketches. The colouring's almost all gradients and a handful of opacity masks, although there are a few blends where I couldn't make gradients do what I wanted to. That might be different if I was using CS4, but I don't think my crumbly old computer and its meager pocketful of RAM could handle it. Does anyone who reads this actually use Illustrator? PROBABLY NOT.
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[06 Dec 2008|03:49pm] |
Been messing about with this in Illustrator for a while. Things I have realised:
- DC costumes are BORING.
- It's surprisingly hard to find decent quality pictures of super-hero belt buckles.
- Rectangular women do not like women, no matter how you shade them.
Interesting!
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[01 Nov 2008|11:46pm] |
My friend Angela makes awesome toys:
These and more on her Flickr page.
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| help me, liz lemon |
[01 Oct 2008|12:16pm] |
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mood |
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similar |
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music |
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yes - close to the edge |
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Help please! I've been putting together a portfolio website over the last couple of weeks and it's pretty much good to go. All I need to do is find somewhere to host it and somewhere to register a domain name. Sadly, I'm completely clueless when it comes to these things, and I don't want to fork over money to some company without hearing a good account from someone I know who's used them. So... any help?
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[06 Jul 2008|11:33pm] |
GLASGOW (and to a lesser extent, Edinburgh) PUNTERS:
Hello. I will be having an exhibition up at the 13th Note Cafe from tomorrow up until the 20th of July. I'll be hanging four canvasses up tomorrow, and there should be another one up on Tuesday. I realise that's not that many but I battered them out over the last two weeks, and they're not bad, considering. In fact, they're reasonably good. Yes, reasonably so!
Anyway, it'd be nice to have folk come and see them, so if anyone can make it out, I'd really appreciate it. DO NOT, HOWEVER, FEEL PRESSURED TO DO SO. I'll have photos up after the exhibition's finished for everyone to see and not comment upon.
In the unlikely event that you're in Glasgow and do not know where the 13th Note is, it's at 50-60 King St, just off Argyle St. Directions can be obtained from Google Maps by typing in "13th note glasgow".
SEE YOU THERE, PERHAPS?
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[25 Jun 2008|12:56pm] |
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mood |
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prone |
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music |
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dan hicks - where's the money? |
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I'm still working on my paintings, although I've yet to apply brush to canvas and the deadline is fast approaching. Erk. I've got about five designs that I'm pretty happy with, though, and will probably start painting in the next few days. However, I'd appreciate some advice first.
Here is one of the designs:
I'm reasonably happy with the design, but I can't settle on a good colour-scheme. Here are some questions:
1) Does the orange/red/white work at all? If so, does it work with a pale blue face?
2) If not, have you any other pallette suggestions?
3) Any suggestions for the background? Both in terms of colour and design. As it is it's fairly dull. I don't want it so busy that it's going to detract from the foreground, but I'd like to have some kind of visual engagement going on there.
If it helps, the kind of idea I have in mind for the character is a sort of holy warrior. I'm not beholden to that, but I want him to exude a combination of piety, arrogance and power.
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| honkey magoo |
[12 Jun 2008|11:56am] |
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mood |
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inflamed |
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music |
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prokofiev - various bits from romeo & juliet |
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Well, that's me completely finished college now. Hurrah! What next?
First up, it seems one of my lecturers submitted this illustration for the Trades House of Glasgow Craftex Exhibition 2008. *ahem*. I have absolutely no idea how prestigious this thing is, so probably not very, but he phoned me this morning to tell me I've won an award. Looking at the website, that would seem to be a cheque for either £150 or £200, so that's quite nice. Although, of course, these things being what they are, it will probably transpire that I've won some sort of runners-up prize in the form of a £5 shoe-repair voucher.
I'm also going to try and put together some paintings for a show at the 13th Note (veggie restaurant/pub in Glasgow that puts up different artwork every two weeks, free of charge). I've got less than a month left to do said paintings, so God only knows how good they'll end up being, but I am officially Under Way as of yesterday. The exhibition's going to be called "Hats, And The People Who Wear Them." I'm going to use Illustrator for composition/colour purposes, appropos of which:
...this is a rough sketch of the first painting. The colours won't be like that, but that's the approximate shape of the thing.
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[22 May 2008|01:30pm] |
Aaalmost finished college, and these are the last two outcomes for the last project I worked on. I'm quite pleased with them, even if they're not the most communicative of illustrations (they're about podcasting and the analogue/digital switchover).
And there you go. I'll be finished college in under a month, and then I'll be doing some paintings, and then I'll be trying to find work. How tremendously exciting.
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| Bullit |
[29 Apr 2008|03:04pm] |
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mood |
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uncharitable |
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music |
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mgmt |
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For anyone paying attention - all two of you - there is a colour version of the other one, but I completely and utterly screwed it up. I didn't do enough sketching and as a result the pallette I chose was hideous beyond words. I really need to do some work on my colour choice on general. Anyway, I'm quite pleased with this one, so that's something.
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[22 Apr 2008|02:12pm] |
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mood |
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sliced |
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music |
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school of language |
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Inked versions of previous:
Colour versions by the end of the week, possibly with explanations.
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| Some rather stilted looking chaps |
[18 Apr 2008|03:58pm] |
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mood |
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gastric |
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music |
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Cursive |
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Click on pix for slightly bigger versions. Should be inked and coloured by next week. The compositions are a bit skwonky, and I might fix the fixable bits before then.
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| Bongoloria |
[11 Mar 2008|04:21pm] |
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More college stuff. Poems wot I wrote, plus drawings wot I drawed. Ink on bristol board, then scanned and LiveTraced in Illustrator, before also doing the colours in Illustrator. Would go into more detail, but I'm in a bit of a rush. Enjoy!
( Read more... )
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[18 Feb 2008|01:31pm] |
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mood |
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gummy |
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music |
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nothing; I forgot to charge my mp3 player. Bah! |
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Hello there. Sorry for the lack of updates; I lost my Flickr password and was too lazy to get a new one sorted until now. Here is a painting that I did for our recent observational drawing project:
The idea was that we were supposed to go out in public and draw people socialising, but the idea of drawing random pedestrians and partygoers makes my skin crawl. I can't comfortably draw people unless I've got their permission, and I don't like drawing in public, either. I feel like people will assume I'm looking for attention, which couldn't be further from the case. I generally don't like it when people watch me draw, for fear that they'll see my every little mistake, assume I can't draw, and therefor logically conclude that I am a bad person.
Anyway, for all of the above reasons I cheated and just drew people from photographs I found on the internet when I searched for "party" or "crowd". I don't think it really matters, as the versions of the characters that ended up in the finished piece are so abstracted from the originals that you can't tell. If you're curious, here's the original photo of the guy at the top:
( What looks to be a rivetting basketball game. )
I can't find the photo of the other guy, but he didn't look anything like the guy I painted. I seem to have combined Larry David and Dr. Venture, for some reason.
And there you go. I might have some more updates later this week, or I might not. The tension is palpable.
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[13 Dec 2007|03:27pm] |
Ach, well, while I'm trying to work out how to put the Flash up, here's the second Sainsbury's carrier bag design:
There is a third one, but it is quite literally a bag of shite. Hopefully have some more stuff up over Christmas.
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