Some work from school

All of these are works in progress.



This was for Photoshop class. We had to collage together various scans of fabric to create a summer scene. The boy and the monkey are from an encyclopedia on the events of 1970, and I had to color them because they were originally in black and white. The rest were embroidery with various filters or color gradients applied to make them look more like a naturalistic scene.



This is for Intro. I guess severed limbs are becoming part of my style.



For Adobe Illustrator class, we had to make a building to demonstrate our knowledge of shapes, grouping, and color swatches. I created the double curve on the onion dome by layering two circles over the dome and turning them the same color as the sky, and the arched windows with more circles over rounded rectangles. The soda bottle is a stretched circle. The crescent moon is two circles, slightly displaced. The chain link fence is a group of rounded rectangles. The pennant string is a warped ellipse. I went crazy with the curves.



For Adobe Illustrator class we also have to design a pattern. This is one I did today, inspired by the "Monkey Vs. Robot" song. Oh crap, I just realized the video was made at Coney Island!

Some more from class

This is a collage for my first project, which was to create a figure out of characters. He is a Xerox dog. I like the bad-copy textures on the D, but my professor wanted me to blacken them for my portfolio.



This was for my second project, which was to design a sign for a Coney Island business. Have you been to Coney Island lately? The only rides left are the Big 3: the Wonder Wheel, the Cyclone, and the Parachute Drop. It is not very inspirational, to say the least. Before, it might have been run down, but now it feels completely gutted.

Looking at this drawing reminds me of how much I hate working in color. I have no knack for it. I had fun with the inking, though. I had to rush the building and the professor hated it.

This was my third project: redesigning the Ford logo. I haven't been keeping up with the news, but I'm pretty sure Ford is heading the same way as Coney Island...I tried to set that aside as I created this. I wanted to convey the ideas of grace and speed, which are things I like about riding in cars (to be honest, I hate cars and don't even have a license). Originally I had the single Garamound f with the road stripes substituting for the crossbar, but I decided that was too confusing, and added the little flash across the f to adequately express that the f was a letter and not just a weird curve. It also makes the logo less static, I think. I had to use the copier's negative function to create the black, because my markers weren't giving me an even color.

Ink stuff

I have to say, Blogger's NEW AND IMPROVED image upload manger is a piece of shit.

It's made creating this post an incredible  pain in the ass, but for some reason I can't load up the old manager's web page.

I don't know why web designers like to destroy anything simple, quick, and straightforward,  and replace it with clumsiness and complication. Were the masses really clamoring for a slower and more awkward way to upload images?

Anyway...I'm taking a class in Experimental Typography, which is exactly like Typography except I need the credits from the second class to graduate. That's pretty much the main difference: between graduating (HOORAY) and not graduating (damn).

Here are my inked works for my first project, which is to use type to illustrate a figure or object or subject or whatever. I inked them using my new fountain pen, which was a lot of fun but kind of tricky, since I'm still learning how to use it.

This is a goofy goat that I went a bit overboard in illustrating, because other people couldn't tell what the hell it was supposed to be. I thought using the E as a body and the g as a head was absolutely brilliant when I sketched out the concept, but execution made it hard to distinguish from a dog. Or a horse. Or a cow. Really, I didn't settle on it being a goat until I added the extra serif as an ear to the g.

This is the concept of a drink can illustrated two different ways. The can with a B as a pull tab was done first, but it seemed lonely, and I had finally figured out a way to draw a can using the letters of the word, with a bit of thought. The B can wasn't colored in to balance its thick letters against the other can's lighter typeface. B can's a mish mosh of typefaces, but CAN can(?)'s Futura, because I liked the geometric shapes of the letters. They seemed perfect for a cylinder, a circle, and a triangular punch hole.

This is a Franklin Gothic kangaroo. I came up with him after reading an article on Russian constructivism. I think his name is Olaf. It's too bad I can't ink his big A in red.