Adventures In Freelancing -- Part II

As I mentioned before, Steve is a pretty consistent source of clientele. This time, one of his roommates needed a website for a web series he is making entitled Arklay. It tells of the events leading up to a big zombie outbreak and the conspiracy behind its origin.

For the website, he wanted something very basic, and without any heavy navigation. The idea is that there are five key phrases, each with an accompanying video. There isn't any indicator of what phrases the videos are linked from, so the viewer has to search for the link amongst the cluster of crazed writing. As of right know there is only one video up (spoiler alert: you can watch it by clicking the not-so-subtle bloody words), and I'll be updating the site with the others as they are completed. You can visit the website by clicking here.

Fun fact: the bird in the Twitter icon on the bottom of the main page is undead (it has x-ed out eyes), but it ended up being so small you can't tell. What can I say, superfluous details are my bread and butter.

CLose to finish!

Hey guys, just looking for final crits on this piece. Maybe resolution on the puddle or background trees? Maybe more dark vignetting in the foreground? Thoughts please! And thanks to Elyse I now have a very detailed schedule to finish this series and accountability, yay teamwork!

 

Super Post III -- Christmas in March

I was consolidating/deleting some files on my desktop when I found a folder containing a bunch of images I meant to post to the blog a while back. Since they are all gifts I made to give to people for Christmas, I decided to make it into another big fat super post!

It's become a yearly tradition for my mom to brew some variety of alcohol to give as gifts during the holidays. This year, she wanted the bottle to look a little more 'professional', so I designed a wine label using an updated version of the one I did for Vargo's class. For those of you who are wondering, 'Trois Amis' is French for 'Three Friends'. At least that's what my mom said. I have a limited knowledge of French (a.k.a. none whatsoever).

To further develop the sewing skills I discovered last year, I decided I wanted to try my hand at making hand-sewn ornaments. The moose was for my mom (she's crazy about moose) and the owl was for my good friend. Funny story: the design of the owl is actually based off of one of the designs I created for my application for the internship at Carter's. The difference is that this time, the recipient actually liked it.

Before my sister moved to California, she adopted a kitten from a litter one of her neighbors abandoned. For her gift, I decided to make something she could give to Florence (her kitten), so I made a handmade catnip-filled dead animal toy. My original idea was to make a set -- a bird, a fish, and a mouse -- but I ran out of time. Maybe next year!

When trying to figure out a gift for another one of my friends, I remembered how taken she was with Lizard Wizard, one of the abandoned toys in the Toy Story short that proceeded The Muppets. What's significant about this drawing is that I used markers over top of my rough pencil sketch, and then added stronger values with colored pencil. I didn't do any ink outlining -- which you all know I am so prone to do. You can scrape your jaws off the floor now.

In addition to moose, my mom has always been an avid collector of nutcrackers. So every Christmas, my sister and I make a custom nutcracker to add to her collection. This year, we decided to do a matched pair -- a tamborine player and a trumpet player that were supposed to be Salvation Army workers...but we lost the Salvation Army scarf and badge accessories, so we decided to made them into a police band. My sister knit mini-scarves for them to replace the ones we lost.

...And that's what kept me busy during the holidays. I'm currently working on some more projects now, so expect some updates in the near future!

Sketch 1!

Alright friends, sketch achieved. This is supposed to represent my basic values and color, and solid composition. Any last min crits on the above before I jump into painting? I'm trying oils! *gasp* wish me luck!  

Adventures in Freelancing -- Part I

As I have mentioned before, I have been picking up some freelancing jobs here and there. Some of my contacts are local, but they are mostly people from L.A. because Steve is awesome and throws my name out to anyone who needs design work. One of his friends wanted me to design an identity for his massage therapy business, Modern Massage; this included making a logo, business cards, a letterhead and a website.

This is my immaculately trimmed thumbnail. Oh yeah, and his business card design (these are roughs I printed out on my computer and cut out myself, so the actual cards probably look better). Jade stone massage is one of the specialties at Modern Massage, so I only thought it would be appropriate to reflect that in the business card design.

This is the home page for his website, which you can visit by clicking here. Everything was designed to be simplistic and user-friendly as well as being consistent with the color scheme of the business card and letterhead. My favorite part: on the contact page, I made a facebook link button out of the same texture as the logo. I'm really proud of that for some reason. Don't judge me.

And finally, since my website was pretty janky-looking, I made a little 'Under Contruction' page to replace it. I mean, my website looked like it was made out of construction paper and masking tape, so I didn't want people to think it was a fluke that Modern Massage's came out looking pretty decent. It's not much, but you can click here to see it full size.

I have some other freelance projects I'm working on, but my main goal is to get my full website up and functioning withing the next few weeks. I'll let you know how that goes.

a penguin, a yeti and an eskimo...

Okay, so here's the deal.  I'm opening an Etsy shop!  My launch date is set for March 8th and my life has been basically "eat, sleep, work" trying to get things up and running.  I plan on selling prints of my illustrations and fine art as well as notecards, handmade journals/sketchbooks (with my artwork on the cover or as endpapers), and needle felted characters from my illustrations.  I purchased a high quality epson printer to make my prints and have been feverishly whipping up several new sets of illustrations.  I'm working on an "animal alphabet" meant for children's rooms (a is for armadillo, b is for beluga whale, c is for cuckoo bird, d is for dormouse, e is for echidna, etc.).  I'm also working on a series of four illustrations centering around the adventures of Polo the penguin and Teddy the yeti who's 3-D needle felted wool counterparts are pictured below.  Polo wears blue and green striped socks and Teddy wears a red hat.  

Teddy the yeti has toes!

I've also been working on new pieces for my illustration portfolio.  I've decided to focus my attention on book covers and children's books and am updating my portfolio with that in mind.  I've also updated my my process.  I'm still going for the same style/"look", but am doing more digitally, which speeds things up and makes my work cleaner and easier to manipulate.  I do all my ink work by hand, then scan it in and color the image by digitally collaging watercolor fields and patterns that I have painted and scanned separately.  Below is a piece that I completed recently (though I still have to go in and tweak a few things) that I like to call "Tangled Eskimo".  

I am super excited about all these new plans and projects!  I feel more motivated than I have since we graduated and the feeling hasn't gone away yet, even after about a month of non-stop work.  Hopefully it keeps up!

As always, I appreciate your thoughts and opinions.  I also want to apologize for being out of touch and not checking Facebook or this blog regularly... I'm afraid I've been a little single-minded of late, focusing on the things mentioned above to the exclusion of most everything else.  I was completely unaware of the newer blog posts until Chad informed me that I was missing things and should get my butt in gear!

An Owl, a Hamster, a Fish, and the World's Cutest Vacuum

Yesterday when I was cleaning my room, I came across my Game Boy cartridge for Kirby's Dreamland 2. While looking at it and recalling the hours I spent playing it over the years, I couldn't help but think that the Kirby series has a very children's book-y aesthetic in terms of tone and characters. Naturally, my next thought was, "Hey, why don't I make a children's book-styled Kirby piece?!", so I made some rough sketches...

I would being doing the final in watercolor because I realized I haven't touched any medium aside from ink and markers since graduating. I don't have a particular favorite of the three, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Part of me thinks that they are each different enough that I could make them into a series...if I find the time. I am still working on some commission work, so these would just be a side-project for now.

Update on the Secret 7"/Florence + the Machine project: I am 99% sure I am not a part of the finalists. Since it is supposed to be a "secret", the winners are e-mailed individually as opposed to be announced on their website, and I haven't received an e-mail. I'm not bummed out at all; once I make the last few finishing touches, my entry will make a pretty rad portfolio piece. Oh, hey there silver lining.