Reading Opens Doors

This is a recent project I have been working on in collaboration with my Literacyhead.com partner. We were contracted to create a 5.5inch x 3.25inch educational flip-book for Smart Start Education, a division of The United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta. The flip-book would be given to parents to help the parents encourage reading through games and activities described in the flip-book. The project is not finalized and we are still working on some client requested edits. Pictured above is the cover we presented to the Smart Start Panel.

The image above is the first draft of the cover. Initially, we decided to make the front cover be a door that opens into the content of the book. The challenge was to make a door interesting and inviting. We thought using a child would be engaging and also established that showing the child's thoughts, of what doors could be opened through reading, would work well conceptually.

After the initial draft was approved, I redrew the image to be used in the color draft (pictured above).

Next I added the color, texture, and the children's thought images. From here we came to the conclusion that the kid's face needed to be cuter and more family friendly. I was also asked to include a pot of flowers to add some visual interest. The draft with these changes is the final draft image at the top of this post.

While I was working on the cover, I was simultaneously working on the book layout. Each chapter was appropriate for a specific age group. We thought it would be cool to make each chapter be a different door that is being opened. Each chapter door has drawings, or elements, that relate the to the age group represented in the chapter. Pictured above is a chapter introduction spread for the 4-6 Years chapter.

Pictured above is a spread of how most of the pages look in the flip-book. Each chapter uses a different color scheme to let the reader know which section they are in. Everything that is red, in this example above, changes to a different solid color with each advancing chapter. The pages are 5.5inches x 3.25inches, the font size is 11 point, and it will be spiral bound.

This is the Back Cover. We wanted to have visual interest/friendliness and invite the readers to use the flip-book again.

Recent Art

I have not posted for awhile and for that I apologize. I recently committed to remaking a design by an artist on Threadless. I respect the artist Isaboa (Joe) and I thought his design had some potential. Here is my version.


Below is Joe's original design. I took his concept, added my style, and subdued the color. I also kept the dynamic composition.



I was late submitting a design for an Indian Pale Ale design for Finch's Beer Company. It was an open competition and I drew this picture the day it was due. Needless to say it was not going to get finished for the competition.


I also had the opportunity to create a design for the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Most of their merchandise was pretty strange looking hand drawn art and I tried to push the envelope in that direction. I was going for bazaar but drawn well; I really liked my final product. They ended up going with designs that were more solid graphically speaking.

Literacy Head: Comparison 2 (Somehing Different)

Here is a couple samples from the most recent Literacyhead issue. They are in the "Tools-You- Can-Use" section and are a continuation of the Comparison tools (or Venns). This time around I used burlap and fabric as inspiration. Actually Mollie, my wife, has been making art in this style recently and I sampled her style for this series. Below are my favorite finished pieces.

Kids Tee

Or Goat Tee. I had this odd idea of making a shirt that was a play on words or Double meaning. The Goat Tee is a shirt for a goat with a goat on it. And each successive goat would be wearing the shirt; so there would be a shirt within a shirt within a shirt, etc.


On my blog here I want to describe he process of the execution of this design. First I new I wanted a decent photo of a goat. When I was at a petting-zoo with my kids I took some photos of small goats from multiple angles. I found this front angle to work best in the end. I had to do some photo editing to contrast and make the lit-up area on the right-side of the next have lighting consistent with the rest of the goat.


Next I had my son pose in a couple different ways so I could use the best pose for the design. I stuck with this pose that looks like he is showing of the design of his shirt. The hardest part of using photo was erasing (or rubber-stamping) the actual shirt's design off of the shirt.


Once both photos were prepped I combined them and maticulously erased the background of the final result. Once this was compete, before I flattened the image, I made solid underlays of the shirt and the rest of the body so I could change the shirt color and the rest of the body color.


Then I flattened the color version, skewed it to look right on the odd shirt angle, and the duplicated and shrank the image over and over again to get the shirt within a shirt affect. See top version for final color test.

I also made single color versions and tested them on multiple shirt colors.


Placement:

IF: Fuel

Fossil Fuel's Revenge: 16 x 10 (Click to see detail)

I am glad the prompt for Illustration Friday was "Fuel." I have been messing with this art for a while and the prompt got me off my duff to finish it. I had to shrink it to make it look good online, hence the more obvious bitmapping. It is great to do something for IF again; it had been too long.

College Designs (Threadless)

I am posting some designs I did for a Threadless Challenge to redesign 12 college mascots. I only got around to 2 but I like how they turned out.

I have always been bothered by the commonly seen Georgia Bulldog mascot I see around town in Athens, GA. I wanted to make a cool and aggressive bulldog to contrast the poorly drawn goblin-looking mascot. I used actual bulldog images, the idea of a full-bodied mascot (which many other colleges embrace), a ready to pounce football player, and the Rancor creature (from Star Wars) as inspiration for my design.

Georgia Design Link


For Auburn I strove to use the concept of their established logo/mascot and take it to the next level. Their logo is circular and I used angles to create more aggression. I also used more of the tigers face to further intensify that aggression. For this design I used actual Tiger images, super hero emblems, an almost symmetrical triangle (and the space it creates), and the current Auburn logo/mascot for my inspiration.

Auburn Design Link

Literacy Head: Comparison

The newest addition to Literacyhead.com is a lesson on comparing. We decided to make Venn Diagrams so kids could find similarities and difference between objects; mostly animals. Pictured below are pages where kids could compare a T-Rex and a Dragon, a Frog and a Toad, a Dolphin and a Shark, & a Pizza and a Pie. I had to abstract the figures a little, in most cases, to make the Venn's more usable (see example of Shark and Dolphin for most obvious stretch. Overall I am pretty happy with the way they turned out.





I have an exciting illustration project that is coming up that I will show you soon. The entire project is due by October 1st, so wish me luck in it's timely, stress free, completion.

Fun in the Sun

This is an illustration that shows that Humans have a place among color changing animals. Everyone knows that chameleons can change color with mood or environmental influences, but not everyone knows that frogs, cephalopods, and sea horses also change color; most usually have a brown phase and a bright phase. I also wanted to show a group that enjoys the beach in different ways. I have the process listed below.

First is a rough sketch. I wanted to figure out the order of the animals and how they would fit together in a composition. I also started some loose character design.

Next I drew the line work with pencil. Then I redrew each character, on separate layers in PhotoShop, with my Wacom tablet. I did this so I could easily alter or switch each characters position.

Next I finished some line work and added texture. I framed everything with a oval vignette to give it an old time feel. I also made the texture and line one color so it could be screen-printed. My intention, if this went onto a t-shirt, is that the color would be UV ink that would be invisible indoors but bright and vibrant outdoors. Hence the title, Fun in the Sun. This image (above) is how it would look indoors and the top image is how it would look outside.

On a side note, the chameleon has the Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises. Also I submitted this design as part of a Threadless challenge called "Threadwars," and I was not aloud to promote it on my blog until the round was over. I am happy to report this was my highest scoring submission on Threadless to date.

All Is Not Lost! More 8tracks

It has been a while and I have neglected this piece of the inter-web's grid. Here is a couple new mixes to occupy ears:







I will post some new art soon, I swear.

Flight of the Concords

Not to be confused with The Flight of the Conchords.

Yet another design with intentions of becoming a shirt. I tried a little different technique on this one; I drew each screen, except the green, in pencil. So even the white screen was drawn in black. It was a little confusing at first but I liked the results. I found it gave everything a cool texture that would be hard to reproduce using any other technique.

Here is a link, pending approval:

Recent Literacyhead Piece

This is my favorite tool, out of six, I created for the current issue of Literacyhead. The issue is about testing but this Tool could be used for any topic. I wanted to put a twist on the idea of feelings by showing animals that have unusual ways of feeling their way around.


This is another tool for the Test issue that I could relate to. I experienced all these feelings at different times and for different tests throughout my time as a student. I tried to channel my experience of the feelings into the facial expressions.

On another note here is a really cool musical tool/toy I found on the web today. It is a web-page that is interesting to fool around with. Have fun.

Bonnaroo

This year, for my 10 year anniversary of marriage, we are going to Bonnoroo. Here is a mix of songs from 22 of the bands playing this year.



So many great bands it will be hard to see everyone.