My Clients de Faux

I've got a lot of pretty dull examples of work in my portfolio. Up until recently, I thought it was a good idea to include only final, published material as a way to tell an potential employer that I'd worked and gotten paid for things.

Some of you are already throwing up your hands and getting ready to school me on this folly. I'd like to call your attention to that part up there when I wrote "up until recently".

So, I got it, thanks.

When I'm not designing for anyone, or when I'm working for a group who hates design so much that they'd rather die than let me create something that I'd be proud of, I fall back on my clients de faux. This selection of fake businesses gives me an opportunity to work on designs that might not go over well with existing businesses. Sometimes, it's understandably too experimental or maybe too 'untested' of an idea for, say, an event planner to put their trust in. Other times, it's a really killer design that a client turned away because of their aforementioned hatred of aesthetically pleasing, professional work. A lot of times, it's simply a plan I have but don't know how to execute with enough confidence that I'd ever turn it in as a paid concept.

My Fake Clients aren't without their flaws and challenges. For one, there's not enough (or any) constraints put on the work and I know myself well enough to understand that while I often react angrily to rules, I just as often follow them. Also, while I'd love to believe that anything I make is going to be straight-up diamonds in the first shot, I know that only though detailed, well-thought out critique will I be able to reshape the final draft into something exceptional; therefore, I need people other than just me looking at the project.

That said, I love my Fake Clients and I want to do right by them.

The first one I came up with was back when I was so new to the design game that all I really knew how to do was sketch. No Illustrator, no InDesign, hell, no computer. Just some Prismacolor pencils and variations on my Catholic school-taught Palmer Method handwriting.

Salome Vinyards (sic) didn't exist but I thought it should. I'd recently gotten back from a visit to Tonnerre, France where I'd seen a vineyard, house, and shop for sale, starting a chain reaction of plan-making that involved cutting all ties and becoming a grape farmer. Eventually, I accepted that I might just really like designing for wine rather than designing the wine itself.

Years later, I discovered desktop publication and returned to wine labels, this time with a Lovecraft theme.

This one was a bonus because a narrowed version of the squid ended up working out nicely for my Myopic! Studio logo, which is another fake business. In fact, it's the fake studio that designs for the fake businesses.

This month, I tried to move away from sticking solely to illustration and wanted to do something a little more commercial, a little more ubiquitous. I know that sounds silly: why wouldn't I want my work to stand out, especially in my own portfolio? The short answer is that I wanted to show that I can work within a consumer market, albeit mostly targeted at the high end. It's worth it for me to take a walk down 5th Avenue every month to see what the designers are doing if I can bring those inspirations back and put them to work, even if I have to  use them in clients de faux, in this case, a boutique label called Cherie Paris (I think of it as rhyming: sharee-paree).

The model is a stock image, except for the pattern on her glove because I'd envisioned Cherie Paris being a brand of gloves at first, and the rest was drawn in Illustrator. Everything was assembled in Photoshop. I'll run in and tighten it up after I go a few days without thinking about it but this is likely going to be close to how it'll appear in my 2013 portfolio.

As a sort of epilogue note, about six months ago, I'd started a similar idea on my iPad, in a vector drawing app called Inkpad, but lost the file (i.e. the whole iPad) before I could polish the design but I'm happy enough with it to share it here.

Aside from the name change, it appears that they also closed the London store.

Projekt: January - Mission Accomplished

At the end of the last post, I'd put some text in and thought it just looked too damn much like a modern comic book cover. It looked good and I'd have normally been happy with it but the game here has restrictions: "If someone hired me to illustrate this, it wouldn't fly." So, I trudge on...

First thing I did was strip the box from that publisher mark in the upper left corner. I kept my lovely Myopic Squid and the copyright.

Next up was to change that typeface. I liked the Soviet one okay so I kept it for part of the title and used a different one that was suggested to me by +Kristin Sinclair that turned out to be much better for the book's title. I realized I could add a pop-out effect once I saw this totally bitchin' poster:

There's so much bad-ass going on here.

I might change it if I have time for a revision because the text gets lost in the background on anything smaller than the full poster, but here's the new title.

Oh, and I changed the name, just to reiterate that.

Let's up the action a bit; the original sketch shows shells being ejected and I agree with that. Also, I'm throwing in a target and some recolored clip-art of St. Basil's because it seems appropriate for the era and gives me some background rather than plain yellow.

But there's something crucial missing. It's getting pretty late and my deadline fast approaches but I know I need to have it: The Big Face in the Background. I won't be thrilled when I get 2 hours of sleep tonight but I'll be happier with the final picture (and I have to complete it tonight to adhere to the rules of this game stating that a new project gets started on the 1st of the month).

The big face is going to be Destro because when you look at posters and paperback covers, the main character gets a full body, and the love interest or antagonist gets to be the Big Face. For those who aren't really familiar with Destro or the Baroness, they were romantically linked in the cartoon and comics. She was Cobra intelligence and he was, like, ordinance or something but seemed to do a lot of the same sort of work she did. But, like many of the Cobra characters, they seemed to eff each other over sometimes.

Destro's going to be pretty easy to draw because he's just got to be a bald guy. But painting him will be a little challenging because he's got a silver face-shaped mask on. One question I have to deal with is: do I go with the Destro from the cartoons who has some form of changing expressions or do I go with the more realistic permanent mask? I finally decide to give him an untrustworthy look by tilting his head up a bit and letting the slight smirk carry his personality.

Using a 3D model I created a few months ago for the sake of speed (and not reinventing something I already did), I painted him up in another PS file and cut/pasted him over to the main project. There's a bunch of filters and effects involved here but I tried, merged, and deleted so many while trying to get him finished that I didn't take very good notes. I moved the Baroness over and actually flipped Destro to have him looking the other way. I might want to go back in and make his metal face a lot shinier but right now I want to mask off that straight crop he's got at the bottom of the image.

And that looks great. I didn't even realize how sweet that was going to look, that fading paint stroke effect there.

After adding some description text and a curves filter or two to shine up Destro, I decide to ad some cool flyover jets.

That's where I'm officially stopping for the January project. This thing was actually painted with a resolution high enough (3300 x 5100) for me to be able to zoom in and work with details, so I'm going to be able run off some posters and put 'em up on my eventual Etsy store over on my site, so check it later at www.myopicstudio.com

The Baroness: Suit, Text, and Background

It's time to tackle the suit, I think. Using the gradients I added in Illustrator as a guide, I created a palette of grays off to the side.

And again, I used those gradients as a guide to what I'd built as a light source. I still do like the subtle texture of the original one above but it just doesn't have the spark I need for this concept. This happens to me with details on every project: I get an unexpectedly good-looking result that makes me question if I should go with the original plan. But, as always, I decided to give it a shot.

Well, it's okay. Some of it looks really good and some just doesn't work. The bright reflections work on her hip but not on her chest. Clearly, as a paperback featuring an attractive woman, I need to draw the eye but bright white lights on her breasts cheapens the effect. 

Because I'm getting to my February deadline, I'm going into Push Mode where I force myself to stop worrying over every single thing and get some of the other elements started. Once the major components are created an put into play, I can go back and stress out over things if I have time.

Checking the next item on my list, I get a possible solution for the suit problem.

Boom.

I was going to create an entirely new Cobra symbol based on the original anyway so I got this image into Illustrator, created a vector, and warped the hell out of it.

Already sexier.

Placing this vector image as a smart object allowed me to go make trips back and forth beween Photoshop and Illustrator, constantly warping and re-warping until I got something that worked.

The Cobra layer also has a linear burn on it to let the highlights and shadows come through, effectively recoloring it for me. I like it a lot but will probably need to work on the suit more before I'm done.

So that'll be the background next, then. I started with this really great blue that I'd seen on the box art for a board game I had as a kid.

There's a hell of a lot of things to like about this.

I painted in some cloudy dark blues and it looked great. Then I accidentally selected a negative photo filter and ended up with this:

And it's way better. I'm a little concerned that it looks like more like a a modern-day comic book cover than a 70s paperback but we're going to Push On and make corrections later. Next, I'm putting in a publisher's block and text. Oh, and I changed the name.

Making it look exactly like a comic book. God dammit.

Things are going to need to change to make this look right. For the next article, I'll be making some 70s-appropriate design changes to include adding new elements such as technology, a building, and, possibly, a giant face in the background, a popular design choice for the era.

And now, here's your Baroness cover for the article.

Maybe I need to add gladiators...

Baroness: Flesh-tones and Shadows

I've worked on this a little but I think I pretty much left off with this, which is kinda cool in its own right:

Cool in, like, 2002. If I were more hipster, I'd stop now and put this on a t-shirt.

One difference between this and the last image (besides her glasses, which I'm working with separately) is her suit is less shiny and more like a modern wet-suit; I did that by making the highlight vectors into a "Multiply" layer over the flat black layer. That's okay because I'm going to go back in and shine up the armor plates with an airbrush. What I'm trying to get right now is her face and hands: the flesh tones.

Who have some great album art

I've got two ways of doing this. Sometimes, if there's a lot of skin showing, I color the whole thing gray and shade over it using white. That way I can really see the values, plus, that's sort of just how I learned to draw was with just a pencil, so I'm used to how gray looks when shading.

In the case of my Poison Ivy, the only image I have saved is the flat green. But pretend it's gray...

So I had the first image in gray and painted over it using white, which I isolated just so you can see it. Once my values were correct, I turned the gray (first) image green (or some more human flesh color for another design) and duplicated that layer and set the duplicate to "Multiply". What that does is make the white layer burn into a highlighted value of that base flesh color. That's how you get those nice shadows.

I should make it clear that I have to do a few small test areas for each project to wrap my head around this concept; I'm not naturally wired to think this way. Because this is Crazy-Think.

Now that I've said all that: I didn't do this for our Baroness. I just went right in.

The reason I brought the whole shading-on-gray thing is because that's what I've decided I have to do for her spy-suit and it'll be an experiment that I'm hoping doesn't set me back too many hours but it will.

It always will. Better now than on a project I'm getting paid for, I suppose...

But let's knock out those glasses.

I went with the larger ones. I mean, it's what she's known for. Plus, the design is a 1970s spy thriller. The only people who wore narrow glasses in the 70s was your grandfather when he got ready to show you something scientific that you already knew. 

If you look at the right side of the glasses in the above image, you can (barely) see that they look pasted on because they totally are. I imported them from Illustrator and the branch is cut to what should be behind her hair. 

So I cut that part out and pasted it above the branch. Then...

I added a bit of a glow to the lenses and some shadow to the frames and also up by her forehead.

Then, I went downstairs to get another beer (Baltimore's own Resurrection Ale) and when I came back up I noticed a few things wrong. The glare on her glasses wasn't right with the light source and there was too much disruption in the lenses: I worked too hard on the way the eyes look to cover them up that much.

While I was correcting the light, I went ahead and added some crimson onto her cheeks to give her an additional subtlety to her expression. Then I cut her hair to shoulder length which has he added bonus of not forcing me to re-create some dynamic action where I didn't want it. Sometimes, physics itself is a limitation and you can work with it but I wasn't feeling it here. I may change my mind before the end but she looks really where I want her right now.

Notice that although I cut the length, I still had to actually add to the left side because if her hair is shorter, it'd bunch up as she raises her shoulder.

I'm going back in to do the hands now but we'll see that next time as I tackle that suit and the guns. I'll leave you with another one of these fancy book covers that I can never hope to equal. 

Is her preference of her men being one hundred proof 70s slang or does she like them drunk?
Those f'n dogs are drunk. 

Project January: The Baroness

The last few weeks I've been pressuring myself to put together a better portfolio, highlighting illustration over design and typography as there's a whole lot of Baltimore graphic artists who are better in those latter departments. But maybe they need illustration help?

Anyway, I've put about 7 hours into the drawing, 3 hours into learning some new painting skills, and another 2 in correcting stupid mistakes. It's not complete, of course, but I've worked out enough bugs in my workflow that  I can cut down the time put into getting this far. Hopefully, another 8-10 hours and I'll be totally finished (so lets add another 3 in there for revisions when I think I can do better).

What I'm going for is Cobra's intel officer, The Baroness, in all her dark, Soviet-esque spy coolness, making some sort of escape, guns blazing, on the cover of a mid-70s secret agent paperback. I'm not totally sure what the end result will be just yet: I have a few different designs sketched up, each with its own story to tell beginning with the Baroness, her expression, her pose, and the typeface. Let's look at that first.

Because nothing says this is a dangerous mission better than 'Operation: Massacre'.
Except maybe "Dangerous Mission".

The first two are golds and feel like spy science fiction, like Moonraker, so I'd add some satellites, a rocket, some cool Chesley Bonestell space stuff. The third hints at 1970s technology, with the green color of a Speak & Spell display, meaning an ICBM, a secret bunker, a briefcase maybe.  Same with the last one, which is an 'instruction booklet' sort of slab-serif with the color of old calculator numerals.

Or this bastard who haunts me to this day with his 'Math Fun".

None of the technology has been drawn up yet so we'll have a look at The Baroness herself. I drew her out, "analog", with the intention of scanning it into Illustrator, where I can straighten the lines on the guns and  smooth out some of those feminine curves.

Either I need help with perspective or she's badass enough to aim in two slightly different places.
We'll make the latter true.

This one was done in the Adam Hughes-approved Pitt pens and Copic markers. And while that's great when destined for a finished product on paper, it makes for a truly disastrous scan into Illustrator. So, lesson learned: don't shade or otherwise color a sketch if the bulk of the work is going to be painted digitally (unless someone knows a better way).

Also take note of how I obviously changed my mind at some point because some of the hair looks like it's moving with the action and some looks as though she's standing still. That's something I'll have to address at some point (+1.5 hours to correct that, I'm sure...) but I wanted to push on for now. Here's what I was left with after I deleted all the grays out:

I started with the face and hair painting first, hiding the lines you see above so I could work without the glasses in the way.

I always use a 50% gray background instead of white so I can make sure stuff like the shine on her lips are brighter white than her teeth and the "whites" of her eyes. Teeth and eyes look weird as hell when you make them white.

Again, you can see how much I'll have to correct with her non-dramatic hair. That's irritating.

In order to make this more complicated, I've got two ideas for the glasses as well:

Big 70s Glasses

Small, less distracting glasses

The glasses, by the way, were drawn in Illustrator so they'd be straighter & I could put a gradient on them. I decided to do the same for her super-spy suit:

Turns out, I can only add one gradient per shape. Makes sense. So, I use the Blob Brush to custom-create areas on different layers where other highlights should go. It should be noted that I'm just testing out whether the gradients will work for our purposes here at all; I may actually end up creating these with an airbrush instead.

Because I decided to depict her having amazing shooting abilities by aiming in two different places, I had to really lay on the perspective of her left arm by making it less transparent (appearing black rather than gray is just the effect of higher transparency on the other areas).

And here's the new areas placed over the original shape:

Those gradient areas look blocked in but that doesn't matter because I'm going to smooth out those types of separations in Photoshop anyway. Here's the suit with the face/hair layer:

All this is going over to PS so I can being painting. And that'll be what I'm writing about for next time...

EDIT:

I swear I researched this idea before I started it...

...and there's just no way I'm going to beat out The Baroness karate-chopping a Scot.

Holiday Cards: The Makening

As it turns out, a few of the unsuspecting recipients of my Holiday Cards had no idea I made them, much less that I made them while sitting in their bar(s), so I showed them the few screenshots I made during the process and, as it turns out, people actually like seeing stuff like that. So here's the pics; I'm going to try to get better at remembering to take them more often.

I doodled a few elf-faces for about an hour, based on a plastic decoration I remember being at my parents' house. Here's a few of those:

I knew I was going to want to go out at the bar that night and work on my tablet (in a digital painting app called ProCreate), so I sketched this up real quick and took a picture. The energy of the sketch was all I'd planned on using but most of the composition also managed to fall into place as well:

And here's some random steps:

 This is a close up before I added the rosy reds:

And after:

 I didn't like any of the typefaces I had installed on my tablet, so I Dropboxed the file as a .psd and put in one called Santa's Sleigh, which is fitting, and added some nifty 1940s-styled stars...

After a few stressful hours doing color correction, adjusting the size, and depleting half of my ink cartridges, I sent them off to the printer.

Note for next time: design according to size. That was a pain. Also, Pantones do not work for desktop printers, so don't paint with them, as awesome of an idea as that sounds.

Time to get to work on Spring/Easter cards maybe?