More Icy Branches

I've been real busy the last few weeks up through the new year... here's another Ice Storm photo in the meantime.

Brad Pitt

...ran out of room at the top. d'oh.

IF - Tales and Legends

A gnome, w/mandatory mushroom house of course.

Snake

The deadly Green Mamba. Just as deadly as the Black Mamba, but not as aggressive.
I've been watching the Discovery Channel again.

Helmetless Hockey player

circa: 1980

IM Zoo II

Bird from junk mail calendar.

Busy - More Ice Branches

I'm super busy right now... Here's another shot from last year's ice storm in the meantime.


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Pirhana

Done with fine mechanical pencil... about 2" x 3" - approximately actual size if you're running @ 1280x800

Sidney Crosby final

I finally got all the pieces/parts drawn and colored. I played with my new WACOM tablet for some of the coloring... I still would never use one of them for the actual linework, but they're not bad for swabbing in color, erasing, and some selecting. I used it to stipple in the ice shavings as well.

I mentioned last week that I had a hard time drawing his gloves... he uses some really cool unique gloves, but they were just tough to draw as they didn't look like gloves I'm familiar with and I didn't understand the contours. What I ended up doing was giving Sidney my own hockey gloves... I propped them up and drew them in the right position to replace his fancy gloves with my el cheapos.

Floppy icon = SAVE

Right now I'm working on a SilverLight scheduling application for a 3-day event this January. I'm working on the "Save" functionality, where an attendee can store the itinerary of sessions they would like to sign up for. Most of the attendees for this conference are software engineers, architects and developers, probably familiar with the MS Office suite of applications where the Save button is a 12x12 pixel image of a floppy disk:

There is a lot of value in that image, since anyone who has used MS Office products, will intuitively recognize it as a save button, without a second thought. Lotus apps use the same symbol for saving, as well as many others. It's right up there with the red stop sign octagon, or the man/woman pictogram symbol on restroom doors when it comes to instant understanding of a graphic symbol.

But I'm sure there's a better visual representation of the Save function than something as obsolete as a 3.5" floppy - I mean I haven't had a floppy drive on my computer since 3 machines ago. Plus, why does a 3.5" floppy mean "Save" anyway?

The attendees for our conference are all familiar with software development, and one of the ubiquitous symbols in software application maps and network diagrams is the 3-D cylinder, which represents a database/datastore. So here's my thoughts on an equally intuitive Save icon.

For our application, that's exactly what we're doing - storing it in a database.

Another feature is the ability to email your itinerary to another attendee - again, "Email" functionality has been represented in multitudes of applications with the obvious envelope graphic, and that's such a simple, intuitive indicator that I wouldn't think of messing with that. We have a bit more graphical capabilities, so here's my treatment of Email functionality:

Ice Storm

Here's one of many shots I took in the Whetstone Park of Roses right after last year's ice storm... It's tough to take a bad picture after an ice storm.



Larger image here.

Preview: Sidney Crosby

Worked on this the last couple nights watching the Jackets late on a west coast road trip. Here's a rough detail of a work-in-progress of Sidney Crosby... Still working on the coloring & cleaning up linework.

The skates aren't cutting it, I'll need to redraw them. I think I'll leave this image as the before example, but aside from the skates, I'm pretty happy with it. I haven't decided how to treat the netting, but I'll handle that purely in PhotoShop.

Trick or Treat

Here are this years Jack-O'Lanterns... Jake's (left), Johnny's (right), and mine in the middle. They each designed their own pumpkin, and I was the carving technician on all 3 of course.

Tarantino, background added

Diner background added.

I Know Nothink!

With a last name like mine and being in grade school in the '70's, I probably heard that 10,000,000 times. Anyway I have an 'I know nothing' poster hanging up with an image of the hilarious John Banner downstairs... here's a quick take.

Restaurant table items

Cleaned table items to revise into image in the previous post.

Tropical Bird

Quick take on a tropical bird

Cayenne Pepper

For Extremes, Here is an extremely hot cayenne pepper.

I grow hot peppers every year. Usually, I pick them when they are still green, since the heat and taste are the same, and the faster you pick them, the sooner more peppers bloom. But sometimes I will let just one or two ripen to the state where they turn red. I saw one that was so beautifully orange-red, that I remember thinking it looked better than any computer graphic program could ever render it. But here's a try:

Jake Byrd at O.J. Press Conference

Here is my take on an absolutely hilarious YouTube video where Jake Byrd manages to steal the show during the media-circus-press-conference-of-the-moment for the O.J. Simpson burglary/holdup. I ended up watching it many times while searching for good reference stills, and I was still laughing out loud the second and third times through. As Jimmy Kimmel said, "Where does this guy get off turning our circus into a circus?"

I actually found the lawyer to be as much of a caricature as Jake Byrd.

Airplane

A quick airplane sketch.

IF Wedding

Gator Attack

Alligator attack. Hmm, 2 of the last 3 posts have been animal attacks... I think I've been watching too much Discovery Channel.

One thing I tried to do here is keep the lines tight and connected when I drew the gator, basically so it would be easier to select and colorize with the magic wand. But the thing is - I still couldn't select him, no matter what tolerance I used (GRRRR!) as there obviously leaks somewhere. Looking at it now though, I actually like the birds better, as I drew the birds just naturally without worrying about PhotoShop, and they look a lot looser than the gator.

Hair II

Here's a revised version of the image posted 2 days ago, lightened up with a little more contrast.

Tax cut man

Not exactly my usual style, but it's what they wanted...

Villanova Pizza

Had a tasty, tasty pizza. The Villanova (no website) has the best pizza in Cols, IMO. They don't deliver, but it's worth the drive.

Space Environment

Here's an environment I had created using many different tools and mediums for an article on the Hubble Space Telescope. The article never made it to CD, but I still use this image as a desktop background.


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Caricature on phone

Here's a caricature of my wife on the phone. I think it captured her well... she's a little disappointed that she looks so "mean".

IF Visitors

My take on visitors. I'm trying out a few new brush techniques.

I accidentally saved this with the layers flattened. I hate it when I do that.

Strange Day

The artwork I wanted to post isn't working yet, so here's this thing.
Not sure what to say about it - just something I did on a very strange day. Originally drawn in illustrious ball-point pen. Full screen anim here.

Back to the '80's

I thought I'd go through an old outdated portfolio and see if there was anything worth posting. Most of it didn't make the grade, but I thought I'd post this illustration I created around 1987 while working for a large pharmaceutical company. I had a job in the ancient art of keylining with an occasional need for illustration, and this was made from a photo of a spotlighted sales rep for the company newsletter.

So here's to you, Ms. Pharmaceutical-rep-circa-1987 ...whoever you are!

IF Emergency

Recent sketch, plus some enhancements. I wasn't real happy with the original drawing, but I tried out some new digital treatments and thought it made the grade to post it.

Underwater ship

Here's an underwater ship I created using various graphic tools, photos. The idea was that the ship is purely self-propelled using the translucent plane's water friction as an energy source.

The fish, and ocean floor segments are all underwater images I shot in the Caribbean with some PhotoShop manipulation(clearer by viewing the larger version). In fact, the group of fish was actually a pretty crummy picture originally that I manipulated quite a bit.

Original pre-PhotoShop image

Here is the original time machine artwork. I tried to make sure the lines are all connected, to make it easier to select areas in PhotoShop - it's not the way I usually draw.

IF Backward in Time Machine

Here's an illustration of a prior time experiencing machine. I spent much more time than I would like to in PhotoShop and I'm trying to develop drawing methods that can reduce this time. ie; figure out the best ways to shade on paper vs in PhotoShop. Already, I'm making the drawn lines all fully connect so the internal areas are more easily selectable via magic wand.

Basketball player sketch & final

Here's a look at a simple sketch of a basketball player from initial sketch to finished PhotoShop coloring. After getting the basic positioning down in the sketch, I used that for reference for the final illustration and refined the details, bent the player a little more at the waist, flicked the wrist a little more.