The Party Shark and Keeping Things Topical

I just finished a T-Shirt illustration job. The shirt was a spoof off of an earlier label that I for a beer called FIG JAM.

The FIG JAM label. FIG JAM stands for "Fuck, I'm good. Just ask me."

My clients have a shark puppet in their brewery that they call the party shark, soI put a little portrait of a shark puppet up there in the corner as a little "in" joke. They liked it so much that they wanted to a t-shirt also featuring the party shark.

This little request was actually quite challenging, because the actual puppet itself had very few defining features and doesn't really look like a shark (Don't tell them I said that!). So, my task was to retain the "essence" of the party shark while adding enough extra information so that people would know that it's a shark, and not a blob with teeth.

Here are the first round thumbnails:

I don't know why but I always felt that this one looked douchey. 

My personal favorite

My least favorite

I was trying to think out of the box on this one. I really like the sense of flow.

Here are the second round of thumbs:

They like the last thumbnail. Fun fact: I used a screen shot of Psy doing his gangnam style dance for my reference for that one.

Next, we vectorized the thumb and tried some text options.

The finished version with the client's text treatment 

I think I slipped it into the contract that I get a free t-shirt. When I get it, I'll through some un-flattering pictures up.

On a wholly different note. Does it bug anyone that I've derailed the topic from online courses for the next few months? I've debated back and forth about putting this other stuff into it's own blog. I just don't want to loose momentum on this one while I wait for the Imaginism workshop to start ad for work to die down. Please, let me know what you're thinking!

Cheers

-Dave 

30 Minute Beer Label

In terms of client work, my biggest jobs have been beer labels for a local micro-brewery. While I've learned a ton from each one, they aren't in style that comes naturally to me. Bobby Chui recommends pretending the you've gotten your dream job, and working on that while you're in between projects. This will keep you sharp, and build a portfolio for exactly the type of work that you want to do. In that vein of thinking, my partners and I started doing the 30 minutes beer label challenge.

They give me a made up beer name and I have 30 minutes to conceive and execute a beer label appropriate for that brew. It's too short a time to worry about gather perfect reference or being super finicky. It forces me to work fast and loose and take chances. Some turn out bad, but there are good ones in there too.

Here is one of my favorites. It's the "Olde Man River" Irish Red.

I did the line work with a No 5 brush and india ink, and then added ink wash over it to get a little more gradient. Lastly I threw it into sketchbook and added a little color. Nothing too fancy. A muted, warm, monochrome color scheme could work well with the image and the taste of a red ale.

I hope to do more of these in the future. It's always nice to let your hair down and throw caution to the wind sometimes.

Cheers!
-DC

A slight shift in our programming schedule

My job has shifted yet again, I'll be busy working on that new fangled aluminum truck that has everyone up in arms. In the next few weeks, I'll be required to start working 12 to 14 hour days, and even com in on the weekends.  Because of the constriction on my time, I've elected to halt my schoolism exercises until I can be certain that I can devote the enough time to make them worth the price.

The next class on my list is going to be intro to digital painting with Andrew Hou. However I stumbled across and equally useful course from a different organization, anatomy for artists with Scott Eaton. I encourage you to look him up. The prices are about the same as schoolisms'.

However, I'm not going dormant for the next few months. Far from it. I've been selected to go to the one month workshop With Thierry "T-Bear" Lafontaine at Imaginism studios' Montreal location in May! From here on out, I'll be documenting my preparation for this once in a life time opportunity. 

My own studio, ThoughtWell, will be launching our new website and digital store come May 16th. I'll be sharing my progress of creating content and my thoughts on the whole thing.

Recently, I've been experimenting inking with different brushes. Here are some samples of my pencils and inks based on Dragonball (still one of my favorite comics).

Gesture Drawing Week 7: Story

Week 7 is the last "active" week of this course; meaning that it's that last assignment and critique that we'll get. The next week is just a quick little review. So, this is assignment is like our capstone project.

Story is the point of the whole class. Up to this point we've been looking at different ways to make our characters expressive, but expression for it's own sake is kind of pointless. Story is what gives context for our character's emotion. Sure, this girl may look sad, but the viewer is probably more interested in why she's sad. 

In this lecture, we draw 5 four minute poses with emphasis on story. We need to not only draw the main figure, but also the environment and other characters. Each pose progresses the story just like panels in a comic book. The pose of the figure should be exaggerated to reinforce what's going on in the story.

The home work this week was to draw a story for the second video.

A quick side note: Andrew the lecture implies that you need to use the poses in order for your story as a constraint. However, Louis the critique-er doesn't seem to care. I ordered the poses in the way that made for the best story.

Here's my submission:

Finished story.

My initial sketches and the corresponding references. I took some liberties with the poses. I kept the idea as I saw it the same, but moved the arm's around to reinforce the narrative.

Here's my first attempt at a story with a different video from a different lecture.

Here, I'm practicing posing this character and getting a feel for how she moves.