Forums: Projects Theory and Miscellanea:

so I got this crazy notion to do an illustrated alphabet. In illustrator. WIP.


a is for anarchy, a love that endures
b is for birdseye, butterfly and beetle, for sure
c is for comet and constellation
d is for dog in a state of consternation


e is for elephant, no need to ask why
f is for fairisle, fedora, fox, and fly.
g is for gun, and also gourd
h is for hat and handgun, you can also be assured.


I is for ibis, just like Thoth's head
J is for jaybird, whose call would wake the dead
K is for kaboom (hence grenades), key pattern & knotwork, a pattern like woven thread,
L is for lock & ring-tailed lemur, let's just call him Fred.


Anyone else have any art projects on the go they'd like to share?

beautiful stuff.

i've been working on some simple silhouette and shape patterns, but nothing really finalised yet. must pull my finger out so i can bust a move in this thread.

again, nice work man.

thanks! glad you like 'em. It's somehow freeing to work strictly in illustrator, rocking my screen art stylee on personal stuff.

Originally posted by: arigato
thanks! glad you like 'em. It's somehow frreing to work strictly in illustrator, rocking my screen art stylee on personal stuff.

you don't do much illustrator work then? frankly, photoshop is a mystery to me, i fear the raster.......

i illustrator!

For work it's almost all illustrator - photoshop is more for print advertising for me - almost all the appliqué work I do has to be provided in vector format. For personal work I'm more photoshop oriented but I've been getting into using illustrator more for that, too - like here.

those are really fantastic. i suck at illustrator. do you pros still place an image behind to trace or you at the point you just freestyle it? oh yeah you guys have CS2 probably and can also autovectorize with the haste.

really like the gun as the ear in the elephant, how did you even think to do it! you're too smart.

For this specific style, I usually do live trace on stuff I've adjusted the levels on in photoshop, then import to illustrator high res then adjust the lines with path-simplify electively and changing the curves/ adding more shapes as needed.

I also combine a lot of smaller parts then pathfinder them together - for example, I did livetrace on a random lemur, trashed its hands and feet, drew in ears, put in new hands and feet livetraced from a skeleton, did path expand to fill in the spaces between the bones, added a woodgrain texture for the fur form something else I'd worked on, drew in some eyes & ears with the positive/ negative relaitionship I wanted, pathfindered it, smoothed, cleaned, dirtied, recleaned, and made the tail out of some edges pulled off the fur then repeated the clean/dirty/clean process. Kind of like collage more than drawing per se, though there is some drawing involved.

For this style anyhow. I also do a lot of regular drawing but for that I ususally work in flash first then export as .ai and clean it up in illustrator, often combining effects for different stuff.

yeah, i find if i'm working with photo's i've still got to do a bit of 'shop before i live trace and tweak in illustrator, then bust out the pens and brushes and go mad with clipping masks.

ok, so you persuaded me to post a crappy wip i've been playing with today which is part of a series coming together, although this is the only one in any shape so i hope it doesn't screw the point of this thread up.



however it ends up, it'll be on a shirt.

hey, no prob - looks like how I pass my days, too - but most of my stuff ends up on hats.


Whether I'm doing knit-in, embroidery, special appliqué or print my makers need all the art in separated illustrator files.

i can picture the elephant design looking sweet on a hot xxx fedora.

That's really cool stuff ari

Are you going to put that out as a print piece? I think it would lend itself quite well to either a large format children's book or a series of prints.


I've been trying to do a bit of short fiction lately in a gear up toward a more substantial piece of writing. I'm trying to get one of these out per week.

A man and a dog

Robert was struggling with his dog, it was one of those misbehaved
beasts that pulls this way and that, constantly infuriating its owner
by stopping suddenly for a sniff or lunging toward oncoming
traffic. Periodically it would pause to bark menacingly at small
children and other dogs. The more nervous the child or dog the more
likely that it would receive a heavy ear bashing from Orlando the
Staffordshire Terrier.

To be fair Orlando came from a long line of fighting dogs. In fact he
wasn't really a Staffordshire, he was a Pit Bull but his owner had
registered him as a Staffie to avoid intervention from the authorities
who had recently begun to crack down on the ownership of breeds that
they considered dangerous. Orlando wasn't dangerous though, he was a
bit gruff and a bit boisterous but when released from his lead the
last thing on his mind was fighting.

Orlando's temperament was almost certainly due to Robert's complete
misunderstanding of the canine intellect. Robert had read books and
listened to sage advice from others at the dog park regarding how to
raise a dog so that they are well behaved. Unfortunately he took the
advice. It was all the usual stuff-- "Don't keep tension on the lead,
just use quick jerks", "Don't use treats", "Use treats", "Never hit
your dog", "Give it a good swat because that's the only way it'll ever
learn"...

Orlando started out excited and exuberant but under the careful
tutelage of Robert he managed to become both neurotic and
overbearing. These things take time though and were never immediately
apparent to either of them until they had firmly seated themselves in
his doggie psyche.

Despite all of this Orlando was a smart dog, he often found himself
wiling away his hours on the couch just dreaming about opposable
thumbs and vocal chords capable of speech. Oh the fun he could have if
only he could articulate his wants and needs to Robert. It is a
frustrating thing the business of being a dog, all the intellect in
the world and no ability to express it. That sort of thing drives
people absolutely mad, it eats away their mind until they become
hollow shells of their former self. There is a theory amongst
linguists that supposes the ability to talk is not motivated by a need
to communicate but rather a need to express oneself. This made perfect
sense to Orlando and he would probably have agreed vigorously if he
could read Chomsky but without the ability to communicate with humans
he never learned to read and thus was never exposed to the field of
linguistics. It's a shame, he would have enjoyed it.

That left Orlando no choice but to amuse himself by digging up the
garden or chewing on a bone until the thoughts just sort of
disappeared into the background. Meditation-- blocking everything out
until you reached some sort of stasis, emptying the mind and then
waiting for something to show up, well that was how most dogs, Orlando
included, lived with their crippling inability to communicate.

Robert picked up lunch, a greasy chicken roll from Chicken Wizard on
the corner of King and Egan. It wasn't particularly nutritious but it
would do while he let Orlando run around the park chasing birds. It
was one of Orlando's favourite things to do, just lose himself in a
full bore run after the little winged pests that milled about
Camperdown park. He'd do this for thirty or forty minutes until he
nearly collapsed of exhaustion.

On one of his high speed laps Orlando lost site of everything but the
mynah he was galloping after and barreled right into Robert's shins. As
his feet fell from underneath him a hunk of chicken meat and skin
lodged itself in his windpipe. Orlando, disappointed at the missed
opportunity to catch his bird turned around to observe his master.

Robert lay on the ground clutching at his throat. His face had swollen
and he looked like one of those novelty balloons you get on top of a
straw. The ones that are made of foil and seem to be stretched to the
point of bursting. Robert's legs were kicking and Orlando stood back,
a bit put off by the whole spectacle. Don't get him wrong, he loved
Robert dearly but it just added up to another one in a series of
frustrating moments that could have easily been avoided if Orlando had
opposable thumbs or a voicebox that could make intelligible speech.

Robert's legs stopped moving and his body slackened. Orlando would
have been amused to know that what happened to Robert could never
happen to him. Humans are one of the only animals whose windpipes
intersect with their food intake closely enough to allow asphyxiation
by choking on food. This is what gives us the vocal agility to form
words. That's why Orlando never had any problems wolfing down his chow
with such wild abandon, there was no need to chew too thoroughly
before swallowing. If things got stuck, well then eventually they'd
just be thrown up and re-eaten.

Orlando let out a little whine and pawed at Robert's leg, wishing he
knew how to call for help.

Excellent stuff, Stinky, a nice, tight short story with enough backstory stuff to keep it witty without being played too heavy. Reminds me a bit of PAul Aster's novel, Timbuktu - ever read it? I think you'd enjoy it.

No plans with the series at present, just knocking 'em out to hone the style a bit more. I've been thinking about getting into illustration more seriously and this strikes me as a good spot style to be able to show around.

Nice, I hadn't heard of Timbuktu but a search brought it up. It sounds like a good read, I'll have to stack it on top of my ever increasing book queue.

As for the illustrations, I look forward to seeing what comes next in the series

mnop

Nice work ari - really nice. It'd prolly also display well on bandana's if it had a border added, also as 1,2,3, or 4 color pieces.
With my hair thinning over time I've taken to wearing them a lot more, particularly in this 90 - 100degF heat we've been having.
Do you use a tablet for any of that ari?

Stinky, I would never have thought that you were the novelist type, short story or otherwise. ari summed it up well. It's descriptive enough to fuel the imagination and interesting enough to keep you reading it.

db, you'll have to post pix of the finished designs when you have them on shirts. It/they should look quite good

Those are great Ari, Kudos for sure!
Are you live tracing bitmaps for that stuff?
Facking Excellent dude!

Yeah, I'm using livetrace but that's only part of the process.

For this specific style, I usually do live trace on stuff I've adjusted the levels on in photoshop, then import to illustrator high res then adjust the lines with path-simplify electively and changing the curves/ adding more shapes as needed.

I also combine a lot of smaller parts then pathfinder them together - for example, I did livetrace on a random lemur, trashed its hands and feet, drew in ears, put in new hands and feet livetraced from a skeleton, did path expand to fill in the spaces between the bones, added a woodgrain texture for the fur form something else I'd worked on, drew in some eyes & ears with the positive/ negative relaitionship I wanted, pathfindered it, smoothed, cleaned, dirtied, recleaned, and made the tail out of some edges pulled off the fur then repeated the clean/dirty/clean process. Kind of like collage more than drawing per se, though there is some drawing involved.

For this style anyhow. I also do a lot of regular drawing but for that I ususally work in flash first then export as .ai and clean it up in illustrator, often combining effects for different stuff.

tenplus - no tablet in illustrator, just photoshop. I still find it easier to use the mouse in illustrator. If I want to draw freehand in vectors, I'll use flash - it's still better than illustrator for that, IMO. THough it does have an annoying vector limit that it starts to drop out chunks if you pass it, so it's a good idea to do your work in stages & piece it together in illustrator.

beautiful work on the alphabet ari



with all the folks in our community with youngsters, I have long thought we should do an alphabet battle/collaboration in the Thunder Dome... each time I thunk about it happened to be a slow time in the Dome

might yet be a good idea... especially for the kids

Originally posted by: StinkFist
I've been trying to do a bit of short fiction lately in a gear up toward a more substantial piece of writing. I'm trying to get one of these out per week.

A man and a dog

my project for design is coming along pretty well, for really my first time ever i have a professor that isn't asking for metaphors about the site but just to design. he's happy with my work and so am I so far.

Montreal Pavilion

Ttrying to keep the blog up to date with my progress and its linked in my sig.