June 9, 2010

hOily Whale!

I have a lot of "internet friends," people I've never met face-to-face. A good many of them happen to live in the New Orleans area. I've got a friend who used to live up here who used to work on the oil rigs out there in the Gulf of Mexico. So when the Gulf exploded, I was following the goings-on closely. Getting unbelievable details from those in the area, friends with family who fished for a living.

It's gotten so that I expect every other tweet or email to contain oil. It's permeating everything down there - from the smell of the ocean turning to the stench of crude oil to the feel of it in the air. So when NOLAnotes tweeted that seeing the Twitter FailWhale yesterday was a little startling because there wasn't any oil on him ... I had a little brainstorm.

Originally, I'd wanted to do the green, green/yellow, yellow pattern inside the birds, but they're just too small for that to work (unless I wanted to do another huge illustration!). I chose to keep it very, very simple, hinting at the oil on the birds (in their eyes and wings - those black areas are usually white) and a nice, happy sun on poor Mr. FailWhale. I wanted to match Twitter's clean simplicity, so I didn't go for the amount of oil that really ought to be coating everything ... the key to parody, of course, is changing just enough to get your point across without beating your audience over the head with your point. In that respect, I think this turned out pretty well.

What I didn't expect was the attention this got - even landing on the Maddow Blog where it was called "instant folk art."

The world is a strange place sometimes - for some reason, I expected more response from the Adobe/Apple illustration which took weeks (and therefore, really wasn't as topical by the time it was done, I know), and this little parody was just something I whipped out when I couldn't sleep Tuesday night.

I'm not complaining ... just noting that the world is a strange, strange place.

Which, of course, is evidenced by the fact that oil has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for over a month while BP tries to polish their image and protest that their safety records are perfectly fine.

All that just smells a little fishy to me.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:39 PM | Comments (6) | Design | Sketches | Stumble

June 5, 2010

The Zax Stopped in Their Tracks

Finally.

I've been drawing semi-seriously and now seriously for just five years. It started when I first saw Mike Rhode's sketchtoons. I owe a lot to Mike for his early encouragement.

Recently there's been a very public kerfuffle between Adobe - the leading software in design - and Apple Computers. Adobe wants the Flash software they purchased from Macromedia some time ago to be ubiquitous on the web. Actually, I think they want Flash to be synonymous with the web. I'm no Flash hater myself - it's good in small doses for some things on the web. Whole sites? Uh, no. It's buggy, it's unreliable, it's a resource hog. But I enjoy using it to do animations ... it has its place.

The standoff between Apple insisting on HTML5's ability to do everything Flash can do, only better, and Adobe's insistence that Flash is the supreme gift to the web is a bit ludicrous. There are always shades of grey.

And this battle reminded me of a favourite Dr. Seuss story: The Zax. You see, there were South-Going Zax and North-Going Zax and one day one of each met up. Neither one would move a step to the east or a step to the west to allow them to continue on their way. No, each insisted that the other must move. And so the world just continued on around them, eventually building a bypass over the two stubborn creatures.

Please click through for the full version where you can see other references to the Sneetches and the Lorax as well.

So glad to finally have this piece done. If it'll stop raining around here, I'll take it in to get matted and possibly framed to go above my desk here at home. The final piece is about 29"x30" and is the first major piece I've ever done and is only my second foray into India inks.

Process:
Sketched on copy paper, scanned, cleaned up a little in Photoshop. Then I reprinted a neater copy, traced it onto medium-weight cold-press illustration board and sketched a few more details. Then I went over that with Speedball India ink. Once that was dry, I used Copic sketch markers for the colour details. I chose a palette very similar to the one Dr. Seuss used on his Zax bypass drawing. I was nervous about the india ink bleeding, but since it had dried for about four days before I got time to do the colours, the ink had dried and set well and I had very little issue with bleeds (although I tried not to go over too many of the lines just in case).
Both the Apple logo and the Adobe logo on the Zax' t-shirt have been painted white with a Marvy DecoColor extra-fine paint pen.

Update - 1:40 PM -
I should add, that I'm not really bashing Apple or Adobe at this point. I think the standoff is the ridiculous part. (I also think Flash is buggy as hell, but it's not evil.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:03 PM | Comments (1) | Design | Sketches | Stumble

June 2, 2010

Eep!

Sorry, for some reason I always underestimate how long something will take me. I've pretty much done nothing but some fast client updating and working on this illustration. Had a large catastrophe Friday night which necessitated a trip to the art store for more illustration board and starting over. Had another minor set back Monday which meant more wasted time Monday, Tuesday evening and this morning, but looks like things are back on track now.

Not the world's best picture, but it's still in progress anyway. I've got to add colour to the vehicles and then decide if I'm going to leave the rest b/w or mimic the Dr. Seuss page further with colour on the overpass columns and the background. I'm definitely leaning toward b/w.

Hope you enjoy! Remember, if you want to leave a comment, the "Captcha" I use is actually a bit different and easier than most. All you have to do is put the first LETTER of the word, not the whole word.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:03 AM | Comments (2) | Design | Sketches | Stumble

May 22, 2010

Preview

This was to be the practice piece for the center of the piece I'm doing right now. Since I had kind of noodled around with ink once before, I thought I should practice quite a bit before tackling the nearly 30x30 insanity I've got planned. As it turned out, I quite like this piece enough to think I'll get it matted this week and put it up at work.

It was a bit larger than the scanner, so there's a tad of blurring around the edges - but here's the preview. I hope to start the large piece tomorrow, but might have to wait until next weekend, darn it.

Don't worry - the larger piece will set the context a bit better. Frankly, it was taking so long to get this done, I wanted to get at least a portion of the drawing out there before someone beat me to the punch.

(Added 20:45 - Oh yes, this is Speedball ink & pen with Copic R29 for the red on coldpress illustration board.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:17 PM | Comments (3) | Design | Stumble

Dear Adobe

Today's Crash Report (because there's always a new crash report in the making ...)

How to replicate the problem? First, cover your drawing table with 10 sheets of copy paper in order to draw the rough for a large piece of art. Tape everything carefully down, so it doesn't move while drawing. Next, draw a picture. It's best to stay away from stick figures. I prefer to do roughs with a 3B pencil as they generally erase nicely. Use a Tombow Mono Zero eraser for detail erasing in tight corners. When you've done that, scan all 10 pieces of paper in utilizing Photoshop. Of course, Canon uses a TWAIN Acquire method which Adobe doesn't like any more, but I'm on a Mac, and so it's force Photoshop to use it (open system anyone?) or don't use a scanner. Stitch all 10 scans into one big document at 300DPI and about 34"x38". Save after adding each piece. Save in between just because. Cry when it beachballs. When all pieces are placed, press Save again. Now Quit. Upon quitting, Adobe will detect that the application Adobe Photoshop CS4 has unexpectedly quit.

Amazing how selecting File > Quit is so unexpected.

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:46 AM | Comments (1) | Design | Stumble

April 13, 2010

Chrome Sticker

It's no secret I'm a Mac person. I also love the iconfactory, a company of designers responsible for things like CandyBar, xScope, Twitterrific and my all-time favourite game: Ramp Champ. I discovered the iconfactory many moons ago when I wanted to change the icons on my Mac. They make the nifty program CandyBar which will change icons for you. In addition, they make tons of absolutely gorgeous icons and icon sets that you can use. In fact, with CandyBar, you can install either an entire set of icons onto your Mac, or you can select a few to change and mix and match. I've got Dia de los Muertos, Totem Poles, Sticker Pack, Ravenswood, Petroglyphs and a slew of others from them.

Today, after getting irritated that Firefox was constantly crapping out on me today - displaying long beachball of doom spinning time or simply not being responsive when I was typing, I finally downloaded Google's Chrome browser. Only problem is that it sits next to other icons in my dock that have David Lanham's sticker treatment. So, I popped open Illustrator and created my own sticker version of Chrome based on David's look. Now, the look of the sticker icons is very flat - these ain't some Sanrio puffy stickers here - these are good, old-fashioned flat stickers. David's done a wonderful job of using a desaturated colour palette for these icons and keeps everything very simple looking. I think he uses at least a subtle gradient on most of the stickers - in order to keep the art simplistic and clear and yet still add some depth to the icon.

Google's Chrome icon is very 3D looking. I studied several of David's icons and really saw no attempt at fool-your-eye for this particular pack of stickers. It didn't make sense to keep the 3D look for this icon. I should, however, revisit this icon at a later time and I went back and added a little bit of gradient to some of the pieces to give it a little more "pop." It's still not perfect, but I have got to get some other stuff done - can't play all day!

The Apple icon is located here: download

Free to use for personal use - not for commercial use. Enjoy!

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:46 PM | Comments (0) | Design | Stumble