Monday, December 5, 2011

Okay, so to start things off, massive dumping of images and calling it a final.

Vectoring, Gods I love vectoring. 90% of this final was done with Illustrator and the faithful Pen Tool over scanned drawings.

#1 The Re-Do:
I re-did the Mome Rath picture, reigned in the text and re-colored it to be more visible, and for the background I enlarged and focused on the path in the woods and vectored that whole background. Rather happy with the results.

Before
After

#2 The Adjective:
Couldn't think of a good adjective off the top of my head, so I looked up a random word generator and got the word "Quadruped" so I drew a pony. The style itself is based off of the art style of the recent show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, a new and loud muse to me, so a lot of pony-related materials have been cranked out of late


#3 Da Musics:
Was listening to this hoping to draw inspiration from it. I originally thought that I would do a DJ manning her stand about to drop a bass, but my thoughts drifted to the speakers that make that bass happen. Also got some work in on the perspective tool, and I must say it's a temperamental little so-and-so.

#4 Typography:
Octavia was a character in a show I once saw, her theme distinctly musical. I like making things like these, and I tried my hand at merging writing with music. Rather happy with the results.

#5 No Words:
I'll be honest, this started as a freebie image, but when I was drawing balls in a bowl I saw what looked like two eyes peering off to the side. I couldn't decide if they were being sneaky, accusatory, or otherwise so it seemed a nifty idea to let that be open to interpretation.

 #6 Scratch Image:
Made this start to finish in Photoshop. I wondered how the meeting of the nature-loving pony Fluttershy from aforementioned cartoon would react to the plant-animal hybrid Pikmin from the game of the same name. The mental image seemed too adorable to pass up.

#7 Based on a Photo:
I felt that I was a bit to new at things to do an earlier image I had justice so I redid it. It's a skeletal creature creeping in the depths of a forest, with a trail of corruption in its wake. Results turned out much cleaner and overall nicer than the original.
Before
After

#8 Color:
I like the color blue, blue is somehow an invigorating color for me. I drew inspiration for this from an artist I'm following on deviantArt who does minimalist styled pony wallpapers.

#9 Based Off a TV Show:
I liked My Little Pony, I liked the anime Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, the mash-up that spawned therein was a glorious sight to behold. The image itself is an equine styling of Team Gurren's emblem.

#10 Based on a Famous Work:
I hand-vectored one of Piet Mondrian's works ("Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue, and Black" I think, internet had issue pegging which of his many similar works it was) and noticed the spiral tool in the toolbar. When I overlayed it I was surprised how well a perfect spiral nestled itself into the work, almost like it was intentionally a fractal. I went back and make the spiral negative to the fields it overlapped.

#11 Something Masculine:
I don't really have a solid definition of either masculinity or femininity, they can be both and the same for all I know. What I made the image after was more towards how you see toys marketed towards boys and girls respectively. Here, the boys take, I usually see sharp, pointed, hard painted plastics such as with Transformers or Lego. Next we have...

#12 Something Feminine:
Avoiding the obvious Barbie pitch, I see a lot of softer materials and edges, but in contrast bright colors. Plushies seem to be universal barring 'boy' and 'girl' colors, but there always seems to be that awkward period in a boy's life where all things even remotely not manly are shunned. Admittedly it could be the exact same for girls, but plushies still strike me as feminine-neutral.

#13 Aimed at Children
Brightly colored cereal boxes, what else to cause a major scene in a grocery rivaled only by the toys and electronics aisle? The color and the title is what's aimed at children, the subtitles read more as a parent would see them.

#14 Vector
Did I mention I love vectoring? Dug through my wares and found this beauty of a mech that I'd recently done in Photoshop and went over it in Illustrator. I suppose that it's only fair seeing as I used PS's pen tool to keep my lines straight, I just did the next step.

#15 Something that Sells Something
In a few ways it seems that Mr. Mays had never left late night television. All the same, though, it seems that this was the general message those infomercials were giving me in the wee hours of the morning as I scramble to adjust the volume. Pinkie, the pony pushing the product (say that 5x fast) seems like the kind of pony to have the voice to do Mr. Mays some justice.

#16 Freebie 1
Cats wearing food as a costume, it works with cats and pop-tarts, why not comically elongated cats and a burrito wrap?

#17 Freebie 2
F-Zero, wonderful non-euclidean racing game. Racing in vehicles that can break mach 2 while going upside down and sideways being held to the track buy this wishful thought called 'magnets.' Made a generic vehicle build, made more after the style than a particular vehicle. First brush with gradients on this one, the Tron-esque contrail was fun to make thought.

#18 Freebie 3
Toyed around with the path alterations, squiggly, slanty, so forth. I imagined a simple-minded Transformer named Grimlock trying to draw a picture of himself. He has this verbal tick so his sentences flow like "Me, Grimlock, no like you." but he does have a wit about him. Drawing with T-Rex arms limit artistic ability, though.

#19 Freebie 4
Legend of Zelda had a game come out recently, I'm unable to play until Christmas, but I drew one of the universe's many interesting creatures to pass the time. Deku Scrubs are a plant species, for some reason their recent appearances have made them seem adorable, despite being a frequently annoying enemy until lately.

#20 Freebie 5
A band I listen to, called The Megas, takes music from the Megaman games and puts lyrics to the stage themes. For Topman, the robot master with the top motif, the title they gave the song was "Can't Stop the Top" Didn't quite feel that it was worthy of "Music Inspired" but at the very least I got to fiddle with making text go along a path. Not as easy as initially expected.