Tigers

Poster designing just isn't my thing. My desire to illustrate narratively, with a fully realized character, setting, and situation keeps me from being all that graphic, simple, and striking. So I suppose it's saying a lot that I'm actually rather pleased with the turnout of my newest piece. I illustrated each piece separately so I could compose them exactly how i want, and any colors imaginable. See that was the catch 22. Too many options. It took me a lot of scrambling and color swapping, but I settled on this final look while still adhering to my concept. Tigers are very close to extinction in the wild. The idea is that they are fading away, and only their stripes are left, allowing the background to show through. The placement of the writing on the face, while graphically looks nice, is also meant to emphasize their disappearance. For working outside my comfort zone, I'm rather pleased.

*update* I put a little more work into and think I got something better out of it.

New business card and therefore, new art

The SCAD Con is quickly approaching (this friday, actually), and my girlfriend and I have signed up for spots. The Con is an event where artists can display artwork, sell prints, and hand out business cards to professionals in the industry, all in the name of self-promotion. It's in conjunction with the SCAD Career Fair, which those same professionals have displays of their own. Kinda wacky, but whatever.

So the point of the story is that I decided I needed a new business card. A larger, postcard sized one to display some art. So I painted a picture. Enjoy.

So much for being consistent

I kind of knew I'd have a hard time keeping this blog current. Who knew I'd take months to make a second entry? I'll start things off with my work from my last quarter at SCAD, and top it off with something hot off the press for the current quarter.

A label for a paint can of goodies from hotels.com for repeat customers. The lid (which isn't shown) shows a man sticking his head in the 'o' of hotels.com and this label depicts him popping up in locations across the globe.


A poster for the American Museum of Natural History's relocated dinosaur fossil exhibit. Hopefully the concept is self-explanatory.


A simple illustration for the Oatland Island Wildlife Center. The Great Horned Owl is a popular specimen, and is even their mascot.




Another new quarter brings more illustration classes. This time it's Poster Design. It requires a different mode of thinking, that's for sure. I'm so used to narrative, children's book, and editorial flare. It's much harder to think more iconographically, and conceptually. I spared myself a headache by sticking to what I know: Back To The Future.





Fans will argue that Marty never had his sneakers in 1885 Hill Valley, but the poster is a reimagining, and it's much easier and more effective to the concept of time travel to show a visual anachronism like this. I settled on this subject after much debate and stubbornness on my part. I was convinced that a simplistic image of Marty's feet on the hoverboard from Part II would make the PERFECT poster. The only problem was, nobody agreed. And while I could argue that artistic integrity and confidence should lead me to do what I believe in, that doesn't get me a good grade. Doing what the professor says will.


I could ramble on about the politics of producing an image from start to finish right now, and I sort of want to, but it is late, and I would run out of steam without ever really making a lick of sense. I'll spare you the trouble. Buenas noches.