Travel Poster Color Studies

Okay, so these aren't actually revised sketches.  They're more revised than the thumbnails, but not quite there yet.  These are some examples of color schemes I want to go with.  This first set of five are the designs for my travel poster;  the second set, for my postcard.  For the actual designs, I'm working on a more revised sketch that incorporates more of the bike idea.  Possibly adding a gear facade onto the building or paving the road with gears or wheels.  I definitely need to work on the people, since they're in the foreground.  So with that said, here are some possible color schemes.  For this first set of five, I'm leaning more towards the second, the purples, greens, and golds.

These are the quick color studies of my postcards.  I played off of the Kanye West "blinds" glasses idea (I have no idea what they're called, but they have horizontal bars that remind me of window blinds).  I've also added some examples of the highly patterned and colored plant life of Madda.  I like the first and the third one, mostly because blues and oranges are my favorite colors to use with each other.  The postcards are more art nouveau than art deco, like the poster is.  

10 Card Designs

Okay, so for those who don't know, I was anti-digital the first two years of art school.  I hated it, it took forever, too many shortcuts to remember, and I felt like an elephant learning how to paint.  Then I talked to some fantastic illustrators at Spectrum Fantastic Art Live, wrote an excessive amount of notes when my teachers would give demos, and interviewed and picked the brains of other illustrators and classmates.  This card assignment has provided me with the perfect way to practice, so I've been dedicating about 6 to 12 hours each week working on these.  I have 52 cards to design.  I believe I have the first 10 paintings at a finished state.  I can't afford to dwell on them for too too long.  I'm almost finished with the next 10.  What I really need to focus on right now is designing a border for the front, the suit signs along with the typography (I really love Garamond and Snicket uses it in his books), and the pattern for the backs.  I also need to speed up production; I tend to dwell on detail.  I'm going to change these backdrops below, mostly because the burned edge texture looks bad in my opinion.  I want to actually burn paper and scan it in.  But these are just to give you an idea of where I'm going.  

                             Aunt Josephine                                             Klaus reading

                                 Uncle Monty                                                  Count Olaf

                               The Reptile Room                                        Captain Sham

                  Sunny and the Incredibly Deadly Viper                          Stephano

                                 Violet as bride                                             Sunny in a cage

Art Deco/Metropolis Posters

 

  

 

So you guessed it!  My next assignment in my Illustration 4 class is to create a travel poster for an imaginary world.  I came up with the idea of Madda last semester when I struggled to come up with ideas for my Communication Arts submission (my work wasn't accepted, but I expected that).  Madda is Addam backwards, my dad's name.  Before my dad passed away, he spent most of his time in our garage welding and building these surreal, crazy looking bikes that looked impossible to ride.  My brother and I would ride our normal bikes around the neighborhood collecting discarded bike parts and would bring them to my dad.  He'd then weld them together and spray paint them in crazy colors.  We'd then test drive them and were surprised we could actually ride them!  They were great and a way for him to feel productive and active as his condition worsened.  In my eyes, he became sort of a mad scientist.  So this world is my dad's world, in a way.  I try to incorporate some of my dad's ideas as well as my own in a lot of my work.  So as I wrote down my ideas for this travel poster, I thought of the movie Metropolis and all of the dystopian books I've been reading lately (The Handmaid's Tale, 1984, The Hunger Games, etc.) and movies I've watched (V for Vendetta, Star Wars, etc.).  Although my world is much lighter than those books and movies, I really like the style of them, especially of Metropolis and Art Deco posters.  The images posted are some of the posters that really stood out to me.

Imaginary Travel Poster

 Madda

            In the late 1800s, an amateur bike maker named Victor Madda went for a test run with one of his two-wheeled, self-propelled vehicles he’d been working on for a few months.  As he rode down a dirt country rode, his wheel hit a large stone and he flew forward toward a large, ancient oak tree.  Instead of a collision, he found himself in this surreal, alternate universe full of plants and animals with unnatural colors and patterns.  The most dominant and unusual feature of the world was the mountains of bike parts randomly placed among the trees.  Since bike making was Victor’s only skill, he used his knowledge to build a house, well, transportation, and other mundane tools.  Overtime, more people came across the rift in the old oak tree and were transported to Madda, where a civilization dependant on bike technology was formed.  Bike makers became the kings of the land and were highly admired and revered.  However, Victor stayed in seclusion in his mountaintop laboratory with his family.

            The world is bathed in rich, deep colors.  There are two moons, which look like bike wheels due to the spoke-like ridges.  The capital city was founded where the rift opens up, which is in the valley of steep, rocky mountains the color of deep lavender.  Victor lives on top of one of those mountains, overlooking the city but far enough away to not be disturbed.  Bike makers adopted the style of dress of scientists.  People from Earth, after discovering the rift, travel to Madda to witness the spectacular bike architecture and surreal landscapes.

52 Card Sketches

So you've seen these plenty of times.  This post is meant to make it more convenient for my professor to view all of my sketches in order.  

For me, this is a very slow process.  It took me five hours just to draw 26 sketches.  It took me six hours to paint the first 10 sketches.  Hopefully as my skills develop I'll paint faster.

OMG Brett Helquist!

So I just went super fan girl a few minutes ago as I searched the web for Brett Helquist's illustrations.  I practically grew up with his Lemony Snicket illustrations and I guess I've always subconsciously channeled that through my work.  As well as the Harry Potter illustrations, but that's a different story.  So as I searched for images to put in my artist presentation, I came across his blog and several interviews.  Who knew you could actually get in touch with an illustrator?  I mean, people always say it's not that difficult, but Helquist always seemed to me like Santa Klaus.  I first saw his illustrations when I was nine.  I guess when you haven't allowed yourself to take advantage of the Internet and its possible connections, you believe everyone is surreal and magical.  Here are some of his images and the link to his blog and that really great interview.

http://bretthelquist.blogspot.com/

http://mormonartist.net/issue-9/brett-helquist/

My favorite cover

First 30 Card Sketches

So I've already posted the first ten sketches, but I want to show where I am right now.  I have the compositions for the first thirty figured out and have already started painting.

I'm not familiar with Photoshop, so don't take any advice from me.  I started with a sketch layer, then created a new layer where I painted a base color within the sketch.  I chose not to use the pen tool mostly because I didn't want to lose that hand drawn, messy look.  However if it's not working, let me know.  Then I made a paint layer and went at it.  Since I'm still at the timid stage of digital painting, I tone down the opacity and treat it as if I'm painting in washes.  The final revised sketches will have more contrast.

As for these?  Well, these are still sketches.  Some of these I drew from imagination, such as the balloon, tree, and statue.  For most of them I took specific reference photos of friends who matched the general descriptions.   

So yes, I have a whole album of embarrassing reference photos that may or may not be used as blackmail.  Especially the third card in the second batch, of Shirley.

Arabian Nights

So I decided with this design for Miriam Brooks' Arabian Nights product.  It's very simple, but I think it gets the point across.  Miriam liked the blue the best.  I agree.  It goes with the night/sleep theme.  

In case you forgot, Miriam's company is the rival company to Mary Tuttle's floating pillows.  The purpose of Mary's pillow was to levitate children as they tried to sleep.  So Miriam created Arabian Nights rugs, which cause the whole bed to float.

Familiars Logo Color Scheme

Hi, so I've been playing around with different colors for my Familiars logo.  I changed the black to a dark blue, mostly because I hate using straight black and white.  I've also played with monochromatic and complementary colors.  There's also the issue with racial ambiguity.  In one design, the beige and orange, the girl appears white.  I played around with different colors, un-naturalistic colors, for the skin tone.