carl-mitchell.comAs per usual in a design company trial, a bit ago I had to make a layout out of supplied assets. I got to keep an A3 printout as a souvenir; as that memento is a bit crinkled, attracts dust, and doesn’t fit in my scanner, I quickly recreated a neater pic for you:
Earlier in the year, when I was working on various print layouts, there was a secondary curio that I never showed you blog-people (though a few Facebook friends will have been privy to it).
The woman I was speaking to at the time pointed to some cupboards in their room, the faces of which were composed of various shades of wood. She then asked, as an example of my Photoshop prowess, if I could make them the same colour. Alas, I didn’t get a reference image at that point, but one afternoon I took a few pictures and set myself one hour of ‘shopping time.
I changed my breadboard from dark to light wood, both in the foreground and the toaster’s reflection.
Then I made a miniature version of myself to sit on the counter.
To finish off, I removed a plug socket from the wall.
It’s my dad’s birthday this weekend. He’s been retired for a few years now, but is always up to something, he’s not the idle sort. For the last couple of months he’s gone to meetings about bees. He’s bought a bee-keeping suit, but there’s no hive in the garden… yet.
While mum considered digging Bizzy Buzzy Bumbles out from the attic, I made this. The inside reads “Dad-Bee Birthday!” (there’s a reason I didn’t write “Bee-Day“).
Hand-drawn then coloured with crayons, the bumble bees are raised from the card slightly on paper blocks. The day before gifting it, I happened across a YouTube tutorial to make wiggle-springs for cards: I carefully prised Dad Bee off and re-applied him with one of those installed!
p.s. Admins: I’ve added a captcha plugin for comments. Should help.
Behold, the site is refreshed! The visual shift came about as this blog is now powered by WordPress. There’s a reason it’s one of the top names in Content Management Systems: It sees a heck of a lot more updates, support and plugins than my previous CMS, Habari. Everything has been ported over except the comments, and there may yet be an injector for those. All in all, I like it.
If you want an update with a picture in it… my deviantArt account passed 7,000 pageviews a few days ago. I did a comic for 2, 3 and 5 thousand views – The 7,000 views comic, featuring old character Super Turnip, is now up.
You may have seen that Youtube had a redesign: They call it One Channel, and it provides a more unified experience across a few different platforms. One consequence of this is that whether your YouTube channel is on a computer, phone or television, it uses different parts of one large backdrop.
I don’t really use my YouTube account for projects any more, as i’ve sidled away from video and 3D animation projects (the ancient ones are still there and on Vimeo). John and the Final Boss Fight team do though…
Update: Off The Market was been accepted, and voting is now closed.
Threadless is arguably the most famous t-shirt site. Artists submit designs, either in general or as part of themed contests, which are then voted upon for a chance to join their product line. They’ve expanded into further clothing, wall art, cards, phone cases… good fit, good quality and good designs.
After posting earlier this month about all those cards I made, a Threadless newsletter had a word in my ear, introducing the contest Greeting cards II. T’was a sign!
I’ve tidied up two cards which are featured on my portfolio pages, but have only been mentioned in passing. Get Better Than The Weather was a Get Well Soon card for a work friend, while Off The Market was a Valentine’s Day card for a newlywed, but for the purpose of the voting is a Wedding congratulatory card.
Both are now up for scoring on Threadless for the next 9 days (until about the 6th of June). Click a link or picture below to hit ’em up high, why don’t you?
One of my pastimes is to tinker with wikis. I amend text, fix references, apply cleanup tags, the usual. Sometimes images come into it: Hence today’s update.
For Wikipedia itself, it’s mainly been photo and diagram cleanup. The one i’ll highlight is the diagram on Xbox 360 technical problems, as it required some learning of EPS file formatting. And because i’m a PS3 owner. Teehee.
May 4th 2013 starred the third wedding i’ve attended in six months. I mentioned these upcoming nuptials when showing off the last wedding card i’d crafted… you can see where this is going.
As the Turners had been raving about Matilda the Musical, their card is in the style of Quentin Blake, famous for illustrating Roald Dahl’s children’s books. Like the time I made that Master System cover, it was interesting to actually try and reduce proficiency, making lines sloppier and slipping some colour outside them.
…Lay across my InDesign spread.
Yes, today’s theme is layouts: Recently I put together a few new compositions, and polished up a couple of older ones.
When it comes to publishing software, there’s essentially two rival firms: Adobe (them of Photoshop) make InDesign, while Quark produce QuarkXPress. I haven’t used the latter for a long time, so I was sure to roughly re-create at least one of these ID works in QXP, looking up how to do particular actions when required. While features like arranging items forward/backward have yet to be discovered, it served as a good refresher task.
So, play the gallery theme in another tab and scroll down: You can click on any of the images for a larger view.
InDesign version on the left, Quark practice on the right. The Donkey Sanctuary’s website has a pleasing colour scheme, which has been carried over to this. I also used a method from The Sun newspaper, in that specific words are made bold for emphasis.
Moving on to this magazine cover, there’s a lovely triple meaning in the cover line “Second Life”: First off, it’s the name of an unrelated but well-known video game. Secondly, Vampire: Bloodlines is based around Vampires – creatures in their ‘second life’. Finally, Bloodlines has been given a new lease on life since the development studio closed, as fans fixed bugs and restored incomplete content!
I’ve reached that age bracket where a lot of my friends are getting married. I made a card last winter for one couple who got hitched, and yesterday another pair tied the knot!
I’ve known Mr West for almost a decade, and the now Mrs West for nearly as long, so they most certainly had to have a homemade card too. This one is also a pen and watercolour work, yet there’s no imitation of famous artists this time around.
This duo of feelies will likely become a trilogy, as there is one more wedding next month. The occasion is on May the Fourth, so stay tuned to see if I infringe on any Star Wars copyrights.
An acquaintance (who is already wed, for those keeping score) is branching out into his own first aid / CPR training business, and he knew I was the guy to hit up for a logo. Research showed that this kind of company always seems to use a combination of lovehearts, heart monitor lines and first aid crosses for it’s identity, so this one took a bit of a think to make more distinct. There was a heap of back-and-forth communication involved: Getting it down to case designs, then the decals, the colouring, selecting the font and word arrangment…
