Still Alive

Just a little update for you.

While learning JavaScript means I can write my age and it’ll adjust automatically to the current date*, it doesn’t make for a visually exciting blog post:

Image of JavaScript code
My birthday is not in August – the code for January is zero.

Among learning syntax (and the usual day-to-day trials) i’ve been dabbling in 3DS Max again, two interviews were prepared for and attended, and the previously mentioned pixel project has been put on hold. Lending the post title a double meaning, i’ve been playing Portal again, but that’s not important right now.

In design news, toying with a series called “Not My Day”. Below is one of the first sketches.

Please let that be chewing gum.
Please let that be chewing gum.

Pixel week

Last weekend I was contacted by a guy who had seen some of my old work – a sprite sheet for a pixel art city. He’s wondering if I can help his team out on a project. Having not done pixel art in 5 years, I wondered that myself.

So, I took the sample image he’d sent me and went isometric on it: It reminds me of Pokémon.

Carl Mitchell's pixelart brown house

That went rather well rather quickly, so I stepped up the ambition for the second image:
Carl Mitchell's pixelart White House

Yep, that’s the White House. No surrounding buildings or vegetation on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but bear in mind it started out as a test (even if it did take a few days). I think I succeeded.

Catalogues, not Catalogs

This week, I present two catalogue layouts, made while practicing. The first one (Moulin Rouge badges) is a single right-hand A4 page, while the second (Terry Pratchett books) is an A5 2-page spread.

A few things I have learned while working on these:

  • It’s amazing how much more artboard you have working in print.
  • I now completely understand Bleed and Slug.
  • Products in the outer corners of a spread get the most attention.
  • InDesign’s colour managed system is a bit tricky.
    • Although LAB is not a bad alternative to HSB.
  • Adobe Acrobat can’t export anti-aliased images.
  • My printer is still terrible and a liar.

Alright, have a looksie. Click to visit the larger versions, of course.
The badges one:

Badge Catalogue page - Click to enlarge

…and the books one:

Book Catalogue pages

p.s. It’s “Catalogues” because that’s the British spelling.

My Red Mill Collection

By Red Mill, I mean Moulin Rouge, that infamous cabaret that ended up romanticized in Baz Luhrmann’s musical of the same name.

4 or 5 years ago, during uni lectures, I did a doodle in a sketchbook – Harold Zidler from the film, spouting a catchphrase. This turned into a t-shirt printed for a friend, the image created in Macromedia Flash, JASC Paint Shop Pro and Microsoft Publisher (of all things). Later on, while teaching myself Illustrator, I did a few more characters. Skip forward to today, down that slippery slope; now there are eighteen of them.

Carl Mitchell's Moulin Rouge Rosettes - Click to visit collection

I finished a couple of stragglers off this weekend. This is almost certainly the final update: I do have a vague plan for two more in the future, but they’re not getting brought out right now.

The DeviantArt collection has been brought fully up to date – the Flickr set and example on my portfolio will follow at a later date. I’m going back to learning catalogue layouts now…

p.s. Did you notice that this site’s header and footer have been changed? Yep, that was snuck in last week.

Jailbreak

A Wednesday update – weren’t expecting that, were you?

It’s back to designing this week; Illustrations have had a good run for a bit.

Bradford University has a Student Union that puts on plenty of events. While their website and posters are vibrant and full of colour, they make me feel a bit ill with their colour choices and production values.

So, my latest target: The 2010 “Jailbreak” logo and poster. This is what was plastered up all over campus:

UBUonline's Jailbreak 2010 poster

And, well, this was my reaction:

Phoenix Wright Shocked - Animated GIF

My revamped (and unofficial) result is below…

Jailbreak 2011 - thumb

…perhaps I went a little overboard with the brown, which could detract from the poster’s attention-grabbing power from a distance. It does have meaning though – It’s a deliberate callback to the look of those old sailor’s maps (like the ones pirates used) and the old wanted posters (think Westerns and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?). It also allows people to focus on the information over it, nicely prison themed.

Considerations of the Alphabet

There was a picture my brother used to have. It was his name, with the letters surrounded by Gnomes, or Gnomes hanging off them. A personalised image. You see mugs and keyrings all the time, all the same pattern, just with different children’s names on them.

Consider the following image, which I have made, and which has taught me several things in its creation.

Chloe Safari - Click for larger image

Chloe is my second cousin. Her father is from England, but she lives in South Africa, so the above image features animals from the region. Research: Obviously you won’t get a Koala in S.A., but you do get Penguins.

The image above has the animals at random. As H is not for Giraffe (shame, it fits the shape nicely), some educational folks might want the animal lined up with it’s corresponding letter. Restricting the region is just asking for trouble – there’s a lack of African animals beginning with X – but when considering the audience of this piece, do you line the animals up with their English initial, or their African name? In England it may be M for Monkey, but down there it’s A for Aap (pronounced ‘arpy). As a side note, this is also why most animals in pictures such as these aren’t fully entwined with their letter – you can’t fit a Wildebeest into a W without ruining it’s skeleton.

There is also efficiency. If you want a mix-and-match theme, so any name can be put together, you have to create images for all 26 letters. If you want lowercase letters (as above), you have to double that. Going worldwide could easily drive a man to madness, with accented letters, minor punctuation, cyrillic lettering, even hebrew or kanji to cater for, before you dared to assign the correct letter to an animal for it’s language.
No wonder all the ones i’ve seen are English and all in capitals.

I have the urge to try again, but with an overall less demanding theme… and not matching the initial.

Send out a Clacks

It’s another Friday update!

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld; one of the very few novel series i’ve read from start to finish. Love ’em. There’s a dedicated Wikipedia for many things, and these books have one.

The picture they had for a Clacks (a Semaphore tower) is, in a word, awful. So I thought i’d wade in and bring a nicer one to the table.
I made two.

Carl Mitchell's First Clacks Tower - Click to enlarge

I started drawing this “technical” one first. Realising that the thin lines and angle would make it unclear at a low resolution, I soldiered on none-the-less, and decided to draw a second, smaller, rougher one to make up for it.

Carl Mitchell's Second Clacks Tower - Click to enlarge

I actually prefer this smaller one. It must be the shading.

Land of Trees

Been busy.

This is finished: An idea that’s been rattling round my brain for years, all wrapped up with an Illustrator CS3 bow!

Land of Trees - Thumbnail - Click for full view

In upcoming news, when my printer decides to print more than off-red stripes, or when a reasonably priced print shop is found, a long-running project (one that’s a slight departure from the usual) will be completed…

Shiny new boxes

The site now has new information boxes!

OK, so their function is a bit boring, but they’re very important: Not having any easy to find my CV or contact details would be a disaster!

You may have already noticed the new “Social Corner” box on the right, below the Featured Work boxes. Yep, that’s where the Latest Tweets box I mentioned before was going to live, but this box is more sleek and comprehensive. I kept the bird. I like him.

The main event is on my About & Follow me page. Before the valuable info below the blurb was a simple paragraph and a few small images, which along with lacking something to be desired, didn’t stand out as it should. Now all the links are combined into three boxes, and looking sharp! For extra “ooh”, move your mouse over the download links in the left box… I like that code!

p.s.: I made all the icons myself. Some from scratch, some heavily modified from commons images.

p.p.s.: The site background is now darker too. Like? Dislike? Let me know.

iDraw

Now that lame pun is out of the way, here’s the content. Not my usual style, but below are two vector creations, both of them Apple music players.

Carl Mitchell's iPhone and iPod nano illustrations

The iPod nano (left) was drawn last year, to feature on its Wikipedia page. It lived there for a heartwarming 3 days, 3 hours and 37 minutes before a grander (yet oddly similar looking) image replaced it. See it archived here.

I’m posting it now because the iPhone illustration (right) is new. It was made for a totally different reason – a possible surround for the TimeLock app example on my design page. It could make that image huge, so we’ll see, but doesn’t it look pretty?