Freelancing with Vector Art

I've been super busy lately freelancing. Mostly playing around with Illustrator and After Effects, woo!

I'm working with Degs Beldham, who has this nifty website Call My Other Number dot com where you can buy alternative phone numbers for your phone. I made a video for him for the Take One Small Step competition.

Check it out here

I hired my brother Nels to do the audio. We had a lot of fun working on it. Unfortunately we didn't win the competition, but we got into the top ten, woo! It took a little less than two weeks to make this. It was hectic at first, trying to find a time when Degs, Nels, and I would all be free to do the recording (an added difficulty that he lives in London and we in Texas).

This was a rare animation where I didn't use a storyboard. I wrote a script for the interview and voice over, and I made notes for what visuals I wanted, but I didn't draw anything out on paper before I started. It's a different approach that what I normally take, and it was fun and (dare I say) freeing to make it up as I went along.

Programs used were Illustrator, After Effects, and Protools (for Nels' audio work). Lots of help from the Video Copilot people. I always watch at leased 2 or 3 of their videos for any project I do. I'm pretty sure they know everything.

Right now, I'm working on my second animation for Degs. Meet Gabrielle:

More logo design

This one is for the website Reviews of Things and Stuff
reviewsofthingsandstuff.wordpress.com

It was the negative space that excited me in this one. I like the partially visible reflection. I'll have to play with that more in future projects.

My friend Yankee emailed me today. He's starting his own business and wants to hire me as the in-house graphic designer. I don't know any details yet (the company is still in the paperwork stage), but I'm very excited.

Playing with photography

There's this technique in photography called tilt-shift photography. It allows the photographer to have very precise control over depth of field, which basically means there's one small area on the picture that's in focus, while everything else moves quickly out of focus.

You see it a lot in pictures of food or very small things. See my favorite examples here.

You can also use this technique to make photos of life-size scenes look tiny. I love the effect. You can make people and cars look mini, which is always exciting.

Well, I don't own a fancy camera, but I own Photoshop. I've been playing photos that my friends and I have taken and made some neat images.(Cat photo taken by Lisa Lin)

the MADRE show

My troupe, Bastet, had a Belly Dance for Change event for MADRE. I designed the flyer and post card above. This was a fun project. I used bright, bold colors like the MADRE website.
It was a great show. Scott Wilson performed, and Kelly Ann danced to him. Bobby played his bazzouki, Ray Ray recited some poetry, and Pacita danced.

Sunken Car

So the goal of this project was to put this car under the ocean for 50 years. Of course, I show it to my Grampa and the first thing he says is, "I don't think this car has been around for 50 years."

lol

figures

This one took me two days to do (would have taken me one if the dear ol' family didn't keep distracting me)

This was a texturing project through and through. The model is the 1976 Chevy Hatch by Pieter Steyn off of Turbo Squid. Background photo taken from istockphoto.com. It was a lot of fun. Did a lot of playing with layered textures and bumps and difuse and transparencies and ambient colors and... well... everything. :-D

So let's start with a brand new car, just off the lot..



Then as we're throwing it into the ocean it's gonna get a few scratches



And it's gonna get rusted and corroded, of course. This is my favorite shot. I love how the light scatters across the hood and the roof.



then green things start to grow on it



And, of course, barnacles and more grossness



and let's see how this beauty looks now



I can't help but feel like my compositing skills could use some room for improvement, but I'm very pleased with how the car turned out. Very gross, very water-logged.

Industrial Light and Magic

Today I visited ILM. I met David Lenihan (who I met at Siggraph) and he showed me around. It was a lot of fun, ILM seems like a, awesome place to work (and I am DEFINETLY gonna be workin on my portfolio to apply there now). There were lots of background paintings on display, some of which were amazing! i loved the Neverland ones. Lots of props from movies and replicas from Star Wars (SO much Star Wars shwag everwhere). We had lunch and talked about movies. It was nice.


I saw clips from their latest movie, Avatar. I'm not so sure about the plot (typical action movie set up with anti-war overtones. Some sort of love-story in the mix), but it looks like the visuals are what's gonna make this one worth seeing

Graphic Design

Somehow I've been doing a lot of graphic design work lately. Logos, business cards, posters.
*shrug*
I don't mind it. I enjoy anything creative. And I'm starting to get more creative with type.

And now, for your entertainment, I've posted a few below...



business card for Dwayne (in progress)


Logo for my friend Yankee's Hackers on a Bike


Logo for Bastet, my belly dance troupe