Amy Kingman

Updated Demo Reel

2010-10-29T10:27:00.001-07:00

The Basement Design + Motion 2010 Reel Updated

Animation Fills

2010-10-27T09:09:00.000-07:00

Here's the same scene filled in. Oh, and I wanted to give credit to Brian Phillips for the work on character design and look/feel.

Another Pencil Test

2010-10-27T08:13:00.000-07:00

Another pencil test for some work we're doing to remind college females to be careful about the information they post online. In this portion the girl is tweeting about how she's at the coffee shop and that she's bored because her roommates are out of town. In the background you can see our character Mr. Creeper (one of her many twitter followers) sneaking around the coffee shop up to no good. The idea is to attempt a more light hearted reminder as opposed to a preachy off putting approach.

Just a quick pencil test

2010-10-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick pencil test for a new set of animations we're doing. I've been doing so much design work lately it's fun to get back into animating.

Buckets For The Cure

2010-06-17T08:47:00.001-07:00

The last design that I worked on before I left for maternity leave was KFC's Buckets for the Cure Site. The purpose of the site was to accompany KFC's pink bucket campaign, during which a percentage of the sales from the pink buckets went to the Suzan G. Komen For the Cure Foundation. This site allowed people to read about and upload personal stories of breast cancer battles, get information on breast cancer, and donate to Susan G. Komen For the Cure. We worked with Creative Alliance, KFC, and Komen to create this site.

Unfortunately, by the time I returned to work, the campaign had ended and the site was no longer hooked up to the system containing the stories and twitter feed. But you can get the general idea of what the site involved.

We wanted to present the gallery of stories in a unique way that reinforced the KFC pink bucket campaign. To accomplish this we created a pink bucket formed by photo squares. The uploaded stories were pulled from a database and populated the squares. You could spin the bucket to see other stories or search for someone specific. Once you clicked on a photo all of the photo squares flipped over and filled in the cracks, then the story appeared on the bucket.

Once you selected a story you could use the arrows to flip through additional stories or you could return to the bucket photo gallery and choose someone else. Our flash team did a fantastic job. I especially loved the work they did with the bucket using Papervision. Nice work guys!

Augmented Reality Christmas Card

2009-12-23T12:28:00.000-08:00

View the greeting

For the last couple months we here at the basement have been testing and experimenting with augmented reality. Boy can it be finicky!!! We've definitely learned a LOT as a team about the capabilities and limitations of AR.

Today we are finally sending out our Holiday Greeting. If you have a webcam, it's a fun little thing to play with. Following the steps, print out the symbol and point your webcam at it. You should see a 3d stage and a couple characters pop up on top of the print out. You can move the print out around and look at the characters from all angles, or there are 3 songs that you can choose from and the characters will sing to you.

If you don't have a webcam, you can still see what the buzz is about by clicking on the link at the top of the page. It will take you to a video that will show you what we've done. There is so much more to write about this project, but no time for that now. Great work Basement Team! It's been a fun challenge!

View the video

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope that your holidays are bright!

New Work Blog

2009-11-12T11:17:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the new work blog!

After much thought and deliberation I have finally come to the conclusion that it's high time my blog was split in two. Now instead of one blog containing all things that I make, I will keep up one for more 'work' related posts and another for my various other past times. Of course since my hobbies and my work tend to overlap in many areas, there will be some crossover, but for the most part if someone in the industry is interested in my work I wanted to make it so they didn't have to wade through recipes and random arty projects.

That being said, if you're more interested in the 'other' non-work related stuff I post about, you may want to follow drawingsinmotion.blogspot.com instead of this blog.

I intend to keep a feed of work related stuff on the right hand side of my drawings in motion blog in case anyone over there is curious about my work life. Thanks for all your comments and support as this little space on the web has continued to grow!

PRIME: AIGA Indy Design Awards - Featuring One of My Designs

2009-11-04T07:10:00.000-08:00

The Knozone.com website has won an AIGA Prime design award. Congrats to our partner on this project Miles Design and to the rest of our talented team that worked on it here at The Basement!

I'm going to head down and check out the gallery this Friday. I'm looking forward to checking out the other Indianapolis talent on display. Thanks to the AIGA for the nod! This will be my personal first interface design that has won any kind of award.

If you're interested in popping in, let me know. I'll probably head down there around 7:00.

Friday, November 6, 2009 Dean Johnson Gallery
646 Massachusetts Avenue
Indianapolis, Indiana

View Map

Playing around with Biped animation

2009-09-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

I can't remember the last time I animated in 3D. A few weeks ago I opened 3d Studio up at work and played around with the biped animation to check it out. I chose two quick little dances to animate for fun and learn the tool. Obviously there's gobs of room for improvement, but I thought I'd share my first attempt.

The Basement Design + Motion launches new website

2009-09-23T11:13:00.000-07:00

This week The Basement launched our new website. Each section showcases a different style that we're capable of as a company, from 2d vector animation (the pipes on the 'Homepage' and birds in the 'Contact' section) 3d work (the 'Work' section) stellar hand drawn illustration (buildings on the 'Homepage'). And of course the portfolio, case study, and demo reel in the 'Work' section show off the work that we've done in the past including motion graphics work, microsite development, and online games.

It was a team effort all the way with each member of our team tackling some element of the site. We're happy to see it launched and look forward to the opportunities that will follow.

Hancock Fabrics: The Ultimate Prom Competition Webisodes and Style Tips

2009-09-23T10:48:00.000-07:00

This is an old project I worked on earlier this year that I'd forgotten to post until I saw it in the portfolio section of our new Basement website.

Advertising agency, Creative Alliance, recruited us to produce a microsite for a seasonal promotion with Hancock Fabrics and Seventeen Magazine. Hancock Fabrics was the official fabric sponsor of The Ultimate Prom 2009 competion. The microsite included fashion design tips and webisodes documenting three aspiring designers from New York's High School of Fashion Industries.

For this design obviously fabric and fashion design were our overarching concepts to work with. We wanted fabric to be the biggest design element so I used some satin from the Hancock Fabrics prom line and added stitching, pins, tape, and pattern paper to pull it together.

Being the only girl designer in the office it made sense for me to use my feminine sensibilities for this project. ;) Hopefully it came across as appealing to teen girls across the US and helped to portray Hancock Fabrics' as a more relevant brand for teens and younger women, and not a just store catering to their mothers and grandmothers.

Though this site has already launched and run it's course, there is still a test version of it up on our server you can check out here.

Dug up some old stuff...

2009-07-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

Here's a Lichtenstein-esque version of my sis-in-law that I did a few years back. It was long forgotten, but somehow came into conversation recently so I dug it up and decided to throw it up on a post. I think she may end up using it as a facebook profile pic instead of an actual photo of herself if she decides to part ways with the stock icon they provide. We'll see. :) Well, happy Friday everyone!

Timeline Animations In Flash are Fun!

2009-06-08T13:58:00.000-07:00

I love putting together a fun timeline animation in flash to add some bells and whistles to slick interface animation. You wouldn't want me animating the entire site, but I like to think of what I do as like the sprinkles on top of the cup cake. Tiny bits of amusement here and there to add a little fun. Here's a sneak peek at our new Basement website. We knew that we wanted the buttons in the 'who we are' section to have some personality so we came up with the concept of these pipes building a sign of sorts. I sketched the thought, drew it up in illustrator, then animated it in flash. This is a type of task that makes my day go by quickly because I have fun doing it. I'll be sure to post when we've got the site up and running! Until then!

Knozone's new site finally launches!

2009-05-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

Over the past few months The Basement has been working with Miles Design to create the new look for Knozone, an organization championing Indy's clean air movement. Personally, I really enjoyed working on a site for a client like this. (Now, if only we could do the same for Indy's water quality!)

On this site I wore several hats.

Art director (oversaw motion, additional design needs such as charts and buttons, helped troubleshoot problem areas our interactive team faced)
Lead designer (main homepage and overall sub page look and feel)
Time line animator (poofing clouds, balloon siren, air whisp animation)

Miles developed the idea of the skyline and displaying content between buildings, and it was our job to figure out how to make it work. There were tons of challenges that our interactive team had to solve and they did an awesome job!

I'm so happy to see it live! Nice work everyone!!! Check it out!

http://www.cleanairmatters.org/

by hand

2009-04-01T20:00:00.000-07:00

Designers, I'm sure you've scoured dafont.com for the perfect handwritten font at SOME point or another. Some designs just call for something less structured and more alive. Not to mention the whole DIY look has been super trendy for a while now. I guess it's the charm of something created by hand and the flexibility of the digital world. It's nice.

These handwritten fonts are nothing new. If you can't find something that you like on dafont, or you don't want to risk seeing the font you use on another design, there are hundreds of different ways to do create your own. I've known this was a possibility, but it wasn't until today that I finally took a moment to give it a try.

I can't believe I hadn't done this before. It literally took 15 min. I created mine with the online font generator at www.yourfonts.com.

Let me sum up:

1. Go to www.yourfonts.com and print out the character template
2. Fill out the template in a thin black sharpie (or thick if that's your bag)
3. Scan the template you just filled in at 300 dpi
4. Upload it
5. Get custom handwritten font to install on your computer!

Here's what my character template looked like all filled in:

In my haste, I did not pay as much attention to the hashmark guidelines as I should have, and as a result a couple characters (the lower case u and the . ) are either a little too high, or a little too low, but for the most part it worked out flawlessly.

Even if you're not a designer, this could be a cool thing to play with. I can see scrapbookers getting some good use out of this, and maybe cooks who want to preserve recipes in their mom's handwriting but are a bit too much of a search junky/technophile to rely totally on recipe cards. I realize this is cheating, and it's no where near as close as a scan of the card or the real thing, but it could be better than straight up Arial. Just an idea.

Any other ideas for how a custom handwritten font could be used?

(The above photo was taken through the viewfinder of my kodak duaflex II camera with my Digital Canon Rebel. I processed the colors in photoshop and used my fancy new handwritten font to label it. Talk about combining the digital with the DIY. Alex's grandfather worked at Peerless for nearly his entire life. This building has a special place in the hearts of his family. It feels nice to have a picture of it.)

Wednesday Desktop Background Freebie

2009-02-04T11:39:00.000-08:00

Select your screen resolution: 1920 X 1200 | 1280 X 960 | 1024 X 768

Who doesn't love free things!? I personally like to change my desktop backgrounds often. Sometimes I make my own, other times I really like having another artists work to look at.

A week or so ago, I was playing around with the photo that I used in the processing tutorial and created a simple desktop background with it. I got to thinking that if I love free high-quality desktop backgrounds made by other artists, maybe I should contribute one of my own to the community. So here it is! Take it if you want it! Totally on the house.

Precise Path Robotics Site is Live!

2009-02-04T09:27:00.000-08:00

We at The Basement Design + Motion have been working with a local robotics company, Precise Path Robotics, for the past several months to create promotional and educational materials for their product the RG3, the worlds first robotic greens mower. It's been really neat to work on a project for such a ground breaking product!

Today they're unveiling the mower at a trade show down in New Orleans. We produced video's that will play in their booth to help them explain what the mower can do and how it can benefit greens keepers. The mower is so new they needed to show it's capabilities through 3D animations. (Photos of the booth yet to come.)

In addition to the videos, we produced an online experience where greens keepers can learn about the mower, get detailed spec information, and sign up for the newsletter and road show.

We're very proud of the entire campaign! My role involved art directing the website from the ground up. I had a lot of fun. Each part of the process was an opportunity to learn, from the first meeting talking to the client about the image he'd like to project to working with a team of 3D artists, compositors, designers, and interactive developers to create the final product. Having access to such a talented and diverse pool of talent made my job a joy!

So here it is, the unveiling of our latest project www.precisepath.com.

Playing with the mood of a photo

2009-01-28T17:14:00.000-08:00

After looking through the images I took during my antique camera photo shoot, I thought it might be fun to pick one and try to play with the tone of the image. I wanted to keep the effect subtle, but still give it a bit of a mood. For this tone I chose to draw from the look of film developed in the 70's. Here's a tutorial of the techniques I used to achieve these results.

Here's the original photo

New 50 mm Prime Lens

2009-01-25T12:43:00.000-08:00

I can't believe what a HUGE difference this new 50 mm prime lens makes! I did a photo shoot of a couple antique cameras we have in the house today and was really excited to see the results. The cameras are so beautiful! I think I'm going to have to print out the series and hang them all together somewhere. It might even be cool to see if there's a coffee shop or something that would be interested in the series as part of a local artist gallery of some sort. I'll have to look around. Thanks for the extra inspiration to make the purchase, Steph! I love it!

Honored to be a guest blogger

2009-01-16T12:33:00.000-08:00

Today I'm very honored for the opportunity to be guest blogging over at Shutter Sisters as a Friday Featured Resource. Thank you for allowing me to contribute a thought to such an inspirational and talented community of women, Tracey. Happy Friday everyone!

Shutter Sisters Inspiration

2009-01-10T08:08:00.000-08:00

I enjoy the daily bits of inspiration from Shutter Sisters. Today's bit revolved around the clean slate of the new year.

Sometimes it's tough for me to follow through with various creative assignments depending on what's going on in my life and whatnot but I just really liked this one so I thought I'd give it a shot. With all the chilly gray brown and white around us these days I felt like this would be a great opportunity to look a little closer for the colorful, the cheery, and the cozy. Here's the assignment:
January Homework Assignment (Starting Monday):

1) Take one photo everyday until Jan. 31st that is colorful, cozy, cheerful or just makes you smile.

2) Do something creative with your hands 5 days a week. It could be drawing, painting, origami, scribbling, doodling, writing, or anything else. But it may not involve a camera or a computer.

I've decided that I'm going to count culinary exploits as 'something creative with my hands' as well. I'll be keeping a log of my photos, and photos of the things I make by hand up on my flickr page. Let me know if you decide to join. I'd love to see your photos.

PS: The diptych above is of some awesome eggnog cupcakes. I got the recipe from Annie's Eats. The cupcakes had a great flavor, were super moist and the icing was REALLY sweet. I don't prefer the sugar icings as much as cream cheese variety, so I think next time I'll experiment with a different icing.

New Lights and Some Color

2009-01-08T18:22:00.000-08:00

Here is my new and improved light box photo. I found that my little desk lights weren't quite bright enough to show off my subject matter, so I got some clip lights and put in a daylight bulb so that all the colors were as true as could be. I also made sure to white balance my camera before shooting my subject and I added a nice patterned fabric beneath to make it pop.

The angle wasn't quite right when I clipped my lights to the sides of the box, but I didn't have any special light stands to fasten my lights to. To serve as stands, I tried clipping the lights to a couple bookends and it worked perfectly. They were easy to maneuver to get the lighting just right.

The Making of a Light box

2009-01-03T16:31:00.000-08:00

A light box is something I've been meaning to construct for some time now. I get so frustrated when trying to take photos of things that I make in the winter time because of the lack of natural light. Everything looks dark and blah.

After a conversation today with miss Jen the Beantown Baker about techniques to improve her delicious food photography I decided to take on the challenge of creating an affordable, collapsible light box for people who may be short on space as well as cash. The problem I found with many of the affordable foam core light boxes is that every time you want to take it down you risk having the tape rip the walls apart. That in combination with the potentially frustrating assembly as one fumbles with the foam core like a house of cards lead me to the idea of a dove-tail like joint for the box.

This light box design cost about $4 for the foam core and another $1 for the poster board that I use to create a seamless background. It's quick and easy to assemble, tear down, and store away. I still need to find brighter lighting, I used two dim desk lamps to test, but it definitely has potential!

First I cut the foam core into 20"X20" panels. I then labeled each panel according to it's location on the box to keep myself from getting confused.
After I labeled my 4 sides I measured a 1" thick margin where each joint connected. Then I laid out the panels according to where they connected to the 'back' panel. Imagine the sides and top folding up at each joint and you can visualize how the box will connect.

With the joints touching I measured out 3" notches and drew my line across both panels to ensure that everything would fit together nicely. For someone who is less than precise when it comes to measuring, this is a great technique to ensure a good fit. I then shaded in the notches that I wanted to cut out with my exacto knife. I did this to keep from cutting out the wrong notch accidentally.

By tilting your panel up you can see where the notches fit into each other. The white ones, or tabs will fit into the shaded ones, the ones I cut out.

Once you cut out the shaded boxes to create your notches, you should be able to easily assemble the light box.

Here's the light box assembled. This will create 3 nice white surfaces to bounce light off of to create a nice even light source for product photography. The final step is adding a strip of poster board to create a seamless backdrop for the product. Since the light box is 20" wide with a 1" margin on each side I needed to cut my poster board to be 18" wide.

Again, I did not want to use tape which could tear the box and the poster board, so I cut notches into the poster that fit into the tabs on the 'back' panel. I set the poster's notches into the 'back' panels, then laid the 'top' panel on top of it to hold it in place. It worked out great.

Here are the 2 dim desk lamps I used to test the setup. I'd recommend getting a couple of those silver dome lamps with daylight bulbs to give brighter, better light. Here's a comparison of the light box set up vs. the flash on my camera.

(For tips on making this shot more appealing see updated post on lighting and color)

As you can see, the flash blows out the subject when you try to get close to it and creates a harsh shadow. It also flattens the image because the light source is only coming from one location straight on. The light box feels nice and soft and helps show off the contours of the subject by providing light from multiple angles.

Once I finished with the light box you simply pulled it apart and all of the panels lay nice and flat so that you can store it easily til the next use!

For other takes on the light box hack, check out:

Steph's light box which is made out of an old box, cloth, and poster board. This one diffuses light instead of bouncing it off the walls

and

Sara's mini photo studio which is made out of pvc pipe, white sheets, and poster board.

both turned out GREAT! Nice job ladies. :D

Adding To The Shop

2008-12-08T19:25:00.000-08:00

After a bit of research on archival quality printing, I've decided to add a couple more items to my shop today. I chose to go with a few of the more interesting Ttv photos and an unframed print of the Wishful Thinking illustration.

I wanted to make sure that any prints that were purchased from me would resist fading and look nice and sharp. I'm looking mostly for prints that are guaranteed for 70+ years. From the bit that I've read, it's important to print on acid free paper to prevent yellowing, and use pigmented/archival ink to resist fading. I found a few online options that look promising. It took me a bit of time to sniff out these printers, so I thought I'd share them here to save anyone conducting a similar search some time. Here are my findings:

http://www.mpix.com/
http://www.iprintfromhome.com/
http://www.imagekind.com/
http://finerworks.com/
http://www.giclee-factory.com

I have yet to use any of these printers so I can't vouch for them. If you have used any of these printers, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I would really love to find a local printer to work with, I just am not sure where to start, especially if I'm not printing in bulk. If you're in the Indianapolis area, and you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

I'll be sure to post any findings and reviews once I've discovered a printer I like! Yay for learning about print! It's a wide wide world and it's SO not dead.

The Results Are In!

2008-12-06T18:56:00.000-08:00

My first attempt at printing with the gocco DEFINITELY didn't turn out as perfectly as I'd imagined it would, but isn't that the way with most first attempts? I set out to produce a set of prints to send out as Christmas cards and the experiment was full of lessons learned and questions I need to ask. Even though the prints didn't turn out as beautifully as I'd hoped they would, it was still fun to make. Here's a quick look at my process and my result.

First, I sketched up the initial design, scanned it in, then cleaned it up and played with colors in the computer. After a bit of playing, I finally ended up with this.I wish we had one of those little guys to take care of our shoveling for us! Least he has friends to make the work more fun.

Next I split the colors into 3 separate black and white compositions to use to burn the screens for the 3 different colors I wanted to print. I needed to take the compositions and have them printed on the laserjet printers at Kinkos because I needed carbon in the ink. Laserjet prints contain carbon, but my home inkjet printer does not. The first printout is what I used to burn the screen for the light blue color, the second for the light green, and the third to burn the screen for the dark green. I wasn't sure if there was too much detail in my illustration or not, so I was very curious to see if the detail of the shingles and the texture on the wall of the house would show up. I was pretty impressed by the results.

Insert blue filter then screen. The blue filter keeps the print from fusing to the screen when you burn it.Screw bulbs into housing then fit into top of the unit.Press down firmly on the front of the unit which will cause bulbs to flash and burn the screen. (I added a little flare to this photo for fun, cheesy I know, but hey this photo just didn't do the flash bulbing step justic)Here's a closeup of the middle screen. Check out the detail of the thin windowpanes and the ironwork. Pretty cool that the mesh is fine enough to pick all that up.

Once the screens were all burned it was time to print. I didn't have the color blue that I wanted, so I decided to mix my own. First lesson, I should have started with white, then added the blue. It was impossible to get it light enough once I had all that blue on my screen. Even after I printed all of my papers I still had TONS of ink left on the screen. All the ink was good for a nice even print though.Once you ink the screen, you lower the plastic sheet attached to the screen and fit the screen back into the unit facing the same way as when you burned it originally. Next step, place your paper on the rubber base, lower the lid and press. Then just lift the lid, the paper will stick to the screen, then you just peel it down gently and admire your print!
So, the colors couldn't really be further from what I'd originally envisioned. I decided to just roll with it though and deal with the brightness. Honestly, I dont mind the saturation, that crazy fluorescent green is kinda fun. I think if the blue was just a bit lighter and the dark green just a bit darker I would have been more ok with the overall look of the print.

I also learned that registering 3 colors with this model gocco is super difficult. Lots of mess-ups for sure.

The final point of frustration I had was knowing how much ink to flood the screen with. It seems to vary from color to color. I dont know if maybe the inks I have are different ages or if it has something to do with the pigment, but the dark green gave me ALL SORTS of agitation. Whenever I'd peel it off the screen I'd end up with certain areas with a heavier ink buildup than others. I was running low on the dark green ink, so I wasn't quite as generous with it as I was with the other two colors, and I wonder if that might be the culprit? If anyone has had similar experience with this kind of trouble, please share! Once I ran out I threw some black ink on the screen and it didn't give me that trouble... or maybe it did, but wasn't as noticeable because black is more opaque.

Does anyone have any tips on cleaning the screens? It seems impossible!

Overall, the experience was fun, and I cant WAIT to get more supplies for another project. I'm still unsure if I want to send these prints out as Christmas cards, or if I should just get the original illustration printed at kinkos or something to send out. I feel like the quality of this first run isn't necessarily what I want it to be to share with others, but then again is part of the charm in it's flaws? You can CERTAINLY tell they're hand-made. I'll have to live with them a bit longer to make my final decision.

So that's my first gocco experience in a nutshell! Hopefully there will be more to come.PS: I'd also recommend having furry helpers near by to give second opinions on the prints. Mylo was super helpful, especially when he laid on my feet to keep them extra warm.

Printing with the Gocco!!!

2008-12-05T22:08:00.000-08:00

Oh Gocco! I knew we'd be a good fit together. Why did I discover you so late?!!!

I've been having so much fun playing with my new toy! After finally finishing a 3 color print design for our Christmas cards this year I've begun the printing process. I don't want to give too much away til it's finished. I just wanted to share a quick progress shot that Alex took.

This thing the Gocco and I have, it's love. So simple, such quality. I'm desperate to continue our love affair! Why has Riso stopped making supplies?! If anyone out there knows of alternative gocco supplies PLEASE let me know. If not, maybe you knows of a similar printing setup that ISN'T going extinct. That would be great too.

I guess the only thing to do, for now, is just to enjoy the time I have left with my beloved Gocco.

I cant wait to see how this first print project turns out with all 3 inks! I'll post when they're finished.

My Etsy shop, La Grisette, is up and running!

2008-12-04T20:28:00.000-08:00

I'm trying a little experiment. I've purchased many a hand crafted item off Etsy over the past couple of years, and I always thought to myself, "Someday, I should post a couple items for sale and see if there's any interest". Well, today was that someday. I've opened an Etsy shop online and listed my first item for sale. Sure it needs finesse (the look, the wording, the information), sure I need to add more items to sell (photography prints, illustrations, gocco prints, tshirts), but for now, it's a start. So without further ado, I present 'La Grisette' my little shop on the web. Just one framed illustration for sale now. More items to come.

New Basement Tees

2008-12-03T12:29:00.000-08:00

The design and motion company I work for, The Basement, is in need of some company tees, so I put together this 3 color design. We wanted something other than just our logo slapped on a shirt, so I tried to integrate a bit of movement in the design to associate with all the motion work that we do. The plan is to print them on Alternative Apparel shirts (the perfect crew for men and organic scoop neck for women). We're hoping to get these printed and sent out to clients as holiday gifts, as well as for ourselves of course. I can't wait to see them finished, hopefully we can get them printed soon. Happy Wednesday!

The Exciting World of Split Toning!

2008-11-24T15:39:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I took this photo of my little niece, Margot, playing on the swing set earlier this fall. It wasn't the worst photo I took, but it was a gray, yucky day, so none of the colors really popped, and it didn't seem to evoke much emotion. I guess my eye never settles on one particular spot in the photo, so it's not super interesting. I wanted to try and do something to bring a bit more focus to the shot. She was in a very dreamy sort of mood that day, closing her eyes and just swinging and swinging, and I thought that the right kind of processing would allow me to bring out that mood more in the photo. Here's the original photo for you to compare.

I tried turning the photo black and white to see if it helped at all, but it still didn't help to draw the focus anywhere, if anything it made it worse by taking away her bright red sweatshirt. It just felt even more flat. I love the richer look of split toning so I thought I'd give it a try on this photo.

Here's a tutorial on how I achieved the look above.

Step 1: Add an adjustment layer that turns the image black and white

Step 2: Add a Color Balance adjustment layer, select highlights, and move the dials towards the red, magenta, and yellow. This will warm up the bright areas of the photo.

Step 3: With the Color Balance window still open, select shadows, and move the dials towards the red, magenta, and yellow. This will warm up the bright areas of the photo.

Step 4: To get the soft, dreamy look and punch up the contrast a bit. Duplicate the layer that your photo is on. Go to Filter > Blur > Lens blur then play with the threshold and radius to get nice bright spots that will highlight the sunny spots of your photo.

Step 5: Select the layer you've just blurred and change it's blending mode to "Soft Light"

Step 6: Now lower the opacity on the image so that the "dreaminess" isn't overpowering. (Unless that's what you're going for) In this case, I just wanted a subtle hint of it.

And now you should have a nice split tone dreamy effect on your image. I'd love to hear thoughts or other tips that you may have concerning this photo or tutorial.

The Basement's Crowd Surfing Game Launched!

2008-10-27T07:25:00.000-07:00

Well, our flash game for KFC finally launched. This was the first flash game I personally had been involved with, and I am continuously amazed at the cool things that these code people can do! I was responsible for the illustrated assets, the character design, background, and menu design, then handed it off to the rest of the team to make it do all of the cool stuff. It was such a fun project and it's really cool to see it live. Hopefully this will lead to many more great game projects.

You can play the game at www.surfthecrowds.com

There are also links to it on www.kfc.com, www.kfcrocks.com and www.ign.com

Character Design

2008-10-14T06:01:00.000-07:00

Two of the characters I designed for a national flash game we will soon be launching. More details to come. Rock on!

I think it's a sign

2008-09-19T22:53:00.000-07:00

Here is a quick glimpse in to a neighborhood on the east side. The thing about this neighborhood that caught my eye the most was the signage. The style of the signs seemed to suggest that the town must have boomed in the 50's but now they've all experienced a sort of urban decay. Perfect for a little TtV photo shoot.

Mustang Sally, through the viewfinder

2008-09-17T18:28:00.001-07:00

Somehow this TtV thing seems to capture the late summer warmth on a cherry red mustang far more eloquently than my dslr on its own. Working in a field where everything is post produced, there's something really freeing about creating a whole mood in an image before it ever reaches my photo editing software. No grunge masks, no massive exposure or color corrections, just a slight tweak of the curves to pop the darks and viola, an unsightly used car lot in a small town can feel completely warm and nostalgic. I posted more small town USA, TtV style, on my Flickr site.

Photo Week: Auto-Settings

2008-09-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

This week Photo Week is inspired by our camera's Auto-Settings

Share your work with Steph as she hosts this week's challenge.

Monday - LandscapeIt's a secret little landscape.

Tuesday - Macro

Alex was driving me around Lebanon to shoot some photos of our small TtV style and when I got back in the car this little guy was sitting on my door. He flew off onto a fence where I shot the rest of the photos.

Wednesday - Portrait

My sweet niece Sylvia Q.

Thursday - Action

My other sweet niece Margot being pushed on the swing by Uncle Alex.

Friday - Nighttime

Oh Gocco!

2008-09-17T07:16:00.000-07:00

This little device is the raddest thing I've seen in a long time! I've been lusting after it lately and imagining all the cool stuff I could do with it. It's not sold here in the US anymore, so it's become a rare-ish sort of item in these parts. How sad that something THIS fun should be largely unavailable to the general art loving public here in the US. Some day, hopefully, some lucky owner of a Gocco will tire of it's charms, or perhaps upgrade to one of the larger units leaving it available and in search of a new loving home. Some day...

TtV Experiment

2008-09-13T09:27:00.000-07:00

Last night I grabbed an old piece of cardboard and some electrical tape to construct my glare blocking tunnel for the TtV experiment. It didn't take long, I suppose I could have tried a little harder to make it look nice, but I was so anxious to get to using it I really didn't care about the aesthetics of the tube.

My contraption, though strange and ugly, worked great!

I took a couple test photos in the living room last night to test it out, then a couple more outside this morning. I can see some definite potential for cool photos. I'm curious if the length of the tube has anything to do with the way the edges of the photo will bubble. (why didn't I pay more attention in optical physics) Well, I'm off, I've got lots of experimenting to do!

The top of the camera flips up and you look down through the viewfinder

Here's my ugly little cardboard tube on the camera. I just stick the lens of my DSLR in the top of the tube and snap away.

Hello Beautiful!

2008-09-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago I won an old twin lens Kodak Duaflex camera on ebay. I just think they're super cool looking and I thought it would be something interesting to have on a shelf in the living room. Aside from it's aesthetic value, I of course thought that it would be fun to load it up with film and shoot some photos with it from time to time.

As soon as the package arrived, I opened the box, pulled out my new (old) toy and began to wander around the house. As I gazed down through the top of the camera through the viewfinder there was something really cool about what I saw. The same things I see EVERY day somehow looked different and a little more interesting. I thought little more about actually using the camera other than to show Alex the Duaflex when he got home. Just as I did, he held the camera at mid torso level and looked down through the top of the camera and commented on how neat things looked through the viewfinder.

Apparently we're not the only ones who think that a little magic happens when you look down through the veiwfinder of these old cameras. I recently found a post about TtV (Through the Viewfinder) Apparently there's a whole community of people who rig up their digital SLR cameras to take photos down through cameras like my duaflex. Here's a great how-to article that explains the process. I can't wait til tomorrow when I will rig up my own duaflex for some TtV fun!

Blue Friday

2008-08-29T17:22:00.000-07:00

Happy Blue Friday Everyone!!! I decided to play with my idea of Friday in addition to the color blue for this post. The long weekend is here which means time to put my feet up, enjoy a cold one, and spend some time in the lovely outdoors! Hooray for Fridays!

I had so much fun sharing photos with everyone during color week. I loved seeing all of the daily photo posts and reading all of the comments. Everyone really seemed to enjoy the project as well. I think that the color topic was a fun, easy way to get us back in the habit of carrying our cameras around with us. Nice work everyone, I was most impressed.

For our next task, I had an idea. What if we use the entire week to complete our exercise. This way, you can post photos as you take them throughout the week, but if you would like to spend more time on a photograph, there's not the investment of spending that kind of time every day. By the end of the week we should have a set of photos that reflect the theme, but whether you decide to take them each day or all in one day doesn't matter.

I'm going to 'tag' Steph as our next Photo Project host. See her blog for info on the next project and the list of participants.

Check out Steph's Blog for the next Photo Project

Alex
Ashley
Beth
Cambrie
Eric
Greg
Jen
Justin
Mindy
Nicole
Sara
Scott
Shelly
Steph
Sue

Thursday - Green

2008-08-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

The rest of my greens are up here on my flickr site.

Well, I only got a few greens before our battery died! booo! I was so excited, Alex and I were gonna go on a bike ride and capture some of the green country around us. Oh well, the ride was still nice, even if we don't have any photos from it. Luckily we got a few in the back yard.

Tomorrow is our last exercise for color week!

Blue will be a nice color to end on. I'm super impressed with how everyone has kept with this challenge this week. It's kind of a lot to do every day! Kudos to all who've participated. I really have enjoyed seeing everyone's awesome photos and reading all of the comments.

Alex
Ashley
Beth
Cambrie
Greg
Jen
Justin
Mindy
Nicole
Sara
Scott
Shelly
Steph
Sue

Wednesday - Yellow

2008-08-27T21:26:00.000-07:00

The rest of my yellow photos are posted here on my flickr site.

I loved seeing the honey bee's legs up close once I looked through my photos. It was such a brief moment that he was buzzing around the sunflower that I hardly noticed it at first. As you can see, my day involved a bit of laundry out to dry and some pretty yellow flowers. Photo project proves to be the most relaxing part of my day yet again. :)

Again, lovely photos everyone! I just adore the insight into the individual personal lives of everyone participating. The different perspectives, the various subject matter, wonderful all around! Tomorrow Greeeeeeeeeeeen!

Alex
Ashley
Beth
Cambrie
Greg
Jen
Justin
Mindy
Nicole
Sara
Scott
Shelly
Steph
Sue

Color Week Continues! Tuesday - Orange

2008-08-26T12:15:00.000-07:00

You can see the complete set here at my flickr site.

I totally ignored my better judgment to wait until the sun was at a more agreeable angle today and went out over my lunch break to grab some orange photos. (I know the truck is more 'rust' than orange, but I just had to share. What a strange little town!)

Nice job with the orange photos everyone! Tomorrow, Yellow Wednesday!

Alex
Ashley
Beth
Cambrie
Greg
Jen
Justin
Nicole
Sara
Scott
Shelly
Steph
Sue

Color Week Begins! Monday - Red/Pink

2008-08-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

A quick glimpse into my Red Monday. For more check out my 'Red' flikr set.

Great job everyone else who got their camera out today! I was most impressed by all of you tapping into your photographic creativity!

Alex
Ashley
Cambrie
Greg
Eric
Jen
Justin
Sara
Scott
Shelly
Steph
Sue

Panda Study

2008-08-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

Lazy Saturday mornings + getting started with some coffee before taking care of real life stuff = Panda Study

Margot my niece recently requested a panda and bamboo painted on her wall. Bamboo is a no brainer, but I dont generally draw bears so I thought I'd give it a quick shot. None of these are anything I'd consider using... but I figure the study and the process of figuring something out is worth sharing. I didn't get to any body studies, just faces straight on playing with different head shapes. The study ended with me feeling that all of this is very flat and boring, so next step is to play with better angles and poses.

PS: Still having trouble figuring out how to harness the power of the markers! I need to figure out a good technique/style for them. Right now it all just looks messy and blah! Guess some things just take putting in the time with the medium, frustrating as it may be without an undo button!!!!

Color Week!

2008-08-22T07:40:00.000-07:00

So Steph and I were having breakfast the other day and we decided that it would be cool to have a simple excuse to pick up the camera every day for one week. So we decided to do a "color" week where each day we would take 3 or so photos based on the chosen color of the day and post it on our blog.

If you'd like to join us in this little project, when you post your first red/pink photos on Monday email me with your blogsite/flickr page.

I'll keep a running list of participants beneath each color post next week and we'll be able to share our photos. I cant wait to see what everyone comes up with. :)

A couple weeks down the road we may do another one and call it pattern week, or reflection week, or whatever theme we want to play with. We just wanted a task that wouldn't take a lot of time, and that we could share with each other and get inspired by each other. Who knows, after a couple of these themes we might end up with some cool frameable art to give away as gifts or hang in our homes. At a minimum it will be a fun little task giving us an opportunity to learn more about the way we take photos.

Colors for Color week!

Monday - Red/Pink
Tuesday - Orange
Wednesday - Yellow
Thursday - Green
Friday - Blue

Wishful Thinking

2008-08-20T21:42:00.000-07:00

This is a sketch I did per the request of Ashley for her Fab For Less house. She gave a group of us a common theme and asked us to create a 6" X 6" black and white work of art based on the theme "wishful thinking" I guess I went SUPER literal as it related to her project, but I just couldn't get the imagery of the little girl, the victorian house, and the windy stairs out of my head.

Generally my style tends toward the more simple, flat, clean line, and graphic, so this time I wanted to experiment with perspective, and try using marker technique and a sketchy pen technique.

The markers dont come naturally to me at all. I definitely want to keep experimenting with them. I put this sketch off until the 11th hour though, so I just needed to finish it and get delivered to the house. I'll post pictures from the house later and explain more about the project.

These are just some sketches I did as I was experimenting with the look of this piece.

Lebfest Goes To Camp!

2008-08-19T07:38:00.000-07:00

This year we decided to take Lebfest to the great outdoors. We stripped away the competition and added canoeing and camping at Blue's Canoe and Livery down in Edinburgh. I'm excited to see everyone. It's become a reunion of sorts for many of us. It's also nice to have it at the camp grounds because we can open it up a bit more and encourage our friends to bring friends of theirs that we haven't met yet. Here's this year's t-shirt design.

No red or blue, we went with a neutral color and decided to make it seem like an old school camp tee. It was fun to play with texture instead of color when faced with a 2 color challenge. This is one of my first projects considering that.

Concept Art

2008-08-18T13:50:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to show some in progress concept art for an internal animation. No real details available yet.

Transitions Lenses Eyeglass Guide 2.0

2008-08-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

So I just realized I'd never blogged about the launch of our latest project for Transitions Lenses.

We worked with Brandwidth to create an online quiz of sorts to educate the user on lens options that might fit their lifestyle. At the end of the quiz it allows the user to print out their results in a format that will help her eye care professional work with her to decide which lens options would best suit her.

My job was the general look and feel of the animations. Stanley and I worked together to create assets, and then I animated the videos. Brian was in charge of general art direction, interface design, and 3d assets, and Mark did all the flash work for the tool.

Check out the tool and anywhere you see a yellow button like this:
you'll be able to check out one of my animations. I'll try and work out a way to get the video's in my blog.

Elizabeth's Story Launches!

2008-08-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

My buddies at Mediasauce informed me that the last project I worked on while I was there finally launched. Check it out! Maybe even donate to help Riley Hospital build their new patient care tower. :) www.elizabethsstory.org Great job guys!

Invitation Revisions

2008-06-10T14:21:00.000-07:00

***SEE REVISON 3 at the BOTTOM OF THIS POST***
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you SO much to everyone who gave their opinions, impressions, and suggestions. It was great feedback. Here is a first round of revisions where I focused on the following:

-playing up the ticket theme
-keeping the visual interest of the asymmetrical design
-keeping the information organized and easy to read making the title, sara and robs name, and the date/time the dominant information
-minimizing the feeling of currency
-reducing the overly formal feeling, while maintaining the elegance fitting to a wedding

I'd love to hear feedback based on these revisions. Did the changes do what I set out to accomplish. Are there other areas where maybe I've missed the mark or something still feels a bit visually unsettling? Thank you so much for your time and your thoughts.

***UPDATE***

Mindy, I hear what you're sayin about the address, that was the thing I pissed around with the most during my quick little revision stint this afternoon, then I decided to give up and mow the grass. ha Anyway, I was afraid to cram too much stuff on the left, but I think it's better than having it along the bottom. On the reception card the address isn't necessary, and i suppose since there will be a map and directions on the back, I could leave it out of this one... hmmmm... it certainly would fit nicer. I'll talk to the bride to be about it and see what she's cool with. If she does decide she wants it all on the front, here's a better arrangement.

Shelly, thanks! You're so supportive :)

Brian, oh yes, the dog will get some love on the opposite side of the Wedding card. It wouldn't be Sara's wedding without it!

***UPDATE***

Here is the third round of revisions where I focused on the following:

-re-creating the "admission" block to fit with the elegant design of the rest of the ticket better and punch up the decorative border.
-adding the dotted divider between the admission stub and the rest of the ticket to visually enforce the ticket theme.
-incorporating the date into the design a little more while still keeping it separate and easy to spot, also added the Saturday back into the date.
-adjusting the title font to something with a little more punch
-changing the wording in the copy to say "dinner" as opposed to "reception" to avoid sounding repetitive

Wedding Invitation

2008-06-09T07:35:00.000-07:00

----------Final Invitation Design Posted 9/29/08----------

It has recently been brought to my attention that I never posted the final designs so here it is!

----------------------------------------------------------

Invitation Back

Invitation Front (Option 1)

Invitation Front (Option 2)

Invitation Front (Option 3)

The idea behind the invite was a ticket theme, an idea that Rob had, but that Sara wasn't crazy about. After we talked about an option where we could make it look less like a sports ticket and more like a broadway show or almost circus-esque ticket she thought that would be very cool and different. Her other request was to involve her dog in some way.

Also in the envelope there will be a reception card that is the same size as the invite card. It will be a similar design but will say "reception" instead of ceremony and the back side will be a map and directions. There will also be an rsvp postcard that will be themed accordingly without being too matchy matchy.

Anyway, your reactions and feedback would be GREATLY appreciated, not just to make sure that Sara and Rob's invite is the best that it can be, but also because we'll most likely use these elements in future designs.

Bored Bird

2008-05-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

Rawr... oh look.... i'm ravaging the city... it's so... tiring.

2008-05-15T13:39:00.000-07:00

Just a work in progress... working mostly with character personality, no color or attention given to environment style yet.

After some mouth tweaking it went off to Brian who developed the color scheme and placed him in the city environment. Here's a sequence of his animation that will serve as the opening for our demo reel.

Elizabeth's Story Animations

2008-04-04T10:06:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick preview of some Elizabeth Story animation progress.

Spokeskids Website Approved

2008-03-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

The National Insurance Services site that I've been working on was approved today. The site will be re-branded with the school logo as schools sign up with NIS to provide retirement planning services for their teachers.

Oh The People You'll Meet

2008-03-17T13:40:00.000-07:00

In between a few After Effects CS3 tutorials today, I took a break from staring at the computer to sketch a bit. The three heads on the right seem like they could all be part of the same adventure.

More!!!! More?

2008-03-14T10:44:00.000-07:00

You know how it is. :)

This is a sketch I just finished and I think it would be nice to do a series of em on canvas with ink and acrylic... well... at least next time I'm feeling a little more like sketch 2.

Philosophy Video for new MS Website

2008-02-01T13:41:00.000-08:00

Here is a quick animation that I put together for the Philosophy section of the new Mediasauce website with Larry's help on initial concept, Mitch as writer and voice talent, Mike as the Creative Director, and Andy as audio extraodinaire. It was nice to have some freedom on the direction of the design and animation style. I enjoyed sketching some of the elements with a pen that were included in the design, and it was fun to jump into Maya briefly to create the root animation. Thanks for the Maya crash course Joseph!

I have to say, the project went relatively smoothly until I tried to mess with the temporal properties of my position key frames in the graph editor. I dont quite understand why the key frame splits or why you cant angle the handles to make the curve you're after. It's something I definitely need to investigate further because it was driving me crazy! I look forward to spending more time on the next piece like this one and incorporating more pizazz and 2ndary movement.

Here's an image of the design I used for the animation. The photos all came from personal travel photos I've taken and the flower designs are the result of some fun with pen and ink. I liked how they turned out and would love to make a funky fabric based on them at some point.

This Year's Holiday Greeting from Mediasauce

2007-12-19T06:47:00.000-08:00

Here's this year's Holiday greeting from Mediasauce. Vince, Dan, and I did the white board time-lapse illustration, and Mike and Mitch worked together on the interface.

Click here to watch the greeting.

Indy Green Tips Tshirt Designs

2007-12-18T08:56:00.000-08:00

Here at Mediasauce I was in charge of organizing a day where everyone in the company would devote 5 hrs of service to our community. Everyone worked together to create a PSA of sorts that shares small ways that everyone can work together to help make Indy a greener place. I'll share more about the project once it launches. For now, I'll just share a tshirt design that I put together for it using some of the design elements we created on our day of service.

Click here to see my other t-shirt designs

Bookend with Audio

2007-11-27T14:04:00.000-08:00

After working with Andy on what I was thinking on the audio, he produced this lovely sound track for the bookend. Dan made the scurry sound for us with a couple pencils on a pad of paper. Well done guys!!!

Mediasauce.TV Bookends

2007-11-21T07:13:00.000-08:00

I've been working on a little bookend animation for the videos that will be posted on mediasauce.tv The "network" hasn't launched yet, but should sometime within the next couple weeks. Dan created this little tv character that will be used throughout the site. A lot of the videos will be that low fi production feel so I wanted to animate his little character to feel that way as well. I liked the idea of seeing the paper flip and change as the poses changed and gave a slight wiggle to the lines of the tv character to simulate that hand drawn wiggle. (It's a bit hard to see on the small video) I've still got some sound effects and a nice little music track to add. Dan is going to play some snare drum for the music track. I cant wait to get it all together.

Lip synch animating with the slide controller in After Effects

2007-09-26T15:02:00.000-07:00

The only lip synch animations that I've done, I've done in Flash. I wasn't entirely sure how the workflow would be most efficient in after effects, but here's one that I discovered to be pretty quick and clean. It involves time remapping and a slider control.

1. Bring the ai file of your character in as a composition with all of the different mouth shapes on their own layer.

2. Pre-compose all of the mouth shapes into one composition called "Mouth Shapes". You should now have 2 layers in your main composition. One layer is the composition containing the mouth shapes, and the other is the layer containing everything else.

3. Open the "Mouth Shapes" composition and make the duration of each layer 1 frame. Use Animation presets to stagger the layers end to end so that you have a different mouth shape on every frame of the composition. (Animation>Keyframe Assistant>Sequence layers) Make sure that the "overlap" checkbox is un-checked.

To keep things neat and tidy, change your comp settings to match the number of frames in your comp. ie. if you have 15 mouth shapes, make the comp 15 frames long.

4. Go back out into your main composition. Select the "Mouth Shapes" layer and enable time remapping. (Layer>Time>Enable Time Remapping) Select the time remapping properties under the mouth shapes layer and type the number 3 into the time code contained in that property layer. You should notice that the mouth shape changed to correspond with the mouth shape in frame 3 of your "Mouth Shapes" composition. Set a keyframe in the time remapping property. Be sure to right click on the keyframe and select "Toggle Hold Keyframe" from the menu. This way it will hold on frame 3 of that composition until you set another key frame to change it to a different mouth shape.

5. Now it's time to add slider controls. Delete the key frames that you added to the "Mouth Shapes" layer. The next step is to create a null object that will control the time remapping property of the "Mouth Shapes" composition.

Go to Layer>New>Null Object. Name your new layer "Mouth Controller".

Next, add a slider control to the layer. (Effect>Expression Controls>Slider Control)

Add an expression to the slider control effect that you just added to the "Mouth Controller" layer (Animation>Add Expression).

Now, select the time remapping effect on your "Mouth Shapes" layer and add an expression to it as well.

Add this script to the "Mouth Controller" layer: effect("Frequency")("Slider")

Now add this script to the time remap expression: [1*thisComp.layer("Mouth Controller").effect("Frequency")("Slider")];

You should now be able to go up to the slider controls under "Mouth Controller" and click and hold on the value then move your cursor from left to right and see the mouth shapes change. Add a keyframe to the slider property and dont forget to change it to hold keyframe. Scrub along your audio until you're ready for the mouth shape to change then move the slider again to the new shape you want to use. It should automatically add a key frame for you.

There may be additional tricks to use with this method, and there may be ways to clean it up, but this new technique allowed me to animate a lip synch for my character very quickly. Below is a sample of the animation. The same method could be used for other facial features such as eyebrows, forehead wrinkles, ear wiggles and blinking. The secondary motion of the head, arms, and rest of the body could be added afterwards.

Now I just need to put together a little slider app that does the same thing for flash. :)

(This animation test was done using a character from an American United Life Insurance Company project that we animated that is used to encourage 20 somethings to think about saving for retirement. Special thanks to Vince Gorman and Dave Devries for character design)

Let me know if this tutorial was helpful! I'd love feedback.

Sorority Anti-Hazing PSA Illustration

2007-09-25T12:35:00.000-07:00

Here's an illustration of a sorority girl that I did for an anti-hazing public service announcement. We do a lot of simple vector-y illustrations here at work because most are used to be animated in flash. It would be fun to drum up some work that allowed us to do illustrations with more texture and depth. For now, we'll just have to work on some of those outside of work.

Grisette Logo

2007-09-23T19:49:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been dabbling in t-shirt screen print design. Mostly I've been putting designs together for specific events, but I also have quite a few little designs that I created just for fun. I thought I might try and take them around to local boutiques to see if there is any interest. I figured I should put them under some sort of name or label, so I decided on the name "Grisette". There were several aspects of the term that appealed to me and seemed to fit with the type of designs that I am producing. Here's a draft of the logo that I'm playing with for the label. Hopefully soon I can put together a few experiments with my own screen here at home. The process is so interesting to me. It'll be a tight squeeze trying to do anything in the bathroom downstairs, but we'll see how it goes. If nothing else, it will give me a fun project to work on once it starts getting cold outside.

KeepMyTV.com is Live

2007-09-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

Well, the Save My Set site went through a few rounds of revisions and eventually ended up here at KeepMyTv.com. My favorite part of this site was retro fitting the design with the translated headers for the Spanish site. Nice job to Mindy, Spencer, and the rest of the web/interactive team on getting it up and running on a tight deadline.

Oranje 2007

2007-09-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

My first experience with Oranje was last Saturday. Mediasauce had booth space so I was there helping to set it up beforehand then worked a shift during the event. Oranje was located in a giant abandoned factory this year so there was a lot of open space to play with. Our booth was made up of giant sheets of viscuine that we stretched over the metal poles that formed its frame. We set up 2 photo scenes inside the booth.

The "play" photo scene that a blue sky scene, sod floor, and random props like sunglasses, wigs, bubbles, windmills, badmitten rackets, and kickballs. The "work" scene contained wood paneling, an old desk, phonebooks, old computers, and construction hats. We would let people back into the scenes 2 at a time, grab their email, then let them pose however they were inspired to pose for 3 photos. The range of inspiration was wide!

Another cool thing about the booth was that the photos that were taken were then projected onto the viscuine so that it could be seen outside the booth. I will have to find photos of the outsde of the booth from someone to share.

I think it was one of the more "interactive" booths at Oranje and a lot of people seemed to have fun with it. On Tuesday we launched a website where people could type in the email address that they gave us to find and download their photos. Nate G did the design for the page as well as the "Work is Play" logo that was projected onto the booth. He was also one of the principle photographers along with Mitch M. and Larry L.

Here are 3 snapshots from our group and one from a practice shot during setup:
.

I had my little video camera with me during setup, it will show you a little more about what the space was like that we had to work with. You will need to have the Divx codec in order to view the movie. I'll have to add photos of the booth all put together later.

Old Pencil Drawings

2007-09-14T18:32:00.000-07:00

Another area of the old HD contained a few pencil drawings of my family that I did many moon ago and the tea diffuser I did in metals and jewelry making. The roof is a lid that lifts off so that you can insert the tea leaves, then you place the tea diffuser into an entire pot of tea. The tea diffuses out of the carvings on the side that were made with a very tiny little coping saw.

Here's a more recent sketch I did for an art swap we had at work.

Old School Work Archives

2007-09-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

Very old Photoshop work. (Photoshop airbrushed illustration of Edgerin James, an airbrushed illustration of a girl viewing the streets of chicago from her car window, a collage design using some photos I'd taken around Lafayette, and a scientific illustration of a garden spider)

Old segment intros I did for a college show I worked on called CG-TV. They were created using Illustrator, 3D Max, and After Effects.

An old flash project I worked on for ITaP one summer. Created the characters and animation using Illustrator and Flash.

Tonight I found my old external hard drive from school. I had to search through boxes of cables to find a power supply and cable to hook it up. I found some of my first photoshop projects, an old ITaP flash project, and a couple of little animated intros that I did for this computer graphics tech tv type show we did back then (You can see Alex and Kindari as hosts at the very end of the Tech spot intro). It is so embarrassing to look back at most of this old stuff, but it's all part of the process so we cant just pretend it never happened! Although, I'll admit, there are definitely things too terrifying to see the light of day that will remain on the hd for the sake of anyone actually viewing this blog.

Armadillos are fascinating!

2007-09-14T13:58:00.000-07:00

They jump straight up in the air when they get surprised! Unfortunately this seems to be a cruel involuntary defense mechanism to give a creature who needs to cross busy intersections. Poor lil fella.

Lebfest '07 T-shirts in Action

2007-09-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

Last weekend marked the 2nd annual Lebfest. Around 60 of us gathered in the "Friendly City" of Lebanon, Indiana to celebrate Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Friendliness. We gathered beneath the friendly city water tower for opening ceremonies then competed in sports at the park, hung out, challenged each other to ridiculous competitions, and partied until the wee hours of the morning. We split into two teams that honor the two most popular forms of lawn ornamentation embraced by the city, the Porch Geese and the Garden Gnomes. As explained below, the t-shirts were designed to capture the energy and the "fest" aspect of Lebfest, while at the same time highlighting the team mascots and over-all spirit of patriotism that the town of Lebanon (and our beloved festival) prides itself on. Here are some shots of the shirts in action at Lebfest '07.

KeepMyTV.com

2007-09-13T10:56:00.000-07:00

After several back and forths, name changes, and a spanish site translation the KeepMyTV.com site is under construction. It should launch Mondy, at which point I'll link the site to this blogpost. In the meantime, here's the updated design.

Aquaphobic Octopus or Supersoaker Sniper

2007-09-06T09:10:00.000-07:00

Ok.... so the title is a groaner and could use some help, but here's a little colored pencil/sharpie drawing I threw together for an art swap we did here at work. I was in the mood to do something semi-colorful on a nice dark deep colored paper and this is what it evolved into. I love very organic twisty imagery and octopus legs just sort of formed from my squiggles as I was planning it out. Before I knew it I had a very terrified looking octopus and ended up adding the little fishy as his aggressor. The paper was textured, so I decided to work with it and see what kind of result I could get using the textured side. I couldn't quite get the colors of this scan representative of the original, but oh well, close enough.

Everyone who participated in our art swap brought in a piece of art. There was a ton of variety from quilts, to photography, to paintings, to re-purposed ready made art, to quick character sketches. We all drew numbers and swapped based on what we drew. It was a lot of fun, I ended up with a very cool "burner" that Dan did, and Frank Tai got this piece.

Other old sketches.

Speak Easy Invite Illustrations

2007-08-31T10:43:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week our illustration/animation team started compiling a bunch of illustrations to put together an illustration reel. I bounce around between so many different things, I had to dig way back for some actual illustration work that I'd done and I came across this old Speak Easy invite that we put together for Suros. Mike Rendel, a fantastic print designer here, put together the layout.

The Penguin Monologues

2007-08-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

Here are some penguin sketches I doodled recently. I developed one into a vector character that I began animating for fun. The animation isn't done yet, but here's the start.

T-shirt Fun

2007-08-31T10:14:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple months I've dabbled in a t-shirt design here and there for various reasons, so I thought I'd include a couple of them in a post. More designs are in the works, maybe some day soon I'll actually put some little label together dedicated to wearable art. I dig t-shirt design, but it would be so fun to put together skirts, purses, etc. Hopefully things should slow down at home soon, and I'll be able to break out my new screen and do some experiments!

1. For The Cure Shirt: A shirt I put together to help raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. My purpose for designing this shirt was to create something that I personally would like to wear and hope that others would want to wear it as well. I like the idea of design that can benefit a cause without containing an image of a ribbon or helping hands. (I'm happy to get re-prints made if you are ever in need of a fund raising shirt for this organization. 100% of the profits will ALWAYS go to The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.)

2. Love is All Shirt: A shirt commissioned by Soul Sister for the Indy Pride festival. They requested a rainbow bullseye and the tagline "Love is All" I wanted to incorporate urban imagery since it was a Downtown Indy festival so I included the buildings and spray paint. I originally had a few prominent buildings from downtown, but I wasn't sure if I should be concerned about the companies that own the buildings since I might be associating those companies with an event without getting permission, so I ended up making the buildings more of a general representation of the city. I also wanted to use very saturated, bright colors that would pop off the shirt and decided to add a bit more interest by breaking up the bullseye. The placement of the buildings and the organic shapes reaching out from behind also implied that the bullseye was a representation of the entire world, re-enforcing the "love is all" tag line.

3. Lebfest '07: This shirt was designed for a mini-event that my friends and I have put together for the last 2 years. The opening ceremonies are held underneath the town's water tower which contains the town's nickname of "The Friendly City". I wanted to play up the "festival" part of Lebfest which drove the general idea behind the design. The geese and gnomes represent the two team names of "Porch Geese" and "Garden Gnomes (which can be found on NUMEROUS porches around the town of Lebanon... lawn ornaments are BIG here).

As a side note, PRN Graphics is a local apparel printing company who I love and trust to get my designs printed. Today I was browsing around their site (because I needed their phone number to call about the Lebfest shirts) and saw that they included my design in their portfolio section. It was surprising to see it on their site. They did a stellar job with the prints and they're really great to work with. If you're in need of a printer, these guys get two thumbs up!

Save My Set!

2007-08-31T09:35:00.000-07:00

Animation requests have been a bit slow this week at Mediasauce so I'm helping out the design team with a web mock for Thomson. They're releasing a little converter device for sets that only accept analog signals. The demographic for the website is primarily older individuals who are looking for a way to keep their old tv with the switch of national broadcast signals from analog to digital, so it was important that it seemed friendly, bright, and had large text. It was also important that the majority of the text is html for search engines to spider through. I'll link the site to this post when/if it goes live. Dan Thomson, one of the illustrators I work with did the cute TV cartoon guy, and Dave Devries, another fabulous illustrator, did the comic illustrations in the center of the page.

Girls Can Draw Too

2007-06-28T11:51:00.000-07:00

My friend Vince at work sent me a link to this photo on flickr. Thank goodness there were young men around to lift all those heavy pencils!

Pitching Roster

2007-06-28T11:17:00.000-07:00

The last couple days at work I've been working on a layout to help pitch the idea for Roster. Its about hooking up celebrities with fans via xbox live gaming. The website allows fans to watch the the games online in addition to a bunch of other video content that helps bring celebrities closer to the fans. Perhaps fans could write in an ask a question and the celebrity would answer over a video interview, you could watch him give a tour of his home, or sing some karaoke. The idea has room to grow and change, but here's a first run of my layout to help the investors envision it's potential and appeal to the younger generation.

Sometimes I Make Things

2007-06-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you have to. Sometimes when you don't, you get grouchy, and depressed, and nothing seems very exciting, and everything seems a little off. Then you make a sketch, or a print, or an animation, or a window box and you feel better, and pretty dumb for not knowing what was wrong after 26 years of the same problem. I'm putting together this blog to remind myself that sometimes I make things. Not always portfolio worthy earth shatteringly awesome things, but things that make me feel whole.