I started a Flickr account just for posting design and illustration projects too.
I’m hoping to get some networking going on and Flickr seems to be where the design nerds are (instead of MySpace, which I’m not into).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nosweet/
Right now, it’s sort of a “greatest hits” + new stuff. I’ll organize it later.
I recycled a lot of the elements from the killed “oak tree” concept into a pro bono Channel 102 job. Not 100% in love with this one yet. The elements on the left side look a little thin.
Until I get some paying work I’ll be working on that Harold poster and putting it up for sale on CafePress…
The producers of “an oak tree” have just killed the job; the author/actor of the show insisted they use the UK art (designed by his wife) with no compromises (or improvements).
I’ll probably put up the poster I had done so far on the site anyway, since I spent two days on it.
I need to get some design work fast to pay Oct rent.
The clip art isn’t quite right, the somnambulist looks more relaxed than entranced.
I had an out of the blue call to do publicity materials for the Perry St Theatre’s next play. I wish I had quoted them a higher fee, but at least its work.
I’m adapting the play cover/UK poster for the play, “An Oak Tree,” so some of the “figuring out what they want” work is done for me. The director and producer contacted me after getting a reference from a producer’s office that I had done “Tails” and “Laughing Liberally” for (I don’t have “Laughing Liberally” on the site since it’s not one I think of as a great design success, but had to be approved by a panel—design by committe).
The Perry St. team liked the cards I did for UCB LA and NY with a day-glo circus look and also the sloppy-on-purpose Four Faces of Eve card and wanted a type treatment along those lines.
They want to continue using the 19th Century engraving of a hypnotist and a subject, but the image is so degraded in the original it looks like it was taken from the web and blown up 500%. I’m trying to find a similar image in a Dover print book, but no luck so far. I may have to collage it from a couple cuts.
The pink and lime color scheme was also on the UK poster… only there they called it a colour scheme (pronounced sheem to match the Brit “shed-oo-al”)
the first steps
I think I like this drawing style for the scene circles… white outline. Maybe with some shading matching the background color of the beat. I drew the thumbnails very quickly and with a mouse (it’s tiny in this preview so you can’t make it out)—a sad man with falconer’s glove and a hawk conversing with a little girl with a giant lollipop.
If that image describes 7 of your 9 scenes in a Harold (as depicted in this chart)... it’s not a very good Harold.
When I take a design job, I never know how long its going to take. I’ve been lucky working with performers who usually have some idea of what they want (having written the show its going with) and then with a few tweaks, it’s out the door.
Sometimes, that isn’t the case.
I’ve wanted to do some sort of edu-tainment graphic project with instructional content related to improv basics.
At first I was going to do something that was more a joke, on the confrontational/accusatory model of a Jack Chick tract with a title like “Your Improv Sucks” or “Bad Improvisers Go To Hell.” I still may do that, but the prospect of hand-drawing all those tiny panels (saying “HAW HAW!”) and looking up Bible quotations to site is too much work.
I do really like the Chris Ware/McSweeneys hyper-precise aesthetic of arrows and infographics, so I started doing a poster explaining a Harold, that is simultaneously arcane but accurate. (My palate is sampled on the left.)
I need to write copy and do spot illustrations in the circles representing the scenes themselves (tinted to match which beat they’re in). I need to find a better way to represent “connections” in the third beat.
I think I might do another poster on the elements of a scene, modeled on a child’s educational poster I had in college of “The Parts of A Tooth” mixed with my kitten metaphor on the nature of game.
_
UPDATE: The Illustrator file of this project has mysteriously become “corrupted,” so I lost it and have to start over from scratch. Ay yi yi.
Channel 102 has never done any promotion at all. There’s been a sudden upswing in interest in raising the profile of the site and the screenings and I volunteered to make business card sized microflyers that would be equally useful for show creators to promote their own shows and for fans to pass on to their friends.
I also still hate the 102 logo… I’d like to do a new one that doesn’t at all reference “TV Guide”
I used two of Pantone’s colors of Spring 2007 as well. I wanted to be all trendy-like. It’s Fashion Week.
Rough sketch on paper, which I don’t usually do for Illustrator-only pictures, but action poses are tricky. The brief was it should be retro-inspired and like the last scene of a screwball love story, “running away from the church” type deal. The background should refer to the look of the venue, Belvedere Mansion in the Hudson Valley (I had a postage stamp sized photo of the place to work from).
First rough pass of converting to Illustrator, tracing the sketch and building things from simple shapes. The girl’s face is generic; the hands are potatoes. Did this in one 12-hour insomniatic jag.
Flowers and champagne… and hands.
Biggest change is the background… most of the details are covered by the characters there, but every cornice, column, and moulding I could make out in the photo I added. The girl’s leg is kind of disappearing into the background unfortunately.
Waiting for feedback now before making any more changes.
Added: The client dropped some comments, leading to this revision, late in the day:
