Illustration Friday – ‘Faded’

I’ve always had a soft spot for chameleons, with their multi-directional eyes and their awesome colour changing ability they have always seemed one of the world’s stranger inhabitants. So, when I saw this week’s Illustration Friday topic, Faded, my mind drifted towards the chameleon and the type of situation where blending in to the background might not help things!!!

So, may I present, Crispin, your friendly neighbourhood chameleon… okay, so there’s a chance he’s also a small time crook but if that’s the case then his colour changing stills aren’t going to help in a police identity parade!!!

‘Unusual Suspect’ by A.R Vincent, copyright 2012

This unusual suspect was created in Photoshop, though unlike last week he was based on several sketches of chameleons as I wanted to capture his chameleon-ness.

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Illustration Friday – ‘Kernel’

I was told recently that my style was very ‘cute’ and, though I don’t have a problem with that as such, I wanted to try something different for this weeks IF something that was far from cute! Besides, when I saw the topic of ‘Kernel’ for Illustration Friday this week nothing immediately leapt to mind so I decided it would be a good time to let my imagination show me the way…

The design of the creature actually came to me as I was staring at the irregular, blotchy pattern on a piece of linoleum – some people see faces, I see hideous mutant plant monsters from outer space, I guess thems the breaks! When I started creating the beasty, first as a pencil sketch and then in Photoshop, I actually had no idea about the story surrounding it or if it would tie in to the theme. However, as the little critter took shape he started to tell me his story and I discovered that this extra terrestrial piece of sentient flora was no pot plant!!

Now the art is done and posted I’m going to pen a story to go with him and perhaps see about posting that here too.

Until then my friends, look to the skies and think twice before mowing your lawn this summer… because one day your lawn may want revenge… mwa-ha-ha!!

Getting My Head Around Adobe After Effects

Whilst lamenting the problems I was having recently animating in Flash someone suggested a better program to try would be After Effects. So yesterday I decided to give it a go!

After Effects has been languishing on my PC for quite a while now as, like Adobe Bridge and Soundbooth, it was part of the Adobe Creative Suite. Despite the fact that I had heard great things about the program, I have never been sure quite what to do with After Effects. Part of this dilemma came from being slightly unsure what it did! I had originally been introduced to it as a motion graphics package but quickly discovered that it was equally, if not better, known as a VFX tool. However, since neither VFX or motion graphics were my immediate concern when I got the Suite my attentions strayed to Photoshop and Flash and After Effects was put to one side.

A much more significant part of the problem I had with After Effects was, since I had never had need of it, I had never learnt it and thus hadn’t the foggiest how to use it! But yesterday, with an intimidatingly hefty tome on the subject beside me and a screen full of free video tutorial, I started to find out what dark magic I had to master to master After Effects and today I tried to implement what I had learnt on a completely new project.

Here’s the result…

Ugly Joe himself was created in Photoshop and the sequences were put together and titles added in Premiere Pro, but all the animating was done in After Effects… possibly proving that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing ;P

Illustration Friday – Jump

“Captain, the core is at capacity, we are ready to make the jump to hyperspace now.”

You may conclude that I’ve been watching too much sci-fi at the moment, but the first place my brain went when I saw the word ‘Jump’, the topic of this weeks Illustration Friday, was space travel. This space-ship, which is about to make the jump to hyper-space, was inspired by a tutorial from Practical Photoshop magazine. I say inspired because I once i got the general gist of the thing I quickly abandoned the tut and went my own way!

"Ready to jump to hyperspace" by A.R. Vincent, copyright 2012

I’ve become over recent years and many Illustration Friay’s an increasing fan of Photoshop which, so far anyway, has become the stand out member of the Creative Suite family and yet I have never really done much with photo manipulation, montage and compositing. So this, as I seem to say so often in these posts, was a learning curve and an eye opener to one more facet of Photoshop.