Work that is somewhere in between.
Not all of my work is traditional drawing, painting or photography.
Part of my education in the field of Graphic Design was in the realm of computer-generated
imagery. Some of what follows is my own invention, and some of it is work
I did while employed at Robertson
Marketing in the late 90's.
All personal artwork was constructed as black and white vector art
in Macromedia
Freehand and then imported into Adobe
Photoshop and enhanced, sometimes with Kai's
Power Tools filters. Most of the techniques were learned from the Photoshop
WOW series of books, probably dollar for dollar the best instructional
guides I've seen.
All business art was constructed solely in Macromedia Freehand, with
the occasional use of Adobe Streamline to convert line drawings into vector
art for manipulation.
Phoenix
The first symbol I ever designed for myself, and the first use of any
Photoshop WOW book, all the way back when it was just Photoshop 3. I like
the phoenix as a symbol of rebirth, hope and perseverance.
Dragonfire
The first web logo I ever made for a friend who had just started up
his own server, dragonfire.net, in 1996. Unfortunately, he turned the site
over to a waste of DNA who has just squatted on the domain name since 2000.
Espernet
The second logo I ever designed for web use, it's actually still being
used by
Espernet IRC Services. This was
a mishmash of different techniques and filters which I just sort of threw
together on a whim, but they liked it better than the other variation shown
below.
Espernet take two
This was the version I preferred, being a much tighter and coherent
composition... but I'll survive.
Vector
Designed for a friend's personal web page, it's also the first transparent
gif I ever made. There's only one flaw in the design... can you spot it?
Final Fantasy, the Roleplaying Game
Just something I threw together after seeing a cover for a video game
I liked.
Shame
My second attempt at transparent gifs, this was to be the title graphic
for a page about bad fanfics that never got off the ground. This was still
during my "Throw every technique you can think of at it" phase.
More sigils
A wallpaper I made for a best friend, from something he sketched after
a fever dream.
Wyrm
My second symbol, the dragon, stands for power, strength and knowledge.
This was the first of many uses of the symbol to test out various Photoshop
techniques.
Stone Wyrm
Another technique, this one was used for desktop wallpaper.
Stainless Steel Wyrm
One of the flashier techniques I've learned. A small graphic of this
was used on my last incarnation of a homepage for many years.
Flameburst Wyrm
The latest variation, which you've no doubt seen if you came in by
way of the
front door. This was adapted
from the
GFX^TM site's
Ray of Light 2 tutorial for Photoshop.
Phoenix Mark II
After three years, I finally redesigned the phoenix symbol to be more
stylistically compatible with the wyrm logo. This was the first rough CGI
of it to see how it looked.
Etched in Stone Phoenix Mark II
This was a variation of the stone etched effect used above, but with
the original symbol roughened up to make it look more primitive. Nifty but
useless.
Ayr's Ayle
Originally a pun by an IRC friend, when I started trying my hand at
making cordials such as Limoncello, I decided to make a bottle label to go
with it.
Gettysburg
Everything after this point was created for various clients at
Robertson
Marketing during my stint as assistant artist there from '96 to '99.
This was a concept design for a souvenir tshirt at a Shoney's in
Gettysburg, PA. I went to the national archives online and put together photos of the leaders and generals, after taking a little while to educate myself more about the battle itself.
Hidden Valley Country Club take 1
They wanted rough lines and water. So they got it.
Hidden Valley Country Club take 2
This was the second design, which they settled on and are still using
to this day. There is a rather fun boost to the ego to see something you threw
together in about thirty minutes seven years ago as a sticker on the back
of a brand new vehicle.
Anchor Splash '97
A tshirt design for a sorority at
Roanoke
College.
Make me an offer...
Another design for Roanoke College. Cheesy and light-hearted, but it
went over very well. It wasn't until a year later that a friend pointed out
I had left a handle off the tommygun. Ooops.
Spring Fling '98
And the next year they needed another spring tshirt design...
Hubbell Lighting: The Nightmare part 1
Occasionally you get the client from hell. Hubbell Lighting was one
such client. What follows are only four out of thirteen total designs I did
and several more by my boss after being told "Be creative". This
is the biggest lie you will ever hear in the commercial art field.
Hubbell Lighting: The Nightmare part 2
They initially liked the above design, but wanted to see some color
variations. I will spare you the horrid grey and yellow company color scheme
one...
Hubbell Lighting: The Nightmare part 3
A few designs down, I tried another tack when they said they wanted
full color. Still not feelin' the love, I'm afraid.
Hubbell Lighting: The Nightmare part 4
After many more designs and lots of wasted time, they finally brought
in a book of artwork and said "We were looking for something like this...".
I guess it didn't occur to them that they could have saved two weeks of hassle
and quite a bit of money by simply showing it to us in the first place. Thanks,
fellas. It's people like you that make me glad I'm out of the biz.
