Booyah! I have drawn a sea creature! So cute.
I’d like you to notice that this is an octopus, but you can only see six legs. That is because two are in the back, and are therefore blocked from view. Please don’t send me grumpy emails defining the word “octo”.
Now, I must attack the pirate tugboat. We’re gonna get there, team. We’re gonna get there.
Remember the pirate tugboat drawing I was working on back in the day? This one?
http://design-newyork.com/blog/2009/07/08/pirate-tugboat-part-3-were-getting-there/
I’ve decided to give it another shot. I found a different board that’s a lot smoother, so my pen shouldn’t get snagged on the tiny ridges anymore, meaning a more controlled line. So far I’ve done the seaweed outline and the corner crabs.
In order to get the waves as perfect as I want them to be, I’m going to have to cut stencils for each size of wave. A ton of work, I hope it pays off.
We here at Publicis New York have a window case that is two feet high and nineteen feet long, and living in it presently is a timeline of the company. It’s been the same timeline in the same design for at least three years now, and my boss (the CMO) has grown weary of it. He asked me to redesign it, so I promptly starting rummaging through my research books. A while back I saw an article called “Cutthroat Capitalism” in Wired Magazine and I thought it was a terrific marriage of positive and negative space, so I cut it out and put it in my book.
I wanted little ornate headers and footers to incorporate into the document. I remembered B. had recently sent me a link to the calligraphy on the bottoms of maps that was fascinating, so I looked at that as well.
So, combining some of the elements from both of those documents, I spent three days redesigning the timeline. The beginning part looks like this:
Here are some details where you can really see the things I pulled from my research.
Some of the pictures given to me were really low-res and pixelated, so I converted them into art. Like the radio announcer guy, I made him into stripes where the thickness depended on the amount of light and dark, and then for the bus, I traced it in Illustrator and made decisions about what I wanted knocked out and what I wanted solid. See, solutions to problems. When God gives you lemons (or low-res images), you make lemonade (or graphic icons). We’ll see if my boss likes it and I can continue on in this style.
Addendum: Alas, it was shot down. Too “wacky and dark”. But I don’t care. After shrieking into a pillow, I decided I’m going to keep working on it and add it into my portfolio. Always with the lemons / lemonade thing, I am.
Addendum to the previous addendum: It’s back! The head person likes it! She wants a deep red background, but other than that, I’m good! Hurrah!
I’m done! The complex background is done. The beasties are done. They have come together in a beautiful medley of weird art that makes me so happy. Gaze upon on the gloriousness.
I spray-painted the pattern after I weeded out the vinyl stencil. Then I painted highlights with some sparkles on some of the thicker areas of the lines. The spray-paint bled a little into the wood grain on the beetle board, but I think it looks cool, so I ain’t sweatin’ it.
Then I drilled a hole in the center of the board and affixed the insects into place. And voila! Months of toil comes to an end. I am super-pleased with how they turned out.
You remember the cicada I made?
Well, I made him a beetle friend. Now he has someone to talk to during the day when I’m at work.
I need to make his head less shiny, but other than that, he’s a completed beetle. I’m going to use my laser stencil designs and combine the whole process into a really cool set of pieces.
One of the things I learned in college was keeping folders of inspiration. Before the Internet, during the dark ages when you couldn’t find anything you wanted at your fingertips in a split second, I kept a filing cabinet of inspiration. Everything I ever saw in a magazine that was of interest to me, I pulled out, labeled and shoved in its corresponding folder. Now with the beloved ‘net, I still do that, but on a much smaller scale. I now keep three-ring-binders of inspiration. Anything design-wise that strikes my fancy, I drop into a folder on my desktop labeled “scrapbook” and every month or so, I assemble them on pages, print them out and put them in my binder.
You’ll notice that just on these pages, we have: a book cover, a soccer ball, a wreath made of wire, logos, illustrations, a beer ad, graffiti, music posters, a pair of shoes, a web banner, etc., etc. Sometimes I’ll forget I liked something and I put it in there already, so I’ll have duplicates. I don’t berate myself. I like to that I liked it so much I put it in there twice. Like this crazy-ornate calligraphic letter (I think it’s an F).
Or this delightful Coca-Cola ad.
And even that freakin’ wallpaper I keep complaining about in commercials and music videos.
Now, if anybody thinks I use this for plagiarism, they aren’t really correct. What I do is when I am asked to create a design project and I’m not quite sure how to approach it, I ask myself, “Well, what am I trying to evoke in the viewer? Do I want them to feel a charming whimsy, or do I want it to feel like strong and powerful, or mystical and underwater, or bleak and sparse…?” Then I go through my scrapbooks and Post-It tag all the pictures that make me feel that way, and I assess why. I take those elements and incorporate it into my own project and hopefully I get the response I want. I use it as a starting-off point when I’m a bit stumped. And if you do anything like me, whether it is drawing or painting or designing or collage or embroidery or whatever, I highly recommend creating one of these for yourself. It takes that stress out of the beginning of the project.
I showed my co-worker my design and he said he found the leafy parts distracting, so I deleted them and whaddya know, it’s better. Now it looks like this:
I need to keep remembering that white space is not the devil. I know nature abhors a vacuum (and so do I – my dust bunnies are now dust rhinos! booyah!), but there can be empty space in my work and the earth will not collapse into itself. All kinds of pleased with myself, I immediately started to work on a second complicated doily. And after investing six hours in that one, I realized it was waaaay way too complicated.
SO MANY SQUIGGLES. And the lines are too thin. So, sadly, I broke it all apart and culled the ornateness down. After another four hours of fussin’, I got it down to this:
Good. Better. Less stuff all over the place.
I found a place that would cut out my stencil for me. Expect to see exciting things pertaining to this in the near future.
I’m in a flurry of creativity over here at Casa Rothmanpants, and I just spent a good six hours designing this really complicated pattern. I’m going to have it professionally cut out to be a stencil because there’s no way in hell I can cut it out by hand, not if I want it done in my lifetime. Ignore the leaves, those are there for my reference. The black part is the part getting cut out. The leaves I will be handpainting in later.
Now I have to see if I can find a place in the city that will cut this out for me without charging me all the money in the world ever. The hunt begins…
Last week was Halloween, so I done got m’self all costumed up (as The Rotten Tooth Fairy, pictures below) and attempted to win an iPad for best costume at the work party. I did not win, but I think I looked pretty rad nonetheless. Here is a bathroom shot of my costume.
Someone described me as looking like a “chubby steampunk bounty hunter”, which I thought was an EXCELLENT description of my costume. I will break it down for you.
Number 1 is a bowler hat that I put a temporary band on. Then I printed the letters T O O T H and watercolored the paper so it looked aged. I put those letters on wires and hit the letters with some gold for added ping.
Number 2 is a necklace I strung with molars I made out of polymer clay for extra creepitude. Those were a big hit wherever I went.
Number 3 are antique dental instruments I bought on eBay. There are two pick-things jammed in my waistband, but the best one were the pliers that hung from my belt. The pliers are cupped inside so as to better grab at your toofers.
The work gathering was delightful. I always like to be reminded that I work with creative people, and that was in full force. Here’s S. being a Na’avi from Avatar. You can’t appreciate it, but his puffy white things have LEDs in them and they light up.
Here’s a timely costume – a bedbug. I think the eyelashes really make it.
Also timely, a Chilean miner.
Dead Marie Antoinette.
P. was a superhero, and he made a sign that said “POW” that you held next to your head while he pretended to punch you. I thought that was a genius costume. He now has, like, thirty shots with people making their best “punched in the jaw by a superhero” face. Here’s mine. I look like I’m being abducted by aliens, but I’ve never been punched in the face before by anyone, so I was woefully inexperienced.
My favorite costume of the day was the “Wrecked Fung Wah Bus”. The Fung Wah bus is a bus that goes from Chinatown in New York to Boston. It’s about $30.00, so in that respect it’s great. It’s not so great that the bus crashes from time to time. I am definitely biased because Chuck Norris the Oversized Pomeranian was part of the costume and I love that damn dog so much. He puts up with everything. He’s not bothered by this weirdness at all.
Someone else was a great New York Times crossword puzzle.
And this is my lovely co-worker Börkke going as the personification of the song, “Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady”. She borrowed my t-shirt with the speaker in the front and I programmed it to play the song. Rather shnazzy.
They announced the winners, and I didn’t place, but I was totally okay with that because the other costumes kicked so much butt. Dead Marie Antoinette got first place and an iPad, Wrecked Fung Wah Bus got second (go Chuck Norris!) and Avatar got third.
The next night, I went to my annual Riedel Dance Company Halloween Fundraiser Dance Thing. As always, it was delightful. JR and his wife went as a band called GRAPHIC INTENSITY. They insisted that the band’s name be typed in caps.
There was line dancing.
And someone was there as Paul the Octopus, the semi-famous octopus who picked the winning teams for the World Cup.
And this was the costumed Paul the Octopus. He had a nametag with Paul on it and a soccer ball to complete his look.
Has everyone seen the video of the Red-Shirt-Guy at Blizzcon asking a question about World of Warcraft? If you haven’t, you should.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwyMB19q7ms
Now, armed with that knowledge, I want you to imagine me cornering Paul the Octopus Costume Guy and saying in Red Shirt Guy’s voice:
“I like it, but it would have been easier to identify you as a cephalopod if you had painted chromatophores on your costume. Chromatophores are the cells in the skin of the octopus that allow it to change color and texture. Individual colored areas in the cell swell and shrink depending on the color the octopus is trying to mimic, like a TV screen.”
BECAUSE THAT’S PRECISELY WHAT I DID. I felt so bad for him. He was nice about it and everything, but I still feel like a complete dweeb.
When I got back to White Plains on the last Metro-North train, I wasn’t tired at all, so I trundled off in costume to the diner at 3:00 a.m., where I was accosted by what I like to call Whore-loween (girls, you have beautiful bodies, but for the love of Pete, PUT SOME PANTS ON), and it was loud. These broads were noisy and sloppy-drunk and made it very difficult for me to listen to my iPod an eat my sandwich. There was a lot of “You’re dead to me!” and “I can’t believe you!” and “Fuhget her, she’s a total skank!” and various other statements I can’t write here due to the coarse language. And then I went home and went to sleep while the sun came up. A delightful Halloween all around.
Remember last year, when I made all those drawings for those boards? Well, that meeting came around again this year, and Publicis wanted it BIGGER! and BETTER! this year, which is fine. The only problem is that last year I just made the drawings and other graphic designers assembled the imagery, and this year it was just me, working alone. For the meeting, the boss-folk wanted a giant wall, 32 feet long and 8 feet tall, covered with stats and facts about Publicis in 2009. I originally designed it with chunks of information scattered all over it with tasteful white space between each fact, but I was told by the big-whigs that they pretty much wanted no white space at all. None. “Okay,” I said. “If that’s what you want, that’s what I’m gonna give you. I’ll cram so much stuff in there, you won’t be able to walk straight.” And the final product looked like this:
I was true to my word. And not to toot my own horn, but it was a big hit. All the execs loved it, the attendees loved it, it’s being printed and hung in other offices around the country, etc. This is what it looked like in the meeting room.
That wasn’t the only thing I worked on for this meeting, oh no. That was just the biggest thing. There was the presentation itself, for which I made the slides. There were the gift bags, for which my mother and I sat all Saturday making labels and cutting ribbons like Victorian factory workers. And then there was the nametags.
Each person got one, and it was shaped like a conversation bubble. I cut out about sixty of them. For your own personal information, I would like you to know that when you cut out cardstock with an X-acto knife for seven hours in a row, your index finger looks like this:
But the meeting is over, it went smashingly, everyone was well pleased, and I don’t have to think about it until next year. Hoo-ray.
