gfxdug.com

Very cool online video tool

gfxdug — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:06:15 +0000

I just tried out a new online video / slideshow creation tool, Animoto. Incredibly easy, quick & fun.
I grabbed some images from our recent trip to GenCon for Aidan 5 and created one of the Animoto shorts (free). Looks like you can purchase “full-length credits” as well for longer pieces.

Here’s what I put together (took about 5-10 min total).

Another cool show…The Mercury Men

gfxdug — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:42:05 +0000

Another very cool black & white show …The Mercury Men
Met the film makers at GenCon this past weekend, great down-to-Earth (no pun intended, well maybe) guys.

Here’s the trailer…

Aidan 5 Ep. 1 goes live

gfxdug — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:16:42 +0000

The indie Web series I have been a part of, Aidan 5, has finally launched it’s first episode “The Rooftop”!
I did a good deal of the background drawings and there were a few very late nights and compromises in order to hit our launch date of the the 14th, but it’s here and live.
We’ve got a booth at GenCon in Indianapolis (#2014) and will be doing a screening of the episode along with Q&A at 7pm Saturday night. The shows site is starting to fill out as we add production stills and blog entries from the cast & crew.
It has been awesome working with such a talented crew. We ran into some roadblocks late in the process and the VFX / compositing guys at RAVE have killed themselves to get everything done. They will be participating in this years 48 hour Film Project which was the origin of the Aidan 5 series.
Check out the site: aidan5.com
Become a fan of Aidan 5 on Facebook

Side project – Aidan 5 Web Series

gfxdug — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:51:37 +0000

So, I have recently been working with a group of local creative friends on a new web series called Aidan 5, doing storyboards & illustration. This is a great group of very talented folks and I am geeked to be a part of it. The director, Johnny Jackson does a great job of explaining in his latest (and first) Aidan 5 blog post – check it out. We are in total churn & burn mode now and will probably remain there through the Summer. I will post examples if the project gets to where I can, or more likely, I will link to them on the project site.

Amazing trip to Glacier

gfxdug — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:50:10 +0000

Just got back from an outstanding vacation in Glacier National Park, Montana. If you ever get the chance, GO!

We flew in to Minneapolis to see family and then rode the Amtrak (20 hours one-way) to East Glacier. I can’t say I was a huge fan of the train ride, it was pretty rough a lot of the time, but I am glad I did it. We rode coach on the train so, if I were to do it again, I would get a sleeper car or fly in.

We stayed in 3 different lodges in East Glacier: Glacier Park Lodge, Many Glacier & the Swiftcurrent Motor Inn. I liked them all for different reasons. Met many nice folks, saw interesting places, ate good food.

A lot of inspiration to draw and paint. I plan to post the outcomes of that inspiration.

Scenery, wildlife, hiking, the freshest air I have ever breathed…I will go back.

I wanted to get some pics of the mountains reflected in the lakes…unfortunately, the wind was whipping the whole trip. I have a few pics of the trip posted on Flickr & Facebook, enjoy.

Happy Clients

gfxdug — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:51:13 +0000

Got a great compliment from my client at EcoTek Tiles. Always a wonderful feeling to have a happy customer. I really enjoyed working on this project, which had a unique challenge. Create illustrations that explain a do-it-yourself installation without using ANY words. The illustrations will appear on the side of the box so that no translations are needed. According to my client Robert…

“Very nice work on the assembly illustrations. They get the concept across simply and without text, allowing us to use the same packaging worldwide.”

Quick Draw for Giant Eagle

gfxdug — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:35:45 +0000

Recently, through my friends at Film Columbus I was contacted to do quick-turn storyboards for six :30 Giant Eagle commercial spots. 85 boards in about 37 hours proved to be quite a challenge. I had a great experience working with the guys from Optimus One in Chicago. I haven’t heard about the finished product yet, but my understanding is that the spots should be running sometime this month. (I’ll have to wait and see before posting any examples)

Kick in the pants

gfxdug — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:40:29 +0000

Ok, so I am painfully aware that my blogging is abysmal… So, I thought I would try to find some way(s) to make it easier – and to kick my own butt into doing it.

A friend of mine suggested trying ScribeFire, a Firefox blogging plug-in. Hopefully, if it’s in my face all the time, I’ll be more likely to add posts. This of course depends upon whether I actually have something worthwhile to say.

Old Bent Tree-Work In Progress (WIP)

gfxdug — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:51:17 +0000

*Someone* suggested to me that I post a Work-In-Progress of my Old Bent Tree illustration. So, here we are…

Keep in mind that I am always refining my own processes, so this is merely *one* way to do things. Also, for an ideal WIP series, there would probably be at least one step between the line drawing and this.

On this particular illustration, I am working solely in Photoshop CS3. At this stage, I have scanned in my line drawing, and done minimal cleanup on it. I may clean up the line in a much later stage, especially where the scan wasn’t the best. The line drawing is on a top layer in this case set to Multiply ( I am liking the quality of the line drawing in this case, so I am planning on keeping it rather than painting over it).

I picked a nice earthy tone for the background to start with and have painted in flat areas of color where I think I will be working in varying detail (this can always change). I am a bit of a layer fiend so I tend to keep these areas in separate layers at first. As I build the color and detail I will combine layers and work them together.

Because I was itching to develop the old tree guy (and to convince Diane I had something specific in mind for the color version), I have been developing the bark and ground texture detail. I have been doing all the bark by hand with a chalk brush in PS building the various layers of color. For the ground debris, I created a PS brush that looked like some dead leaves, sticks n such and varied the layers of color and size. I will be developing this more.

I am ready to start messing with the background now (I may mess with the rocks in front a bit too).

I’ll post the next steps as I go…

Walk in the woods

gfxdug — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:58:44 +0000

This past weekend I was able to go on a great hike with my family. Along the trail my daughter pointed out a cool bent tree which inspired me to do the sketch below. Planning on developing it further into a color version so it’s a WIP.