Christmas Special: Doctor Who (gift box)

I know that I may get a lot of random traffic because of this tag, but you won't be disappointed! For a little Christmas gift, I crafted a very small TARDIS, "pop-up" box. From the beginning I knew I wanted it to be handmade, and have a flap or something that made it look "bigger on the inside." I have never done paper engineering before, beyond a few Valentine's and birthday cards, so this was completely new for me.

Dissecting small gift-boxes, I had a general idea of what to design and cut. After a few test-runs with normal printer paper, I finalized a design and cut it in thicker, cardstock paper with an Exact-o.

Tools:
Printer paper
Cardstock paper
Ruler
Exacto
Ruler
Pencil and eraser
Pilot Pen, Precise V5
Tape
Inkscape (free vector program)

Here are some photos for the finished product, way down below are templates, since I'm in the festive, gift-giving mood.

Later versions I will try and figure out the way to have the fully-detailed top of the TARDIS.

Good peek inside to the console of the TARDIS--Matt Smith's version.

Pull on the tab, and the full console illustration pops out for all to see. Could also be space for a personal message or note.

Here are rough instructions, as well as a variety of printable* templates (that I completed after I finished the "pop-up" TARDIS), to fit your wants, needs, abilities, and how far you want to push your printer--or inversely, how much of your own creativity you'd like to use.

*The PDFs may not be available when this posts.

[Rough instructions - My model was 1 in x 1 in x 1.75 in, and the templates are in no specific units, but the height is a full 2, instead of 1.75]

[Completely blank]

[Windows added]

[Color on revealed sections]

[Full color! This stops the use of console-view or written message. It becomes a box.]

Merry Christmas, DFTBA, and Allons-y!
-"Seattle Whispers"

Tattoos

I didn't do a First Try Friday last week because no one posted suggestions, and I kinda forgot in a rush to get home for the weekend.

I guess technically this can be a First Try Friday, but in a strange way. Just go ahead and look at the images for yourself.

Vector image of the typewriter tattoo (Inkscape)

Now, for the reveal. All of the above images were edited and manipulated.

After taking some photos of my arm (all slicked up with Egyptian Magic for effect), I think tinkered around with the vector image converted into GIMP. Mainly I used scaling, rotating, perspective, layers, duplicate, transparency, blur and IWarp to get the effect right.

Enjoy!

Music Art

I've been doing some music-related art for some awesome people, primarily my roommate Rtist, and awesome Norwegian musician, Binärpilot.

Here is some of the artwork I've been doing for both of them, as well as some links to their stuff.

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Below is the base artwork for Rtist's "University on Fire" for the project he's called Soul Searching. Being his roommate, I'm constantly hearing the mixes and work that goes into it, so I'm a little biased, but I like it. I also get to work with someone on creating art. Doubleplus!

You can find the download site through this shortened link: http://dft.ba/-3Tz
For now this is a temporary link, and he hopes to allow the downloads on a more "stable" site. Being his roommate, I should have the replacement link before anyone notices it's down.

This was using GIMP once again, and my tablet. The lens flare was added the very last on my end, (on GIMP, if you can believe it), and I dig it a whole bunch.
Here's the version he put out with the song (which is downloaded with the song in the link above).

I also did an alternative version, which was more of my vision than my roommate's. If you prefer this version, then when you download the song you can grab this one and swap it out on iTunes. I think with all of the covers I'll do at least two versions, unless both of our visions are one.

I sketched out the emblem on GIMP, but then built the whole image in Inkscape.

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These are "bumper cards" for Binärpilot's music video of "Underground" off of his new album, Nordland. I've been pretty active about spreading the album, so I did a review for it, and he asked me to do artwork for him on the music video. Also, you can order a hardcopy of the album here.

First off, here's the video for the song:



And below is the artwork:

If you've seen some of my latest posts, especially this one, then you know I'm really into black-and-white graphics at the moment (while still dabbling with color).

Both of these were sketched and worked out in GIMP, and then touched up in Inkscape, especially the word and "record-ball" in Underground, and the screen on the monitor.

Have a great Sunday!

Board designs

Ethan, stay away!

Sorry, my friend Ethan--who requested I draw on his blank skate deck--also requested he not see what I'm doing until it's finished, so that's just to scare him off. Now that it is just everyone-but-Ethan, you can see what I've been doing!

(All images can be enlarged)

During my meals I've been sketching and doodling, a few of them for this project. For some reason, the image of squids and octopi, so that's what I mainly focused on.

Once I found which image I liked the most (top right on first page), and noted some colors, I went back to the blank board and used a china marker to sketch out the lines. When I took the photo, the light washed out the sketch-lines, so I went over in GIMP to darken some lines.

I then took to my computer, armed myself with my tablet stylus, GIMP, and went to town sketching and playing with colors. Here is the rough-version of what I want the board to look like.

The next step is to find a day to set out newspaper, don painting-clothes, and paint up the board. I will keep up on the progress on here. Hopefully I can get it done for Ethan pretty soon!

Shirts ordered

So, today I visited with a local printing company to see samples of my work on shirts, and order a batch. I'm going to try selling these locally, as my CafePress shop wasn't getting anything. That system is better for higher volume sales than what I have.

Now I'm waiting until next week when the batch makes it in--and already I have three orders on top of my original fifteen.

Here are the three designs available so far. Shoot me an email on here to order shirts.

Frog Hospital Shirts

My friend, Fred Owens: local coffee-shop personality, blogger, have-funner, historian, and contemporary commentator (I think that's redundant with blogger), asked me to design a graphic for his shirts he's selling.

The shirts were for his blog, Frog Hospital, and he told me what he wanted.

"A frog. But nothing about hospital. Some years ago a woman created a frog with crutches for me, but it didn't look right," he told me over coffee. "Also, green and blue, like the Seattle Seahawks."

After talking ideas some more, I got to work. A week or so later I sent him a few sketches of frogs and styles so he could choose from them.

He liked the variety, and I told him once he chose a frog look I could clean it up and make it look better. He ended up sending a cropped version of the big, blue one in the center to the printer and ordered shirts. (My money was on the little buy next to Big Blue).

Now you can buy them from him, or order them from his blog. I'm going to be doing a redesign to a more logo-looking graphic this time around. Maybe I can make something as awesome as this!

I'll post links and all that good stuff when the reboot version is up and hopping.

Tulip Graphic Reveal!

Alright, as promised, I have revealed the tulip-themed design on Wednesday. It is now 12:02 am, Pacific Time at the moment I'm typing.

So, the saying "Nuke the Tulips" isn't in any way my creation--it is a local phrase that has been uttered since the day locals despised Tulip Season. Also, the idea of making shirts with this phrase has been done before, according to Google-ing "Nuke the Tulips".

[Of course tourists bring economy and all that, but a lot of locals still sigh heavily, and lock up their doors for all of April anyway.]

I haven't seen this image on a shirt before, so this is why I did it; as well as for the anti-tulip-sympathizers in the Valley.

I don't mean disrespect to anyone that likes tulips--I myself think they are awesome colors and inspiring in those huge fields (red especially)--but I also whisper "Nuke the Tulips" when the first batch of tourists drive in.

And so, I proudly announce my new graphic for T-shirts!!
[None of the graphics are expandable,
you have to wait until the shirts/other products]

Now, the graphic might not be available for print as you read this--it is 12:09 am, and I work this morning--but it will be available definitely before April. (I can't promise before tulips bloom, because I don't think anyone can guarantee when that will be this year) I will include links to said items once they're available.

EDIT: Here is the link to said items. This will be available through orders to my email, as running a CafePress shop wasn't worth it with low volume sales. It has also been slightly edited to look better on shirts.


Short version of the process:

I first sketched out a very basic explosion and tulip field from the angle I wanted. I didn't sketch with pen, it was entirely my tablet and stylus from start to finish this time. I used a transparent brush on GIMP (Free/awesome version of Photoshop) to start off the sketches. From here I roughed out the lineart for the nuclear explosion. The tulips were later and on their own copy-version. I kept the explosion in the background so I knew how to space everything.



The tulips were definitely harder to finish lineart for. I had many layers going with different parts of the plants and everything. It was a mess, but I knew what I was doing, and I don't want to bore people. At first they looked like moosh (above), and then once I had lines and colors sorted out they looked good (below).


From here, I took the JPEG versions, and threw them over to my awesome (and also free) vector graphic software: Inkscape! Each of the colors above were on their own layers, so I could load them in separately. This may be time-consuming, but it's the way I found works for me. (The layers went as follows: Yellow, red, purple, white, green, dark green, pink, and lineart).

The reason I used Inkscape was to get all the edges very smooth and curved, so they'd look nicer as a final product. Also, each color is its own shape, so I could control the end result for each color very well.

The same process was used for the background: the explosion and sky. The layers used were: blue, cloud shadow, orange, yellow, dark gray, and lineart. The red was added on the final product.



I put everything together on one Inkscape document, lined it all up, tweaked, and voila! Now it is finished, and I am off to bed!
(12:39 AM)

Tulip Teaser!

I've been really driven to create more designs for my Cafe Press shop, and I've been wanting to do a particular design for a long time.

In the Skagit Valley, there's a large tulip-themed festival every spring. Of course, this brings lots of tourists plugging up streets, so there's a lot of controversy/debate over everything. In a way, I'm putting in a new perspective.

I started creating the image yesterday afternoon using Gimp and Inkscape, and a lot of hours for working. Just about done too.

Here are some teasers. The full image will be released later this week.

-Enjoy!

New Shop

I've just recently started a Cafe Press account, and have been thinking up ideas for designs. At the moment I have one finished that's Easter themed.


More holidays and other things are to come.


If you're interested, I suggest looking through the batch I have up at my store.

This store has since been removed due to low volume sales.

That's Cute...

Just recently rediscovered my friends' band they have on MySpace. It's not a true band, like a band-band, they remix different songs together. I still like it, anyway. I thought I'd share their music and the image.

The other night I was bored, creative, and had my computer. So I got cracking, and whipped out a playful little vector image for them. After I emailed it to them, they happily used the graphic.

Their band is called That's Cute, I Remember My First Remix (with corresponding MySpace link). By the way, my favorite song is My Drinking Team Has a Dancing Problem...and possibly Boner Jams.

Also, their other mock-band, Whores Behind Doors has some snazzy music! I may make a graphic for that one as well.

The graphic was created on Inkscape (vector-graphics), my Genius tablet, and insomnia.


-Enjoy!

Pea Graphic

I'm behind, but last week there was an illustration that I had done that was published with an article about peas. The farmers of Skagit Valley will have to do without planting peas, which is an important crop in the field cycles.

Anyway, it's a big story, and I will only be talking about the graphic I've done. I wanted to have this out at the same time as the newspaper featured the graphic, but like I said, I was behind.

At the end of last year, I went to pick up my check when my editor asked if I wanted to take on an illustration for an upcoming article about peas. She told me she wanted a picture of a bag of peas, and an open--possibly empty--can of peas.

I immediately started sketching the design and wrote some notes. She then gave me some money, and I bought a bag of peas and one can.



I went home knowing exactly how I wanted to do this: take several pictures with the can in different positions, and later edit them on my computer so it is one image with three cans.

At home, I grabbed big pieces of paper, tape, my camera, the peas, and a clamp-on light. I had an impromptu studio in the kitchen.



I arranged the cans as needed, and took a series of photos at different angles. I also changed the lighting quite a few times. Here are the different pictures that made it.

The tea box was the exact height of the particular can I used.

The final garnishing.

On the computer, I used my tablet and GIMP, and probably about 3 hours or so layering, shading, burning, editing, etc. The sign with "Sold Out!?" on it was eventually erased for the paper.

Recent Works

I haven't been really doing my big Van Gogh portrait lately. I've been busy, also procrastinating, and I have to find the right way to really portray Vincent's face how I would like to.

Although, this doesn't mean that I've not been doing art. I have been doing a lot of art things lately--if you haven't noticed the new header graphic and snazzy new link-buttons! If you don't remember, or haven't been here before, the three-panel scene of the mountains were freshly installed early this morning (around 1:30 am).

This also included the buttons on my other blog, Seattle Whispers. You know, I'm just gonna put them here anyway.


I knew I wanted something to jazz up my blogs, and I decided personalized buttons is a good (relatively easy) first step. I tweaked around a bit on what I wanted them to look like, and then used GIMP [free version of Adobe Photoshop] and my Genius tablet to create them.

If enough people are interested in the steps (and ask me or show interest), I will put up a blog for the blow-by-blow and techniques I used. Show interest by commenting here or emailing. Or asking me if you know me.

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For the three-panel-buttons you see above, I created a single image with black bars where I was going to crop, and then saved each cropped version as its own file. So, I had essentially my Full Image, then Crop 1, Crop 2, Crop 3. Getting them in this order, all lined up with no spaces was a little harder.

Essentially, it all came down to how I uploaded each image, tweaking the border-pixel size, and a little bit of frustration. At first I loaded them to be aligned as to the left, center, and to the right. When all three images were up, there was a lot of space. To cut a long story short (and if you're trying to do something similar like this), when uploading the images, select the alignment value "None." This allows you to stack them together like above.

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My very latest art piece might be the hardest to spot: The picture on my "About Me" link. Yeah, its digital now.

Nothing too flashy or complicated on this one. I just took the JPEG image, and plugged it into Inkscape [a free vector-imaging* program] where I then essentially traced outlines** of the jacket and my face. Almost everything else was freehand and referenced instead of traced outright.

Alright, hopefully that satisfies a few peoples' appetites for at least a few days. I know it's been lacking, but I'm trying to update more often.

Happy New Year (!) if I don't write again before Thursday.

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* - Vector images use different algorithms to store and show curved lines. Bitmaps (like JPEGs, etc.) use squares to show curves. Vectors use real, mathematical curves.

** - This technique is called 'rotoscoping'. Traditionally, animators would trace shapes from real-life film so they could draw movements that looked real (Like for Snow White and the original Star Wars trilogy). The technique still survives in some form today.