Something Else

I didn’t know what to draw; my colleague Tamara suggested...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:10:00 -0500

I didn’t know what to draw; my colleague Tamara suggested I do a portait of her. HERE IS THAT THING!

Kit and I were talking about classical music; specifically, how...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:39:00 -0500

Kit and I were talking about classical music; specifically, how Vivaldi’s Four Seasons manages to perfectly capture each season in a way that - even without knowing the title or theme of the Suite beforehand - one would be able to tell it was a piece of music about seasons. Its meaning transcends language, and is universally accessible.

This was the seed of today’s Doodle Buddy Challenge: to try and convey something abstract in a way that could be extrapolated by anyone looking at it. We settled on longing for our theme because it’s universal, but difficult to indicate visually in an elegant way.

Doing this in a visual medium is particularly difficult because it’s very easy to be ham-fisted about it. I think we both put in a valiant effort.

Ba-Bump

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:59:00 -0500

My friend Kit and I are trying to get each other to draw more - and post more. Today, we had our friend Les tell us the FIRST word that was in his mind. He lied and told us it was “crap,” but then admitted it was, in fact, “ba-bump.”

Here’s the result of Doodle Buddy Challenge No. 2!

Kit and I agreed ba-bump is WAY better, so the seeds for our drawings, which were undisclosed until their completions, was a word in a lyric in a random hip-hop song Les was listening to.

I thought of a guy getting smacked in the head with a seagull, and Kit thought of something very clever.

Kit Chokly Bar

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:24:00 -0500

I’ve got a coworker with a great last name. She and I are going to try and keep each other drawing for awhile.

Edit: This was the first installment of the Doodle Buddy Challenge; Kit and I both felt we needed motivation to keep drawing, so we challenged each other to keep going.

Homework?! You must have meant fart joke.

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:48:03 -0500

This is the type of thing I’d draw at school when I was asked to seriously analyze a problem and come up with an industrial design solution.

would you rather have gills on your neck and be able to breathe under water or have wings for arms and be able to fly?

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:15:30 -0500

I think I’d rather have a bird body and regular arms. That would be badass.

would you rather have an adult head and baby body or baby head and adult body?

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:48:47 -0500

I don’t think either of those has an advantage. I mean, figure you have an adult head on a baby body. Is the baby body going to be able to support the head? Probably not; it probably won’t even have a big enough heart to pump blood through the brain so you could function well enough to have coherent thoughts and not die, and so on.

Figure somehow that the baby body WOULD be able to support and sustain an adult head, then you’re still stuck in a teeny, tiny body, and NOBODY would want to ever have sex with you for the rest of your life. That would be the WORST! Tiny, baby purgatory.

Well, it WOULD be the worst, but I think maybe baby head/adult body is pretty bad, too. With a baby head, there’d be no room for a large enough brain to handle adult things like doing taxes or telling a joke about taxes at a cocktail party. If anything, you’d also have the intellect of a baby, so you’d crap yourself and be like a dizzy, stumbly godzilla in a man’s body.

I really dunno what I’d choose.

would you rather have mini fingers coming out of the tips of your regular fingers or ears that could taste what they hear?

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:26:11 -0500

Man, I don’t even know what tasting sounds would be like, but I think I’d know what feeling things more would feel like….

I’m gonna have to go with tasting sounds.

The Brave Salad

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:06:23 -0400

This is a little doodle I did one day. Not sure why I chose salad, but something felt “right” about this scenario.

I like to think he won somehow.

Dr. Fraunbrau and Mr. Squintly

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:26:00 -0400

May I present: Dr. Fraunbrau and Mr. Squintly.

I don’t think I intended for these two to be on the same page, necessarily, but here are two characters I made up that involve weird eye configurations.

Robo Crab

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 13:17:54 -0400

This was a doodle I made the other day. Made me laugh.

Going Google

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:07:00 -0400

A couple of weeks ago, OCADU’s student email changed over from its old, clunky interface to a Google Apps setup. I was asked to design posters, web graphics and handbills to inform students of the change.

It was also my first time working with the new OCADU graphic identity, so it was interesting to find a way to make something both eye-catching and simple to properly use the new identity.

Like all projects, there were several revisions, but I think what I came up with stays in the spirit of the new OCADU graphic identity, and does a good job of organizing information in a concise manner.

Here are the “Mail” and “Calendars” posters I came up with.

Ryan and the Wizard

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 00:57:34 -0400

The Grandma’s Virginity Podcast is one of my favourite things to listen to (usually while playing Minecraft.) It’s a podcast put on by Justin Roiland, Ryan Ridley, sometimes Jackie Buscarino. It features a wide cast of characters, and usually some improvised scenes acted out by whoever feels like it at the time.

One such scene was one in which Ryan was essentially forced to choose death, or to have sex with Casey Anthony, a woman acquitted in the death of her infant. There were doubts in Ryan’s mind as to whether or not he should even do this, because he wasn’t quite sure if Ms. Anthony was actually innocent. Jesus, God and a Wizard (and his orb) finally convinced him it was the right move.

I was inspired by my friend Taj to send in some episode art, so here is what I came up with.

I like to challenge myself whenever I do a “big” illustration, and this one was all-new for me. I’d never attempted a proper comic book cover; I’d never drawn someone lit from beneath using only highlights, and I’d never drawn Ryan Ridley #$%@ing Casey Anthony, either. This was really fun!

General Discomfort and/or Embarassment

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 21:23:00 -0400

I’ve been feeling this way a lot lately.

CouchPigDog in SPAAAAACE!!!

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 14:35:00 -0400

This is my second drawing for the 4th Annual Super Mario Marathon for Child’s Play Charity. It’s based on a request from the chat for a hybrid of Couch Dog, Couch Pig and they wanted it in space!

Elmo was a thing that happened late last night - there was a scary Tickle Me Elmo that freaked everyone out with the way it moved.

The Raccoon Suit

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 00:32:00 -0400

This is a Fan Art submission for the 4th Annual Mario Marathon for Child’s Play Charity. There are a bunch of people playing every Super Mario game LIVE, right now, on www.mariomarathon.com!

Donations buy new toys, books and video games for sick children that are stuck in hospitals. It’s a worthy cause if you have a few spare bucks. Go on and check it out!

This is my first submission for this year. I wouldn’t have been able to think of this idea without my friend Caitlin.

Bikey the Horse

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:02:19 -0400

This horse is the result of a dream my friend Juan Carlos had in which one of our friends, Banafsheh made a bicycle from a horse.

This drawing is a transcription of what he dreamed Banafsheh had made.

Angry Dude

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 19:31:08 -0400

This was the first time I put the words “Something Else” down on paper.

This drawing was done because an event happened in my life that I desperately wanted to participate in, but a circumstance beyond my control prevented me from being where I wanted to be at the time.

This is all part of being a grown-up, and frankly, I count myself among the luckiest people on this planet. Nevertheless, my inner teenager still felt this… anger towards the entity preventing me from being where I wanted to be, and so I drew this.

If I would have been able to frown as seriously as I wanted to at the time, this is probably somewhat how I would have looked.

Raising Awareness

Wed, 04 May 2011 13:06:00 -0400

People don’t read. I worked for a long time at various service jobs, and the one thing that sticks out in my mind, as a design challenge, is that people just don’t read things. Could be the sign is there to prevent a loss of life or injury, but chances are it will forever go unread. At my office, we have some rules that were going to be enforced for the first time ever, and I took it upon myself to try and make some placards that would get noticed.

Here are some typical bulletins. Nobody will ever look at them. There’s important stuff on there, but they will decompose before even 10 people read them.

This one, on the other hand, was designed to command attention. Obviously, it’s based on Alfred Leete’s Lord Kitchener poster, which was itself designed to inspire people to sign up to go die somewhere for their country. I like moustaches and old-tymey lookin’ stuff, so I decided to first grab people’s attention with this image, then substitute the text with my own.

It’s really easy to just type something out in Word using Times and call it a day, but for the extra effort it took to make these posters, the result is that people take notice and enjoy the parody while also taking in the information.

Designing for a Client

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 22:22:03 -0400

When you make a contract to design for a client, it’s an amazing feeling. You take a look at what you’ve got to do and break it down into steps, prioritize what needs to be done, and you SKETCH like mad! You come up with all kinds of fanciful ideas - then take a step back and look at it, analyzing it over and over - until you have something to show the client: your first proposal.

Invariably, they will shoot back with notes on what should be changed, and it will be the most annoying thing in the world - if you’re new at design. Some notes will make sense, and others will frustrate you - how am I supposed to fit all that copy on this thing?! IDIOTS want that much copy on this thing!!!

THIS is where you need to take a step back and remember this: you are designing for a client, not for yourself. If you’re making something for yourself, the only person you need to please is you, right? Remind yourself you’re designing for your client, and it’s they that need to live with the product, and they should feel as if their needs have been met. Sure, there are things you should fight for, but on the whole, most of the notes you get back is stuff you shouldn’t sweat over.

The picture above is of the first step in a project I undertook this year where I work. My boss came to me to ask me to design some signage to identify the various branches of our department. It had to be simple, clear and imply a competent, serious, and helpful organization (note: the plaid was put in there as a joke because I’m very familiar with my client - it was also fun to figure out how to make plaid in Illustrator.)

It was a graphic project, but my inner industrial designer got the better of me. I quickly developed the idea to colour code the various help desks within a graphic identity to have users recognize that these are branches of the same department. Part of this plan involved colour-coded tags on our equipment so users would, hopefully, subconsciously recognize where equipment they borrowed belonged.

I proposed all of this to my client, showed him that rough first image, and he gave me feedback, which I used. Inventory tags were out, and colour coding was still in. The first round resulted in this mockup:

The colours were a bit brighter, which I felt helped create visual appeal. The signs, which were represented to scale, reflected the physical locations they’d inhabit. I used quick and dirty mockup techniques to pitch where signs should go, like so:

I thought it looked pretty good. In my mind, I had done my job; I took the feedback, and I made the changes and this was going to be the end of the road. All you experienced designers out there are rolling your eyes because you know what happens next: more feedback.

In this case, it was pretty simple: make the signs all the same aspect ratio, and all one colour, since inventory tags were out, and for unity’s sake. I got to pick the colour we used, and I picked red, since it went with another sign I’d already designed for all of the classrooms we service. The design morphed into this:

This is the version that finally got approval from my client, though I’ve omitted various steps that involved changes in nomenclature or wording. It’s similar, but very different from my initial proposal. It’s not what I would have done if I were unrestrained, but it’s the best solution for this problem because it is a product of cooperation between myself and my client, and it meets the goals we set out to reach. Now, we have a graphic identity we can use. Every time he calls up for a sign or notice to be made, I have a resource pool I can use to quickly put something together. It’s not very sophisticated, but it’s recognizable, clear and concise.