Visual Development * Illustration * Craic
Specializing in turning that frown upside down.
Scribbler-a little drawing program.
A little project I did for college-go on, play around with it. You’ll notice that the ‘ink’ button doesn’t upload- that’s because it’s an image that didn’t upload to the server. It should work fine though…
Feel free to comment/send me pictures that you’ve done with it! Have fun. 🙂
The Wedding Morning- John Bacon.
‘The Wedding Morning’ by John Bacon.
Wedding Inspiration.
I’ve not been updating much lately, but I have an excuse-I’m newly engaged! Planning a wedding isn’t so very different to planning a design project- you have to do your visual research and work to a budget and timeline. Stand by for a load of inspiration and you can see my design work come together for my wedding invitations etc. In case you can’t tell, I’m still trying to plan the theme…my fiancé and I both like Celtic and Art Nouveau art. More to come!
Layout thumbnails
Before going on to the final page, I like to play around with a few thumbnails. Here you can see I’ve used the colours I picked before and some textures that I felt were relevant, giving a rather nice vibe of the ’40s folk scene. Each thumbnail engenders an idea or two that I liked, but overall my favourite is the bottom right one, where the text forms the strings of a guitar. I’m a little worried that it might be too generic, but I can take a couple of these ideas and render them into ‘finished’ products, then choose between them. Keep an eye on this space!
Teaser Photo: Mary’s Octopus.
Inspiration: Sylvain Marc
Please just take a moment and look at the above pictures. Allow yourself to wallow in it. Really soak up those colours. The pure autumnness of it!
This mastery is by a London-based French artist, Sylvain Marc. Here’s his website: http://www.sylvain-marc.blogspot.com It says ‘under construction’ but you can scroll down a bit and see many gems anyway. I love his free and exuberant style, his impeccable colour sense and his sense of humour (very important in design!) Want a bit more Sylvain? Yeah, OK, I thought so too. Here you go!

SYLVAIN!
Go now, go to his website, go quickly. Godspeed.
Here it is again in case you feel you may have to scroll back up and that would be just TOO MUCH HASSLE (although I can’t imagine that could ever be the case):
>>SYLVAIN MARC <<
Inspiration: Robert Kondo
<img style="width: 500px; height: 500px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2008/2085621211_a4a48c7134.jpg" alt="" width="499" /> Robert Kondo is an art director at Pixar and he well deserves that role; just look at his beautiful work! His lighting is beautiful and hits the spot where we can 'feel' ourselves inserted into that place, like it's somewhere real, but with odd things happening. <img style="width: 353px; height: 500px;" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/170/431077111_11bf6d80e7.jpg" alt="" width="352" /> Gotta love that lighting and the combination of desaturated colours with saturation, as in the apples in the painting above. Look at how he uses shape and colour to such great effect- the shapes are very simple, with a bit of texture to suggest colour. Not too busy, everything in the right place. We can all learn a lot from that. <img style="width: 400px; height: 500px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3077/2647007724_5499b5ef4a.jpg" alt="" width="399" /> If you want to see more (and sure why wouldn't you?) just head over to the US Department of Public Works, click on Kondo's name on the left-hand side and flip through the glory. <a href="http://www.dopw.us/blog/gallery/">http://www.dopw.us/blog/gallery/</a> <<----HERE!!
Applied Digital Media
I’m starting a new course in Applied Digital Media in Dublin this year- watch this space! There should be some cool stuff coming up just around the corner….
I leave you with my favourite font at the moment— Lobster! It’s made by Pablo Imparalli and is free to download at the link below.
http://www.impallari.com/lobster/
It looks Golden-Age vintage without being too gimmicky, it’s round and cheerful and eyecatching. What’s not to love?
9 months later and the baby pops out.
An oil sketch that I did a while ago- finally got around to finishing it off!
(drumroll)
Wacom Inkling ‘pre’ review.
Watch the above video, immediately. Wacom has brought out a new product that allows you to sketch on any paper, anywhere and immediately converts it into bitmap or vector. It’s a dream product for those of us who like the feeling of working directly on paper. It’s supposed to come out in September and retail for $199 in the US. For those of us in euroland, it’ll go (or come) for €170.
I’m definitely buying one. Oh yes. I’ll review it here too so you can all see just how great it’ll be.
Do I sound overexcited? I SHOULD BE. I’ve been waiting for something like this for years!