Cat vs. Building (who will win?)

I've been working on a composition in Photoshop for the next Digital Imaging assignment, which was to respond to one of the expired contests on Worth 1000. I chose to do the Bizzarchitecture challenge, whereby you place buildings where they ain't meant to be. This was good fun - the real challenge was getting the background to look right. I'm happy with the way the clouds turned out; there's a nice depth to them, which probably comes from using photos of real clouds, rather than painting them in. I've posted a before and after below.

Normal

!!!

Acronym Broth

Busy week this week - handed the BIA assignment in, which was a really painful process. Woke up late (09:15, due at 10:00), left half the rationale at home, wasn't happy with the stationery aspect. I think it might be partially due to the way that Studio is structured this year. Group A had amazing stationery, but some really average logos, while Group B had better logos, but comparatively weak stationery. I think this may become even more of an issue with the next brief (a redesign of an existing journal) due to run times for printing and binding.

Got put on to a great comic this week. Its by a former DC artist - Karl Kerschl - and it's really quite amazing. Called Abominable Charles Christopher, it's set in a forest that seems inspired by the earlier films of Hayao Miyazaki (particularly Princess Mononoke). It's really a very nice, touching web-comic.

As far as Digital Processes goes, I've been working on creating a cat-house in Photoshop. More news as it happens.

This Guy

Now we know who to blame — Jeff Ludes. His photography is well lit, nicely composed. It's the subject matter I object to; this is where all these heroic automobiles come from.

Vinylisation

This is the work of Sanna Annukka — I think it's indicative of popular illustration at the moment. Using very simple, clean shapes, along with strong colours (and lots of black) creates interesting illustrations, but they feel just a little too fashionable. As another example, she did the cover for Keane's Under The Sea. While Annukka's work is visually stimulating at first glance, there is little beyond that first impression. Compared to the work of Christoph Niemann (below), it lacks personality. As much as illustration is fashion driven, and there are particular styles that become more or less popular, nothing beats a good concept.

Some Kind of Rorschach

So this is the first post that has some actual work for Digital Imaging in it. We were tasked with creating an abstract image in Illustrator using techniques that we weren't that familiar with. Tricky for me, mainly because I taught myself how to use Illustrator by going around and clicking on everything and figuring out what did what. I also came up with a composition that broke my computer. Yep. It took eight hours to export this as a jpeg image. Here it is.

Brain Injury Housing

Found a great new blog just now - called It's Lovely, I'll Take It!, and includes photos of just... well, go have a look! You will enjoy.

In terms of design, I've been working on some logos for Brain Injury Australia. It's an organisation that advocates on behalf of those with acquired brain injuries (ABIs). An ABI is any physical damage to the brain that occurs after birth, and its symptoms range from almost nothing to full blown amnesia. Scary stuff.

Anyway, their website is (currently!) very, very ugly. It can only get better from here!

So - we're recquired to have three concepts to present tomorrow. The first two came fairly easily:

This one is based on PET scans of an active brain.



This is based on those block puzzles you probably did as a small child.
They are uses as a therapeutic and diagnostic tool for people with ABIs.

The last one was a real struggle! I'd run out of ideas to work on; some were funny, some were distasteful, most of them were terrible. And then I came up with this:

This is bases around the idea of BIA being an advocacy group. The basis is a
human head, rendered to look somewhat like a speech bubble. Pretty neat!

Presenting these tomorrow. Should be good - particularly happy with the last one. It was such an effort to get it done.