Classwork
Digital Art 1
Our assignment for this one was to make a "photo collage" as it was named in the past. This year our instructor, Dr. Taylor, changed it to Digital Art. This particular design was not turned in. I wanted to see if I could create a piece of art that was inspired by my two cousins. I took some of their drawings and paintings, as well as a couple of pictures of them doing their artwork and put some filters on them with Photoshop, hoping that it would make it look as if it was all drawn. I'm happy with how this turned out even though I chose not to submit it for a grade.
Digital Art 2
Goaltenders in ice hockey are usually though to have something wrong with them. Who else would voluntarily put themselves in front of a couple a pound of rubber coming at them in excess of 90 mph? Well, I see goalies in a different way. They are passionate and they are very competitive. I hoped to show that in this piece, which is why I chose a very vibrant color palate, instead of the dull blue and white that the jerseys and pads created. Using Photoshop to play with the hues and saturation of this piece allowed me to create that feeling of intensity and fire within.
Magazine Cover
When Dr. Taylor gave us the assignment of a magazine cover, I knew automatically that I wanted to work with comics. The title of the magazine, FANBOY, came to me very quickly. I decided to use the CLERKS style of type creation and simply take a letter from famous comics to spell out my masthead. (Fantastic Four, Aquaman, Namor, Batman, Omega and Y: The Last Man). I was worried that if I took just a simple picture from a comic that it would be seen as taking an easy way out. Instead I took some artwork from deiviantart.com by Jason Moody, a.k.a. JAMCE, and use it to show my Photoshop coloring skills. Taking his line art, intended to be colored by those who viewed it, I layed in all the color work and chose to make that the main article of the particular issue I was designing. All of the other articles that are teased on the cover are things I would love to read about my favorite authors/creators/artists. Another small detail you'll notice is the logo of the printing company, Splash Page Printing.
Book Jacket
The inspiration for the book design came late one night when I was watching TV. I saw, on G4, a piece about this new underground music that was being made with old, modified, GAMEBOYs. It was intriguing and something I would love to read about. To that end I decided that this new wave of 8-bit music would be the subject of my book. For the design of it I tried to combine elements of video games, music, and even modification--in the sense that I modified Donkey Kong to look like a trendsetter. I'm particularly proud of the quotes on the back of the book. I tried to fake a blurb in the style of all three of these wonderful writers. As a whole this book is something I would want to read, judging by the cover.
Billboard
This was an in-class assignment given to us on the last day of school. We were to create a dynamic billboard and then place it on the photo that Dr. Taylor gave us. I chose, to no one's surprise, to make my billboard an advertisement for the Reel Big Fish concert. I modified my poster for the show a bit and decided to have some of the images hang over the bounds of the billboard. Those are always the ones that I look at the longest, ones where there are overflow design. It always makes me wonder how they do that and thus stare at them for a good amount. Dr. Taylor liked the monkey and gave me the idea to put the banana rocket ship on top, blasting off towards the sky.
Packaging Excercise
To start this assignment we were given a name of a company, product or item and had to design some sort of packaging for it. Unfortunately my product was called Vinyl Wash. We worked in partners for this project and my partner, Andrea Pitt, said that it sounded kind of like a bath toy. Andrea and I decided to run with that idea. We came up with what should be on the box and since I was more proficient in Photoshop (and had a working computer at the time) I designed the front of the box and the logo. That was all we had time to do in class as it was an exercise and not an actual assignment. A month or so later I went back to the design and came up with the back of the box, a couple of other side designs and the line of other toys to be plugged on the back.
Bus Design
I was given this assignment the day before the Flyers clinched the playoffs in the 07-08 season. Of course my favorite team was on my mind and I could not pass up the opportunity to design a bus for super fans such as myself. I was lucky to have a long time to work on this project and thus collect some great pictures from the playoffs. I knew I wanted the pictures that I used, but the background gave me some trouble. Finally I decided the best bet would be to make the beautiful skyline of Philadelphia orange and black, like the buildings and sky were even part of the Broad St. Bullies line-up.