Thursday, June 28, 2012

Tank Study

Tank Study
This is the second in a series of get better at vehicles/mechanics.  This study took about 6 hours also.  I think things went a bit faster doing this.  

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Helicopter Study

Helicopter Study
I decided to do a series of vehicle / machine studies to work on my edges and get some workflow going.  I have actually avoided doing these kinds of things but I want to start working on these kinds of things.  Because of the nature of these studies I am going to spend longer than the unusual 2- 2.5 hours I would spend on these things.  This one took about 6 hours I think. 

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Bloodsports 12 Final

Bloodsports 12 Final


Here is the final label designs for the Bloodsports 12 challenge.  
Below are the 4 variants plus the labels printed on bottles.




What I learned - I should have printed these at actual size earlier to check readability.  The mountain images should have been larger, reduced the size of surrounding graphics and I probably put some white on the title text to make it pop more. 

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Carrauntoohil

Carrauntoohil


Carrauntoohil  the highest mountail on the island of Ireland (3406 ft).  Number 4 in the series.  Now that these were complete I went ahead and completed work on the rest of the label.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Mweelrea


Mweelrea


Mweelrea (in Connemara) was the second mountain.  Both the previous one and Donaard I had made using a value study then adding colour.  Two more to go!









Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Slieve Donard



Slieve Donard
Slieve Donard

This was the second image I worked on.  I then went and started generating a mock up.  Not very exciting at all so I decided to change approach.





Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Devils ladder



Devils Ladder

Looking at the image ideas I had it became apparent that I would have to work really hard to give them visual impact.  I decided to take a distinctive feature of each mountain and use that.  The first was Carrauntoohil which has a portion of the path up it called the Devils Ladder. That's what I went for.    I did not finish this as I had a rethink on the whole approach. 

Monday, June 18, 2012

Bloodsports 12

Bloodsports 12 was a design challenge.  


 we are asking you to create a BEER LABEL to be put directly on a BOTTLE.

you get to choose what brand of beer youll be working with- or if youll opt to create your own. both are acceptable. the important thing though is that your label has an intended market, and a fitting style for that market. is this a fancy beer meant for upper class people? is this a trashy and cheap beer meant for college partygoers? is this a badass beer meant for biker gangs? its up to you. Choose a market, choose a style, and go to town!

 I have not done anything like this before so it was going to be a trip into the unknown.  

The first thing was to decide the theme for the beer.  It happened that a colleague of mine was wrapping up training for a charity event called the Four Peaks Challenge.  This involved climbing the 4 highest peaks on the island of Ireland. I figured this would be an interesting theme to play with. 


Friday, June 15, 2012

Ironman -+ Variations



Ironman Study
Ironman Greyscale


After the Bloodsports 11 submission I had resolved to try harder on hard edges.  I did this Ironman study as practice.  It was done in grey scale then used colour overlays.  This seemed to work really well for this subject.  It is not my usual approach.  What this method does offer is the opportunity to try out different colour combinations. 










Still Here

  A year since my last post here but that does not mean I have forgotten.  I stop by from time to time and this still remains the most compr...