Variations and Deviations

(but aren't they all deviations?)

This is just a quick update. So, I feel like I am at a point (as far as catching my design blogs up to the available designs) in which I can start rolling out some of the alternate versions of some of my main designs. Less of a variation from RELOAD! 2.0 to 1.0, and more like the difference in between the KA-BAR Backstabber, and a Backstabber featuring a different knife. And then, some of these are combinations of elements from other, multi-part designs.

I'll be starting to post some of those soon, so be on the look out for them! That is all. Carry on.

J, out!

The *Biggest* Fan

(like, ever)

S'been a week since my last post, so I think I'm ready to make a design related post now! Here's a design which I had actually been meaning to make for a long time. Lemme put it this way; that conversation that I describe in my [Backstabber] post, in the second paragraph? The receipt I pulled out to write that "Blades & Blood" idea down on had a sketch for this design already on it.

(Click image for larger version)

So, lemme give you the backstory to this one. Before she moved, I'd hang out with my friend Adlyn about once a week to bullshit, catharse, watch a movie, or whatever.

Well, one of those times, on my way out, something caught my eye. So I pulled a receipt out of my wallet, popped the top off of my pen, and began sketching. When Adlyn asked me what I was doing, I told her I was sketching her ceiling fan and began rambling some nonsense.

To put it plainly (probably plainer than how I explained it to her), there was something about the way the ceiling fan looked that gave it the appearance of a character to me. Like it had eyes, y'know? Well anyhow, that's the original sketch to the left. That thing had been sitting in my wallet for a while...

I can't tell when or where the receipt is from, only that whatever it was cost me $8.03. Knowing me though, it was probably sitting in my wallet for a while before I even sketched on it (I like having makeshift canvases like this available, to take ideas down on should nothing else be available, so I keep such things stored in my wallet).

Fast forward to April 13th, and on the way out of Adlyn's I decided to get a reference photo of her ceiling fan, so that I could be prepared when the time came to crank out the design. Not too soon after, on June 29th, after finalizing a few other designs, I began work on it. Strangely enough, I also prepared and posted a blog on the same day, mentioning that I was actually in the process of finalizing the design near the end.... Geez, creating a design and writing a blog at the same time? I guess that could give y'all some idea of the way my mind works at times. At this point I remember wishing that I had taken a picture of the ceiling fan with a better camera (i.e: anything other than my cellphone) and with better lighting (i.e: anything better than with the lights off...at night). By then my friend Adlyn had already moved out of that apartment though, so that wasn't possible. Well, enough of my blabber. Here it is!

(Click image for larger version)

Pretty silly, huh? Designing this was straight forward enough, even though I began with a different vision of what it would be in my head. Still, I like this much better. After I sent Adlyn a text with a shot of it though, we kinda got into a little back and forth on the font choice.

Basically, it all boiled down to her not liking the asterisks. I informed her that they were there for emphasis, so she told me I should italicize the word. When I told her that I didn't want a design in which just two words were in use to have differing looking text she told me I should use all caps then. When I replied that all caps took away from the readability, and that the emphasis was of a quiet, self-assured type (with the all caps being more of a yelling type), she... Well, actually, I think she left me alone at that point.

It's alright though. I've made the ceiling fan design, sans the type, available as well. So anyone that doesn't like my font choice, the asterisks, or even the message itself can add in their own. Interestingly enough, some folk must not mind the font or the asterisk, as someone actually purchased 4 products with the complete design on them! I thought that was pretty cool. Also, I showed a friend a few days ago, and she couldn't stop laughing, so I'll take that as positive feedback. Or maybe she was just high? Most of y'all reading this probably are also, so maybe I've found my audience? Hahaha! Ah, what an asshole....

Drop on in by my shop every now and then. There's new stuff coming in irregularly, so look out for that stuff. I'll try to crank more of these blogs out, possibly even catch them up to the corresponding designs available. That's all I had for this one. Y'all carry on.


J, out!

Spiders Gotta Eat Too!

(...and I'm fine with that, s'long as it ain't me!)

Another quick update, since I'm still too busy to sit and prepare a full on blog post. Been really busy, too busy, to bother paying attention to the priorities in my life lower down on the list (sorry, but this is definitely nowhere near the top). School has kept me busy enough this quarter, and a lil' someone (the same lil' someone who thought this design needed more cock) has been occupying more of my time.

Anywho, I paid my eldest sister a visit about a week ago, wearing one of my t-shirts (with a design I've yet to blog about) so the conversation headed in that direction and I was reminded that I had promised my nephew one. Specifically the [...] t-shirt, which was one of my very first ideas (and the first I attempted, before realizing that it didn't fall within the strict standards for vector designs on Spreadshirt). So, with that brought to my attention (I have a hard time with letting kids down) I've rededicated myself to getting the design to work, so that I can get him the t-shirt that I promised!

My sleep cycle is thoroughly fucked at the moment (thanks to the same aforementioned things that have been keeping me occupied), so I planned to come home and pass out, last night after class, but instead I sat and started roughing out some ideas on paper. I felt like I had it down, after 7 or 8 sketches, so I got it scanned, digitized, and dropped into Photoshop for a quick crop of the specific rough that I wanted to work on top of, in Illustrator. And then...something happened.

Basically, I'd recently updated my touchpad (Yes, I'm seriously working off of a laptop touchpad. Will purchase my own tablet later) driver, and it reset all of my settings, so I went through, quickly, and set everything as it was before (I HATE IT when a touchpad can be used to click. I cannot stand that!). Or, so I thought.

So, with the freshly cropped image dropped into Illustrator to work over, I zoomed in and attempted to move the image around to survey the landscape and get a good idea for how I would do this, and to find a good spot to start off on....but it wasn't moving. Now, I don't like having to press "H" to choose the "Hand tool". I prefer having whatever tool it is that I'm using and holding the space bar to quickly switch it to the hand tool, and then letting go of the space bar when I'm done to have it revert back to my previous tool. But when I would go about it in that manner, it wasn't working. Holding the space bar caused the pointer to freeze in place. I fought with it for a while, going through tool settings to try to resolve the issue myself among other things, to no avail. So after much frustration I gave Adobe a call...

WELL...after a total of 63 minutes and 27 seconds (I wish I was lying, this is so embarrassing), the nice Adobe support specialist, after telling me shut down Illustrator and having me attempt to move the mouse around while holding down any  key, and making me realize that it wasn't the program, kindly directed me to call my computer's manufacturer, as this seemed like an issue with the computer itself, completely unrelated to Illustrator. Well, after 32 minutes on the phone with them, I learned about a little option, called "TouchCheck" (something I'm sure Bobby Boucher's mother would rightly refer to as The Devil), which locks the pointer from being moved while any key is held down. Yep... That's all it was. Nice, huh? By the time I got done with all of that being put on hold, troubleshooting, and direct-connecting through the internet I was freaking done, so I called it a night.

Still, I'm kinda excited about getting this design done. It will actually be my first (public, these don't count!) spider design, and with a shop named "Tarantulas" I probably need about 20 more of those!

(*reads back over blog*...)

Wwww-OW! Some much for that "quick update", huh? That's why I gotta try to stay off of these rants that I jump into. It's not good, in the interest of time. Well, that's about as much as I should have written for that one. So with that, I leave you. Carry on.

J, out

"Beautiful Strokes"

(I just like that name, I don't know why...)

So I just upgraded to CS5 last night, but I've been too busy to try playing with any of these new things yet. My school is still on CS4, and was on CS3 when I started there in the Summer of '08. I can't say I ever took the time to learn what was new from CS3 to CS4, but I'm taking a little more care to find out about some of these things now. I figure knowing about these could open the door to many new possibilities in my head, at the least, and with just about everything I do starting there, that would be optimal.

I still remember how my imagination exploded with ideas and possibilities when I first learned about and began to understand the concept of "layers". It may sound silly, but I didn't sleep much that night. My mind just kept cranking out idea after idea after idea and I couldn't get it to shut up!

Folk who know how I go about creating digital art (which, admittedly, I don't create enough of and working within the restrictions of Spreadshirt greatly tones down some of these ideas I have. BUT!...that stuff is for a later time) know I'm BIG on layers. Like...BIG! They just make things so much easier! But...I'll leave it there. I gotta watch myself, lest I got off on some random rant. I don't really have time for that today. I'll try to drop by soon to post some more t-shirt design process blogs. But until then, feel free to visit my designer profile and look through my shop and designs from there. Y'all carry on now...

J, out.