RELOAD! Reactions

(Reactions besides immediately reloading...)

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This is a family of designs that I feel gets...less reactions than I would like. As much as I might tout my obsession with my arachnophobia, RELOAD! is kind of my flagship design. And even when they do get reactions, I always get a sense that the people reacting to it are not fully aware of what it is that my designs are depicting. As some of you may know, the whole premise behind my RELOAD! designs—which up to this point include the GI1911 2.0, GI1911 1.0 (pictured here), and another which I've yet to present in a blog—feature semi automatic pistols with their slides locked open, signaling that they've run out of ammo. It's that little detail which I feel people don't quite understand, which is fine, but still an unfortunate wasted of human visual recognition capabilities. I think people would enjoy or appreciate it a little more if they were able to connect the text with the imagery.

I suppose that Hollywood is partly to thank for its continual depiction of pistols who only indicate that they are empty when the trigger is pulled and they go click. But mostly, it is the reality that most people don't have any real understanding of how firearms function. I mean, Hell, even during my time in service, a majority of us were taught only as much as we needed to know about the firearms that we handled on a daily basis. Even the manuals I read incorrectly stated that Condition Two "does not apply to the M9 Service Pistol". What?!


But, it's Ok. I understand that most people might never need, or care, to know all of these things. Like the cycles of operation (firing, unlocking, extracting, ejecting, cocking, feeding, chambering, locking), or the differences in between a recoil operated gun and a blowback operated gun, as examples. I get that not everyone's brains are sponges for information. But with that rant (and my revelation that I've got a bit of a hard-on for the guts and inner workings of firearms) out of the way, I think you might have a better understanding of some of the...validation that I felt when the following happened. These are the exact words that I posted as a status on Facebook on the 12th of this month, minutes after it happened:

"So, I'm walking to get my mail, and I notice two Sheriff's patrol cars parked up ahead. I notice that one of the deputies has his passenger side's door open, and he's pouring some kind of solution onto his hands and scrubbing away. (Probably just got done busting someone's head open or something.) Anyhow, as I get closer, he faces in my direction, and then keeps starring at me. I can see he's squinting his eyes even. So I'm thinking 'Grrrreat! What now?...', and right when I'm about 10 feet away he says 'Nice shirt!' So I respond 'Thanks!' while thinking 'Whew.' Figures though, that it would take someone who carries a pistol around all day to appreciate my 'RELOAD!' design..."

Hahaha. I'm such a little kid, huh? The specific design I had on was the one pictured above, in all white and on a black t-shirt, so it's what I'd call high visibility. Speaking of, I've actually been thinking of updating the 1.0 design, since it was one of the very first for Flex printing vector designs that I've made. I've gotten working within the restrictions down to more of  a science now, so feel like I could do a better job. I'll probably leave it alone until I've cranked out several more of the designs on my list though. I've got enough on my plate just with those as it stand. Well, that's about all I have or this update. Be sure to swing by the shop if you want any of these designs for yourself, and to see what's new. (I'll probably get around to updating the look in that place soon here as well.) So, until the next time, y'all get out here!

J, out...

Next Needs Up: "Demon(s)"

(Have I mentioned how much I love titles? Coming up with and giving them to things, namely? You should see the files in my computer. Sometimes [...] sits here trying to find my pictures so she can reminisce on something and she just gets frustrated at how little sense it all makes to her. Haha.)

Anyhow, here's the first design entry in the Next Needs Up series. (But be sure to stop by and read this post first, if you haven't already gotten acquainted with Next Needs Up's origin story.)

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Here, to the right, is the official (*cough*!) design document...

So, Ok, maybe it isn't so "official" looking. Or even very clean and thought out! (Excuse alert! Brace yourself...) But I'm not on a "team", so I've got little need to create accurate visualizations of what I have in mind for anyone else to follow. I've pretty much got what I want fully visualized in my head, so a quick, messy sketch like this one, with the only "corrections" or "revisions" being substituted by chicken-scratchy notes works perfectly.

If you took a second to read said notes (if you can read my handwriting...), then you should be getting an idea of what Next Needs Up's "essence" is. If I had to put it into as few words as possible, I would have to say that it is tension, discontent, confusion, and anxiety, overall. He's a character that I've always imagined would look shaky and jittery at all times, stopping to look over his shoulder every so often. It's possible that it was born from my arachnophobia. (Which, I should probably note, a friend mentioned that she doesn't believe that I'm scared of spiders very much anymore, after spending the last few years obsessed with them. She might be right.)

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And here is Next's  full body, simplified "icon" rendition, based on the above shown sketch. Not that it wasn't already a streamlined character, but these lines capture the basest essence perfectly, I feel. I am pretty happy with it as an icon for Next. I called this design "Demon"...at first. If you noticed, the title makes mention of there being a plurality of this "Demon".

Some artifacts, that come from my design process when working with vectors, created some questions in my mind, as to which "Demon" version I should choose to represent Next with. I will attempt to explain this as plainly as possible. Basically (you know you're in trouble when I start a sentence with that word), to make the negative spaces that form the eyes and the fanged frown, I used curves with no fills and strokes set to about 0.04 of an inch (Spreadshirt's minimum size for space between elements) in size. With them, I made the circles for the eyes and the lines for the frown and fangs on a layer on top of the solid shape that I had set down for the body. I then flattened the transparency to turn the strokes into outlines, then selected them and the body shape and merged them using the pathfinder window. (Found under "Window > Pathfinder", or by hitting "Shift + Ctrl + F9") The strokes were colored differently from that of the body shape, so when I merged their outlines on top, everything on the body shape that was underneath them was subtracted. And, since they were a different color from the body that they were merged to, all I had to do was select them on their own, with the "direct selection tool", delete them, and voilà!

Here's how the design looked by this point. The leftover circles in the eyes, and the triangular shapes in the fangs are the "artifacts" that I mentioned. Next, again with the direct selection tool (shortcut key "A" in Illustrator), I proceeded to select the circles in the eyes and deleted them. No qualms there, since the big, empty eyes communicate what I wanted the design to perfectly. But then, I selected the triangular shapes, deleted them, and stopped and thought, "Hm...does it look better with or without the triangular shapes filling that space?" So, I undid it and stared at it for a while. Then deleted them again. And undid. And deleted again. Finally, I copied it over to compare them side by side. Still undecided, I took a picture of them with my cellphone and sent it to several of my friends, in hopes the they would help me defeat my indecision. (One of them being Adlyn, of course. With her being Next Needs Up's "godmother" and all...) The verdict was mostly mixed, but one of the people who replied asked why I couldn't use both. Brilliant! Why couldn't I think of that?!

So I uploaded both, naming the one with negative space for eyes and fangs "Demon Alpha", and the one with shapes for fangs "Demon Beta". Not long after, I decided to also make one with shapes for both its eyes and fangs, and one with only shapes for eyes available, and renamed the whole bunch. Here they are, from left to right. Demon Alpha, Demon Beta, Demon Delta, and Demon Gamma. What a happy (but tense, confused, and anxious) family, huh?

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They're currently available as Flex prints as either singles, pairs, or trios, grouped by type, and arranged horizontally. (For example here's an example of a trio of Alphas.) That's all I have for this one. I'm not making any promises or predictions, but I'm going to try and crank out as many posts as possible so I can catch up to all of the designs which I've yet to cover. Feel free to swing by the shop if you want to sneak a peek at any of these. (Or purchase a t-shirt or accessory with the design on it to see it in its full glory.) Until the next time, y'all carry on, I'll be going to sleep!

J, out...

Once a Backstabber, Always a Backstabber; The Tanto

(you can count on that)

Upon sitting down to start preparations for my next "deviation" blog, I realized that I hadn't actually gone over one of the designs that I would be featuring a deviation for. Obviously, that's no good, so here I am!

For this post, I will be (briefly, I predict) going over a "Backstabber" variant, this time (if you had't surmised as much from the title) featuring a Tanto. As mentioned in this follow up Backstabber post I plan on making several other Backstabber variant designs, featuring all sort of pointy objects. With as many ideas as I have coming into my head, it's difficult to actually execute on very many of these (and yes, I have a long list of Backstabber variants already). I won't even mention my time constraints (but I did)!

So, the same as with the KA-BAR, I created a Tanto "icon". The process was pretty much the same. The reference image used was this one. I like it. It's plain, clean, sharp, and gets the message across (that being "Hey, look! I'm a tanto!!"). Next I opened up my Backstabber "work" file (I save the "work" and "finalized" versions of every design separately. Makes it 79% easier to go back and make any fixes or revisions), removed the KA-BAR, and readjusted the blood a bit. Once the Tanto design had been completed (you can't really tell, but I'm pretty anal about these designs, and the final appearance betrays the attention to detail that goes into it), the rest was pretty much just about orientation and what-not.

Anywho, here's what the "Tanto Backstabber" looks like. I'm considering (meaning, I will...just not yet) creating some "Backstabber" text of my own (meaning not from one of the template Illustrator fonts), so I haven't actually gotten a t-shirt of my own with this design on it yet. With as many Anime/Japan geeks as there are in my school though, I'm sure several would stop and ask me about it if I wore it (sure, the KA-BAR Backstabber that I wear every now and then gets reactions, just...y'know).

In other news, a recent gaffe involving a digital direct print has halted some of my Spreadshirt shopping progress. Basically, I want to wear this damn design (done right!), so I'm waiting until the return gets back to them and they credit it to me before trying again. Until then I'm gonna sit here (not the whole time, mind you) and wait for the email with the digital coupon code. I understand that they'd recently become very backed up (some partner's shop was getting a massive amount of orders for digital direct printed designs), and they had to up production by adding more personnel and working throughout the week, so I'm attributing it to that (especially since the t-shirt that I ordered with my "GI1911 RELOAD! 2.0" printed on it over half a year ago looked awesome, and still does after many washes!).

Well, I'll stop boring you with my personal problems now. I'm gonna try a little harder to at least do one of these a week, so that I can finally get caught up. The designs featured in my shop with a blog post of their own are currently outnumbered by the ones without, and I'm not exactly happy about that. It sort of dissuades me from getting to cranking out some of my other ideas, because that will just back me up more on this end, and that's not good if getting more designs into my shop is my goal. That's enough for now. Until next time, carry on!


J, out...

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!

"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.

LYPHE

(Also known as "life")

So!...things like school (and the beach, and drinking fishbowls full of alcoholic beverages, and discussing art with friends) have kept me more that just a little busy these past few weeks.

(*checking out when my last post was made*)

Holy Hindu cows! June 30th, huh? (*cringe*) O.K. so maybe it's been a little more than just a few weeks. But, what can I say? I like for these design posts to be nice, clean, and well put together. So while I could just drop in, post a bunch of images and say "There ya go!" it would be incongruent with my M.O. Half ass-ing (stuff I'm into) is definitely not my thing.

You could say that I've gone a bit art heavy on my chosen courses this school quarter, so I will be busier with that stuff regardless. But also, the first few weeks are busier to boot. It's the time when I have to make several adjustments to my schedule, acquire books and supplies, and get my mind in the game.

So with all out there, I think it's safe to say that I won't be making any significant posts for at least a few more weeks. I don't like leaving a two part post all alone by itself like that, but it is what it is!

Still, there are new designs available beyond what I have featured in this blog, so feel free to check out my Spreadshirt designer profile, or my designer shop, for peeks at those. I know, I know! The designs are not as pleasing to view in their small size on there (which is kind of the whole point of this blog!), but it'll have to do in the meantime. That's about all I had for that. I have a lot of drawing to do for class! So, until next time, carry on!


J, out!

Designer Shop

(Kinda late for an update. It's past my bedtime! Haha...)

I'm working on getting a designer shop set up at the moment. I've had a premium account on Spreadshirt for a minute now, but I haven't had the opportunity to work through the intricacies of setting up my designer shop. The advantage of a "designer shop" is that I don't have to worry about all of the minutia that I would with a standard shop (available to anyone with a free account). Some of these "minutia" include what I believe are some pretty important details. For example, what piece of apparel should a design go on? Should it be a heavyweight men's t-shirt, or a woman's v-neck t-shirt....in pink?! What about the color of the design? The exact size and placement?

Sure, as the originator and creator I have a vision, my own artistic direction, to each design. But what happens if  a person loves the design, but not necessarily my arrangement? What if an individual likes my Backstabber design, but would rather have it without the text on the front? Or even yet, what if they want the design on the front of their apparel?...

If you can't tell by now, I could come up with many more scenarios for why a designer shop, which allows the customer to set up the design they want (in whatever color, size and orientation), on what piece of apparel they want. There is A LOT to choose from, clearly too much for me to decide what gets in and what doesn't. I actually have about 10 new designs waiting to be approved, so for now, I won't be making my designer shop active. Also, I will be deactivating my old "Tarantulas" shop and designating the new designer shop as such. It's kind of useless at this point.

I'm feeling kinda rushed, so I don't know if I left out anything else that I might have wanted to mention, but for now, that is all I had for y'all. Carry on!

J, out!