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!

Danger & Beauty: Last Half

(Surprise surprise?)

I swear I wasn't trying to fake anyone out when I posted this just yesterday. I actually didn't expect to start up on this until like, at least, a few more weeks. But!...circumstances have presented themselves that have allowed me to sit and prepare this post. So....let's wrap this two parter up!

In the first half, I went into some personal philosophy and over the process that spawned the girl in this 3 part design. So let's discuss the next design in the compilation. In truth, this was actually the first design of the three which I undertook, and the one which I thought would be the more complex of the three; the gun. As you might know from some of my past blogs, I'm kind of a fan of the 1911's design. With that said though, having already made a more complex, 1911 vector design, churning this one out was actually easy enough.

(click image for a better view)

See? Not very complex at all, but it had enough divisions and negative space in it to push Cindy to nag me about the girl standing out for being to simple, in comparison to this pistol and the car. I agreed...

(click here for the 1911 parts guide)

Anyhow, the source image used was that of a Taurus PT1911 that I found online. I wanted the profile of a "modernized" 1911, and Taurus's version includes pretty much everything, externally, that you see on modernized 1911's. Things like the skeletonized trigger (which I did not depict here, because the dimensions of the holes and all wouldn't have gone over well with Spreadshirt's vector design restrictions), the flat mainspring housing, the sights, the "beaver tail" grip safety, and the ring hammer (of course, there is much more to it, but I'm only concerned with those which show on the design).

If you have an eye for detail, then you might have noticed that the hammer on my design is different from the hammer on the reference image. The reason for that is that the other hammer wasn't looking as good as I wanted it to. It's no biggie though, since the hammer that I improvised actually looks closer to the hammer on a stock PT1911. As with my other vector 1911, the negative space between the grip panel and frame, and the negative space in between the slide and the frame are subtractions of forms that were overlaid. Aside from some tweaking with the placement, and the fact that I mirrored the design so that it would face to the right, there's not much else to mention about it.

The next and final design to speak of this day, which was actually the second task undertaken for this compilation, is the car. I've had a thing for the Infiniti G35 since I saw one roll by, so it was a no-brainer when it came down to choosing a vehicle.

(Side notes: First off, that's actually how Infiniti spells its version of the word. Secondly, I'm aware of the existence of the G37, but it just doesn't turn me on as much...)

(click image to view larger version)

This was the chosen design in the end. The search for a suitable reference photo was almost as tough as the search for the girl's reference photo. And actually, I had a completely different idea in mind when I originally envisioned this compilation. I wanted a profile view of the vehicle, and had decided on this photo as a reference right up until the point when I lined the 3 references up. The G was just too wide and too short compared to the girl, which is thin and tall, and the pistol, which was somewhere in between.

So, I decided to go with a perspective shot instead. This proved to have several advantages over the old idea. One, was that its diagonal direction, from upper left to lower right, matched well with the pistol's, which I had pointing diagonally from lower left to upper right. Another was that it's height and length were closer to that of the pistol's as well. It brought the rest of the design together, I thought, with the opposite diagonally pointing car and pistol flanking the girl.

I still don't feel like it is perfect, and I've changed the design of the G35 a bit from what it was originally a few times already, so only time will tell how much this latest design will last. Construction was pretty simple on this as well, although that front, passenger's side tire was a PAIN! I messed around with that thing so much, and I still don't like it! I got a notice of commission earned from someone using the individual design for a product of their own recently though, so someone liked it enough! Hah....

But, without much further ado, here is the visual manifestation of my aphorism;

(Click image for closer look)

That's all I had for this one. Don't forget to drop on by my Spreadshirt designer profile and my designer shop from time to time to see what's really new. Until the next time, this is J, the birthday boy, signing off.

Out!

Danger & Beauty: First Half

(Partitioned for the sake of the readers)

So, let's talk some philosophy. As anyone else in this world, I've been shaped and educated by my own life experiences. These experiences have made me come to find many of the things that the majority of people consider "Dangerous" as Beautiful. I've also come to learn that things such as a rose, nature...or a woman, which are often considered to be "Beautiful" by most, can be Dangerous. So with that idea in mind, I came up with (what I'm proclaiming as) an "aphorism" of my own; Dangerous things are Beautiful... Beautiful things are Dangerous.

I don't believe that because something is or can be dangerous that it should be avoided. No, in fact, I believe these are the things that we should all strive to "master". Master how to interact with a beautiful woman (and keep your heart intact), how to survive in nature, how to wield a deadly weapon....how to drive a powerful car!

But...the reaction that I got from my friend Cindy when she saw the compilation of reference pictures that would make up this design was nothing short of hilarious! I'll cut to the chase a little and say that the design consists of a car, a girl, and a gun. I really couldn't have come up with an arrangement that was more macho, and possibly sexist, than that, but I hadn't seen it that way until I got the immediate (and whiny) "JUAN!" out of her! Hahaha, that still has me laughing. But let's move on to discussing the design process!

We'll start with the Girl. Finding a reference image for her was a nightmare! After about an hour of searching through photo after photo of girls in bikinis (how horrible!) Cindy decided to help from her computer. My requirements were for a picture of a woman with decently sized hips, for her to be standing (if in a pose that would be a plus) and for the image to show all of her body. I don't remember what the Hell it was that Cindy entered into the her search, but she had an image that I found suitable within minutes. I don't have the original, but this is what it looked like after I erased some of the rest off. It was a group of four, and none of the other girls really caught my eye. Well, Ok, so one other did. We called her "pale girl", and you'll probably agree if you see part of her arm in the right of that image. The reason she stood out was because she was so pale and her hair so dark, compared to the rest of them. Cindy thinks the reason she stood out to me is because she's convinced that I'm into really pale girls, and that might be true, but that wasn't it, promise!

Hahaha...Anyhow, this is what the finished silhouette looked like. (click the image for a closer look)

I thought I was done there, and I even went on to finish the other two designs, but before I could call it a day, Cindy had to step in and start pointing out things that bugged her. Top of her list was the girl's right foot. It went something like this; "Ew! What's wrong with her foot?", "What are you talking about, that's how it looks in the picture!", "Well give her a heel!", "A heel? But her other foot doesn't have a heel on it!", "Just - do it!", "Fine!"

So, I gave the girl a quick vector heel and Cindy, of course, thought it looked better. I strongly disagreed though. I thought her having just one heel was pretty ridiculous, plus I started thinking that maybe her bent right arm made her appear like an amputee, so I scrapped the whole the thing and started my search over. It wasn't too long, and I attribute this to lots of random luck, but I was able to find this lovely young girl!

It wasn't long after that I had another silhouette done, and this is how it turned out! (click image for a closer look)

A distinction from the source image is the hair. I like curly/wavy hair, but I felt that my simplified version of hair got the message across better. Another distinction is her right arm. I wanted to show off her curves, and the arm was in the way of that, so I took it out of the equation. The next distinction is her breast. If you're reading this, lovely girl, know that I have no problem with your cup size, I just needed this to be emphasized a little more!

Something else that is different is her height. For some reason, Cindy thought that the shorter, slightly wider version appeared "too young" (don't even ask me for the logic in that one). So, yeah. I made her taller and she thought it looked better. I personally didn't see enough of a difference in it to bother fighting her some more over it...but that doesn't mean there weren't more fights (there's a reason I'm splitting this blog)!

So, the next point of contention had to do with uniformity and simplicity. If you've been following this blog, and you've seen the other designs, then you know I do use a lot of negative space. With that said, the car and the pistol that were flanking the girl in the design had negative spaces and divisions incorporated into their designs, so I do agree with Cindy on this one point. The girl was a little simple by comparison. My solution? A bikini bottom made out of negative space:

(Click image for a closer look)

I like it! So it stayed. But once I showed Cindy and asked her if she thought it fit in better now, she said "Yeah!...But shouldn't she have something on the top?" This went back and forth for a good minute also. I absolutely refused to give the girl a negative space bikini top, as that would take away that boob I worked to enlarge and emphasize to begin with! Cindy then suggested giving the outside of the bikini top, on the boob side, a small outline, but I got her to understand that I would have to make the outline quite thick (compared to the girl's proportions) for the design to fall within Spreadshirt's bigger than 0.06 of an inch minimum, so she dropped that idea.

"How about, like, a space underneath her boob?" I gave that a try, not really liking it much at all, but Cindy, liking it of course, suggested that I add another underneath her outer boob. I gave that a try also, but I hated it even more. "Nah, it ain't working for me. I hate it! They're both coming off..."

I don't have any file saved with the negative spaces underneath the breasts, but they basically looked like smiles. They just didn't feel right at all to me, and they deviated away from my vision enough for me to definitely turn the idea down.

Plus, y'know what? I really like the idea of the girl not having a top on! Hahaha. That's everything I had for that one. Stay on the lookout for the last half, I'll try to get it going soon. Until next time, carry on!

J, out!