A Creative Year

I recently had the opportunity to work on a unique illustration project. Superbolt, Inc. is updating their 12 minute corporate video with new graphics, new footage- new everything. I’ve been working on this for quite a while as it is a side project with no set time table.

At one point in the video, 2 cartoon drawings are used to show the dangers of swinging heavy sledgehammers around. These were created over 12 years ago. They look dated, unprofessional, and were probably colored using crayons:

I eagerly put pencil to paper in an effort to bring my own little cartoon workers to life.

My goal was to make the drawing look more refined, have better color, and look crisp and professional. The basic scene was to remain the same and communicate the same message. Here is an initial sketch:

I then scanned the sketches that I liked and began outlining them in Adobe Illustrator. I wanted nice, crisp vector outlines for our scene. Here is an example of this completed process:

After that I had to decide if I was going to color the scene in Illustrator, with finishing touches in Photoshop, or just take the whole thing into Photoshop. I decided on the latter since my coloring skills in Illustrator are a little rough, and I feel much more comfortable in Photoshop. Also, I hope to do some digital painting soon and this was an opportunity to try a few techniques.

I laid down basic color, put the background in, and then went back to do shadow and highlights. This is supposed to be a cartoon and I kept the coloring simple and straightforward, while trying to clearly separate all the elements and characters.

After the two scenes were finished and approved, I flattened all the layers, sized them appropriately to be imported into the Premier Pro video project, and that’s all she wrote. The images are a vast improvement over what was, everyone here is happy with them, and considering this is something that is not my area of expertise, I am happy with the results. What do you think?

Sometimes fear is a positive force and can protect and motivate you. When designing websites, I’ve seen fear negatively affect content decisions, and ultimately customers. Recently, I had a client in a competitive market request all right-clicks be disabled from their site. Apparently competitors liked to steal their designs. I tried to explain that disabling right-click has more of a negative effect than a positive one, and that anyone really wanting your pictures will get them whether right-click is enabled or not. For a good article on that, go here.

I’ve seen greater degrees of fear causing iffy decisions to be made, that ultimately resulted in customer frustration. Catalogs with information removed, contact information removed from a web-site - you get the idea. It’s key to keep what’s important at the forefront when designing a website so that fears about how a small percentage of your users might use your content does not negatively affect what the vast majority of your visitors want to accomplish. They want your content, information, your message and they want it immediately available to them. Information needs to be easy to find, and it needs to be made available in a variety of ways, so that your of users can navigate, search and gather information in whatever ways they are used to.

Don’t let fear negatively affect the vast majority of your visitors when it comes to content decisions. Look for solutions that will keep your visitors happy, but hopefully also address whatever possible concerns you have over misuse of your content.

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933

I recently moved and have been remodeling and unpacking, as well as all the normal work stuff. Hence the lack of posts lately. To make up for it, I am giving away 3 nice cloud Photoshop brushes. You’re free to use these as you see fit, in both personal and commercial projects.

DOWNLOAD HERE

I have a few pictures of the Pittsburgh ‘Three Rivers Arts Festival’ to post soon, and more posts in the works. Enjoy the brushes!

The first week of April found me heading over to a little place called the Greater Pittsburgh Airport to catch a mid-morning flight down to Orlando, FL. Home of Disney, Universal Studios, and retirees the world over. 2,500 creative folks were also invading this popular area for the much anticipated 2008 edition of Photoshop World. If you found yourself unable to go, let me fill you in on the goings-on!

Wednesday morning brought the opening keynote. We’re talking lights, fog machines, aged women fighting over free t-shirts (seriously) and a rather long Star Trek themed video intro. After that a hobbled Scott Kelby made his way to the stage to pump us up for the whirlwind of learning we all came for.

Then the head honcho of Adobe took the stage and pummeled us with commercials for Lightroom 2.0. I quickly learned that at Photoshop World there is a sinister hidden agenda. Ok, not so hidden, but nevertheless very sinister. Everyone is trying to sell you something, and they will do so every chance they get. It doesn’t matter that you paid to fly to Orlando, that you are paying to be put up all week, and that Photoshop World tickets cost a fortune, and that you are there to learn new and exciting things. Many folks who get the chance to speak and teach know you are just dying to listen to their commercials for their books and videos. Their sinister plot is to take more of your money, and I would say they succeeded. That’s par for the course at these type of events, but still a little discouraging when you are on the recieving end.

At any rate, after the keynote we marched off to our first classes. This marked the low point in my Photoshop World experience, because I was already a little miffed at the keynote, and the first class I chose further darkened my mood and lowered my expectations. The entire class was a regurgitation of things I had already seen in Photoshop User magazine.

Maybe it’s just me, but you have to figure the majority of the creative professionals attending a NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) sponsored event are already members of NAPP and therefore recieving and reading the magazine. So, when they attend Photoshop World, you would think they are expecting the latest and greatest (at least I was). Paying $500 to be shown tips I had read a year ago in the magazine was, in my mind, ripping me off. Granted, I could have walked out of the class and found a new one, but I kept thinking ‘Well, i know this one but the next one will be something I haven’t seen.’ And then the class was over.

Fear not because after this class, the worst was over, and my Photoshop World experience started looking up. After a decent class, the Tech Expo opened and everyone rushed down there to see further presentations and lectures, as well as see what deals were being offered. There were even naked body painted chicks promoting magazine subscriptions. I mean, that’s what I hear.

Thursday brought the longest day, and probably the most useful for me. I seemed to pick some good classes that were helpful for what I do day in and day out. There are so many tracks with subjects for a great variety of creative professionals, it’s hard not ot find something of interest. For the most part the classes I attended were good, and self promotion a little less prevalent, but always lurking toward to end of every class.

One funny anecdote about the classes - at the beginning of each one a staff person would repeat the same message: “Turn off your cell phones, hold all questions till the end.” EVERY class they said this, and EVERY class a cell phone would ring and various creative ‘professionals’ would yell out questions or comments during the class. This is no exaggeration. It baffled my mind - some classes it got really bad and the teacher had trouble continuing. Sometimes an attendee would almost try to prove he/she was smarter than the teacher, especially if there was a hiccup in the presentation. Note to all: just because you are ‘creative’ doesn’t mean you can ,or should, ignore all rules.

Friday was a shortened day, with the tech expo open in the morning, a couple afternoon classes and then the conference wrap-up, which lasted until a little after 5. I caught a few great classes and then waited with the crowd to get into the conference wrap-up in hopes of winning some swag. This was probably the second lowest point of the conference, as the powers that be felt compelled to pummel us with useless video clips, 3 more teachers, (2 of which took their time just showing their photographs) and other things that I had to block out just to survive. Finally they got to the giveaways, which were pretty weak in my mind, and then we all rushed out to get to our cars.

So, overall Photoshop World was a positive experience for me, although it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. I don’t think I would travel that far to go to another one, but if there was an event closer to Pittsburgh I would probably attend, especially if there is a new version of Photoshop out. I have my 832 page training manual to go through, to see the material covered in classes I couldn’t attend, which is great. And, of course, I was in Orlando for a few days, which is never a bad thing.

So there you have it! If you attended, I’d love to hear your take on it. Otherwise, stick around for our next post, which will be creative project numero 2!