Time to leap again

I might have to backfill this with the wonderful work i produced last time - but right now im pretty excited with round 2 of making posters for "It's All About the MUSIC". Krista's next party is coming up in October.

Had a great night last night working with Greg on a conceptual prototype. His immediate suggestion was to chopping up of the DJ images and applying filter in Photoshop first them moving them to Illustrator. I was against it as i wanted to spend time getting good at one piece of software at a time - but just for kicks, we applied some images and traced one DJ in photoshop.

Holy crap and OMG. Wish i hadn't have seen the number of filters and crazy shit you can do there. I was shaking my head at the possibilities that i now have to work with. Having more options, more filters is great - but now i have to pick one!

We didn't quite achieve a perfect cut and paste between programs yet though so the prototype above is based on the same method i used last time, with no photoshop. Just wait till i update it...

Updated Group Poster

I managed to get a picture of Gavin or Torbynik finally and added him to the poster. So they are all there now. I also added the fonts that Greg gave me to my PC (c:\windows\fonts... AlteHaasGroteskBold) and added some names and a footer etc. The concept is ready to show to Krista i think.

In addition, with the basic traced characters, i had some help from Dan, she has made me a few backgrounds with a consistent look and feel in much the same style as the banners. Might be time to show these to Krista too.

Still to come, re-doing the characters properly, adding some shooting stars and bass clefs etc.

Getting Some Live Trace Practice, All the DJs!

I met with my sister the legendary Dan last week to get some help. We worked through the ideas, then got on the tools and had a play. Making something look pretty good with a combo of illustrator and Photoshop didn't look to hard for her being a pro, but she did show me some easy stuff.

Use the Pen tool and draw a swirl, then change the brush type to paint splatter. Make it bright green then fade the opacity, whack it on a layer behind your subject and you have a prett cool effect. Pretty Cool. Now if only i could get ti to do that with some stars.... we'll see.

Besides the fun stuff, we decided was that I do in fact have to go for a vectored approach if I want to blow things up to a large scale. Which i do. A1 maybe? No matter what the combination, each DJ would need to be vector traced. Once tracing those assets was completed, i'd have what i needed to make several designs.

One minor problem was that the trace i had done in Phtoshop of Floody was not an actual vector. It was infact a traced bitmap. Which would remain a bitmap. And, Floody wasn't actually playing.

So, I read through a neat tutorial on Live Trace for illustrator. It was a simple one but wasn't 100% clear at every step though, it said "now you do this..." but i dont know the buttons or where to find ... this. I took what i knew and started carving up what i had. And i did this ....

So step by step, live tracing a photo.
1. place the photo
2. live trace the photo using a preset
3. open a colour palette (not all work, i used earth tones)
4. modify the live trace settings to be colour and use the earthtone palette
5. live paint the trace. if you dont do this, you can't edit the image, scribble on it or erase anything.
6. expand the trace. if you dont do this, you can't select segments and move them around or delete them.
7. use the correct select tool and start deleting bits you dont want. If it deletes abit you DO want, use the eraser to build a white edge between the sections. Then you can delete it easy.

That's about it. I then copied each DJ to a new drawing on their own layer and moved them around. I added a black background and the banner from the flyer we are using. (Cheers Greg!)

Im still missing one DJ but - presto! Concept one on the page and new skills in vectoring coming along nicely.

My first Photoshop Vector

Right - i now have Photoshop and Illustrator. Woo!

Using a Tutorial i found here, http://www.vectorportraits.com/tracing-shapes/
and a photo of one of the DJs which you can find here, http://floodydj.podomatic.com/ I have now vectorized a photo in Photoshop by hand. You kind of trace the image. Lots of layers and clicking.

Ta da! First draft of course. And back ground is still a bit map. Happy with it so far though.

DJ Floody

The challenge

My great friend Krista approached me recently to help her organize her party. A mix between her birthday bash and an all out super event with tickets, DJs, flyers - the lot. Of course I said - "hells yeah Goat"

There were a few rules, we kept our plans secret, we kept the venue secret, we met and did everything secretly. It was a secret project and we were seriously excited. In fact, we haven't had the party yet it's in 6 weeks or so in June. In all the excitement i cam up with a super totally awesome idea to put some concept artwork of the DJs and the party on the walls in the chill out room. A great little space, another little surprise for everyone, and just something special i could add to the mix.

I of course have no idea how to pull this off. As far as a project goes i have the concept and direction, i have some great ideas, I want it to be friekn amazing and get picked up by 3D world or something - but alas - i aint got the skills..... yet.

The challenge - produce several works, possibly one per DJ so upto 5 works for the party on the 25th of June. Besides the tight time frame - the biggest challenge will be teaching myself how to use Illustrator and Photoshop along the way.

I'll do my best to keep track of my progress here, in my first blog ever. Another new skill.

How exciting? off i go now to start my first Leap.