I’ve done a fair bit of artwork from the always-enjoyable Post Atomic Horror podcast over the years, including its logo. (
The other day, I had literally 10 minutes to design a business card. My dad needed to go to a trade show, and with no cards on hand, and no time to get a design offset-printed, we decided to just get it done from a copy shop, five sheets (50 cards) of 300gsm paper that I hand-cut later at home. I’ve used this method before, for my own business cards. It’s mainly because I don’t usually need many cards (I give out, maybe a few dozen a year), and because I can quickly and easily change info and designs, keep it fresh.
So, coming back to this card, with 10 minutes there really isn’t a lot of time for fancy graphics or elaborate illustration. It needs to be strong, sharp and get the job done. But one needn’t stick to simply printing the name & info in a basic font against white, and being done with it. As you can see, there is a little bit of mood and identity to it, even without a logo. And judging by the very staid, sober cards I’ve seen from most Water Treatment industry types, it certainly stands out, a key factor with the identity of a consultant — and individual — as opposed to someone representing a corporation.
It’s not the greatest piece of work I’ve done, but for 10 minutes, I’m satisfied, and most importantly, it did its job: to be given out at a trade show to the kind of people who still keep stacks of cards rather than some fancy digital solution.
Already, I am told, at least one staid, sober water treatment industry type who saw this card remarked that it was ‘too bold’. I think he’s the kind that prefers plain Times New Roman on a white piece of paper.
He’s probably Patrick Bateman, too.
This is a ‘badge graphic’ for @AlenkaofBohemia’s Madhuri Dixit appreciation week (it’s the actress’ birthday today, May 15th, so Happy Birthday!), which she’s curating on her ‘Bollywood-ish blog’.
To be honest, I’m not super-happy with this. The anatomy is fine, but the face is far from it, and I can certainly tell that it was either put together in a hurry, or that my mind and heart were elsewhere while doing it — both of which are partially true, at least.
On the one hand, being able to bang one of these out on something close to autopilot, after months of not illustrating, is a good sign for my skills — practice makes perfect. On the other, isn’t half the point of these fun side-projects that you learn something new, try something different?
When in doubt, draw Star Trek. Truth be told I’m not very happy with this one. The linework is noodly (fineliner, not brush pen), the BG is horrid, and the characters aren’t very well thought out beyond the big blue guy (who actually evolved between pencil and ink stages).
Mostly, however, I’m miffed that it took me nearly four hours to churn this out.
I have no idea why I’ve never put this up here before. Did it last year when fellow Bollywood bloggers were doing a Sridevi-themed week. The hands are hideous (and they’re actually improved from a previous version — I love you vector) but I’m quite happy with it.
Notes
Consider this a sequel, of sorts, to a sketch I did a while back. Another quickie; this time I even vectorised the sketch lines, and did it all in inkscape. Gives the blacks a nice rough, cheap old comic print look to them, which I like.
Argh, I have no idea what to do tomorrow, I have a whole calendar to illustrate in less than a week, and I just remembered that November starts tomorrow and I should start writing!
Happy Halloween, everybody.
V
The other day I finally bothered to buy an optical mouse again. The old one had gone wonky and had been replaced, for a few months, with a ball one. While installing it I suddenly realised that the little graphics tablet attached to my work computer — hidden beneath a pile of well-intentioned clutter — was indeed working. Samir had fixed whatever byzantine driver issues were afflicting it, and in typical Samir fashion had now forgotten quite how he did it and when it had happened (btw, have you checked out his spiffy new blog and site?). With another hour to go before The Simpsons, I decided to give it and the new mouse a whirl.
Firing up the GIMP I loaded up a random picture from my vast collection of junk and played around with various unfamiliar filters and script-fu widgets. One I did have some familiarity with but hadn’t used in years is called iWarp, and is sort of like the liquify tool in Photoshop, or like that old turn-of-the-century tech show favourite, Kai’s Power Goo. It allows you to grow, shrink, warp and shift around various parts of the image, and it’s therefore very useful in creating anime-style characters. That’s what I did to the celebrity picture that formed the base of this. The result looks almost nothing like the original.
From there I took it into Inkscape and used the bitmap tracer to turn it into vector art, then fiddled around with the colours, added in details and shapes to make it more graphic and less like a traced picture. Finally, a background and a random caption (from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, of course). The oversized text in the background is done with a stylus using Inkscape’s calligraphy tool. The word balloon is a standard union boolean of an ellipse and a triangle.
Overall, only twenty minutes of work, which by my standards is a blink of an eye (you all know how many months I can spend abandoning… um, finishing work).
I should do these quickies more often. Hope you like it (and I hope you actually clicked on the image to see the whole, wallpaper-sized thing 😛
V