CareBears Right There
It’s been almost four whole months since I started my new job and even though I was hired primarily as a web designer, I’ve yet to design and build a website from scratch. Granted that we aren’t a web design company, but it’s part of what we do. Sure, I’ve made a few tweaks and updates to the sites we currently maintain, and I’ve had the opportunity to create some registration pages and HTML email blasts, but I haven’t yet been able to do what I used to do multiple times a day at my previous job.
Did I really just allude that I might miss the old grind of daily website builds? I take it back. There are times I miss building websites all the time, and my WordPress skills are a little rusty, but I wouldn’t trade what I do now to go back to then. Ever. Unless the phrase “Million-dollar salary” was brought up.
Anyway, one of the perks of my new job is the side-projects that pop up from time to time. Our company likes to do things that are unexpected by our clients. That could mean delivering creative Thank Yous, or just finding out-of-the-ordinary ways to allow our clients to easily remember who we are. This is how the illustration above was born.
To thank one of our clients for letting us work with them, we created a mini art gallery of work using their logo as a starting point. Since they enjoy displaying and partaking in local art from the area, they were pleasantly surprised by all of the work we put into our pieces. I illustrated this piece by had, colored it using Illustrator and Photoshop, and then printed it in color on a piece of watercolor paper. And although the watercolor effect is missing in the picture above, I still think the piece turned out well.
1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4…
Contrary to what you may have heard (or hoped), I am not dead, nor have I quit this website. Things have been a little more busy than usual for the past couple of months, and I’ve put off doing anything art- or blog-related for far too long. I know that I dust off that excuse quite regularly on this site, and I can assure you that mentioning being lazy and/or busy will probably turn up more search results that anything about art or drawing. I can’t help it; I’m a midwest slacker at heart, and I don’t think there’s anything that can change that.
Production Art Post-Mortem
Up until last week I had, according to LinkedIn, spent the past 5 years and 8 months working in the production art field of graphic design. Over that time, I learned a lot about design — mostly by teaching myself and by sharing knowledge with friends. I also learned a whole lot about what to stay away from as a designer. For instance, I will be staying lightyears away from spec-art and making sure I work where I have input on the creative process; not just from a client design standpoint, but a little about the company as a whole.
I’m not a big “quote” person. There is one I try to live my live by from C.S. Lewis about how growing up doesn’t mean letting go of being a child, but for the most part I don’t find myself connecting to things other people quote. I can really relate to conversations and writings between creative people, but I think that quotes are too often warped to fit the context someone wants them to fit. However, there is one by Picasso (more of a story) that I always think of when people don’t like to think of design (or art) as a real skill:
Picasso was in a park when a woman approached him and asked him to draw a portrait of her. Picasso agreed and quickly sketches her. After handing the sketch to her, she is pleased with the likeness and asks how much she owed to him. Picasso replies: “$5,000.”
The woman screamed, “but it took you only five minutes.”
“No, madam, it took me all my life,” replied Picasso
The Queue: Zombieland
I still don’t know how I totally feel about Zombieland. I know that it wasn’t a bad movie, as I was laughing quite a bit while watching it. However, there were also moments during the middle where I was checking my watch like I was waiting for a a frozen pizza to cook in the oven. The movie had a lot of promise in the beginning. The introduction of the Columbus character with his rules was done really well, and watching slow-mo deaths were always enjoyable — that woman in the mini-van really should have worn her seatbelt. I’m also a sucker for low-budget horror/action flicks where very talented makeup people get to flex their prosthetic muscles to create some incredibly realistic effects. Between Zombieland and District 9, it’s nice to see some of this old-school style.
What killed the momentum for me was about halfway through, when I’d realized I’d seen this before. I had already seen the campy take on the zombie genre with Shaun of the Dead, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was watching a movie about Left 4 Dead. Four unlikely heroes team up to stave off a zombie-type infection while traveling across the country in search of a “safehouse”. On top of that, they spend the last act in an amusement park! With a clown zombie! And that’s why I’m thinking that Zombieland falls in the “average” realm for me. Originality. I can’t say it wasn’t fun to watch, but I can’t say that I plan to watch it again either.
Come With Me If You Want to Draw
Welcome to Killer Robot Comics, Design and Illustration Version 3.0! I’ve spent quite a bit of time creating this, and I hope you enjoy visiting and reading through it as I did making it. For the past 8 months, I’ve been fine-tuning my WordPress ninja skills and this site is the fruit of that labor.
Let me tell you a little bit about what I’ve made here. This site is the home of my personal and art blog, my portfolio and soon to be the hub of all my projects and creations. The entire site is hard-coded from scratch by me, using the most basic possible WordPress framework as a starting point. It was made using a truckload of CSS, PHP and whatever help I could find in order to make my creation come to life.
With a little help from DOMTab for some Java in the sidebar, and IconDock for the free social icons, I have made what I think is the perfect home for Killer Robot. I know there are some things I want to add and change already — things that came up during production that I moved to 3.1 — but I think this is a cool starting point to show a lot of what I can do.
So please take a look around, try things out, comment on posts, and let me know if you think of anything you’d like to see added for ease of use, or if you see something that is borked pretty bad. Also, for the three of you that have subscribed to my RSS feed, you might need to update it.
And for everyone’s sake, please ignore the CSS behind the curtain. The file is a little messy and something to be cleaned up in a future update.
Thanks for reading!
New Website: It’s Coming
Finally my home page is actually accurate! I really am working on a new website design. Currently, it’s in the early development stages (i.e. moving things around in Photoshop) but now that I have a plan and a timeline, I hope to have something new up around the first of the year.
Until this is done, I won’t really be posting anything new here — even though it’s been quite a while since my last post anyway — but once the new theme and site are live, I plan on coming back with more posts, more updates and more artwork to share with you guys.
While I’m working on the site, you can follow me on Twitter to get my latest updates and thoughts, and even if my new site can’t throw knives into heaven or dip ladies’ hands into acid, like George Washington, the new website is coming.
To leave you with something opinionated — it is a blog after all — here are some micro reviews of things I would normally post about:
Bionic Commando (Xbox 360): An incredibly fun and enjoyable rental even if the story is about as captivating as an empty trash can.
Iron Man (Netflix): One of the better comic book movies. The writers got the characters right, the designs right and the story was solid. The only thing missing was a more convincing bad guy.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine: As I’m trying to talk myself into X-Men Movie-verse Deadpool, I can’t help but be bothered by the fact that there was a complete lack of blood in this movie. A group of mutants killing people with claws, swords, guns and everything else, and no blood to be found.
Quick Queue: Tropic Pineapple Rising for Coraline
It’s been a while since The Queue has reared its head, so I’ve got four movie reviews to fire off here (although in a slightly shorter format). Let’s get started.
Pineapple Express
Not since the masterpiece Dumb and Dumber have two best friends with less than stellar intellect and decision-making skills made a funnier pairing. Pineapple Express starts out funny and ends in insanity. When Dale Denton accidentally witnesses a druglord-related murder and his identity is traced back to his drug dealer, Saul, the two men have no choice but to work together to out-run their would-be assassins.
When you start watching this movie, you expect it to be a slapstick comedy with some raunchy humor, but it comes out with guns blazing. Does it have Gary Cole and Seth Rogan having a machine gun fight in an underground weed bunker? Yes it does. Is Danny McBride running over people in a Daewoo? Yes he is. And it all wraps up in time for breakfast at the Waffle House.
What To Add It For: It’s funny, man.
This really is a funny movie. With everything from comedic dialog to over-the-top action scenes that are hilarious in their ridiculousness.
What To Remove It For: Low brow humor.
Comedy is definitely subjective, and while I love a crass-humored stoner comedy done right, it’s not what others may like.
Rating: 4/5
The Lion Sleeps Today
I try to tell myself that I am working on artwork on a regular basis, then I wake up one morning to find out that it’s been six months since I’ve opened a file in Photoshop. I’ve been “working” on Laura’s logo for over 6 months, and I feel terrible that it has taken me so long.
I love drawing and designing, and every time I sit down at the computer or table to do some work, I love every minute that I’m lost in those projects. It really is my passion and when I’m pen-deep in a project, there is nothing that makes me feel more productive. The roadblock for me is getting my lazy ass to move itself upstairs and get to work.
Fallout 3 Review: A Boy and His Dog
Most of the time when I start playing a game, if it fails to really sink its teeth into me or doesn’t seem that fun in the beginning, it ends up another discarded case on my pile of shame. With my limited free time and the never-ending stream of games to try, I don’t have the patience or hourly resources to force myself to play something just because reviewers say it’s “good“.
When I heard that Fallout 3 received multiple game of the year awards and was generally praised in the gaming circles, I wanted to give it a try. After I started looking into the artwork, gameplay and features — an action RPG with exploration and moral choices — I bought it outright, something I rarely do in this economy.
The problem was that I was so behind on the games that I had, I put off playing Fallout 3 until this past summer. When I finally got the chance to sit down with it and started my vault dweller, I hated it.
In the beginning I was having fun and I thought it would evolve into a game I could play for a while, but once I had been playing for around 5 hours, I started to become frustrated and wanted to stop. The game just hadn’t been what I had expected.
I told myself I would give it until I reached Level 10 to turn up the fun dial (another 5 hours or so). All I can say is that I’m glad I did. What started out as ten hours of mediocrity ended 100 hours later as one of my favorite games ever.
The Fightin’ Corgis
Football season is just around the corner — I’m talking NFL, not that sissy college stuff — and the excitement is building like it does every year. The only problem is that I’ve been a Bengals fan all my life. The team hasn’t been near a Super Bowl since I was in third grade, and it looks as if this year is going to be a long shot for even a playoff berth.
Luckily, my friends and I are heavily into Fantasy Football. Every year we draft our league and duke it out like the stat-dorks we are. My usual team, The Heroes of Cybertron, are sitting it out this time so that I can launch a new team into the fray. As the weeks go by, my rivals will learn to fear the name: The Fightin’ Corgis!