For my post I did our current project. My article includes Marcus Vick. I took another body of a football player and used an every day picture of Vick to photoshop his head onto the body. It is not complete and I am using a gold football to put in his hands. This will better explain his personality for the project

Monster Energy Photoshop

I did a monster design for my blog post. I used a photo of monster energy and used A liquid effect to make it look like the drink spilling out every where. Then I used a Shatter effect to give it a better more unique effect. I used blending options to blend and morph 3 different layers to make the image. I faded the letters in the Monster font making it appear as if the the explosion is providing light onto the letters and Monster logo. 

For my blog post I decided to Photoshop a space seen. I first took a picture of a ball and added affects to it to make it appear as a full size planet. I then got a plain background of stars, and added some blue stars using another photo and blended the layers together using the screen affect. I then took a picture of another planet and erased the planet and took the ring, but modifying it to fit the look of my design. I used the overlay affect to blend the ring of the planet together with the planet itself. The end result was very satisfying. 

Illustration Friday: Savour

I chose to do the Illustration Friday topic for my blog post. The word was savour, and I immediately thought of something sweet or sour or good tasting like candy. My design was very simplistic in that it was someone eating candy and sucking the flavor out of the candy. To show that happening to the viewer, I made the cheeks on the person squished together. I then made some lollipops with very simple shapes. The box of candy, I used the extrude and Bevel effect to make it seem three dimensional. I made the colors very bright and colorful to keep the viewers attention to the idea of the design. I then wrote the word on the side with a font I felt matched the design.

My Definite Final Board

Due to printing stipulations my board is rectangle to accommodate everything on to my board. Otherwise, everything else has remained the same. My hopes for this board is that the text does not get cut off. However, extending the checker pattern to the end of the board will defiantly get the whole print onto the board. The main font, reading "XHALE" is a hair smaller and a little bit taller. The small text and small logo I feel do not draw much attention away from the main font. By far I am satisfied with my design and would not change anything in my mind.

So, I have decided to completely scratch the last concept, it just was not eye catching, and the more I looked at it, the more and more I began to dislike it. So my new idea was a board reading "XHALE" with a very unique way of doing the lettering on the board and I edited it and put it into effect and it looked like this:

Since the main letter of the word and the most emphasized was the letter X, I spelled XHALE out of a bunch of small x's turned and sized in many different unique ways, keeping the colors limited to, blue, purple, and white. I feel as if these colors clashed the most with a black background on the board. Next I wanted to add some design to the ends of the board so it did not look so plain, just being a solid black, so I broke it up a little, using some Photoshop brushes I downloaded. My result from this was something like this:

At this point, I was begging to really like my design. I decided to wright skateboards on the bottom to 1)fill in some empty space and 2)emphasize my logo and word to better explain what the viewer was seeing, if they had not seen the shape or layout of the actual board. The next problem I encountered was it was still somewhat empty on either side of the word "skateboards" knowing this, I designed a small and very simplistic logo to hold some space but not grab the full attention of the viewer so with that being said,I came up with this:  

This I feel is very close,if not my final design. I did however stretch out the two end designs to make the checker design bigger, and to reach the red square that was placed in the template. Everything else remained the same, because I did not want to risk loosing any of my lettering or design when it was printed and transferred to the actual skateboard.

Reign is the word I chose to be on my skateboard. I may either use the font I traced out or go to dafont.com and find a font that is closer to the text I had drawn. I want the text to take up most of the board and have roots coming out of the "I". The dot on the "I" is going to be an actual picture of an eye. With this, a root will be winding down the letter I.

I was thinking about using the chinese symbol for strength for a substitute for the letter "N" but decided against it. As it is seen, the eye has wings and there are roots or branches coming out of  the N and on the other side on the R. I was considering the claws coming out of both sides of the board but felt as if it did not match the main theme of my board.

          The topic for illustration friday this week was racing. I first looked up a Lamborghini LP640 and put it into photoshop and trimmed away the unneeded areas of the photo. Next, I went and found a picture of a Bugatti Veyron. I used the same process as the Lamborghini to eliminate the unnecessary space and cropping out just the car. I than had to transform the image and turn the car around so it would fit the picture. Next, I found a picture of a raceway with an appropriate turn going to the right the way the cars would be turning. I then moved that image of the raceway to the back, behind the two cars. I turned both cars the way of the turn and positioned them with one car in front of the other. I finally, used the blur tool and blurred the back end of each car. This was to show the illusion of the cars moving at a high rate of speed.   

Illustration Friday: Spooky

       I did Spooky from Illustration friday.com. When I first thought of spooky, I thought of fire and particular fonts. Knowing this, I wrote spooky in a "creepy" font. I then inserted a fire picture and arranged it so that it was color burned into the picture. Then to give it a unique affect, I overlaid the font.Then finally, I found a picture of an explosion, and used affects to give it a halo image. By adding the affects, some of the picture became black and white, and some became colored.

                    For my blog post, I did the Illustration Friday topic, Transportation. In order to be unique, I used a rocket ship because it's not every day transportation. For the sun. I made a circle and colored it yellow and used radial blur to make it look like a distant sun glowing. The rocket ship was basic shapes and was also given some blur to make it show that it is moving at a high rate of speed. i decided just for a a better effect, I would add the word transportation in a unique attracting font.

Illustration Friday:Beneath

        This week, I did the Illustration Friday topic, Beneath. For a simple idea, I thought of eyes popping out of the sewer. The buildings are simplistic, yet get the point across, still giving the picture and animation, cartoon feel. I used basic geometric shapes to build up the environment around the sewer and eyes. To assure that the viewer understands the scenery, I wrote sewer works on the lid of the sewer. The Yellow rectangles are a curb on the side of the street. The white stripes show road markings to more explain the scene shown in the animation.     

Illustration Friday Topic: Old Fashioned

               I decided to do the illustration Friday topic: Old Fashioned. So I decided to make a cowboy to show the old western days. I chose a cowboy hat off the internet and used the paint brush and pen tool to trace it. I free handed the face and facial hair with the paint brush. Then to make the body I free handed the  body using the paint brush. Then I raced the body and colored it different so it appears as a shirt. Then I created the arms and copy and pasted one arm and turned to appear as another arm. Then for the sleeves I did the same process as the body. Then I added shoes and pants and mirrored them as I did the rest of the body. The black is meant to show wind and a ground that the cowboy is standing on.

Photoshop Creation

       My idea was to take an everyday picture and create it and turn it into a combined futuristic and reality photo. I took a picture of New York's skyline and and erased the background that was originally on the photo. I then put a background of a space photo, as the night sky. With the same idea, I cut out 2 types of spaceships to put in the sky. I made some bigger and some smaller to show distance. I put a picture of the sun to create an illusion of a comet. I put a few explosions in the sky as well to show a "battle scene". 

Rocket Ship and Hands

For this illustration, I decided to take hands but make  a full size rocket ship to show the creativity. I put the moon and rocket ship but to mix it up added the hands holding the rocket ship. The moon and stars give the impression of being really big wide open area, but once the hands are added the viewer is made to think and consider the drawing for more then what they actually see. It causes them to think and imagine what it could be rather then what is drawn on the paper.

Illustration Friday Topic: Desert

      I illustrated desert using the main focus of a cactus. I used the pen tool to make the spikes on the cactus to show that it has texture and is sharp. I put multiple cactus on the illustrator file, as they progressively went back, I added gaussian blurs to show distance. Then for the ground I used a basic rectangle shape and set the layer to the back, making it appear as the ground. To add to the flat surface i used for the ground a took the pen tool and drew sloping lines to make hills. For the sky, I made another basic background a square, and used the pen tool to make clouds. Then for both the sky and the clouds I added the blur effect, mostly to make the clouds appear soft and fluffy.

A recent Drawing

This is a recent drawing I have done. I got inspiration by watching tv and seeing something similar to the the final drawing I have pictured. I basically started with a circle and then added the rings. I decided to color/darken the lines on the outer edge of the ring. I then added other smaller planets which will be noted as smaller versions of the main planet to show distance. The planet is given the image to be hot, as it is cracking and melting in certain areas. If you take notice, all of the other planets are identical in idea to the main planet. However, they have different designs to make them unique. I finally shaded in the background  to show space.

Eye Catching icons and everyday logos.

              Many people go into stores and grab a drink to quickly refresh them from work, or whatever the reason may be, but do they ever take time to observe the art on the bottle they are drinking from? Most people can answer no to that. I have made an effort to observe the art and advertisements on these bottles, one that has caught my attention is the energy drink, Venom. The logo is semi-basic but still demands the attention of consumers. It is a snake revealing only one of its eyes, and comes in a variety of colors. It is important to mention that the bottle also has a even more basic design/logo then the snake on the bottle. It is a V shaped from a fang of a snake. This had also caught my eye. So next time your out check out some of these bottles, you may find some very interesting designs.