Well, just as quickly as it was posted and approved, the masses have spoken and they do not want a Blobber t-shirt. The average score over 700+ votes was 1.6 out of 5. That automatically removes it from the voting area, essentially knocking it out of the competition.

Oh well, maybe another design later on would garner more votes.

Well that was fast. The Blobber T-Shirt detailed in my previous post is now available to be voted upon. Vote People, Vote!

C’mon people, vote on this thing. Let your friends know about it too!

For folks that know me, it’s pretty apparent that I’m addicted to the fine quality t-shirts provided by Threadless.com. My closet has a cornucopia of rainbow colored shirts which are decorated with imagery and phrases that I only seem to find interesting. It’s a simple pleasure that makes casual Fridays all the more enjoyable… at least for me.

So I’ve debated submitting my own designs for their competitions before, but I never got around to it. Their current catalog is driven by user-created submissions that are voted on by the users themselves. Popular items get a higher ranking and might possibly be turned into real live shirts.

Enter the logo for the Blobber.

The Blobber used to be the mascot for a short lived web site put together by my coworkers, which resided at oddly enough theblobber.com. The site no longer exists, and the Blobber is no more. The basis for the site were a bunch of silly eating competitions we dreamed up, and we’ve since outgrown that. Pics from its humorous history can be found in my boss’ Flickr albums if you are interested. Our motto was: “Masticating for your pleasure”.

I’m quite proud of the Illustrator work I did on this piece oh so long ago. I still feel it holds up, and so I figured I’d submit it to the latest Threadless competition just for the heck of it. The original had a much larger, softer color palette; but I was required to reduce the unique color amount to 4 because of the rules for the competition. Two different variants of the original can be found here on white and here on black (my fave).

It still has to be approved in order to be voted on, but as soon as it is (prolly when I’m travelling abroad oddly enough), I’ll be whoring for votes left and right from whomever I know.

If I can, I’ll post again when voting becomes available. At such time, I’d really appreciate a vote or two. Feel free to be honest with your opinion, but think of the possibility of wearing such a magnificant shirt for your casual Friday…

I am often amazed at what someone is able to do with Macromedia Flash. Whether it’s a great visualization, smooth animation, or just great design I’m usually impressed.

Well I’ve been following the work of Adam Phillips since his first or second Flash animation. He is truly a master at what he does, and I can only strive to have work that somewhat mimics his. His skill with effects animation is unparalleled.

Recently, his next animated short was released and it’s his best ever. The YuYu continues the story of Brackenwood and its main character Bitey. If you haven’t seen these pieces yet, you really owe yourself to sit down and watch them. This latest one is actually split into two films. So here is the first part (Littlefoot), and here is the second (The YuYu).

While you are at the site, I recommend watching the other films Bitey of Brackenwood and Prowlies at the River.

I first began using a digital pen tablet back when I originally made this site with my family’s Macintosh. Almost 99% of the Little Yellow Guy’s art was done in Dabbler, using my old school Wacom pad. I think it was almost 5 x 4 inches if I remember correctly. Tiny, but quite useful.

Shortly after getting my own Windows PC, I bought another cheap Wacom pad to replace the Macintosh one I could no longer use. The Graphire 2 tablet I currently own works admirably, but it doesn’t seem anywhere near as smooth or accurate as my old serial pad. It’s imperfections are a big reason why I don’t do much digital art anymore.

I’ve always liked the thought of using a tablet type system, and on several occasions I debated as to whether I should break down an buy a Tablet PC. For one reason or another, I’ve put the thought into the back of my mind.

And now comes along the tablet above all other tablets: the Wacom Cintiq. I had seen advertisements for these before, but the sticker shock has always scared me away. I thought owning one, let alone using one, was a pipe dream.

But recently I saw a live video of one of them in action, and now I’m in complete and utter awe. The video must really be seen. The tablet is so much larger than what I thought it was going to be. It must be amazing to even be within it’s gigantic presence.

Of course, it’s still like a million dollars (about $3000 to be exact). But hey, I could always lease one right?

We started using non-charcoal materials this week. We briefly used graphite pencils on Tuesday, and today we used white pencils on black canson paper. The images from this post are from today’s excercises.

It has been a nice change of pace, and I like the results. The “She Hulk” one is interesting with the green pastels as a base, but I’m not a fan of the blending I used. But it is definitely something to look at. My favorite is the close-up below.

The drawings I’ve continue to crank out are pleasing me more and more as time goes on. I think I’ve found a sketching style that I’m satisfied with. I’m also trying to change up my line style with more variance in my lines. Often I don’t outline the lighter edges in pieces like the ones to the right.

In addition I’m not worrying about drawing the whole figure. I’ve been focusing on muscle groups and more detailed shading.

Tonight’s class contained the return of Kenny Rogers. I had an easier time with his more “squarish” features, and I even completed my favorite sketch to date for the class.

Behold, Kenny Roger’s Knee!

For most of last Thursday’s Life Drawing class, I was unhappy about being there and it showed in my work. The drawings were out of proportion, shading was horrible, and the outlines were crude. Overall I was disappointed with the work.

So towards the very end of the class, I decided to switch things up. I chose to focus on only a portion of the model’s body and not the entire figure.

With this change, my drawing skills u-turned. I was able to better capture the model’s proportions and the smaller details. I was also able to add more distinct shading and the sketches turned out better than anything else from that evening.

In fact as it turned out, these last two pieces ended up being some of my favorites from the past few weeks.

Looks like I might actually be able to start working with other sketching medium other than charcoal. Charcoal is great, but I cannot place down clean or thin lines for the life of me.

Supposedly next week we are going to be using regular graphic pencils, white chalk, and other non-charcoal medium. Honestly, it will be a nice change.

In other news, apparently a recent auto update for Internet Explorer for Windows causes an odd “error” when a web page tries to load a flash movie using the old embed and object tags. Users get a message stating “click to activate and use this control”.

Now after the patch, unless you are using a different way of placing it on your page, users will have to click inside of the flash window (actually an ActiveX control) in order for the movie to start playing, or even do anything for that matter. The first frame appears and simply stays there until the flash is clicked or focused. Quite annoying and it’s all due to a plug-in patent lawsuit that Microsoft lost.

My bits of flash should not have this problem as I use a javascript file called FlashObject in order to include any flash movies in my page. You can learn more about the freely available code by visiting the script’s website.

Well my short “break” from going to class comes to an abrupt end tomorrow evening. Much to my disdain, I’ll be going back to my life drawing class.

I have already gotten back into doing the homework, as seen in the picture below. I’m happy with how this portion of the assignment turned out (mostly due to the shading), but I hate how the first awkward sketch got put down. I pretty much gave up trying to fix it to my liking and just finished what I had.

Kinda sad how I’m already tired of this class (mostly due to the homework), and I’m arguing with myself as to whether I should take another class next semester in the Fall.

If I do decide to take another course, it will probably be another art related class like painting or some other physical form of art.