Board: Done

Staples came thru with the nice print job

I decided to mount it on Foam Core in a attempt to minimize expenses



as you can see i stuck with some line art and employed some general design principles

as i was aiming to do - the design featured fonts and words

i aimed to make a ridiculous statement and follow it up with some ambiguity (both in content and style)



I CAN WALK ON WATER
-no i will not show you -

every time i tell people i can walk on water - the first thing they ask me is to show them

"prove it"

i dont got time for that

it takes hard work and dedication
no need to show off




Here are the project totals:

Design concepts: 1 hour
Illustrator layout / trace / design: 2 hours
Basic Photoshop: 1/2 hour

Print cost: $17
Foam core: $4

Mounted on Foam Core with Rubber Cement: 1 hr

Totals: 4 1/2 hours
Cost: $21

The Toy Box Disaster

well - at least the figures are somewhat photogenic


and surprisingly good at what they were designed to do - which was hold things







the paint job is still kind of trashy as you can prolly tell

but all in all - the characters seem to have some personality

cant complain too much


actually - i could

its just not my style

2 More Board designs

damn this is relaxing


another sketch with dominant text




something a little more gentle

emotional

maybe somebody slipped estrogen into my diet coke



the colors in crayons are dope

but the detail aint always the best


i have something against sharpening

ill have to delve into my psyche and figure that shit out

Board Project: The First Post

to all my loyal readers:

you can stop sending the e-mails - i am fine - nothing bad has happened

yes - there will be some final entries regarding the Toy Project

this week been wild busy

the toy box turned out to be a disaster

but the project on the whole was a good learning lesson


anyway - here are some preliminary designs for the Board Project (where we will be designing a skateboard):




as you might be able to tell - fonts will factor significantly in my design

a bold claim - much like the giraffe ad i did earlier


thats the steelo


penmanship reigns supreme


more designs later




and yes - that is crayon

takin it old school on yall

Friday Night Session - Toy Project

Much progress made:


Assembly Line was established:
Chunks of aliens were prepared:


And the final product seems to be taking form:





it was a relief to see that the plan seems to be coming thru and the alien dudes are able to carry a flat object

you can see in that last picture that i did a trial run using the acrylic paints - not a tough medium to use


more updates later (tomorrow)

Outside-the-Box Thinking

pictures from experimenting with box concepts yesterday:






7 more days to finish this project

the goal is to be printing the box by this friday

5 more days


i gotta churn out this english essay in the meantime (almost done)

Toy Building Process

This is a basic rundown of the process I am planning on using:

1. basic wire base frame:



2. base piece



3. cover up wire



4. addition of foot and opposing leg



5. body piece





6. addition of head and other opposing arm + some face details - also widening base at top






i will obviously add more pictures of the addition of details as i get to that stage


things look promising - i will make some alterations to the style of these figures to get exactly what i am looking for - but all and all things are going better than i thought they would a few hours ago


still plenty of room for disaster tho - dont worry

1

Toy Prototypes #1 and 2

here are the first prototypes i tried to put together in accordance with my sketch designs

you will notice that one is bigger than the other

i did that big one first to make sure that my design was feasible

this morning i got hit by a strike of inspiration while trying to figure out a way to make the characters stable but dynamic at the same time (dynamic is the word of the day)

so basically - the character is built around a central pillar which acts as the LEG and the ARM on the OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE BODY (ie - left leg, right arm)

this way there is a stable pillar, but i can make the character look like he is in motion rather than just standing still

also - one of the dudes in my class mentioned i might want to take that idea AND add some wire re-inforcement - which you will see in further detail in the next post









as you can see - this pillar design allows me to make the character look like he is running and gunning

Psychology Project - Funny How Things Turn Out

our big project for Psychology class is a creative project for which we had 4 options

the Instructor mentioned that if we had something different in mind, then we could run it by him to see if it would be feasible


one of the options consisted of taking a abstract 'doodle'-type drawing (something that somebody draws when they arent really paying attention), and expand it to be a larger piece which reflects their thought process



since i have been working over these past few years to obliterate my conscious and subconscious and merge them into one 'thing', i have found myself frequently putting mnemonics to use (as i mentioned in a previous post with reference to the movie 'Memento')
this got me thinking about the psych project

i had a idea to try to use all of the mnemonic structures that i am familiar with and merge them into one image - and so far (from the rough sketches) i am excited about the effects that are coming up

mnemonics rely on structures and patterns that are easy to recall and lend themselves to making connections to information

accordingly - it can be said that a 'mnemonic system' is a very structured system

the interesting effect emerges when you compile a bunch of mnemonic systems in the same place - because you get a huge shitload of 'orderly' information (structured trails and packages) in what looks to be a chaotic arrangement

here is a little sample of where this project seems to be heading:



upon completion of this project - i might sleep for a couple of months

what you see above was done in pencil crayon on a 4" x 6" sheet

i am aiming at putting the good copy on 11" x 14"


really looking forward to this one

sort of like consolidating everything i have ever done ever in a visually stimulating way


i gotta contact my boy Os3y3ris for some feedback on this one

Toy Sketches and Sculpting Research

Here are the preliminary sketches for one of the toy pieces:




As you can see - it is going to be a little alien dude packin a big gun and also in a running pose as tho he is carrying something

i have those cork/rubber/felt stoppers that will be mounted on that top hand - and if everything goes well - you should be able to arrange about 5 or 6 of these guys in a formation that they will be able to carry something

it would be a interesting decoration piece and might still be cool for kids to play with



as for research into sculpey techniques:

all i did was type 'Super Sculpey' into Google and I got sent to the main Sculpey site

they have tutorials and tips right there - which is great because they range from beginner to advanced

the best piece of advice (for my purposes) that i read was that one dude says that he uses index cards to put his pieces on and even puts the index card in the oven when he cooks it - and the index card does not burn

since these are going to be small pieces, i am going to employ that technique as well



the sculpey site is so ridiculously thorough with the tips and tutorials that i dont really see myself venturing too far away from it as far as research goes

if i have time tomorrow i might peep the site that the Instructor showed us in class (i have the link in my notebook)

Collage

Yet more proof that i am a idiot today as i had a hell of a time cropping my collage to be an appropriate size to fit a CD case - but i will comment more on that later

for now i just want to talk about the benefits of being a idiot as i got a cool effect from making the mistakes -

with what became a scrap copy of my collage - i decided to mess around with oil pastels and generated some cool looking shit:





i forgot to mention in past posts about my new-found affinity for oil pastels

after some of my classmates showed me how to get some cool effects with them, ive been playing around with them a lot

will prolly be using them for the tag assignment (that or watercolor)

Magazine Ad Project - There is No Giraffes ANYWHERE

for New Media class - we have to create a full page magazine ad which includes a large photo

here is what i have so far:

v1.0




v2.0




my first hunch was to go with #1 because the cut off giraffe makes it look even more weird

but now i am not so sure


if anybody reading this has any insights, comments, or suggestions - please let me know

also let me know if the entire thing should be scrapped


easy

Strange Days pt II

Here are the materials I picked up at the store:

Some cheap-ass plastic tools (i actually picked these up partially because the texture on them is this swirly-brown texture which kind of reminded me of my Skate-Tag assignment) - these should be good for the bigger pieces i do - maybe not so much the smaller ones (plus they were cheap which was the most important thing)



Here are the tools jabbed into the clay:






And here is my clay mascot who was awoken and tried to escape the box before he was ultimately mashed back into the lump of clay.





i made that while i was waiting for the video to upload on YouTube


so things are looking good

got my idea and my supplies

but my fuckin shoes are SOAKED




oh - and here is a shot of some Toronto buildings that caught my eye today: