Afishionados,

Mom’s taking some women’s art class and apparently needs to do a report on a female artist of some sort. My immediate suggestion for her was Carolee Schneemann. Sadly, the professor (like so many professors in this day and age) has a pre-determined list of artists that the students are to choose from. And the list contains artists that people are already familiar with (O’Keefe, anyone?). Why not stir things up a bit and let the student research an artist of their choosing? Why must there always be a list? And speaking of lists, it looks as though Ms. Schneemann has found hers:

Excuse me, but your rollers are showing

For those not in the know, Carolee Schneemann’s [arguably] best-known work was her Interior Scroll performance piece (photo above). Interior Scroll was performed in East Hampton, New York and at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. For the exhibition, Schneemann “ritualistically stood naked on a table, painted her body with mud until she slowly exracted a paper scroll from her vagina while reading from it.” From her web site:

“I thought of the vagina in many ways– physically, conceptually: as a sculptural form, an architectural referent, the sources of sacred knowledge, ecstasy, birth passage, transformation. I saw the vagina as a translucent chamber of which the serpent was an outward model: enlivened by it’s passage from the visible to the invisible, a spiraled coil ringed with the shape of desire and generative mysteries, attributes of both female and male sexual power. This source of interior knowledge would be symbolized as the primary index unifying spirit and flesh in Goddess worship.”

She’ll end up at the Gimcrack Hospital as a patient someday, mark my words.

Afishionados,

I’ve been preparing for a psychology test tomorrow and to say that it’s been an excruciatingly dull couple of hours does not do proper justice to the the abysmal magnitude of boredom that I have experienced. I began with the history of psychology…. ZZZZZzzzzzz….. Oh, shit, sorry. I fell asleep again. From there, I moved on to a repeat of 8th grade anatomy of nerves and how senses work. Apparently nothing has changed since then, as my visual senses have demonstrated. The only redeeming portion (if such a thing exists) is the bit about Freud. The guy may well be full of shit, but at least his bizarre theories of sex and aggression are more interesting than reading about how the sense of smell is converted to a neural pulse. Unfortunately, the textbook leaves out all the good parts about Freud’s cocaine use.

The material is so uninteresting to me that I have created this chart to help you better understand:

The designer in me wants to make this into a shirt and wear it to class just to see what would happen.

Afishionados,

I signed up for the abnormal psychology class at Polanski University for the summer. It’s only been a week since classes started, but we’re already discussing the homunculus and the effects on the brain.

Click to embiggen

Afishionados,

June 4th doth approacheth quick, and with it the portfolio show that I’ve mentioned in previous posts. I am happy to say that I am well ahead of schedule because I did a boatload of printing on Saturday instead of going to Cleveland to watch the Indians lose to the Yankees.

My portfolio will have several different pieces, but my favorite is the most ambitious assignment that I’ve undertaken my whole time at school. Everyone has similar projects because everyone has taken the same classes. While I, too, am using some of these “cookie cutter projects” in the show, I needed something that was completely my own that nobody else would have. So I wrote, illustrated, and bound a children’s book. And I think it came out rather well, if I do say so myself. I titled the book The Mysterious Misadventure of Bella J. Teagarden. Here’s what the jacket looks like:

And the synopsis from the inside of the jacket:

Bella J. Teagarden is sent to her room for a nap when the strangest things begin to happen. First, an ugly bird shows up at her window and flies Bella and her cat, Jynx, off to a strange island in the middle of the sea. An encounter with pirates, a cave of treasure, a dragon, and a rusty old robot. How is Bella supposed to take a nap through all of that, let alone find her way back home?

In the book, Bella is six years old and is based on my real life three-year-old niece of the same name. The character is based off the real Bella’s attitude and behaviors. No one has a cooler niece than I do. You may think that you do, but you would be wrong.

The first step was to actually write the story. I wrote the whole thing in a couple of days and, after three revisions, was happy with the overall tale. As with any story, cuts had to be made and characters were dropped because of length. However, there is always the possibility of a sequel, and I already have a good idea on how I want to treat that as well should one ever come about.

From there, the concept began with a sketch of what I wanted Bella to look like in the story. A large head, comical hair, and a simplistic, almost two-dimensional appearance is what I wanted. And she needed a badass dress, but more on that later. I also began to sketch the “sets” for the story. Characters were designed separately so that I could place them wherever I wanted within the scenery. The first set was Bella’s room, where the story begins.

The sketch of Bella’s room:

That sketch was scanned and brought into Adobe Illustrator, a software program for drawing vector images. I traced the shapes in the sketch, and put each shape on its own layer. The colors were not important, other than to make it easier for me to distinguish one shape from the next. Here’s what the vector version of her sketch looked like:

From there, the vector image was exported into Adobe Photoshop, where I applied textures, colors, and adjusted the lighting as necessary. The finished room, as it appears in the storybook:

The book contains approximately 6 images (all done the way I mentioned above) and 12 pages of text. I would love to have done a few more pictures, but I simply ran out of time. I don’t think that the story suffers from a shortage, but there are a few things that I would have liked to have been able to draw. Ah, well, perhaps in the Collector’s Edition.

Now, about Bella’s dress that I mentioned earlier. I used a placeholder texture (a nice pink plaid) when I first designed Bella, but someone suggested that I make the cover out of cloth, at which point I thought I’d make the cloth cover match Bella’s dress. Thanks to the beauty of Photoshop, swapping textures is a breeze.

Originally, I went to Joann Fabrics in search of a nice plaid but found something even better. Because of Bella’s no fear attitude and because the story involves pirates, I chose an awesome pink pirate pattern instead. Awesome!

Joann Fabrics is not exactly a place where men go to buy things. I was the only guy in the whole store and I was carrying a pink pirate pattern to the counter. The woman who cut it for me looked at me very suspiciously and asked me what I was going to do with it. I told her that I kept little girls in my windowless basement but they kept outgrowing their dresses and that it was time to make new ones and feed the girls less food. She didn’t talk to me after that.

And speaking of pirates, guess who makes an appearance in the story? (Used with permission, too! Thanks, JP!)

Once the pages for the book were printed, my mother was kind enough to stitch them together for me with her sewing machine. I cannot thank her enough for her help, because my original plan of using book glue wasn’t working out well at all. The stitching came out even better than I could have hoped for.

And a photo of the first image in the book, as well as the first page of the story. The book ended up being a nice cloth hardcover, complete with dust jacket. Finished size is approximately 8″ x 10″.

I even created a “Bella-ized” version of myself for the “About the Author” section on the jacket. I actually drew my own hair from scratch, but the filter I used in Photoshop generated almost the exact same pattern as Bella’s. Must be genetics I guess.

So there you have it. A sneak peak at my completed book and the reason I’ve been AFK from the blogosphere for so long.

Afishionados,

I’m in the last stretch of the quarter, which happens to involve a portfolio show on June 4th. I’m in overdrive trying to wrap up several projects so the Fish is going to have to wait. In the meantime, I have appointed a temporary replacement to keep everyone company. He’s a robot, but he’s shy. He also doesn’t have a name. Suggestions welcome.

Catch you on the flipside.

A.C.

Afishionados,

One of my last design classes is mind-numbingly excruciating because of the folks in it. A niche group of women who can’t design anything that isn’t pink has this quirk where they substitute cutesy, childish phrases for cuss words. I don’t participate in their insipid conversations, but because I [unfortunately] sit behind them, I frequently overhear them. They often discuss the trite and predictable Twilight saga that has replaced Harry Potter in the minds of teenage girls everywhere. At least Harry Potter has interesting characters and a good story. Anyway, a typical exchange usually consists of something like this:

“Oh, my GOD, don’t you think that Edward is, like, TOTALLY cute?

“He’s okay, but I picture him cuter in the book than in the movie.”

“Shut the front door! You did not just say that!”

I take a very pro-swearing stance and I am always baffled when people are offended by it, but not offended when ‘kid phrases’ are used instead. Obvously, the meaning is the same, so why not just fucking say the REAL phrase? I remember as a kid giving my mom the ‘4th finger’ once. And I got my ass handed to me because the intent was the same as giving her the middle finger. To me, substituting these lame phrases for swear words is the same thing.

I’ve read that swearing is a sign on unintelligence, but I wholeheartedly disagree. You sound much more retarded by saying “Shut the front door” or “Cheese and Rice” instead of the real deal. How can people like that be taken seriously?

What do you fuckers think?

Afishionados,

One of the reasons that OFAL has been rather quiet these many months is because I’ve been busy putting together designs for a company. Various assignments and projects spread over five classes and two quarters have been taking up most of my free time. I’m happy to say that spring break is finally here, that those projects are, at long last, finished and I’ve decided to share the culmination of my efforts with you.

In a nutshell, the idea was to create a company, come up with a name and slogan, and then design for it. I settled on a nuclear power company for two reasons: 1.) My past experience with nuclear power and 2.) a very interesting article I read in Popular Mechanics. Essentially, new reactor designs use Uranium “pebbles” instead of fuel rods and helium gas as a coolant instead of water. Think of these new reactors like big gum ball machines: once the fuel has been used up, new pebbles are added at the top and the old ones are removed from the bottom. There are many benefits to these new designs, but I have three favorites in particular:

1.) By adding new pebbles to the top and removing old ones from the bottom, there is no need to shut down the reactor for refueling (a time-consuming and lengthy process).

2.) Using helium instead of water as a coolant means any leaks cannot be radioactive (Leaks are certainly not common by any means, but if a disaster were to occur, this is a tremendous safety benefit).

3.) The same helium gas used to cool the reactor could be used to spin a turbine to produce electricity, hydrogen, or desalinate water.

Based on this information, I called the company Ingenuiti and gave it the slogan The Power to Be. Here is what the final logo looks like:

As with any good logo, there are references to what the company stands for (the Fed Ex logo’s hidden arrow, the A to Z in the Amazon.com logo, etc.). Since the reactors use round pebbles, I wanted the logo to be round. The big “U” in the center represents three things. Uranium (which is the fuel), the reactor core itself, and “you” the customer. The three small circles are representative of the Uranium fuel pebbles. As for the text itself, the Ns of the Ingenuiti font were modified to look more like energy bolts since electricity is what the company is producing. The colors are eco-friendly and a glassy look was applied to give it a futuristic appeal.

From there, the logo was applied to stationery. I made a letterhead, business card, and mailing envelope.

click for full size 8.5″ x 11″

The business card has a sleeve and matches the look of the letterhead.

click for full size 8.5″ wide

A series of pictograms also had to be developed in the style of the logo. These pictograms would be used for signage and way-finding.

The pictograms used in the signage.

In an effort to be more environmentally friendly, larger signs were designed to use LED displays and be updated wirelessly with custom CPUs (Apple, of course!). These signs are enclosed in metal enclosures and could be used indoors and outside.

Here is a more technical drawing of how the sign operates.

Security badges would be necessary at a nuclear power plant, and I think I was the only one to design them for my company. Here is the final concept of the ID badge. They are loosely based on military IDs and include a magnetic strip to store funds for the on-campus cafeterias, parking garages, etc. They also have barcodes for scanning and security chips to allow for computer terminal access (the badges would be inserted into card readers before the computer would unlock).

Everybody loves swag and freebies. Part of the project included designing giveaway items for the company. I made audio CDs with nature sounds that shipped in wearable cases. For this item, an actual mockup was constructed.

Corporate uniforms and working uniforms were made. Polo shirts for more casual places in the company, and dress shirts and ties for corporate offices. Coveralls for work in the plant, including designs for security and medical personnel. Traditional workers wear the white helmets while those in supervisory positions wear gold. Security helmets are blue and medical helmets have the same first aid symbol to match.

Vehicles are important to any company. I found most of my classmates used Volkswagen New Beetles or Mini Coopers. While those are nice cars, I didn’t want to use the same thing. In order to be different, and to further push the eco-friendly image of the company, I chose to use Segways and Smart Cars. The Segway has two removable cases on each side for transporting goods across the Ingenuiti campuses.

The Smart (Four-Two model) was done up in three styles. A security version for patrolling the campus, a convertible company car, and a hardtop company car. The company versions were designed to match the look of the Segway.

My classmates never took their cars from Illustrator vector images to realistic renderings. Here is what a real Ingenuiti Smart car would look like.

Click for a larger view

The final project was to put everything that I designed into a book. Every company has a manual for designers that explains how to design for their company. Everything from colors to fonts to signs to usage is included. And all this had to be included within the book. Here is a photo of the final book. I haven’t gotten the original back yet, so unfortunately this is the only photo that I have of the finished piece. The cover was a cropped version of the logo and the cover closed with velcro. The velcro was white and round and the logo was adjusted so that the size of the spheres within it were the same size as the velcro (to help hide it and make it seamless).

The book did not turn out perfect, but I I am very happy with it (and all the designs that went into it). It’s arguably the most in-depth project I’ve done, and was ultimately a success. Now, I’ve just got to go back and work out a couple kinks and make it as close to perfect as I can The fun never ends!

Afishionados,

Winter break has ended and classes have resumed. Spring quickly approaches, and brings with it the annual student portfolio show. I’m already getting prepared.

Each year, the portfolio show (PS) features a different theme. And those themes are thought up and designed by the graduating students. I attended last year’s PS but I can’t remember what the theme was. Suffice to say, it was lacking and not interesting enough to recall.

This year, a very close-knit group of students took it upon themselves to make a bid for this year’s theme. I wanted to be part of the group, but apparently they didn’t feel the same way.

That was back in November, before classes ended for winter break. Fast forward to January. With just over a week before the presentations are scheduled, a friend of mine called me. She had caught wind of what the other (and, at the time, only) group’s theme was. And she had one that was much, much better.

In a bit of a hurry, my friend and I put together our own group of individuals and are on schedule to present our concept for 2009’s PS on Friday. I really think that her idea is so good, that we (being all the members of our group) are doing our best to keep it as much a secret as possible until “the big reveal” on Friday. Much like Hollywood does with movies, we’ve come up with a “fake theme” so that we can talk about what needs to be done with our real theme, without fear of the other group catching on to what that really is (Like Gandalf said, the enemy has many spies).

While the first group has caught on that there is now some competition for this year’s theme bid, they still (to my knowledge) do not know what our idea is. But if rumors be true, they are a bit intimidated and slightly worried.

And they should be…

To be continued…

Afishionados,

Typically I reserve posting any design work until after I turn in the assignment. However, I feel pretty confident that I am done with this one, aside from some very minor tweaking here and there. It’s due Thursday, but you get to see it today because I care about each and everyone of of you dearly¹ and I am in a sharing mood².

This assignment has been one of my more entertaining ones (in terms of creating it). Each student in the class was given the option to choose one of the human rights from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I wanted Article 5, which states:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

A lot of my school work up to this point has been very crisp and clean, and I wanted to get my hands dirty, so to speak. I was instructed to choose up to three human rights in the event that I could not get my first choice, but thankfully I ended up getting it.

The stipulations for the assignment were very general and open-ended. The finished product has to be at least 18″ x 24″ and must contain the right in its entirety. Because this is for my advanced typography class, it must also incorporate type in some fashion. Here is what I came up with:

The most difficult part of this whole composition was getting people to read the human right in the correct order. I presented this in it early state to various people all over campus and asked them to read it. Everyone could make it to “torture” but then got confused as to the correct order after that. Originally, the human right read from left to right and spanned across the blood spilled beneath the wrist. Instead, the gap created by the blood divides the right into two separate columns (like a newspaper article). Once I rearranged the human right text to follow the column-like setup, people were able to read it correctly (and hopefully you were able to as well).

The arm in the photo is my own. I’m right-handed, so I had to take a photo of my left arm in order to get a usable shot. I laid out some scrap paper on my desk and snapped it under a fluorescent light. After some quick Photoshopping, I removed the “seams” from the stacks of overlapped paper. My arm is the only subject matter in the initial photo. Everything else was digitally added after the fact. The very first thing I did was remove most of the color from my arm to give it a more corpse-like appearance. Doing so also tended to highlight the veins near my palm and throughout my arm.

Here is a close-up view of the arm carving. I “carved” this out using my Wacom tablet and gave it that nice gory effect in Photoshop. I can’t say as though I have ever cut myself, but after looking at people online who have, I think the illusion is pretty convincing.

All the bruises and stitches in the photo are real, by the way. They just aren’t really on my arm. My favorites are the wrist bruise and the stitches. In the early stages, I only had the blood in the photo and I wasn’t getting enough of an uneasy, disturbed reaction from people. After I added the stitches, bruises and “weapons”, people were really grossed out, as well as engrossed enough to read what the poster was about. Overly gory is ineffective if people are immediately turned off and don’t read it. I think I found a happy middle-ground.

Finally, I looked at a lot of horror movie posters for inspiration. Most, if not all, added some grain over the whole image to give it an even grittier, darker tone. It’s very subtle, but you can make some of it out in the carving photo above. This was the very last effect I did, and it’s amazing how different the poster prints with the grain than without.

I really like the medical tools and the razor blade. The stainless steel saw is fierce-looking, and really disturbs people I’ve shown this poster to. I’m also very proud of the rust effect I added to the razor blade (the image I used was that of a new, clean blade). Rusty razors are much more intimidating. Another “effect” that I am very pleased with is the shadows I added to the saw, the syringe, and the razor (sounds like a C.S. Lewis books from hell, doesn’t it?). It’s one of the effects that I hope people don’t even notice I added because that means it looks realistic, and therefore successful.

Want to see the original photo for comparison? I figured you might. Aside from removing the aforementioned “paper seams” and some very basic color correction, the photo is untouched. Here it is:

While I’m very happy with how the poster turned out, it remains to be seen what the professor thinks. I suppose if she hates it, I’ll try and sell it to Lionsgate for use as the SAW V movie poster.

¹Lies, all lies.

²Actually, I lied about that, too. I’m really in the mood for chocolate ice cream.

Afishionados,