Attack of the ART 210

Final project: format

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:53:05 -0800

For your final project, you’ll turn in two 11 × 17 pages: one with your illustration alone, and one with your illustration placed into a front page with your article’s title (and dummy text).

There are two PDFs for each article; one for taller illustrations, and one better suited for wide illustrations. Use these templates to place your final illustration into the page layout.

Fogelson-Lubliner NY Times illustrations

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:47:00 -0800

Fogelson-Lubliner NY Times illustrations

Project: Editorial Illustration

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:00:00 -0800

Okay, folks, this project is the big time.

You’ll be illustrating a front page article for the New York Times Week in Review section. Choose one of these three articles and create an alternate illustration to fill the top of the page.

I’ll provide you with an Illustrator page template. Your illustration will live behind the page headlines and text.

Wall Street’s Spin Game

Naming the ’00s

The Battle Between the White House and Fox News

Here are some older composed pages, for example:

Timeline

Tuesday, November 24: Introduction to the project. Read all three articles and figure out what some of their themes are. Think about ways to convey those ideas graphically. Select one, and begin sketching your concepts.
Thursday, November 26: No class! Happy Thanksgiving!
Tuesday, December 1: Before class, complete 20 rough thumbnails of your different ideas. Before class, scan them and upload them to the Flickr group. Tighten up your sketches and narrow them down to your favorites. Upload your progress to the group.
Thursday, December 3: Execute your final design. Bring your printed design to class for a group critique. Place your design into the page template and make any necessary refinements. Upload your progress to the group.
Monday, December 7: Our final meeting time! Complete your final design. Print it alone and in the template by the end of class. Upload your final piece.

Making a mockup

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:22:25 -0800

Here’s a recap of how to mock up your shirt design on a photographed model. You might need to tweak these steps if you’re working with a dark shirt.

Find a good tee model. I’ll use a photo by Flickr user seventh.samurai from the Threadless Blank Tee Photos pool.
We’ll need a grayscale version of the model to make a displacement map. Open the model picture in Photoshop, select Image → Mode → Grayscale. Bump up the shadows by pressing ⌘L and moving the middle slider. Save this as a Photoshop document. Hang onto it for later.
Open the model image in Photoshop. Copy the Background layer and, using the polygonal lasso tool, select the t-shirt only.
Click “Add layer mask” at the bottom of the layers palette to mask out the model and background. Hang on to this layer for later.
If you need to change the shirt color, ⌘-click the shirt mask to load it as a selection. Click on the Background layer and press ⌘U for Hue, Saturation, and Lightness. Click the “Colorize” checkbox and play with the sliders to get the shirt color you want.
Open your t-shirt design. If it’s in Illustrator, select the design and copy it to the clipboard. If it’s in Photoshop, select all your design’s layers.
Paste your art into the model image in Photoshop as a Smart Object

(or, if the design’s in Photoshop, select its layers, press ⌘E to merge them, and drag the resulting layer onto the model image). Press ⌘T to change the size and placement.
Play around with blending modes for your design’s layer. Depending on the design colors and the shirt color, different blending modes will look better.
Select Filters → Distort → Displace. 3 is a good starting place for both settings.

Click OK, then select your grayscale model image. Your design should bend around the folds on the shirt a bit.
Now to add the shadows back in: drag your masked tee layer to the top and set its blending mode to Multiply. Adjust the opacity to taste.

There you go! Fancy model in your fancy design.

Design that keeps you warm

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:00:00 -0800

Ooey Gooey by Jen Stark

Project 4: T-shirt series

Create a series of three T-shirts. The shirts share a theme, color, and design concept. Design one with an illustration, one with a type design, and one with an allover pattern.

Chewbika by Black T-Shirt

This one’s completely open. Go nuts! You can use any cut of T-shirt you like. Except: no Live Trace.

Go to the usual sources for inspiration. Check out Rumplo, Threadless, Threadless Select, and Threadless TypeTees, but don’t get hung up on T-shirt sites. Draw from the rest of the world too! Can your shirts reflect your tastes in publication design? Packaging? Nature?

Minimal My Ass T-shirt by Wasted German Youth

Final presentation

Present your designs like the two examples below: mocked up on a model on one side, and the art alone on the other. The Threadless Submission Kit has Photoshop and Illustrator templates, and this Flickr group has images of T-shirt models you can use for your mockups.

Frowns Are Flesh by Geoff Mcfetridge

And You Don’t Stop by Paul O’Sullivan

Timeline

Tuesday, Novemeber 11: Present project brief. Begin research, exploration, and sketches.
Thursday, November 13: Before class, complete your initial sketches and post them to the Flickr group. In class, print a copy for small group critiques, then begin work on your final designs.
Tuesday, November 18: Before class, post your progress to the Flickr group. In class, work on your final pieces.
Thursday, November 20: Bring prints of your project for a final in-class crit.
Tuesday, November 25: Final printed project due at the beginning of class.

Process

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:42:05 -0700

Process:

Process. Process. Process. Process. Process.

How to be a Creative Sponge v2

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:46:59 -0700

How to be a Creative Sponge v2:

Jon Hicks’s presentation on creative fuel and what to do with it.

"A Wolf at the Door" video by 8step3step

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:36:47 -0700

"A Wolf at the Door" video by 8step3step:

Paper + marker + still camera + lyrics + time = video. Look at all the variety!

Lowell Hess illustrations

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:51:51 -0700

Lowell Hess illustrations

A slew of fun, interactive activities awaits you!

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:06:25 -0700

(This post is nicked from Nicole at The Friends of Graphic Design.)

In the next two weeks, you’ll see many huge posters in the Art Annex beckoning you to various classrooms to engage in various activities.

Go to those classrooms! Participate in those activities!

The students of Art 470, Contemporary Design Practice, have worked together in groups for the last three weeks to develop these interactive projects based on the theories of Social Practice Art.

This is a fun chance to get to know some of your peers while exercising your creativity, daydreaming a bit, and getting rid of some old confessions.

“Where would you rather be right now?” Join the project Anywhere But Here in Art Annex 170 from noon to 2 pm on Wednesday, October 21 to answer that question and make a flag. We promise cookies.

On Thursday, October 22, come Release Your Inner Monster at a drawing workshop.

On Thursday, October 29, come divulge your juiciest secrets (anonymously, of course) with Confessions of a Graphic Designer.

There are loads of other projects: watch for more details as I get the dates confirmed. Many of these project promise edible treats.

Stop in! Socialize! Draw with crayons.

Not just for kids

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:00:00 -0700

A spread from s.britt’s Over in the Hollow.

Big fun project time! Next, you’re creating a children’s book (or parts of one, anyway). The writing’s been done, so it’s up to you to communicate something about the characters and the story using your personal style.

Project 3: Children’s Book Illustration

Choose a story from one of the six below. Using the linked text, illustrate part of the story in two spreads (four pages).

The cover of s.britt’s School Years album.

In addition to the two spreads, you’ll create a front cover, a back cover, a spine, a title page, and patterned endpapers for your children’s book.

Go crazy with this one. Bring your skills from other areas of art and design: painting, cut paper, collage, 3-D modeling—about anything. Then, when you bring your work into Photoshop and Illustrator, you’ll finish with a great, complex piece.

Inspiration links!

the “children’s books” tag on Drawn.
Vintage Children’s Books, a Flickr group.
Children’s book illustrators and authors, a Flickr group.
Retro Kid, a Flickr group.
S. Britt
A set of Mary Blair illustrations. And another.
John Manders.

Timeline

Thursday, October 22: Before class, upload 6 children’s book inspiration images to the Flickr group. Bring your character designs to class. We’ll refine those, and start thumbnailing your spreads.
Tuesday, October 27: Before class, refine your final character designs and choose your final layout for the cover, spine, back cover, and two spreads. Upload images of these to the Flickr group, and we’ll talk about them in class.
Thursday, October 29: Upload your completed (or near-completed) cover, spine, back cover, and spreads to the Flickr group for discussion in small groups. Work on your endpapers and title page.
Tuesday, November 3: Upload your final pieces to the Flickr group for an in-class critique. This will be your last chance for making small refinements!
Thursday, November 5: All pieces are due at the beginning of class: printed, ~~mounted,~~ with your name sticker on the back.

Mondrianum

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:24:08 -0700

Mondrianum:

Add Adobe kuler themes to the OS X color picker!

One way to treat line art in Photoshop

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:36:00 -0700

Remember, there are a billion different ways to do this. Figure out what works for you.

Scan your inked art at 600 ppi and save as a TIFF.
Drag the TIFF onto this droplet to make everything pure black and white.
Image → Mode → RGB (the droplet turns everything into greyscale)
Select All, Copy
Create a new channel, click on it, Paste
Click back on RGB in the channels palette so your alpha channel isn’t the only thing selected.
Select → Load Selection… → choose “Alpha 1” in the dropdown, check “Invert”
Double-click the “Background” layer and name it to make it editable.
Click the little “create mask from channel” button in the layers palette. Ta-da! Black lines only!
Create a new layer (white?) for the background
To color the lines, create a new layer on top of the line art layer and press Cmd-Opt-G to group it with the line art, then color as sloppily as you like.
To do fills or background color, make new layers beneath the line art layer.

Adobe kuler

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:55:57 -0700

Adobe kuler:

If you need some color inspiration for your poster or any future project, check out the user-submitted-and-rated themes at Adobe’s kuler.

Tatsuro Kiuchi's illustration

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:01:18 -0700

Tatsuro Kiuchi's illustration:

Bold, clean, inspiring.

How I scan

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:45:00 -0700

Here’s the scanning tutorial I did in class Tuesday. Pretty straightforward. Ask me if anything’s unclear.

The screenshots here show Photoshop CS4 and OS X 10.6. Some descriptions might be slightly different for older versions of the software, but the basic ideas carry over.

Use Image Capture. Scanner drivers are notoriously unreliable, and in most situations OS X’s Image Capture is a simpler, faster way to go. It’s part of every OS X installation, so you don’t have to worry about installing it.
Place your artwork on the scanner pane before you start Image Capture, because it automatically does an overview scan when it starts. Why waste that precious time?
Adjust the selection box to fit your artwork. Or, if you’re scanning multiple pieces of a large drawing, scan the whole platen. That way, you don’t have to do an overview scan for every piece.
I set the resolution to 150 for thumbnails and reference art, and 600 for anything that will survive in the final piece.
Here are the other default settings I like to use:

I don’t try to massage the image here—it’s easier to change levels, crops, and whatnot in Photoshop.
Hit scan. Image Capture will automatically number the filenames of multiple scans.

If you have a large drawing, you can scan it in as many pieces as you need, and let Photoshop stitch them together. No more giant scanners! Just make sure each piece overlaps the ones next to it a bit.

In Photoshop, select File → Automate → Photomerge…
Select your scanned files, and set Photomerge to “Reposition” so it doesn’t try any perspective oddness.
Watch Photomerge do its thing, then marvel at the automatic layer masking.
If everything worked out, select Layer → Flatten image…
Save!

Posters for the People

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:00:00 -0700

A meaty, two-week project at last! Time to flex your design muscles!

Project 2: Modern WPA Poster

Design for mankind! During the USA’s last big economic troubles, the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project employed thousands of artists to communicate the government’s hopeful outlook to the citizens. Posters like the one above were posted in stores, bus stops, public offices to tell people, “Things will get better. Here’s how to help!”

A few years ago, ReadyMade magazine asked some modern designers to create their takes on WPA posters for today’s America. We’ll be doing the same thing.

Your task: use Illustrator and Photoshop to design an 18” × 24” WPA-style poster for the modern age. Choose a social cause that’s relevant, and clearly communicate it in the style of the vintage posters. Show us which one poster most influenced your design—but don’t just copy it!

Links for inspiration:

Timeline

Tuesday, October 6: Introduction to the project. Research in class. By Thursday, read the linked articles and e-mail a brief summary to me, along with your thoughts about the WPA and how its goals are relevant today. Bring 10 thumbnails of your poster concepts to Thursday’s class.
Thursday, October 8: Continue to upload your progress to the Flickr group. In-class critique.
Tuesday, October 13: Save every version you work on, and upload each to Flickr for the rest of us to critique online.
Thursday, October 15: Bring a small print of your poster for an in-class critique.
Tuesday, October 20: Final poster due.

Shaping the city

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:06:58 -0700

Shaping the city:

Printmaker Paul Catherall shows us step by step how he produced the prints that were commissioned by Transport for London. ”If the composition’s good, that’s half the battle.”

Great work from Michael DeForge from Cold Heat Special #7.

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:20:21 -0700

Great work from Michael DeForge from Cold Heat Special #7.

Links for the class

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:32:59 -0700

Links for the class:

I’ve been tagging things on Delicious as “art210f09”. They’re all resources for our projects, or good general design links.

Feel free to add! Delicious is free and awesome. Just tag any relevant links as “art210f09”.