Got a case of the humans?

string theory summarized

I have been meaning to post about this as soon as I found out, but I haven't been on my computer. Luckily, I did not forget about it. Turns out that Disney is going to be releasing animated shorts again, thanks to John Lasseter, the creative director at both Pixar and Disney Animation Studios. According to the article I read, the director for each short can pick and choose whether their film will be animated traditionally or in CG. The first short that is going to be released is called How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, featuring the lovable Goofy and a confusing assortment of color wires and electronic equipment. It was also announced that there will be a return to traditionally crafted feature animation, starting with a film called The Frog Princess.

If any of you guys are old-school Disney aficionados, you can read the online article here.

And yes, Paul, I copy-pasted this from my other blog. :-P

Design Matters

Hello All,
I just wanted to share something with you guys today. One of my professors, which I have most likley mentioned many times already, Debbie Millman, (who is president of Sterling Brands) has a radio show, called Design Matters. I recently subscribed to the podcast, and found that its a very interesting and inspiring show (sometimes the sound quality lacks a bit.) Besides that, she has on some very well known designers as guests such as Paula Scher, Milton Glaser, Stefan Sagmeister, the list goes on, and they talk about all kinds of fun design things. So if your bored and just want to listen to some inspiring artists talk, subscribed to it.

Shalimar

Senior Portfolio (Long Post)

So, as already made clear by Shalimar both here and on MySpace- our portfolio crazyness is over with– essentially ending our senior year. Now that we've handed them in, and gotten them back all graded, I figured I would share with you the book I created. Most of my senior design work is represented in here...from a handful of classes. What isn't in the book is my Motion Graphics Portfolio projects (all of which are posted earlier in the blog). I spent about a month designing the book, and a solid week printing and assembling it (Printing it took 8 solid hours...but it was worth it, the quality is amazing if I do say so, myself).

This thing got a "10+++" by my teacher and Richard Wilde, the head of the design department. To the best of my knowledge, that's the highest grade possible :-)

Below you can see every spread as JPEGs. If you'd prefer, I also have a PDF here and a crappy QuickTime flip through here.

Save the Queen?

Put this together to play around with some design elements. I was really inspired by the great book jacket designs in the recent 'HOW' Magazine, and wanted to take a concept and do a simple design.

Extinction

From Time to time, I like taking a film that hasn't come out, and make a movie poster for it. It gives me some good practice, and keeps the things I learned working at my old job intact. So below is a poster concept I threw together for "Resident Evil: Extinction"..

FreedomLess One-Sheet

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to post an image of a new project I just finished. It's the one-sheet for a film that will be debuting at the Tribecca Film Festival, entitled "FreedomLess". The film covers various instances of Domestic Violence, and has gained backing from a pleuthora of Spaniard Actors/Actresses as well as American Actors/Actresses such as: Reese Witherspoon, Salma Hayek, Penelope Cruz, Anthony Rapp, Eva Mendes, Parker Posey, and a bunch more. The film's official premiere will be later this month and will then move onto it's run in Spanish Cinemas.

In terms of design, I was really excited by the project and really wanted to make something that was strong, gave the message, and was iconic. I did my research on many film posters of the 60's and 70's that dealt with the portrayel of strong women messages. I knew i wanted to stay away from featuring any actors, as the film isnt meant to star sell anyone. I wanted to include a sense of the woman, and thought showing a bruised back would be the best way to get that delicate pain across to the viewer. And although I went through many variations of the logo, this one always kept popping out to me. To me, the movie's message to women is that there are in fact NOT "FreedomLess", so i threw in the cross out line as a signification of that. I also wanted to make sure that although about a harsh subject, that beauty was still present in the visual as the film wanted to protray a sense of that. All in all, I'm happy with the end result.

So here it is:




AND! I saw that they posted the poster on IMP Awards this morning! Which made me collapse a little bit, as it's my favorite site ever! :) it's on the main page but Here's the direct link:

http://www.impawards.com/2007/freedomless.html

AH... done

Markers!

Here Are some marker renderings i had to do for class. I like these but I turned in my fav for the assignment. I'll post it when i get it back!

RIP, The Future.

So last week we found out at work, that we were going to a conference based on Pharmaceuticals and other medical issues. In doing some research, the art director and I realized that Micheal J. Fox was going to be a key-not speaker at this conference. Being two people very interested in commercial aspects of publishing, immediately jumped to the idea that we could have a chance to have a real, genuine, albeit 80's celebrity on one of our covers. In the pharmaceutical industry, this doesn't happen often whatsoever. We were beyond ourselves with happiness.. Until they told us we had a contract with someone else and couldnt utilize Mr. Fox. Then, we were very sad designers.

But before we cried ourselves to sleep, we created a mock cover of what MJF would look like if he graced our cover.
And just for a design perspective on this, as we are a design blog, that photo of MJF is about 3 photos of him. His neck, his clothes, and his face are all seperate photos of him that were frankensteined together to create one whole man. And the background (A skyline of boston where the conference will be held), is also a seperate element in itself... We would have also ideally made the golden color on the cover, a metallic pantone.

So I take this time to bid farewell to the only opportunity we might ever have to having someone even remotely close to being a celebrity, on our cover. R.I.P my back to the future pharmaceuticals friend. We would have loved thee so..

sniffle.

Kid Craft

So a couple of weeks ago, My aunt asked me to put together some quick logo concepts for a little business she wants to start up. It's going to be a kid friendly jewelery, t-shirt, and all around accessories line. All of the products are hand made and give the children a chance to really have their ideas for accessories brought to life. So they have a hand in the craft so to speak. She wasn't sure what she wanted to go for, so there wasn't much in terms of direction, but she definetly wanted it to remain youthful, modern, and fun. I came up with these as a test in about 15 minutes, just to get myself in the swing of things. I liked some of the gazillion I tried, and am posting those here.

Excited

Hi all, I was just browsing our blog, and I have to say, I am very proud of all of those who take the time to post and comment. We are all producing amazing work, and we are all pretty young so I think in a few years looking back on this blog will be a really great experience.

on a slightly different note. imagine if we could see what our work would look like .. say 5 years from now, hell, 1 year can make a huge difference. Do you think that if we see our better selves, we would be encouraged to out do our future selves, or just sit back and relax because we see we are eventually gunna rock...

nano nano

Serengeti Smash

Originally drawn in high school with markers, I decided to make it a craaazy vector.
*edit
Upon Laz's request...

Sketched

Yay, another portfolio piece finished. This book is a collection of my favorite sketches from the past 4 years. And here it is






Sketched on Vimeo

Watercolour

A part of a design I was working on that i decided to make a wallpaper.

Motion Graphics Portfolio

Here we go! Below are all three of my SVA Motion Graphics Portfolio Pieces:

The Tales of Mother Goose:


James Bond 007: The Man With The Red Tattoo


Understanding Ego: The Big & Small Project

Random WIP's

Here are a couple of things I've worked on recently that I haven't posted yet. One is a house AD for the company I work for, and the other is an opening illustration for one of our publication's articles.

Ch-ch-check it out now

I re-did my resume, business card, and invoice form. Before I move on to doing my cover letters and whatever else needs my own "branding", give me your opinions about what I have so far. :-D

ABC Book

Another project finished for portfolio. The construction isn't as good as I hoped it would be, and it still needs to be trimmed. Yada Yada. But thats ok, because I will be taking pictures of it for portfolio. Anyway, heres a picture and a video of the whole thing.



Two Min Abc on Vimeo


*edit* the A didnt show up in the video! woops

Work Related

[Work In Progress] New York Times

Im still working on this. I was told my last design was too stiff. I think I am having a hard time breaking from the rigidness of the grid. So, I am trying to have more fun with it and break some rules without it being too... Boooj.

House Ads (Works In Progress)

Hey Guys! Today I spent the day working on some House ADs for an upcoming publication for the company I work for. I wanted to do a series of ADs that had a very eye-catching, impactful feel and worked together in style, layout, and feel. I came up with these concepts, and although they aren't completely done yet, I thought I'd share.

Conspiranoid

Pictures do not do it any justice. But these are some of the silk screens ive done. They are kinda silly. But thats ok.

[Work In Progress] New York Times

Working on some quick stuff for portfolio. These are not done yet. But I am looking for some opinions / critiques etc etc.

Aqua Stuff!

Sometimes at work, we have to re-do people's ads because they either provide the worst resolution ads I've ever seen (some even looking like they were scanned off of a t-shirt and placed in low res in our mailbox) or they're just plain horribly designed. Today, I ended up doing a set of ads for those aqua massage things you see in the malls everywhere. They lost their designer and had nothing else, so we agreed to put something together for them. This one gave me a lot of problems at first because I knew what I wanted to do (water effects incorporated with imagery) but couldn't really figure out a way to do it that met the vision in my head. And after a couple of hours of fiddling, I finally figured it out and produced the following ads that i thought were pretty nifty. Those silly aqua massagers..

Intencity

I finally got a new camera, and had a little photoshoot with my magazine so you all who haven't seen it can enjoy it.

Child & Death

An Illustration I made a little while back and figured I'd post.

Some New WIP's!

Some more Works in Progresses. These 3 will end up being opening pagers to a few articles in our next publication.

New Partner

Hello all my little Art Minions.

I would like to welcome another new member to our gang of art and design.

Her name is Tiffany Cruz. She is currently working on her Junior Graphic Design portfolio at SVA, and is a North Bergen High Grad. Just another NBer to add to the mix. Her focus is in Motion Graphics, and we will prob see some stuff from her soon. So say Hi!

In other news. I gave the blog a pretty green stripe background if you hadn't noticed, because your blind.

In other other news. Ive changed my name to Fredericka Muenster Sandwich.

Mr. PID Returns

As promised...
Mr PID's worst fears: artist block and Mickey Mouse wanna-bes. Fool.

Some More Work.. Work..

Hey Guys, just posting some new stuff I did this week. One is a media kit cover and the other is an outsourced ad for some airport industry company.

It's Alive

The other day I was sitting comfortably in my lawn chair at the computer eating a cup of Jello. Whilst I ate it, I pondered the idea of making Jello Sculptures, and that it would be very interesting looking. Well, just to prove the point that every idea has already been thought of, I just so happen to come across this artist this morning while perusing through woostercollective.com. Liz Hickok

What I really do at work

I haven't been posting in a while. And I am sure this makes you all very sad. I know it does me. So, since I am extremely bored at work today, I decided that I should show you exactly what it is I do here .

These are called "catalog sheets", although my boss calls them "beautiful sheets". Anyway, I take pictures of the framed art/picture frames and slap them on a sheet.
Above, yet more examples of those marvelous catalog sheets. Below, I had to completely fake these mirrors in Photoshop using gradients. Spiffy. But it makes you ask the question... who actually buys mirrors that look like that? What purpose do they serve? Someone has to buy them, if not I wouldn't being putting them on a sheet. God help us all.
Well, that's enough for now. Don't want to scar your retinas for life (you might need them). I plan on doing that Mr. PID challenge (I didn't forget Shal, I am just lazy as shit is stinky) and try my hand at speed designing and see what mess is created from the process.

Come on down...

Am I the only one just noticing this now?