Out with the old...

Hitting you with some neoplasticism tonight. Working with pixel art yesterday drove me crazy so I thought I would calm it down a little bit. Take those squares and rectangles, arrange them, and try to create a harmony. I was a bit worried about my lack of red or black, but it turned out fine.

I based the entire composition around one small blue square: my prime construct. All of the other shapes were created for visual rhythm and also as a means of balancing against that one shape. Because of it's dark tone, perfect symmetry, and position (slightly above and left of center - perfect focal point), the blue square has a metric ton of visual weight. All of the other shapes had to be larger to compensate.

I also had time to improve the sticker template. My re-design will get rid of those ugly lines from joining yellow edges to the yellow border. You can see in the above diagram. I will re-do my older stickers this way as well, since I plan on printing these out at some point.

Hmmm...

Re-do on the cloud sticker. Some balance issues were addressed. Still not totally happy with it. But it's out there, and I see what I did wrong (so do you).

Tonight, I wanted to do something quick and dirty as an experiment for an upcoming sticker. I have worked in the 8-bit style before in programs that weren't nearly as well-suited to it. This seemed like it would be a cake-walk. However, 20 minutes in and I was seeing all of the reasons this would be a huge mistake.

The sprite was based directly off the Super Pac-Man arcade game, scaled back to my three-color palette of course. It's a mess. Shapes were cut incorrectly, alignment problems are numerous, it doesn't read well from a distance. Blarg.

I'll figure out a way to save this one. But for now, let's call the experiment a work-in-progress.

FujiNanner

Here's a bonus: all the raw shapes that made today's sticker.

Working on stylizing clouds. You really can't get much more stylized than the woodblock prints of Hiroshige, Hokusai, and the other master woodblock printers of Japan. I've included Mt. Fuji to give a solid shape to play with the clouds. The sunburst seemed...appropriate.

I feel like the well is drying a bit. The ideas aren't coming quite so easily and my sketchbook isn't filling as fast. I need to set aside some time for idea generation and study.

NannerPuzzle

I put the same 24 piece Finding Nemo puzzle together a couple dozen times over the weekend with my daughter. Call that the inspiration for this one. It was still a lot of fun.

NannerGator

Sort of lost today. Wasn't really sure where I was going today in terms of this project. My daughter is sick, and she loves alligators more than most little girls could ever claim to. This is for her I guess.

I eschewed the regular method of sketch, scan, vector in favor of brevity. I used the calligraphy tool to create my rough sketch, reduced the opacity, locked it, and made more precise shapes over it.

A younger, less disciplined version of me would have crumpled under the pressure of outside distractions by now. Between Bastion, Skyward Sword, and watching my wife play Skyrim, I would say making these stickers sounds like a lot less fun. But when I press against resistance and tell myself to just start working - I am reminded how much I love this art stuff.

Happy Thanksgiving

Decided to celebrate by making a pie. Don't think anyone appreciated the inedible kind. Oh well.

Hope you're having a happy Thanksgiving, however you've chosen to celebrate.

Celestial Nanner

An older idea incorporating the calligraphy tool. Not much else to say about it.