Boy, has the time really slipped away from me! I’ve been getting back into the grove of uni work along side actual employment, so that’s my excuse for not writing for such a long time. In this entry I will show my first assignment: 5 variations of the same subject. The variations were required to have a different technique and/or “style” to execute. After a long string of bad ideas I simply looked up “Kodak” on Flickr, and could not stop poring over the endless pages of beautiful old Kodak cameras. I found THE one, Kodak SIX-20 Brownie. I am happy with the outcome, though the only down side to this exercise is the fact that I realize how immature my style is at this point. It is immature not in the literal sense, but more so on how much progress I have with the direction and flair that is still developing. Without further blabbing about, here they are:

SIX-20
The initial idea was to create technical drawing of the Kodak camera. Using the photo of the camera as a template, the entire line work was done in Illustrator. While looking at it I decided to make sort of a “manual” cover or a page that you might find inside the manual for the camera. After adding the type, a soft blue gradient was added in a couple areas to solidify the line drawing.

BROWNIE
After finishing the line work from the “technical” drawing, I went over the work and changed line thickness to bring out certain areas as more or less outlines while leaving other areas as detail. The work was then rasterized, live traced, and then prepared for live pain. Using live paint the entire work was colored. The original line work was then placed on top of the colored image and layer property changed to multiply (to darken the line work). A simple background with a half tone feel was added behind the camera, as well as a simple ground was added for the camera to “sit on.” The image was then transferred to Photoshop. After Duplicating the original compressed layer, a soft omni light was added at the top left corner. Then after duplicating the original layer again, a soft omni (with a light purple hue) was added at the bottom left corner. The top omni layer was then given a layer mask to hid the bottom, thus revealing the bottom omni light. After merging the edited lighting layers, the layer property was changed to soft light and reduced the opacity to soften the lighting.

THIEF
I found an image of a business man running to likeness of my sketch. A very quick outline work was done in Illustrator, then the head was replaced by a simplified vector image of the camera. Colored, added highlights and shadows (very simple), a simple shadow for the ground, added a light ray (simple, like a cartoon flashlight light) and colored the background in Illustrator. In Photoshop I brought in a “grungy” paper bag texture, which was brown. Instead of desaturating it I placed and sized it on top of the illustration and added layer properties. Then I merged the layers, copied, added a soft omni to the center to further darken the edges and changed the layer properties of the “lighting” layer.

ONE OF A KIND
Taking the original photo template of the camera, I quickly fleshed out simple shapes to make a very fast and simplified image of the camera. Then, I duplicated the combined shape, tilted the work, and began making a side-by-side pattern on the top part of the canvas and then a reflecting pattern on the bottom of the canvas (bleeding off of the art table). Colored all of the images in Illustrator and moved the entire work to Photoshop. Using the magic wand tool I would select each shape within each image and apply a sing high flow spatter brush and then a series of low flow spatter brush to texture and highlight each camera. Then, I flattened the layers, duplicated the flattened layer and changed the layer property to make the colors pop.

ORANGE
After zooming in and isolating the top part of the camera (the flash), I changed the line thickness of the work and added a brush stroke to all of the outlines. The brush in the light is different from the rest. The idea was to have the line work seem fast and careless. The edited line work was then taken to Photoshop to be colored. Using the magic wand tool I selected areas to be colored. While still selected I contracted the selections 5 to 15 pixels so that the colored areas would have the “casual color” feel, but did not lose the initial shape. A lined music paper texture was brought in and while having the entire foreground image of the camera selected I placed the texture on top and changed the layer properties as well as reduced the opacity.