Hand-drawn logo & type.

?The Australian Government wanted to start an initiative aimed at both youths and parents alike promoting social responsibility. As this is such a broad area and the lines are seldom black or white, they were aiming to launch a site that would act as a source of information as well as stimulating conversation on difficult topics. The concept was simple – ‘The Line’, and the brief for me was to create a continuous line logo as well as several headlines for web and print, ensuring maximum legibility. I went for a script style, to give it a handwritten feel but without being old-fashioned, nor too trendy. The biggest challenge here was legibility, as this style of font is usually too messy to read, so there was nothing for it but to hand-draw my own.

Skies ablaze.

Pack of sparklers. Check. Shutter speed up to max. Check. Okay, let’s begin!

Personally, I’m amazed at the intricacy you can achieve with this effect:

One thing lead to another….

Last night was out for a colleague’s leaving drinks (farewell Liz – you’ll be missed!), so 7 schooners of Asahi lager and 1/2l of Sogu* (Korean spirits) later, I went on a tour of Sydney with my camera. Started experimenting with shutter speeds and neon lights! These are a few of the results…

*No where near the correct spelling, but so f*cking what – I’m not Korean!

Promo poster.

This is a concept for a poster I designed for a movie yet to be filmed. Set in Soweto, South Africa, where the apartheid laws are ruthlessly enforced, the plot is basically the rise of a mixed-race kid’s football team (hence the team name “The Zebras”). The director lined up is Bruce Beresford, the same guy who directed ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ amongst many, many others, though nothing has been finalised yet as far as I am aware. My involvement with the movie industry has only ever been designing posters for Warner Home Video, so way after film release.

I really like the rich colour palette I used for this. However I’m still waiting on a reply from the guy who took one of the photos I comp’d in as to whether I can use it or not (it’s the kids playing football, although I’ve taken people out, added others in and played with it a lot). Fingers crossed! The rest I shot myself.

***I feel it important to add that I am in no way making any money from this. It is entirely a favour for a friend and purely a concept at this stage. They themself are not making any money either, but as soon as that changes, proper copyright laws will be observed and followed. If I am causing offence, I will take this off the site and delete the files.***

The Foreshore walk of Rose Bay….

So, it’s been a while. Been very slack in posting but I HAVE been busy, desperately trying to figure out how to use my Pentax K10D. Getting there! Took these yesterday (amongst others) while enjoying the sunshine and doing a bit of a bushwalk.

WIP – Lizard Man.

Work in progress. Original photo was for a photoshop comp (completely different concept) but I had to work and missed the deadline. Boooo!!! Decided to use it for something else instead, and thought I’d make myself into some freakish monster-type thing.

It’s a logo, sweetie dahling.

So some friends of mine are creating a brand-new theatrical productions company and asked me to design a logo for them. These two were just initial doodles but I liked ‘em enough to post them up here (especially the hand-drawn ‘burlesque’ style version).

Rockin’ all over the canvas.

Was sent these photos of canvases created by my good friend Katrina Leighton, who:

A. Loves concerts; and
B. Loves taking photographs at said concerts

Whipping out her trusty OHP (that’s overhead projector for all you non-teachers) Kat projects outlines of her photographic efforts onto canvas and goes nuts with spray-paint. Et voila, c’est magnifique, non? I certainly like ‘em:

Straight out of a horror movie…kind of.

This photo is Eyeball Odyssey’s first ever venture into HDR photography. The building straight in front is actually the Royal Prince Alfred hospital in Camperdown. We took this from the roof of the carpark right behind it. Did loads of retouching after to remove cars that were parked there and give the building more of a creepy feel to it. Also removed various buildings from either side of the shot that we found were detracting from the main focus, and to give the whole image more symmetry we added some detail.

Quite happy with the result, considering HDR can be so hit ‘n’ miss. The aim of the retouching was to give it a feel of post-apocalyptic desolation, though to be honest the main point of this whole exercise was to try our hand at HDR and see what results we could come up with. We’ll nail it one day.

(I included a ‘before’ shot too)

Bling for your paper.

Made a new discovery this weekend – Metallic colouring pencils from Derwent. And they’re awesome. So awesome in fact that I felt compelled to buy a black layout pad and create my own typeface. I’m up to capital Y so far. Kinda stuck on the Z but never fear – I’ll get there! Of course, still got lowercase, numbers, punctuation marks et al to go. Then I’ve gotta digitise the damn thing. Gonna be a long project…

This is a bit of a knock-on effect since discovering the blog of the amazingly talented Bryn Chernoff whose beautiful calligraphy inspired me to give hand-lettering a go (check out her official site too for examples of her work).

Laser-etching awesomeness.

Though I was a little bit disappointed to find out it was all laser-etching after seeing one of the images, I’m still impressed by this New York tattoo artist’s handiwork. Would have been FAR more impressive however if it was all done by scalpel. Anyhoo, his tattoos and illustrations are pretty naff (check out his site scottcampbelltattoo.com), but this stuff rocks.

New look, same great taste.

Figured that last style was pants. Found this one. Obviously, need to change the main pic, but loving the style, and this one scrolls down in a long list. Still need to fix links etc. For example, the About and Work links in the top right are broken, but I made it so they flick over to “BLOG>>CHECK IT” “ABOUT>>READ IT” and “WORK>>SEE IT”. Will figure it out eventually. Whaddya reckon?

Mo’ style...

The following images were experiments in different styles and techniques of combining digital art with photography.