Coloured

I posted the original lines for this illustration last summer sometime, and actually finished the colours a few months ago and forgot to post it as an update. So here it is, enjoy.

Merry Christmas

A new illustration for Christmas, happy holidays from my family to yours.

It is Finished

Holidays have begun. Finished my placement on Friday, celebrated with a Christmas party at a great restaurant on Saturday, got snowed in on Sunday and stayed indoors on Monday... good times :) Going to be a very enjoyable holiday. Felling the sting still 7 months after not being able to adopt our little guy in the middle. Miss you buddy, but glad you are being loved. 

Yeppers!

Yep, you guessed it citizens!
Another post by yours truly! I'm on a role here :)
I'm at the studio (Creative Odyssey) working on a few projects; my placement time here is almost at an end (only one more day). I'm really looking forward to the holidays with my family. 


In homage to the holidays I leave you with a pic of our studio tree, and a site with some cool Christmas/Holiday craft ideas... enjoy :) 

http://www.craftbits.com/christmas-crafts/

Check it Out

This may be hard to recover from, another post only one day after my last one... I know, I know, try to contain the excitement. Probably not something I'll be able to keep up with lol... but you never know. I could do like a fellow designer friend of mine does and update my blog once a week or so but just put previous dates on the posts lol... you know who you are :)

Anyway, just wanted to take an opportunity to plug another blog site that I follow closely, it is a very inspiring site for design. I recommend that you go check it out, it is not as much a blog site as it is a portfolio site, but he shares many other talented designers works on there that inspire him... here's a little snapshot of one of his letterpress pieces...

http://www.graphic-exchange.com/home.html

The Home Stretch

December 7th 2010, second day of my last week in placement. We had to do a photo-journal as part of our placement responsibilities so I spent a couple of hours today putting it together so I could just relax next week as my holidays start. Our journal had to be like a "day in the life of" kind of deal so I took various shots around the studio/office and of the great people I worked with. It was a real joy to do this placement and I was graciously involved in 9 different projects during my time here. All in all this was a very enjoyable experience for me. I leave you with the cover I did for my photo-journal... 

Still Going

Third week of my placement is almost done and I've really been enjoying my time here at Creative Odyssey (Sudbury ON). The crew here is fantastic and treat me very well. It's been great working on all the projects that they have given me to do, some just to finish off, other's to do from the beginning, every one of them has been lots of fun and educational as well. There are still tips and tricks that years in the industry have honed that classes still can't teach, and I've been able to glean some of these from Maurissa Grano the Art Director/Senior Graphic Designer/Partner here at Creative Odyssey. I'm certainly glad that Cambrian College finally implemented a placement as part of the curriculum in the Graphic Design course. 

Okay that's it for this update, I leave you with a poster I did for a clients Italian Play at Thornloe University here in Sudbury, Ontario... 

Week 2

Well here I am, week 2 of my placement well underway. This is a really good experience for all of us in this course I'm sure. Hard to believe that my college had never had a placement portion in the course before. It took our current coordinator about 5 years to get it into place. There are quite a few options for placements within Sudbury so it's not like any of us should have had any trouble getting a placement. 


I'm working at Creative Odyssey in Sudbury, Ontario. If you get a chance you should check out their website, they do some nice work and I'm learning a lot about different processes that we touched on in our courses but not in-depth (www.creativeodyssey.com). Unfortunately I can't post any of the jobs I've been working on because of a non-disclosure agreement I had to sign, but trust me it's fun stuff, and after all I did get into this career because I enjoy it and it is a lot of fun. I don't think that many people actually get to work at something they really enjoy, so if you do have a job that you love, count yourself very very lucky.


If you are stuck in a job that is not something you enjoy, or isn't creative, I highly recommend finding a hobby that allows you to be creative. Whether that means scrap-booking (which is very popular these days) or photography (another popular pastime), just find something that you think you’ll enjoy and go out there, be creative and have fun. I leave you with a piece I did for my Advanced Design Applications, this was for a film festival and I utilized the International Type Style of Josef Müller-Brockmann. It seems that converting it to a JPEG has dulled the colour a bit, but it still works. Enjoy :)

HDR

So we did some HDR photography in class the last couple weeks, they are pretty cool to do, but I'm guessing much easier if you actually have "bracketing" on  your camera, which I don't. So in order for me to do HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography I have to manually set my shutter speed to get the 3 - 7 different exposure levels. If you've never tried HDR you should it's really kinda cool, here's one of the photo's I took. FYI old, rusty, dirty things look really awesome in HDR.

Woohoo!

Well, well, well, well... It's almost done! My first semester of my 3rd year is almost done! I have a placement in a little over a weeks time :) I'm really looking forward to it, I think it will be a great experience. I've been doing freelance work but this will be in a studio :) Then only one semester left and I'll be among the ranks of the working class again :)

Dynamic photos

During the last project we did in photography class I came to the conclusion that even the most mundane of shots can be livened up with a little creative cropping. It is much more important to look at every photo that you are going to take with a creative eye, that way you can almost guarantee that you take care of your cropping as you shoot your subject. On the off chance that you don't get that perfect crop on camera, then of course it doesn't hurt to play around with the cropping tool in Photoshop (or whatever derivative of software you use to edit) and find that perfect crop. Don't be shy about it, you have unlimited undo's at your disposal. So get out there and practice some creative cropping :)

Food Food Fooooooood

Had to try my hand at some food photography for a class assignment. I've found a new photographic interest, I really enjoyed setting up and taking the shots for this project. Here's one of my favourites from the shoot. 

It Begins

So, 3rd day of my first week down and it's looking like it's going to be a very very busy semester. We've had Advanced Design Applications and Corporate Identity so far. They are worth a lot of credits so take up a lot of hours. Very interesting classes so far, although we haven't really done anything "hands-on" yet, it's been mostly lecture, we did have presentations today on logo analysis. I think everyone did very well considering we only had the evening to pick a logo to analyze and put our presentations together, I keep envisioning how fun this is going to be in the field... reminiscent of "Mad Men", a great show on advertising and design back in the 50's I highly recommend it.

http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/

First Day

Well that's it folks... first day of the last year of the rest of my life... Wow is that ever cryptic lol. What I mean to say is, my first day of my 3rd year of Graphic Design went very well. 3hrs of a 4hr class just flew by and we were let out early. It was great to see all my co-students (friends, acquaintances, peeps). This is definitely going to be an intense semester, 15 weeks of class condensed into 10 to make room for a one month placement. Because of this we have gone from what would have been 15 - 17hrs a week up to 23hrs a week. Very, very intense. Anyhoo, just wanted to try and keep this going on as much of a daily basis as I can. To end this post here's a picture of some wicked clouds over my neighbours house...

3rd Year

Interestingly enough the last 4 months have flown by, faster I think then when I'm in school. One single, individually solemn day left and my 3rd, and last, year of college will be over. I'm really looking forward to this year. It's going to be very intense I think but very good also. With the freelance work I've picked up on the side it's looking to be one busy year for sure. I'll try and post some blogs that pertain more to design and creativity etc... I know this summer has been more ramblings than anything else but it was to help get me in the habit of blogging, even though I still haven't got it down to a daily, or even weekly event yet... I leave you with a friend of mine I met at Science North this summer... enjoy. 

Selective

I know it's an odd title, but I'm in an odd mood so I guess it fits. I had fun yesterday for a half-hour or so, I made my son put on his grad-suit so that I could take some nice photos of him in it. His grad-night was actually 2 months ago but it was a cool, rainy day with not much in the line of workable backgrounds for photos, so yesterday was such a nice cool, sunny day that I figured he'd be fine in his suit for a little while and not get too uncomfortable, and we used our yard as the backdrop. Then I spent another 3 hours or so on editing and I really think they turned out well. I posted some on my Facebook but because of the compression that they use on that site for photos I really don't like how they all look on there. Anyway, today is a different beast of sorts, woke up to  another morning of my wife rushing out of bed, she had the whole week off but always seemed to have something that pulled her from our warm comfortable bed, makes a guy feel unappreciated to say the least. Then I get called an "old fart" by her, presumably because I'm not interested in going to this whole camping/fun day weekend the church I used to go to is putting on, I've cut ties with it, why would I want to go? Anyway, feeling slighted and unappreciated and wishing there was some other place I could be right now... can't wait to move to the city where I could just go out for a walk and have a coffee somewhere, or stay over night somewhere else and see how much my absence was felt. I swear sometimes I'd not be missed at all... oh well there I go again getting all melancholy and stupid sounding, well it is my blog so I can say what I want. Anyway thanks for reading and letting me vent a little, I'll leave you with one of the photos I took of my son in his suit, he's such a handsome strapping young lad :) 

Almost There

Hard to believe that 4 months have almost gone by, but then it's hard to believe that I'm starting my 3rd and last year in Graphic Design. At some point I'd like to take another year, something in communications to get my Bachelor of Arts Degree. I'm really looking forward to this year, should be a lot of fun, I don't want to miss out on anything.

Pretty Soon

My oh my oh my...
Very, very hard to believe that we are already a week into August, where has the summer gone? On the upside, I am now on vacation, and there is only one month left before school starts again. I'm very excited to get back at it and finish. It's been a pretty intense couple of years so far but it will be very very worth it. My family and I are looking forward to moving to a larger centre of life, from very very small town to a bigger town or city. I can't wait to get my career going, and have in fact already started somewhat as I've been doing freelance work for a local print company, which has been interesting to say the least :) 

Anyhoo, the anticipation of moving is very nerve racking, but we'll get there :) Here's another photo I took on my walkabout at my wife's mom's place. 

Vacation

Well first day of August is here already, which means that my 3rd year of Graphic Design will be starting soon. But until then I plan on making the most of this month and enjoying each day. Went to my in-laws today for lunch and brought my camera along to get some nice shots, only to find that a lot of things I wanted to get pictures of (old farm equipment etc...) were gone, replaced by much junk. So anyway I made the best of the situation and came across an old 1960's International dump truck. Took some nice pics of it, and really liked how this close up of the headlight turned out.

Thunder Bay

So, last weekend we took a much needed trip up to Thunder Bay, why? you ask, well simply because we wanted/needed to see our little baby boy whom we fostered for 10 months. We needed to see that he was okay in his new home, we needed to know he was healthy and loved... and you know what? He is :)

It was a fairly uneventful trip, 14hrs up (1100km). I should have been able to do it in 12hrs if all conditions would have been perfect, but of course they weren't. We constantly got stuck behind traffic, and got held up by construction, and of course there were the obligatory pee breaks :)
On the way back we were making really good time, it is 697km from Sault Ste Marie to Thunder Bay and I was doing 100km/hr - 110km/hr so we were there in 7hrs... but 20km outside of the Sault we blew a tire going up a passing lane in the pouring lane... so what happened next? Well I spent the next hour changing a tire in the pouring rain on the top of a hill. The spare was rusted on under the van so that took half an hour just to break loose. Spare tire on and everyone back in the van we made the slow drive in to the Sault and found a Canadian Tire that was still open on a late Sunday afternoon... another 40min later we were set up with a new tire and off to grab some supper... so it took total of 14hrs to get home thanks to all that...

The visit itself with our baby boy was awesome... yes I know I keep referring to him as ours but it is hard not to. We poured our life and love into him for 10 months, from one year old up to 11 months. We were even going to adopt him, but a family member came forward to and we were unable to, that is where he is currently of course, up in Thunder Bay with his new family. Anyway it was a great trip and we were truly blessed to see him again. We love you Jacob and always will.

p.s. Next time we visit I think we'll fly up lol.

Road Trip

Found out on Friday that we will be able to take a trip up to Thunder Bay to see our little guy. Really, really looking forward to it. CAS is going to rent us a vehicle and pay our gas to take the drive up to see how he's doing. Then hopefully we will see him again in August for a day or so. It's so strange around the house even now, 3 weeks later, without him. We had a video call to him through Skype on his birthday may 31st, he wasn't really interested, he was more interested in what the other kids were doing at his new home. He has 3 new teeth :)
I was looking through some old back-up disks I have and found some great old photos of my family :) Here's one from 2002, a trip we took down to see some family in Port Colbourne.

Three

Wow! One month gone already! Only 3 months left until my final year at college starts. I'm really looking forward to it, although I think it is going to be very stressful, I keep thinking of the portfolio review that happens in the second semester lol, too far away at this point to be sweating it, but I am :)

I'm trying to line up some photo-shoots for this summer, just some casual days out with my camera and some friends, so far I have about 3 to possibly 5. I have to find some place cool to shoot, and decide what kind of shoot it should be.

Not Much

Not much going on this past week. Work, work, work... and not really enjoying it. Just a crap job I picked up to get me through the summer. Hours are terrible and pay isn't the greatest, upside is I'm done fairly early in the day at 2:3pm... downside is I start very early in the day 5am :(

I've been keeping busy taking photos, doing some drawings, getting some occasional layout designs for a local printer, mostly just looking forward to getting on with my 3rd year at college and then embarking into the field. Really looking forward to selling my place and moving out of the boonies and into a larger town or city.

Anyway as I said I've been working on some illustrations, here's a preliminary sketch that I plan on working up in Photoshop, I'll post the finished product at a later date.

A Week Later

It's been a week now since our foster baby has been gone, I still miss him terribly but I can now think of him fondly and with a smile without getting teary-eyed. We (my wife and I) spoke to our CAS worker and her supervisor and received some answers and apologies for being left in the dark through this process. We should have had a lot more to do with it, and a lot more involvement than we did. They didn't realize we were taking it so hard and have recommended some grief counselling, not sure if we will take it as we are doing better since we had it all out with them and had our say. They also realize now that we should have been part of all the meetings and had workers out to our home during the transition time for us to be able to talk to. 

We are hoping to go up to ThunderBay in June to see him and his new home to help us with some closure, and we will be taking the summer off to recoup as a family and heal up before we start again. Foster care is a roller coaster ride of emotions, and takes a lot of work, but is so worth it in the lives of these little ones. We love them all so much as they come through our home. 

Here's a shot of a building along the lake I did a family portrait shoot at. I think it conveys the lost, lonely feeling we get when we transition our foster children onward...

Sad Days

It is a sad day as I blog today. My wife and I had to transition a baby we had been fostering and planning to adopt to one of his family members who decided they would adopt. It is very heart-wrenching for us as there is no legal way yet that we have found to be able to prevent this. We poured ourselves into his life for the last 11 months, nurturing and loving him only to lose him to a great aunt of 51 years old. Anyway, not a lot to say about this right now, other than I intend to fight this, I have already contacted the Premier of Ontario, the Minister of Child and Youth Services as well as my local MP. I will get to the bottom of why the laws are the way they are and do not seem to take into consideration the best interest of the child... I will keep you updated on what I learn and any developments... until then, here is a picture of our little guy, already miss him so badly...

May? When did that happen?

Jeepers creepers! When did it suddenly become May? I realize that April was extremely busy at school, but wow, May! Lol, okay I'm over it now. I have survived my first week at my new job and am celebrating with a weekend of laziness and family enjoyment. We went to my kid's school last night to watch "The Toothfairy", it was actually kinda funny. I slept in this morning and have just spent the day hanging out with my wife and kids... way too long in coming, but school work took a lot of my time. It was definitely worth it though, I passed my semester with all A's and have a GPA of 4.0 woohoo me :)

Now begins the tough part of maintaining creativity over the summer, I'm going to have to get out and get some photo's and work on some illustrations, and generally just keep artistically active. :)

Ahhhh

Holy crap! I can't believe I'm up this early! I have a new job for the summer months while waiting to start my 3rd year of Graphic Design at Cambrian College. It is a swing-shift job, which if you you don't know, means one week days and then one week nights etc... Dayshift starts at 5am! Which means I need to drag my tired butt out of bed at 4am to get dressed, make my lunch, have a coffee, check my blogs etc...

This is going to play havoc with my body. Number one I haven't actually done much "physical" work in the last couple of years, which isn't to say my job is physically demanding, but it is standing most of the day and working with lumber. I'll give it a little while and see how it goes, not sure if I'm liking it at all yet, I know the hours are killer for sure... anyhoo, I'll keep ya's posted.

Here's another piece from one of my children's books I wrote and illustrated.

Done!

Done second year that is, wow, what a rush! Second year was pretty intense. I felt like a Doctor under constant triage conditions, what gets first attention, second, third etc... I'm hoping that next year will be less strenuous since there won't be as many classes, but then I suppose we could still end up with just as much work to do. At this point though I'm looking forward to a nice long summer of work (both design and non-design jobs) and hanging out with my family doing "family" things. I'll still try and keep up with blogging though. I know it's been a week or so since my last post but in my own defense, it was pretty hectic the last couple weeks :)

p.s.
This is an illustration from the 3rd children's book I'm working on. Hopefully I'll get back to it and finish it off someday. Only problem is, that I've learned so much the last 2 years that I'd probably go back and start it all over again ;)

In the works

It's been a week or so since my last post, just wanted to put a quick update here. I'm currently working on another illustration  project for school. It's an illustrated alphabet, yup all 26 letters. I've completed the line work and put my flat colors down so far. Once I get the shadows and highlights up I'll post it for you to see. So until then, I'll leave you with an older illustration I did as a tribute to CSI

Surreal

Here's a piece I had to do for illustration class. It's a compilation of 8 different photos. I had a lot of fun putting this one together.

Yet another mockup

Mockups, mockups, mockups... seems like that is all we do sometimes, but the practice certainly pays off. I'm quite pleased with how this mockup of a Philips fluorescent mini turned out.

sorry

I have not been very diligent lately at posting, school has really gotten intense with final projects. We're down to the last 5 weeks of school and we're really being swamped. Anyway, I'm sorry about the length of time between postings here. I've completed another image for my illustration class. This time the theme was "mistaken identity", enjoy.

Finished

So, here it is, the final piece. My magazine cover for my print media class. Very pleased with it. Has a nice clean look, but also edgy and makes you want to open it up and take a peak inside.

Mockup version 2

Not the final piece yet, but here's a second version.

Mockup

Did some work today on a magazine mockup for my print media class. Here's the rough copy, I'll post the final version when it is done. I used a photo I took of an orange and apple that I blended using a masking tool. The idea was that the orange and apple were reintegrated wrong after being translocated (beamed).

The Spark

As day flows into night and creative sparks are loosed flaring into nothingness, one must seize those sparks and blow them into flame. Nurturing, encouraging, protecting it from the elements, in hopes that it will blaze in fury and sear the mind with it's pervasive ideas.

It is those ideas, born of flame and care, that designers must grab hold and exploit. It is the establishment of this process that must be pursued, to duplicate it again and again, that is the goal to be achieved, that is what a designer craves. Designers are more than just extensions of the tools they use, it is not enough simply to know how to use software and manipulate files. Designers must interpret a problem to the best possible solution, submitting it to the flames of creativity that it might be purified to base elements and processed into a simpler, purer form. These ideas, mixed with other ideas, create an ebb and flow that continues the process of refinement to the betterment of the solution. All having started from a spark.

School

School, in a word - rough. Don't take this the wrong way, or think that I'm complaining, because that is not my intent. School can be hard, as I said before I'm in the second semester of my second year of Graphic Design at Cambrian College and it is a difficult year. Which is bitter sweet because I am doing what I think is my hardest... but possibly not my best... work and sometimes the grades just aren't there to justify the time I put in. Which gets frustrating. 

I suppose if I was pulling off 80's and 90's in everything than maybe the course wouldn't be challenging enough, but since lately I've been in the mid 70's I'll say that it is definitely a challenging course. I love it though, I'm having the best time, I enjoy the rest of the students, the faculty is great and the environment is awesome... but I still can't wait to be done and released upon the world. Watch out, cause it's gonna happen :)

Here's a mock up of a webpage we had to design for a favorite book.

I spent a few hours today (probably 5 or so) working on another drawing for illustration class, the theme was "Room to Grow", I had a bit of fun with it this time and tried a completely new style for me. It's a style that I've seen other artists use over the years, both in children's books and in some cartoons. The style looks unfinished yet finished and has a real polished look to it... all in all I'm quite pleased with how this turned out. Inspiration was a photo I found of my 13yr when he was 2 and tried walking in my old pair of work boots.

Okay, so I discovered that doing a gradient mesh is very long tedious work, but can also be fun once you get into it. We had to work on a self portrait in my illustration class, after about 10 hours worth of work I gotta say I'm reasonably pleased with my rendition. It takes a lot of concentration and manipulation of the mesh to get it right but all in all it wasn't too bad, and here it is.

Okay, I know it's been a few days since my last post, not doing so well with the whole daily posting bit, but at least I'm posting more than once a month now :) I still don't really know what to post here. I know I put an image that I have either photographed or illustrated, and I will continue to do so, but I think I'll give you a little background about todays. I've posted an image that I did for my Graphic Production Fundamentals class. We had to create a couple of labels, for a 4 pack of juice and the package that holds them. I picked Old Orchard 100% Grape juice as my item. The package is an actual photo of a physical mock-up, but the bottle is an illustrator image I made using the 3d revolve tool.

Sunday? Really? Already? Yep, seems so, Sunday already. Which means that the weekend is pretty much shot. I suppose there are many of you who may be reading this that are gearing up for the Super-bowl tonight, well I'm not one of those people. As a tried and true, thoroughbred Canadian I am not interested in the NFL, my game is the CFL, which is already done for the year. So if you are one who is gearing up for the NFL showdown tonight, well have fun, but as for me I sure hope there is something a little more engaging on the Tele for me to watch.

Pretty slow day at work today, had a total of about 6 customers, not the best for a Saturday. On the upside though I was able to get some brainstorming done for an independent project at school. After work I came home and finished up an illustration for class on Monday. Hope you like it.

Whew two days in a row

Whew, two days in a row... well okay, I guess not since technically it's now 12:03am... but dang I was close eh? Not much to say today. Do something creative today, you'll be amazed at how good it feels :)

Still blogging away

I know, I know, I was trying to make a post a day but I guess until you get into the habit of it, it can take a bit of getting used to. Todays will be short and sweet, I'm going to leave you with another great inspirational site to check out for photography.

http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/

Daily posting

As I Continue my attempt at daily posts I'd like to draw your attention to a great site that is a source of inspiration for me as a designer http://www.graphic-exchange.com/home.html. It's always a good thing to check out other peoples sites, blogs, etc... just as you are here checking out mine, you never know what you're going to find on them.

Just trying to post more often, make it worthwhile for you to stop by and take a gander. Another long week has come to an end, and even though assignments get finished, it feels like digging a hole in water, as the gap continues to be filled over and over. We've been told that this is our busiest semester of the whole course, and at this point, I'm not going to argue at all. Anyway, thats it for now...

New Semester

Almost a month into second semester at school and its amazing how busy we are already. Between school, photography gigs, work and family it gets very tiring. What makes it all worth it though is how much I love it all (busyness aside that is). Graphic Design is such an amazing field to get into, there is so much to do, so many ways it can be taken.

I stumbled across a list that all designers should know:

1) Designers are meant to be loved, not understood.
2) The purpose of design is to make the ordinary extraordinary.
3) The best designers are the ones who find good clients.
4) Design must seduce, shape, and more importantly, evoke an emotional response.
5) Good design can be planned, great design just happens.
6) Design the right things, design the things right.
7) Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Something to think about ;)

The illustration is my tribute to the X-Files show.