Noah Illustration Blog

Trouble on Planet Zero! Plus Agency Access!

2012-01-08T13:38:00.000-08:00

I recently joined Agency Access (who recently acquired both Adbase and FoundFolios) in an effort to increase my client base and help me have a more effective marketing routine. Like many illustrators struggling to start their careers, I used to compile my mailing lists by painstakingly leafing through the periodicals at the local bookstore for names. Not only was this time-consuming, it was mind-numbingly boring. To top it off, staff changes and folding magazines have made it necessary to completely re-check lists every time I wanted to do a mailer. Quite frankly, this discouraged me from doing mailers more than once or twice a year, and THAT is NO WAY to get work.
Agency Access has cut all that work out for me, and I am glad to be rid of it. Plus, my mailing lists have nearly quadrupled! On January 16th, they are merging their databases with that of Adbase. As a result of the merge, the number of contacts is leaping from 48,500 contacts at 15,500 companies to 71,900 contacts at 20,700 companies! That's a 41% increase.
I'm excited to do my first mailer with these lists, and I'll be super pleased if I experience an equally dramatic increase in work. Only one way to find out!

I needed to put together a new mailer, but had very limited time over the Holidays to do any new pieces. SOOOO I looked through some older work and found this old Spaceman piece I did. Now I just needed to find a way to spice it up a little. The format was a poster for a now defunct sci-fi comedy project, so I wanted to come up with a new way to present it.

I've always liked the way old novels show wear. The creases, bent corners, torn pages, and fraying edges give them such an interesting aesthetic... Gives them longevity; a lifespan. Shows that they were loved and used over a long time. Or to some, it just makes it look worthless and old. I think both of those kinda appeal to me.

Anyway, I thought maybe I could make sort of an old sci-fi paperback with my image like these examples I found on the this Site of 59 Book Covers:
I found some great online resources for High Res scans of old books and papers. Lost & Taken is a great place for textures. Fuzzimo also has some nice ones. I found some great elements on those sites, but I really wanted to find something more paperbacky. Since I was staying with the folks back in Ohio for the Holidays, I took advantage of perusing the old farmhouse's book collection. There were some great finds in there from the era I wanted to use. I eventually settled on using this copy of Wuthering Heights By Emily Bronte. It has wonderful creases and wear.
I got a nice BIG scan of it and brought it into Photoshop. The first thing I did was edit out the text and drawing with the Clone Stamp... It was a shame to wipe out that beautiful illustration, but here it is:

I then did a little modification to the Washington Square Press logo, again just using the clone stamp tool:

Now I was ready to drop in my image. I set the image Layer to Screen to let the creases and wear show through, but it also made the image a little too light, as you can see.

I wanted it to blend into the dark of the book, so I duplicated the image layer and set it to Multiply and reduced the opacity to about 40%. I think I also ran the "Add noise" filter to one of the layers to add some extra visual texture.

Next, I needed to make the picture look printed. I made all the image layers into a group, and then duplicated that group. I right clicked on the duplicate group and picked "Convert to Smart Object". Then I ran the Filter - Sketch - Halftone Pattern with the dot size at 1 or 2. I played with the contrast until I got a dot pattern I was happy with and clicked ok.

Now it should look pretty strange, but trust me. Turn the Layer to Overlay and place the half tone layer under the Image layers Group (as in lower in the layer orders not into the group). Now looking at the Smart Object/Halftone Layer in the layer palette, you will see the little icon of sliders next to where it says <--Halftone Pattern under Smart Filters. Double click it.
Then set the Blending mode to Hard Light and set the opacity to about 75%. This should give you a result like this:Then I used a few fonts that I found on the H P Lovecraft Historical Society website. They have some great old looking fonts. I settled on "Trouble on Planet Zero!" because it was vague and cheesey, and worked with my illustration. To add wear to the text, I rasterized it, blurred it, and then sharpened it. I also used the same process steps that I did with the image layers.
I also used the magic wand to select some of the creases and spots where the paper is showing through and created a new layer on top of the image layers to increase their prominence. I added a few of my own creases as well with a rough brush set really small. Here is the front: Click to Enlarge.

Next I moved on the the back and did a similar thing. Cloned the text out and added my own. I thought it'd be neat to make a little name label for the book where i could put the art director's name and address. I created a little label using a jpeg I found on the internet. I edited out the text, and added my own, and overlayed it with a scan of old paper from one of the old book texture sites, and set that layer to Darken.

So there it is. My new postcard mailer. I ordered some nifty clear labels for the addresses and sent the files off to the printer. I've been using PsPrint for my printing for years now, and they have always done a great job. Plus they almost always have some kinda sale going on. I'm excited to see how these turn out! Thanks for looking!

Happy Holidays

2012-01-08T10:25:00.000-08:00

Let's face it, Christmas cards are kinda boring.
That is why one of my favorite things about the holidays is designing our Christmas card.
I love making something fun and outrageous and sending it to everyone I know, and this year was no exception.

Here are our cards from a few years past.

(2008 - we actually had no tree, wreath or stockings that year)(2009 - not our living room, but the Russian print on the wall is ours)

For whatever reason, we decided that 2010's card was going to involve polar bear riding, however we never got around to making it with our big move back to Portland over the Holidays that year. So this year, the same idea popped up again, and now Lucia was old enough not to be just a lump in someone's arms.
I thought it would be fun to transform our kids into little ice warriors trekking across a frozen tundra like this awesome Frazetta painting, so I did a little sketch.

Amelia, my oldest, was a tough art director. She demanded that I change her outfit. She did not want a cape. She needed to be more "ice-princess" with a dress... and a wand. These demands were made between screaming sobs btw. How could I say no?

So a new sketch was made, and luckily it was met with squealing approval:

Once it was inked, I printed off a few copies for the girls to color. Here is one of the highlights.

This kept them busy while I worked on some colors of my own. Here is what I came up with:

I still needed to do something for the back of the card, so I decided organize a little photo shoot under the guise of a little bit of dress-up time. I made a few wardrobe suggestions, which after a little candy cane bribery produced this gem:
I'm sure Lucia will look back on this and hate me for sending a hundred people a picture of her in her underpants... but right now, it's hilarious. I hope this spreads a little Holiday warmth to you and your own clan.

Here's looking forward to a new year full of spontaneous and fun illustrations. <3 -Noah

Hairy Baltimore

2011-09-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

Cover Design © Alex Fine

At the Washington Monument tonight between 5-8, the release of a book curated by good friend and fantastic illustrator Alex Fine. It's going to be a good time to celebrate a good book containing some amazing illustrated portraits of local Baltimore icons. You will also find bios in the back of the book for each great illustrators who contributed including yours truly. So, if you are in the Baltimore area, do yourself a favor and head over there to grab a copy. And if you aren't, harass Alex Fine until you get one.
Here are my contributions to the book:

Benn Ray of Atomic Books

& Raygun Robyn

Physio-Visual Processes (er...um... sketching)

2011-09-22T15:36:00.000-07:00

Sketches for Emily Sap

So in an effort to become less reliant on reference photos, I am trying to increase my sketching. Admittedly this has always been a weak spot for me. I still have sketchbooks from college that never even made it a quarter of the way through. I just never liked to sit and draw what's around me, and when I was somewhere else, I didn't want the hassle of bringing tools with me... maybe it's laziness, I don't know, but it's got to stop.

If it isn't evident in my work, I like to draw people. Figures are always interesting to draw, and you can never have enough practice drawing them. But being a dad and grad student and freelancer doesn't really afford me the time to go attend a local figure drawing class. Luckily the good folks over at Pixelovely have fashioned this amazing gesture drawing tool which lets you draw from a slideshow of various nudes and clothed figures. They even have one for animals.

Now, I know what you're thinking, "but you are just drawing from photographs, how is that helping your photo reference addiction?" In a sense you are right, drawing from life would be ideal, but the aim here isn't to fashion a polished drawing, it's to give your brain, eye and hand repeated practice at analyzing form and contour. What were to happen if you draw an ear once or twice? You would analyze the form, render it down on paper, and move on. If your brain knows it only has to solve that problem once or twice, it may not retain that analytical knowledge. And the next time you find yourself needing to solve that problem, you have to do the mental work all over again. Do you remember that question on Jeopardy that you got wrong 5 years ago? Probably not. Would you get it wrong again? Probably. It just isn't that important to retain in our memory banks.
HOWEVER, draw that ear 500 times. Scrutinize its structure, deconstruct its form, LEARN IT inside and out. What you've just done is made it absolutely clear to your brain that THIS IS IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER! That is why drawing multiple times a day can be beneficial to any artist or illustrator. We are building unique, complex pysio-visual processes that we can call upon again and again with almost effortless mastery. No doubt about it, this is hard work, and although this makes absolute sense to me in theory, in practice I will admit that I fall short.
So here is where I am going to start. It's convenient, fast, and I can sneak away to my office to do this between changing diapers and feeding children.

30 second warm-up gestures really get you up to speed quickly.
Not much to look at, but they will help you realize what is important to put down first.

Longer 5-10 min poses give you the opportunity to spend some time analyzing the form more closely.Another amazing thing about the Gesture Drawing Tool is that it will give you a ninja or barbarian outta nowhere. Enjoy! and happy sketching!

Take Five

2011-09-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

I promised a process post about this piece, so I'm finally following through. This was a part of my thesis project that I worked on over the summer with Tony Ong (designer at Fantagraphics) as my advisor. "Take Five" was an unconventional Jazz song by the Brubeck Quartet in 1959, because it used and unorthodox 5/4 time signature... Here's a referesher if you don't know what I'm talking about:

This one was kinda tough. Through the conceptualizing process, what I wanted to do and what would be most appropriate and fitting for the song I was illustrating were at odds with each other. But as I was running low on time, I just pushed forward with the one I liked the most. I never ended up finishing it before the end of the semester, but I finally got around to working on coloring it this past week. The Typography still needs some attention, but this is as far as it goes for now.

I had a neat little animated gif all ready to go to show the whole progress, but it doesn't seem to work on blogger...poo. So anyway, here are the sketch, the inks & the color study progression.

Which let to this color configuration:This piece is my first time using my new iMac and Adobe CS5... So I had at my disposal a bunch of neato new tools, and the hardware to handle more proccessor-intensive techniques like high-res texture brushes and stuff. Hopefully this is the start of some new experiments that lead to some more exciting new work. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

And the End Result:

Click to view.

If you are keeping score, this is number three of five...
although 'walk on the wild side' and 'el paso' are still arguably unfinished.

Stay Tuned.

Technology

2011-08-09T07:02:00.000-07:00

Technology has become such an integral part of our lives that many of us don't realize how much we devote to being 'plugged in' to our devices. Hours of our day are spent looking at or interacting with some form of technology. Psychologists now have to spend time dealing with people who judge their self worth by their interactions on social networking sites to a degree that it upsets their emotional and mental health. But technology is not going to go away. We are inextricably bound to it as a species, and our lives will never be unaffected by it. What we can dictate is how much of our daily lives we are willing to devote to it. The internet, apart from being mostly comprised of cats, is a time drain: a veritable black-hole thriving on our attention to it. The more time we spend on it, the more we create habits that, in essence, routinely surrender little pieces of our day to its insatiable kitty cat jaws. How many times do you 'need' to check your email? or your Facebook? Do we need those in our lives?

Anyway, this is a process post about an illustration piece I did that was founded in that line of thinking. I started with sketching the concept. Here we see a multi-tasker. His crazed eyes are fixed on the screen before him as untold hours of the day go by. His hands are devoted to many tasks as time passes, but his attention is unwavering. I ditched this idea.

Next, I started thinking of the ancient symbol of the ouroboros: a snake eating its own tail. It had curious implications when I replaced it with a man and his laptop. It speaks of the perpetuity of our relationship with technology and the way it (almost violently) devours our attention. How we are intertwined, almost becoming one with it.I chose to move forward with this one because of it's striking quality. I re-drew the scene on bristol. Then I inked it. I've been refraining from direct photo reference to get back in the habit of using my imagination, so the only reference I had was my memory, a mirror, and my original sketch. In my opinion, for things like figures, we ought to have the confidence and practice enough to create believable poses from our own minds. We see them everyday, why should we second guess ourselves? If you get stuck, ask someone next to you or get in front of a mirror and visually examine the pose. make quick studies on paper to help you figure it out. Once you have a photo in front of you, it is too tempting to just copy it. We are not xerox machines.

Once scanned I did a little value study, and then several color options. For the concept I wanted a cooler palette so that narrowed my possibilities to two. Then I appealed to the internet, and there was a clear victory (see what I did there). If this were for a magazine however, I may have gone with the other color option, but this was a personal piece and mostly wanted a striking image. I don't always do a value study, but doing lots of prelim studies will really help you figure out the best way to proceed. The color option I chose was not the first one I tried, but doing multiple studies helped me arrive at ones that were unexpected.

So here it is. I cleaned it up and followed my color study. The colors may be a bit washed out, because I can't figure out the color shift with jpegs on blogger, but you get the idea. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go check my Facebook for the next two hours.

Hidden Danger - Process Post about Creativity, Imagination and the Subconscious Mind

2011-08-08T07:12:00.000-07:00

I wanted to show this piece because I arrived at it's composition in a manner in which I don't normally work, but it was an exercise in creativity designed to jump start the brain and get the juices flowing so to speak. If you are ever stuck in a rut and need a little inspirational guidance, this may help you as well.

I started off with black ink and just went nuts making a bunch of ink blots. I chose a few that were visually interesting to me, and then examined them closely, rotating and focusing on small areas that peaked my interest. These Rorschach tests are marvelous ways to access your subconscious visual vocabulary and help you to arrive at compositions you would have never thought of.

Apparently this jungle lady resides in my subconscious. (click to enlarge)

But you can see the visual clues that led me to arrive at this solution: the nape of the neck and the haunches of the cat.

I printed the original ink blot in a blue that can easily be eliminated in photoshop. Then I sketched out my little scene with a similar blue pencil, then inked it. (not pictured, I used a brush to ink some foliage shapes on a separate piece of layout bond and scanned that too).
Once scanned, I separated the inked lines from the blue blot, and proceeded with some color.
Here is what I arrived at:

This little piece was quick and fun, and gave me an image that is a little different than my other work. Most importantly, it helps you reclaim that little thing in your mind that should be the source of all of your visual creativity: your imagination. It's so easy to lose sight of that little guy when you become so automatic in your process that you seem to follow that same steps every time you create an image. The reality is, every problem has a different solution. Attacking it from the same angle in the same way every time will only stagnate you. You may find an adequate result, but it might lack a certain freshness or originality which, if you are an artist worth your salt, you desperately crave. So try this out the next time you are feeling like your well of inspiration is depleted. You may be surprised to see what was lurking in your subconscious this whole time. I know I was.

Don't look at me, I'm not a Designer.

2011-07-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

Be warned, I get a little philosophical. This was my attempt to think through the essence of type and why it works.

So, I'm having this issue with typography. In trying to find an appropriate treatment of type in specific context, what really defines what is appropriate? Is it all based on past context? When we look at type by itself, is it only evocative of what it has been used for in the past, or can we just look and it for what it is? Can a designer break the rules and use type in a different context, or is he just chained to all the visual connections that the type has built up over the years by it's own usage in other media? And when selecting or sketching up type, what makes it appropriate? Do we just have to feel around in ethereal qualities until we "sense" that something is right? What makes type angry or dirty? What makes type happy or heroic? And how do we know? It all seems so subjective. Is there a sort of collective unconscious typography realm that the whole world taps into to know whether those words look right? If you asked me to make a word look happy, I would be at a complete loss. Is it to evoke happiness in the viewer or show that this abstract set of symbols arranged in a certain visual way will show you that it is experiencing its own happiness?

Typography operates in two distinctly different types of communication: the structural set of symbols that are assigned to certain phonetic sounds arranged to form the words of our spoken language, and strictly abstract visual symbols evocative of meaning and feeling completely unrelated to it's auditory meaning - a visual language. When these two languages that typography speaks tell us different things, is that what makes it 'wrong'? If their messages conflict, does that cause discord in our minds? Is the purpose of 'good' design to reconcile these two symbolic languages so that they are giving us harmonious messages? Can we turn that on it's head and intentionally send conflicting messages to create something that will create an unpleasant feeling or thought in the viewer? If so, then typography has the potential to subliminally or unconsciously deliver a message that is unrelated to its spoken meaning. This is all very fascinating, but it seems to me that I need to go find myself a book on the subject and stop trying to deconstruct this visual message system. If you actually read all of this, you deserve a medal.

Time to PANIC

2011-07-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

Ok, so somehow I only have 2.5 weeks left in the Summer term, and have completed exactly zero illustration pieces... Now's a good time for me to freak out.
I was initially supposed to create 5 images in my directed study, and at least two or three in my other illustration studio. I got so bogged down with trying to conceive good concepts and sketching out the endless vomit of typography ideas that here I sit, two-thirds of the semester over and all I have to show are a bunch of scribbles, three inked drawings and a crapload of failed typography experiments. ->
Now I'm down to (maybe) completing 3 out of the original five, and two additional ones for the other class... That means I have to complete 5 amazing portfolio quality images in about twenty days.
Worst part is, I'm running outta steam :(
CRAP.

Here's the creepy TSA agent piece that may or may not get finished.

There's nothing more depressing than realizing that you have spent five whole weeks working and have nothing solid to show for it.

In a few weeks you will either be seeing a lot of new work, or a lot of failed attempts at new work.

Well, wish me luck.

Propaganda

2011-07-18T08:49:00.000-07:00

Airport Security has become a big issue on the American public's minds lately with the new procedures and full body imaging scanners. Invasion of privacy has become the price for "security", not to mention the possibility of harmful effects of repeated exposure to radiation for frequent flyers. Some TSA agents have been fired for inappropriate conduct in light of the new scanners which show an inverted (negative) image of your naked body on a screen. Anyway, the whole thing is one big mess, and if you fly you are sure to have an opinion about it.

So, I came up with this idea of doing a series of Adverts for the Transportation Security Administration. Sort of like old propaganda posters from wartime. I decided that making posters with negative connotations and implications would be a little more fun than trying to make heroes out of them.
Here I've invented this creepy TSA character who is more than happy to give you a pat down, or review the images from the new backscatter full-body scanners. Then I thought maybe I could do a kind of double series and show the same compositions with more heroic and positive slogans and imagery... Then I could emphasize how propaganda and advertising can influence our opinions to its own aims. Anyway, thought I'd share this as I might not take any of these to a finished Illustration.

Design and Stuff

2011-07-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

This thesis business has me paying a whole lot more attention to typography and design. I think I'm actually learning to like drawing words. In my travels through the internet I found Andres Guzman. He has some interesting work up. Here is how I'm feeling about set type these days.

Parenthood

2011-07-05T13:27:00.000-07:00

Having kids means they get to tell you what to draw... from memory. And then they proceed to "enhance" your drawing with their own special touches. I believe the red bit on the left there was a "bad guy".

On a similar note, being an illustrator means your kids will never be impressed by something like this because they've seen what you can do, and you clearly didn't try very hard here.

The Dreaded Thesis

2011-07-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

I'm finally starting work on my graduate thesis this term. This brings mixed emotions for me, as I came up with my thesis projects literally the week before I had to present them to the director of the Illustration department. The ideas were pretty silly, but I had to come up with something.

I always wanted to play with typography and design in my work but never really had the chance. So I cooked up this idea to illustrate song titles (Yawn, I know) but it's working out better than I expected. I get to work one on one with the Designer over at Fantagraphics in Seattle, which is super awesome because he does fantastic work.

I've been playing around with how I want to develop these images, and I think they would work best as posters. Anyway, here are a few sketches from the series so far.

"Walk on The Wild Side" Lou Reed (above)
"El Paso" by Marty Robbins

The Blog

2011-07-03T14:28:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Noah Illustration Blog!
I made this blog to be a place to show sketches and ideas as well as show a little behind the scenes of my working process etc. Posts may be infrequent, and they may or may not be interesting. Who knows! Only one way to find out!