Fight For Your Right...

I recently applied to work at another company that responded asking me to complete a design exercise audition type thing.
I just learnt today that I didn't get an interview, so I've decided to publish the design I did for them.

I had to jazz up a plain text television pitch, for a new show, ready to be sent to a major network. The content of the document is strictly confidential (so I've blurred out the details) but, for context, I will say it was a kinda "teen tropical holiday/party themed reality show".

 

I wouldn't normally use such a garish colour palette, but it fit with the subject matter of the show.

Preliminary sketches & ideas.

 

Tiny Twelve

It has been some time since I've heard from the company that requested this test commission, so I'm assuming I have not been selected.
To that end, I am publishing my design.

It's a likeness of Peter Capaldi (in costume as the Twelfth Doctor) in the established style of the company. I'm quite pleased with it, even if they obviously feel it's not enough to hire me over.
 

Sibling

An offhand comment on Twitter lead me to draw this stupid portrait of my brother.
It's not perfect, and you can tell I put more time into the face than anything else, but it's a good exercise in digital drawing.

 

Face Off

I applied to a company that creates stylised likenesses of celebrities for use on a variety of products, their response was to request that I demonstrate my capability to create imagery in their established brand style.

I have begun working on something.

Having tweeted it without context, people have managed to identify the individual in question. Which is a good sign.

Playtime's Over

I recently, finally, was granted some progression on the web design job. I was given access to a separate live domain the group have, to which I have uploaded my full site for a full final review. Then, hopefully, they can populate it as they see fit, I can hand over the access information for associated 3rd party sites, they'll pay me and I can walk away from the whole thing.
The project has caused me a great deal more time, effort and stress than I anticipated and I will be relieved when it is over. Thankfully, they seem happy with the website I've created and, at the end of the day, that's all that's important.

Comical

Inspired by a project called Twitter The Comic, wherein a group of artists illustrate selected tweets and turn them into short strips, I have decided to practice my comicbook illustration by producing fully-fledged comic pages based on tweets I find amusing.

Below are some preliminary sketches based on two tweets I saw today.

 I'll post more when I've collated some finished pages.

Book It

I just finished the final touches to my "Gilliam Animation", which I've tentatively titled Book - for want of a better name - and uploaded to Vimeo.

(You can see it here.)

It's taken me far too long to complete, what with laziness, tedium, losing a load of work and being put off and having to find the right live-action elements to include. But it's done.

It's almost ironic that the part of the process I knew the least about and had never attempted before, took me the least amount of time. I started this morning and finished a short while ago. (That was compositing the animation with the live footage of the book.)

I think it worked out well too, considering I took the lazy approach and avoided using After Effects and masks - instead winging it with the limited effects in Premiere and a prayer that the clumsy edits won't be noticeable during viewing. (I don't think they are.)

I'm actually incredibly pleased with how it's come out. Especially how well I managed to make digitally animated scans, combined with footage of a blank page, look like closeup shots of an actual book.
It was challenging given the inconsistent colouring of a lot of the source images (that I probably should've corrected at the first stage rather than last) and I ended up using a lot more and far different effects than I imagined when I first conceptualised it.
In particular not being able to chroma key the image backgrounds and having to add digital shadows to mimic those of the page-turn to make them more seamless.

Below are some screenshots to pique your interest/allow me to show off.

I had to write a load of nonsense to make the scenes look more like real book pages. They're not even complete sentences; there's nothing before the left edge of the shot.

I'm not going to pretend that I don't think I'm a genius for adding a layer of mirrored text to emulate the look of the adjoining page showing through the paper.

I think the overall effect is convincing. I'd believe this is a photo of a book page, and I KNOW that I made it.