Now Playing:
Cellodad's Weekly Game (ebook)
This is my first e-book, readable on a Kindle. It's $1 at Amazon.
"Imaginative adventures play alongside personal gig notes from a cello soloist. A quirky, playful condensation of experiences and ideas, years in the making. Author David Pierik, who works in advertising by day, brings the reader into worlds of escape, playing music and games."
Please take a look and email any comments to me at [email protected]. I would like to thank Penny, Miss B., Rod, Chaun, Shane, Marshall, Shawn, Carson, Jon, Mat, Ava, and every other gamer I have ever known – there are a lot of you and you're probably named in the book. Thank you all! By the way Carson, I credited you as an illustrator for this.
Spoiler alert: in the future I plan to write some traditional fantasy/sf novels inspired by ideas from the campaign worlds I've developed over the years, and also a cello instruction book with tips for the soloist and some compositions. I also have a sales and advertising / marketing book in me but right now that's in at least third place of what I feel like writing.
"Imaginative adventures play alongside personal gig notes from a cello soloist. A quirky, playful condensation of experiences and ideas, years in the making. Author David Pierik, who works in advertising by day, brings the reader into worlds of escape, playing music and games."
Please take a look and email any comments to me at [email protected]. I would like to thank Penny, Miss B., Rod, Chaun, Shane, Marshall, Shawn, Carson, Jon, Mat, Ava, and every other gamer I have ever known – there are a lot of you and you're probably named in the book. Thank you all! By the way Carson, I credited you as an illustrator for this.
Spoiler alert: in the future I plan to write some traditional fantasy/sf novels inspired by ideas from the campaign worlds I've developed over the years, and also a cello instruction book with tips for the soloist and some compositions. I also have a sales and advertising / marketing book in me but right now that's in at least third place of what I feel like writing.
Week 11: Final Project
Poster: "What Vector Design is About"
This features a few of my favorite Illustrator projects from the past dozen weeks or so. If you scroll down you can see larger versions of these.
I thought it would be fun to go ahead and create another one, starting fresh. My logo in the right corner is something I came up with in a previous class using Illustrator.
Week 10: Preparing Graphics for Web
Slices
Getting fancy with animation
Okay, as usual, Flash-related things gave my brain a bit of a blister. I read the tutorials, did some exercises and watched the videos and went to bed frustrated and with no ideas about what I wanted to animate. I dreamed of a hammer morphing into an axe and a shovel so that's what I went with, it was good to wake up with an idea and also be able to make it work the next day.
Week 9: Preparing a Document
for Press & Printing.
Drawing with Symbols
The big breakthrough for me this week with Illustrator's Symbol Sprayer tool was the symbol stainer tool, and getting a better handle on ungrouping. I started with two giant groups of identical fish, for example. These are amazing tools.
We still live in a world with a lot of print. I have absolutely no problem with that. I now have a better handle on the preprint setups and specifics.
These are a few examples from the book, for setting up bleeds on business cards and for recoloring artwork on things like magazine covers.
Week 8: Working With A Perspective Grid
Week 7: Creating 3D Objects.
Packaging Design.
Illustrator has wonderful and elegant 3D tools. The trick is wrapping your head around how they work. Once again I have to say I'm glad I'm in a class dedicated to this rather than trying to figure it out on my own, or worse yet – not even know what is possible.
Week 6: Recoloring Artwork
and Working with Transparency, Effects, and Graphic Styles
Week 5: Working with Distortions, Gradient Meshes and Blends
I followed a great class video tutorial for these grapes, working from a Wikimedia Commons photo of a bunch of young multicolored grapes with plenty of purple but also green, yellow and even some brown. What I did here is obviously very stylized. I had a good time playing with these ideas using the gradient mesh tool, the eyedropper and a custom brush I made.
Design Project: Steel Cup. I worked from the Illustrator book, Adobe Illustrator CS6 Revealed by Chris Botello for this one, using the Create Gradient Mesh command. This one was a bit challenging, yet rewarding. I have a much better idea about what the Gradient Mesh is and how to utilize it now.
Create Color Effects with Blends. "Chrome." This one was also from the book. I was frustrated with this at first to be perfectly honest. Illustrator is just really different from Photoshop. But in the end the blend and the mask worked, the aha moment was realizing that you kind of have to connect the dots, then it all comes together. I'm sure there are a ton of cool uses for stuff like this.
Illustrator Blend Tool, Typography, Pen Tool. For this one I followed some steps from http://abduzeedo.com/cool-typography-blend-tool-illustrator and added some geometric shapes and filters among other things. This was really just something extra for some more practice, just kind of messing around.
Week 4: Working with Patterns and Brushes
Illustrator has some incredible tools, not the least of which are brushes and patterns. The dandelion above, I created from scratch in Illustrator and it is not from a photo, not a single part of it.
Week 3: Transforming and Distorting Objects
Independent Project: Transforming Objects
"Submar-Not"
I had some fun with this one. The original images are below, the only photo not taken by me is the porthole, from Wikimedia Commons. My fantasy construction ended up going in a different direction and I had a lot of fun with this.
Clipping Mask, Dartboard and more
These are from the book and tutorials for the week. I am including a few "before" and "in progress" photos along with the completed Mask, Fun, Hawks Win and Dartboard.
Week 2: Creating Text and Gradients.
Drawing and Composing an Illustration.
This week's assignments made me think and grow a bit, using the book and tutorial information from various sources. In the slideshow above are the LaMirage and Firehouse Chili assignments. You will also find my Independent Project, "Curvaceous Type / Star Dreams." I feel like I built a lot of skills this week. Enjoy.
Just for fun - I did an extra tutorial. The background photo is screened back, originally from one of my Advanced Digital Image Editing assignments from last week. I have noticed that Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator work very nicely together, as they should.
Week 1: Getting to Know Illustrator
Working from Chris Botello's Adobe Illustrator CS6 Revealed, I learned a lot this week. I'm fairly proficient with Photoshop by now and Illustrator offers a whole new set of wonderful tools. Clockwise from top left: Iris Vision Design, Flag, Empath, Emerald Logo. Empath is my own custom independent project and I did not work from a tutorial.
Here are a few selected images created during the various skill building exercises. I really did enjoy working on these too, it was fun bringing everything together and I learned a lot.
Media 204 Digital Illustration is a course offered by Peninsula College. Instructor: Marina Shipova. January 2014. Images subject to copyright.
Media 204 Digital Illustration is a course offered by Peninsula College. Instructor: Marina Shipova. January 2014. Images subject to copyright.