Random is fun. Simple as that. So I’ve got 1-6 written on a sheet… 3 categories: type of character, accessories, and style of clothing. I got Werewolf + wizard hat + business attire. It was fun and I had problems with my camera and lost some photos… so Matt and Thom… get me your drawings some how. Thanks for reading!
Honey Bear by Chris Manuel
by Erik Jessen
What’s better than drawing your favorite monster or robot?… ok, lots of things, but it’s pretty high on my list of “cool things to draw”.
Here’s some of the creations that came from that night…
By Matt Rainwater
Artifix Noctem tried something totally different and decided to do Cubee Craft characters. Check it out here… http://www.cubeecraft.com/ This site has lots of pre-designed characters to print out and fold and cut it yourself. My thought was to go off of a blank template. They were a little hard to cut out and put together but once we all frustratingly got them done they looked pretty good. (L-R: Captain N Mega Man by Matt Rainwater, Lion-O by Robert Anderson, Invincible by Erik Jessen, Venom by Chris Manuel, Deadpool by James Jessen.
Seeing how well this works, I’m at the apple store in Houston. Can’t access photo drive from this thing to upload pictures… Dang
A person by the name of Po gave me a call one day requesting my design services for his new whiskey. It’s a family recipe rice whiskey that’s hand made and bottled … oh, and needs a brand! This project totally excited me because 1.) I love asian cultures 2.) This guy’s name is Po Lo 3.) And I don’t want to pass up the chance to design a whiskey label. When I met Mr. Po he had brought in this traditional Hmong flute that he wanted to incorporate into the brand. I took several pictures of it and took any paper notes and pictures that he had.
I must first link some information about the Hmong (since part of my job is researching)
This was one of the first proofs… needless to say I got waaay ahead of myself. It was all that stored up energy and excitement to get started I didn’t do enough research. I meshed in too many different cultures and need to take a breather and actually study what Po gave me.
first proof = EPIC FAIL
Some of the next proofs get way better… this was drawn from the referenced photo I took with my phone. Po liked this angle at first but then changed his mind to a “straight-on” angle… it happens to the best of us. Unfortunately I was hesitant about redrawing the angle so I turned to my friend Photoshop to distort the field of vision.
And this is after photoshop …
On to color and layout…
One of the difficult things about this logo was the balance between the “swirly” pattern and the flute. Po wanted them as both important elements that stood out. We finally decided upon the combination of contrast and drop shadow to make it visually stand out. The solid black was actually the emboss plate.
Here’s the business card…
Thanks Po for letting me work on this project. I got to taste Yerlo and it is quite good and strong stuff.
I’m also pending a photograph of the actual bottle once the labels are done.
thanks for reading.
WHAT IS CHAOS THEORY?: Chaos theory began in 2009 as a concept exhibit which would allow artist specializing in various mediums to display their work without being limited to a specific theme. The artists were encouraged to bring anything from landscapes to tattoo art. The theme for CTII: Chaos Reigns has been narrowed down to feature art inspired by motion pictures, cartoons, videogames, and television shows. In keeping with the spirit of Chaos, we will consider artwork that does not fall within this theme. We strongly encourage artists to challenge themselves and attempt to create a piece within the theme.
If you were upset to see no Artifix Noctem 8 or 9 post… it’s because some of us are currently working on submissions for the CTII: Chaos Reigns Exhibit. I know what you’re saying…”But Erik, how come you can’t post any of the work being done during that time?” A very valid point indeed ‘opposing voice in my head’. So in the later posts I will attempt to gather up some of the works created and post them for everyone to see.
Link by Matthew Rainwater
The concept of “Toon Remix” is to take any toon or character and either draw it in your own style or remix it somehow… as an example my brother, James Jessen, took Boba Fett and put a western twist on him. Darren Hanks, who had Sponge Bob Square Pants, remixed him as Sponge Bob “Round” Pants. When the members arrived they got a random number, then starting with 1, that person got to choose from a list of characters. Chris Manuel got #1 and he chose Fred Flintstone; I was gunning for Captain Crunch, but Thom Trahan picked him up. Thom did a great job with the Capt’n and we ended up getting a good laugh from his quote, “I didn’t want to draw the feet so I drew the earth instead.”… because, to Thom, the earth is so much easier to draw than feet…. and more colorful! Below is the gallery from last nights session – enjoy! and thanks for reading.
Two Face by Oran Parker
I got Viking + Peg Leg + Mug of Coffee
I really enjoyed this sketch night and loved the randomness that came with it. We watched Black Dynamite while we drew… I highly recommend it. Anyways we had some new faces and returning members. Jason Hardesty, Chris Manuel and Eric Manuel were the newest additions. Chris and I ended up working on our drawings till 12:00am… which is what I expect a real sketch night to end up as. See the details of the subject below… thanks for reading.
Character Roulette – You’ll randomly get your subject with various accessories. Example: Cowboy with a Katana Blade smoking a cigar. Or, a Monster with a wand and ballerina shoes. Can be done on any size medium.
The Acts Theatre here in Lake Charles, LA is a great little spot to catch some local actors and actresses do what they do best. My friend Michelle Woodyear asked me to apply my talents for their next show “The Real Saga of the 3 Little Pigs.” I love these sorts of projects because of the spin and the classic story material… For example my artist trading card set of the “Don’t Care Bears”. For this “pig project” I was told that these were young “hip” pigs, 2 female, 1 male. Add in a momma pig and a bad wolf on top of that and make it look good.
I started with sketching the style of the pigs in a smaller sketch book so I could decide on the “style” of the characters. Once I got that hammered away I started working on Bristol card stock with my #2 mechanical pencil. Once the pencil was done I moved to my pens – .08 for the foreground, .05 and .03 for the background. After inks were done I then scanned it in… then went to digital coloring. Here’s were I deviated from my normal process a bit. I took the ink scanned in photoshop and applied threshold to it to get the right levels of black to white ratio. Once I had that I saved out a jpeg and threw that into Illustrator. Once in Illustrator I did a live trace… this gave me an exact vector version of my ink drawing – very good results from the original! Also, once this step was done I could select all the “shape blocks” in Illustrator and adjust the colors till I got the overall look that I wanted. Obviously, this was cool and all but I had to get to shading and finishing… which I then went back into Photoshop to do. I copied and pasted the colored blocks from Illustrator to Photoshop and applied shadows and highlights to those shapes via my wacom tablet. It was definitely a more lengthy process than what I usually do, I think the reason I spent more time in Illustrator was because of the chance that it might have been blown up big so that the vectors wouldn’t loose resolution.
Here’s some of the work…
Inked / Scanned Version
Original Sketch on Bristol
Illustrator - Vector Version
Final Photoshop Version
Here's the Poster Version
Great night with a gang of friends! Instead of having iCarly on the tube I chose to play Gentlemen Broncos. The theme for tonight was ATC (Artist Trading Cards). Each of us was to work on 3 cards of any subject. At the end of the night we would draw 3 numbers corresponding to each card… so, we would all leave with 3 different cards. I thought this was a great exercise and the general consensus for the next night was to show up with a planned concept… since that kinda drained some time.
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