Overhaul Time

I don't usually go through my previous posts and read what I've posted in the past, so I could very well be writing something I've already written. And to that I say: "So what?" Because, let's be real, I'm kind of selfish and I'm just going to do whatever I want, right? Right. Ok then. So with that said. Let us allow the particular post to get underway.

Simply put; it's time to overhaul my site. The operative question will be whether or not I intend to keep the current aesthetic intact or if I want to do something completely different. Before I argue the merits of either choice with myself I will elaborate as to what I mean by "Overhaul."

I just started a new job with Online Image in Murray, UT and I'm there as a web designer. Granted I have traditionally been a front end designer, the modern web design industry doesn't really differentiate from front and back end anymore.

My current website was built from nothing. It functions well enough and I'm happy with the end result, but there is one significant drawback to it. Any changes to it require "hard-coding." If I had developed this site for an end user that had absolutely no web design experience they would be forced to return to me to make updates. That's not entirely a bad thing. I can make money as a webmaster, being the administrator for clients. The only problem with this is that often times I am condemned to what I like to refer to as development hell. A realm in which a designer or developer waits patiently for his/her client to provide much needed information, content, or assets in order for a project to progress. And when one's life is directly tied to the completion, and collection of fees, for said project, development hell can cause some serious problems.

My solution for this is to offer someone a website with a built in CMS. I plan on working with WordPress as it is clearly the most popular content management system. So this brings me back to my initial question; keep the current aesthetic intact or go with a new look? As will be my first time creating a WordPress theme I think it would be quite an achievement to keep it looking the same. This would prove I can work within a specific project scope and still get to the end result I want. Unfortunately, this means my site won't really change much, aside from the way it gets updated.

Maybe I can create something that is new but is consistent with the look and feel of the current site.

Anyway, first thing's first. I need to backup the current html. Organize the content and then install WordPress. Oh yeah, this blog will cease to be used. which is quite unfortunate. I wonder if there's a blogger plugin for WordPress. That would save me a lot of time.

Many Changes

It comes as no surprise that many things have happened in my life since the last time I've posted. I'll admit; I am not the most consistent in terms of blogging. If I had a webcam... Yeah... I don't have one. I would Vlog instead. Wait! I have a cell phone! Those have cameras!! Wow... I can't believe this just occurred to me. Ok... So I guess I'll be posting up my first ever Video Blog in the coming days/weeks.

Anyway so here I am, living in the greater Salt Lake City area in Utah. Yeah. I moved and this change came about in the most unexpected of ways, but I'd rather not elaborate on such matters. The important thing is that I have once again found myself in a different scene and, as always, I intend to make the most of it and I've already begun.

Since the move here I've already worked for UPS, then I was offered a better paying position with Guitar Center. The job at GC introduced me to a handful of people that I intend to create lasting friendships with. Most importantly, however, is the fact that I am moving onto yet another job, starting tomorrow. This will the the best paying job I've had in the past five years and it will allow me to make the most use of my skill set.

I will be a Web Designer for the company Online Image. I will be part of the Fulfillment Team and honestly, I'm not too sure exactly what that means. All I know is that I met with the CEO and I really like what they're doing there and I love the fact that I will be able to put my design skills into full practice here. Going forward this will only strengthen my design vocabulary and undoubtedly expand my skills with the programmatic side of Web Design.

I also have plans of returning to school in the Fall and going after my Bachelor's Degree (finally). I will be pursuing a degree in Web/Graphic Design. I know this seems redundant, but I want to know everything current with the field in order to further improve my place in this world.

Finally. The book is still a work in progress. I've been spending some time off practicing digital painting techniques, thanks to my library of Gnomon Workshop DVD's. I've also been practicing modeling in 3D with Sketchup. I intend to learn to use higher-end 3D modelling software like 3DS Max or Maya in the near future, but as I need to prioritize my time and money I will need to self teach those subjects. My plan is to compete in another Gnomon Workshop art challenge. I don't have to win, but if I can get in the top 3 then I will win at the very least 5 new DVD's and I can request 3D subjects this time around.

The real challenge is the upfront cost of the software. Both 3DS Max and Maya cost almost $3,700 each, but once I'm enrolled in school I will look into getting the student discounted versions. Once the money is there and I'm earning enough. I will spring for a full commercial license, but before that I need to get my new Wacom Cintiq Companion. It costs $2,700 and will enable me to work on my book from anywhere at anytime. At the very least I'd be able to sketch out my ideas on Painter X and Sketchup and then import those designs into Photoshop on my main rig for final paint over and touch ups.

And that's about it for now. An update from yours truly and my plans going into the rest of 2014.

New PSYPHER101 Business Card

There has been a specific plan laid out since I decided to renew my personal brand, PSYPHER101. The entirety of which revolves around marketing myself to new local clients. I knew it all started with the web site. I did not, however, know what my new site would look like. Not until recently, that is.

So the site is done. You're actually looking at it now. No... Not blogger or blogspot. But scroll up and you'll see the navigation. Go ahead, click something. I've integrated the navigation to my blog and as such have effectively added a dynamic blog management system, if not the most dynamic blog system, to my site.

Now comes the printed collateral. The brochure will obviously reflect the site in terms of content, but I digress. The name of this post is "Business Card." So let us talk business card.

The business card concept began with the front, or is it the back? I'm not sure. Anyway. It started with this side. A simple texture with a lighting effect applied. The same grey texture from the main background of the website. I then added the PSY101 logo and applied a mask in which I stamped a moon texture. This in turn inspired a myriad of filters to further communicate the idea that the logo itself was illuminating the card. The drop shadow contradicts any suggestion that the logo emits light, but helps pop it out for the initial read. There was no set goal. I simply wanted this side of the card to look cool. Originally I had my web address underneath the logo, but I felt it detracted from the simple clean look that you now see here.

Upon completion of the front, or back, or whatever, I moved onto the business end of the card. I looked at a few references and found a layout that I really liked. In keeping with the theme of the PSYPHER101 "blue site" I applied a light blue overlay to the noisy background and then changed the color of the overlay on the logo to match the blue from the header on the website. Overall the two sides complement each other while featuring reversed contrast.

Syria

I'm curious... A lot of people have been arguing that we shouldn't attack Syria. I saw the video of who we would be allying ourselves with out there and I agree those guys look crazy. Some have claimed we would be helping Al Qaeda and if that's true then I agree we shouldn't be involved in any conflict where we would give aid to the organization that murdered 3000 innocent people almost 12 years ago... But is that the only argument?

Allow me to play Devil's Advocate for a moment. How can we, the United States, be OK, as one of the most enlightened nations in the world, with allowing thousands more innocents to be murdered. Granted they are not Americans citizens, they are humans. And then there's the potential threat of allowing the use of chemical weapons to go unchecked. Is there not a "lesser of two evils" here?

I guess at this point we will see how things play out. Congress knows where it's constituents stand and President Obama has a clear goal; time for some politics.

Linking my Website to my Blog

When I first started designing the PSYPHER101 blue site. I created a blog layout. It looked nice, but then I came across the challenge of populating it with content and realized that I am ill equipped to create a blog that could even come close to offering the features I've grown accustomed to with blogspot.

The fact of the matter is that blogspot is my favorite blogging site. It works well and offers me a ton of features and the back-end is tried and true. Why re-invent the wheel?

So today I linked the blog via a URL link to my main nav. Then I went through the process of making it look like my own website. Imagine how surprised I was to find that blogspot features full HTML and CSS support! That's right. I was literally able to import the main navigation from my site and with a bit of modification I now have a blog that is linked to my site forward and backward.

I didn't even know it was possible to connect them like this. It's extremely useful as I will be able to recommend this approach to any client that wants to feature a blog on their site.

Now all I have left to finally call this project done is to write copy for my Privacy Policy page and the last 3 sliders on my home page. Today was a good day.

Oh... And the 49ers beat the Pakcers 34 - 28. A good day indeed.

The MySQL debacle

Yesterday I walked upstairs and skimmed my bookshelf for a book I haven't read in a couple of years. The title of the book is "PHP and MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling and Laura Thompson 3rd Edition. I dusted off the 900+ page tome and brought it downstairs with me, with every intention that it would be my companion for the next few days... After nearly half a day of reading it, in a failed attempt to adapt the information to my own ends I closed it and thought... "Maybe later."

To be specific; The reason I went in search of this book was because I wanted to achieve a very technical, and very specific function for a page on my new site. The PSYPHER101 blue site. Allow me to explain. My site features a portfolio page. As of this writing the portfolio is still lacking in content. I have made an online portfolio before, a few times actually.

This time, however, I decided to challenge myself; as I have been doing from the inception of this project. Anyone who has been following the development of the "blue site" will know it started as a Photoshop layout tutorial and soon became an exercise in the conversion process. Once I achieved that goal I decided to evolve the project into a full fledged website and lately I've been allowing Web Design ideas to surface in my mind and trying to implement them on my own site.

All of this was happening dynamically and with great success; albeit not without some frustration. To be honest, I'm somewhat surprised that I've successfully deployed a considerable amount of JQuery plugins and PHP functionality, and that brings me back to the topic of this blog. The MySQL debacle.

For those of you that don't know MySQL is a database management system. It's extremely flexible and probably the most commonly used among well versed Web Developers. My goal with MySQL was to create a web gallery that would pull image locations from the database and populate the portfolio galleries dynamically. I know it's possible. I know it's been done before and I found a plethora of examples that made use of similar functionality.

Unfortunately, all of these examples and tutorials seemed geared toward developers with a considerable amount of experience working with MySQL, something I do not have. Now that I think about it, I don't know that I even got that far in the book in the first place. And this is why I decided to put this effort off until later. Mark my words; I will create a portfolio with dynamically generated content... Just not right now.

Torn Paper

Something I forgot to mention in the last post was that I swapped out the triangle pattern graphic that I used for the top and bottom edges of the content block with a graphic of torn paper. Along with swapping the image out, I improved the relative position. Before doing so I had 2 blocks of CSS code to manage the height of the content background. In those blocks of code I had a specific min-height attribute assigned.

The problem with the min-height was that if ever there was more content, extra text, or anything; the content would exist outside of the background and push the edge graphic (torn paper) down. effectively breaking the aesthetic of the site. I needed to find a way to make the content block scale automatically. I found out that by using the overflow property, and setting it to auto, with CSS, the block would scale on it's own.

This allowed me to remove the second chunk of CSS code.

The next challenge popped up when the overvflow property of the new content class selector caused the contact page to display a small scrollbar within the div. I dove back into the markup to try and identify the issue. My best guess had to do with the embedded Google map. I cleaned up some unecessary code and that seemed to fix it. I still don't know exactly why it happened, but I'm glad it's gone.

Now. The next problem I have to address deals with browser compatibilty.

Most web designers will agree that Microsfot Internet Explorer is considered the most archaic browser of the bunch.  It is always last to adopt new standards and for this reason, designers consider it the "lowest common denominator." As such, any website under development, needs to be previewed in Internet Explorer often.

I don't do this nearly enough. Instead, getting tunnel vision and forgetting all about it while I work out some new challenge. So today I checked the latest build in Internet Explorer and I've noticed a bunch of issues. First of all. The CSS3 animated elements don't work at all. I could go back and use JQuery to fix it, but I won't. They still have rollover swaps, just no fluid transitions. I'll consider that a win. Second, rounded corners on some boxes don't show up... I'm guessint that's also a CSS3 thing. Again, I'm ok with it as it's not a deal breaker.

The real issue is that the quickform (contact form) in the footer no longer has a placeholder. Anyone looking at this with Internet Explorer will not understand what each field expects. They might be able to figure it out, but it's not a good habit to assume these things. So I'm going to find a JQuery solution to this. I need to generate a dynamic placeholder that dissapears when focus is placed on the input. If I can do this then everything should work fine.

I added some web graphics to the services page. Next I will populate the portfolio section with a lightbox and then move onto writing copy for the categories.

Scrubbing the Markup

Yesterday I spent most of my day getting the contact form to function properly. A midst that effort I refined the appearance. It was not essential to modify the appearance, but more an exercise in CSS styling. Since this project is entirely my own, with no paying client, I take the liberty off experimenting.

I will say that I wish I had gone with the "one page" approach. This layout style is becoming more popular among developers, but it does have it's drawbacks. For now I will simply be content with the blue site.

Anyway... Scrubbing the Markup? Yes. Cleaning, more like. What I mean by this is that I broke each of the HTML pages into PHP segments. The header, content, and footer. The actual browsable pages will in fact be the middle, content, segments. The header will contain the navigation and all the traditional HTML elements that exist, including the head, title, and links.

The only drawback to this is that I now need to create a dynamic way for PHP to contain the appropriate title for the content page that is loaded. I'm sure there is a way I can declare a variable early and then define it depending on which navigation button is clicked, but not today.

What else did I do? Ah yes... So the contact form was more frustrating due to the fact that it exists in the footer of the website. A lot of what I worked on was a validation check, which ensure the information submitted at least matches traditional data conventions. For example, if someone wrote "blablabla" in the field designated Email: my form will return a message to them saying it's not a valid email address. The problem was that the error message existed directly above the form itself. It was absolutely possible for a visitor to miss unless they scrolled back down to the footer again, which is highly unlikely.

So how did I solve it? Simple; by using a cookie. What I did was download the JQuery Cookie plugin and then create a scroll position cookie that automatically sets the top of the page to scroll all the way down to the footer automatically. Then the next problem popped up. The cookie was persistent and when a visitor would click to go to another page, the footer would be automatically shown... Backwards.

I struggled with this, then stumbled on a solution last night. Delete the cookie as soon as it is read. Tada, no more cookie. So it is created, the page is reloaded, the cookie is read and the page scrolled, then the visitor can see the form error or success message, then the cookie is deleted, and the visitor can click to another page and read it normally.

The Contact Form

I found a high quality tutorial for creating an HTML5 contact form.

http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css-techniques/build-a-neat-html5-powered-contact-form/

The tutorial makes use of HTML5 boilerplate, which is apparently a very flexible bare-bones template for web designers. I will definitely look into using this if there's any chance it could save time and lower development costs for me and for my clients. But, as with anything else that deals with web technologies, learning how to use it effectively will take time.

Regarding the contact form. I will follow along with the tutorial and make a functioning stand alone contact form page that isn't connected to the PSYPHER101 blue site (the name I've given the the project), but it will be connected to my info@psypher101.com email address. Once I get it to work I will attempt to peel away the layers of code and adopt form functionality to the blue site quick form, located in the footer.

In the mean time I will simply get the rest of the buttons throughout the site to animate like the ones on the homepage.

You can view the latest build of the blue site here: http://www.psypher101.com/web%20templates/portfolio2/

Rollover Dichotomy

The latest changes to the site/template have been extremely subtle and easy to miss. Yesterday I shared a CSS trick for creating rollover images. Then I did some research and found a way to animate specific attributes of a CSS class using JQuery and the color 2 plugin. I did that, spent a couple hours learning, and then, almost by accident, learned that CSS3 supports some animation functions of its own. These animation functions are called easing.  I’ve copied and pasted the code from the style.css file.

/* Rollover buttons */
.blue_button {
            color: white;
            padding: 7px 12px;
            text-align: center;
            border-radius: 5px;
            border: 1px solid #1e30da;
            background-color: #1e30da;
            box-shadow:  inset 0px 1px 1px rgba(255,255,255,0.5), 3px 3px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.3);
            -webkit-transition: all 0.8s ease-in-out;
       -moz-transition: all 0.8s ease-in-out;
        -ms-transition: all 0.8s ease-in-out;
         -o-transition: all 0.8s ease-in-out;
            transition: all 0.8s ease-in-out;
}
.blue_button:hover{
            color: white;
            text-decoration: none;
            background-color: #333;
            border: 1px solid #fff;

}

This allowed me to remove the image buttons altogether and go with an optimal solution. Firstly, the new animation is fluid and looks amazing. It's not a toggle swap like the rollover. A CSS3 transition controls to animate the inner glow on social media buttons in the footer. Now it’s time to create a nice focus animation for the contact and newsletter form.

The WOW Slider Conundrum

Next on the agenda was the "Latest Works" column on the home page. The goal was to get it to animate in a similar fashion as the graphic slider, but not identically. This area of the website will feature the 4 most recent projects.  The challenge was to see if I could animate it using the existing code that I used on the graphic slider. I knew I would have to customize it, but wasn’t sure if I would have to make changes to the Javascript file. As it turned out I definitely would have and that is something I am not quite prepared to do.

I had my goal all but complete when I decided it wasn't good enough. The problem had everything to do with how the WOW Slider affects the HTML content differently from images. Images will fade into one another whereas text elements fade away before the new text fades it. This was inconsistent and jarring, to be frank. So I scrapped it and decided to start over. One thing I can be proud of is that I did not feel compelled to keep any of the HTML or CSS code intact. I did not even comment the code to disable it. I simply deleted it. Knowing full well that I would be able to start fresh and not be intimidated.

After a long break I downloaded the JQuery Cycle2 plugin to handle the animation effect I wanted for the latest works column. I was absolutely blown away by Cycle2. I had only been working with it for about 10 minutes before having the content animating exactly the way I wanted!

Open Source or Bust!

With Superfish installed it was time to get the navigation animated. There is a chaotic elegance when it comes to open source plugins. On the one hand, they are absolutely free and that counts for a lot. The downside, however, is that a lot of these plugins do not come with proper documentation to help someone less experienced make sense of what they are doing and that is where the beauty of the internet takes center stage.

When using an open source plugin it’s a good habit to do a group of searches and try to find websites, blogs, or forums that discuss the plugin. More often than not someone else, somewhere in the world, has run into the exact same problem you are having and yet another person has come along to aid them.

Regarding Superfish; Joel Birch is a genius. He wrote the plugin and is surprisingly helpful. I scoured the web for working examples of Superfish menus, inspecting elements and analyzing the code to try and make sense of what I was looking at. During this process I found numerous forums and blog post where Joel Birch himself chimed in to help shed some light on the plugin.

With the navigation menu finished I found the time to start on the graphic slider at the top of the home page. For this I used a plugin called WOW Slider. Unlike Superfish or other JQuery plugins, WOW Slider is a stand-alone application with a cost for using. The developer offers a free version, but this version has the logo and a link plastered all over the output. What I did instead, was use WOW Slider to create the look and feel I wanted. Then I dove into its source code to study the implementation. It took a few hours to get right. Eventually I got it done.

I decided I'm going to introduce a recurring theme to the graphic sliders of my website. It has been a couple weeks since I painted anything. I can justify doing a painting for the sake of my website. I am going to do a matte painting of an airborne vehicle superimposed over the majestic vistas that are now in the graphic slider. I am considering the Daedalus airship from my novel.

A Footer to Gather a Thousand Words

I decided to switch up the footer section from the original Photoshop layout. I removed the contact form from the contact page and created a new miniature form to exist in the footer. By being there it will persistent on every page. This will in turn allow people to contact me whenever they want. There is no way to predict when someone might feel compelled to do so and I would rather offer them a faster means to do so

The contact page will have physical contact information, but visitors will no need to go to that page to get in touch. I also added some social networking links. Another thing I have neglected, historically, is the use of social media. I use Facebook about as much as any other responsible adult. And given the flexibility and power of social media in today's commercial climate, I've reactivated my Twitter account and am making an active effort to "tweet" often. Oddly enough tweeting is not much different from posting a status update on Facebook. I do understand the impact of such social portals and any working professional would be wise to make the most of their network.

Re-designing the footer set me back a couple hours, but I think it is better this way. Sometimes a person has to take a couple steps back to take a few steps forward.

It took me a few days to finish the layout, including the home page. I contemplated adding content, but opted instead to focus on enhanced functionality. Using Javascript (JQuery to be precise) I plan to animate the graphic slider, all the form elements, the main navigation submenus, the "Latest Works" column of the home page, the buttons throughout the site, and clickable images. Tha will probably take me a couple days of work to finish.

I downloaded the JQuery Superfish plugin, to use for the dynamic animated main navigation. It is always difficult to customize someone else's code without notes. This is why programming, regardless of the complexity is mostly trial an error.

Browser Awareness

The template I had been working on is now green lit to be used as my new website. I figured that if I’m going to invest this amount of time to develop a working website, I may as well give it a foothold and opportunity to be seen and appreciated by others; especially potential clients.

Hours into the design I was forced to fix a significant number of issues with the layout. These issues were discovered when I moved away from designing the site using the laptop. I turned on my desktop computer (that I normally use for painting) and saw that almost everything was hugging the left side of the browser window. I missed a crucial step in the prototyping stage and am now had to solve it. This is why, all web designers, check their previews in multiple browsers and at least more than one computer. I am glad I ran into this sooner rather than later.

At this point, the project weighed in at about 30+ hours so far. I have run into a series of issues that have forced me to think critically to find solutions. This project will be a prime candidate to write a Case Study about. These posts will effectively produce the research material I will use for the Case Study.

Regarding the contact page; I embedded a functioning Google map. Although I do not intend to have clients come to me physically, I figured it is good practice as some businesses I may contract for might need this feature.

A Paradigm through Conversion

Progress on the template is along smoothly. I finally understand the 960 grid system beyond of its basic concept. It is actually really simple once you get used to it. Also, something of a milestone; is the fact that I don't have to work in Adobe Dreamweaver using Design or Split view modes anymore. I am almost exclusively building the template directly in Code view mode.  

I know this probably seems trivial, but I think of it as a sign of growth; a paradigm in my way of thinking and my overall opinion of Web Design as a creative medium. Maybe there actually is potential to express myself as an artist in a programmatically dominated environment.

Regarding the template; I have added a functional navigation and respective pages. They are, however, mostly lacking in content. As of this writing the 960 grid is used on every page. I made some major changes to the navigation. It is now cleaner and uses CSS formatting instead of images. This is preferable as it reduces the load time of the entire website; the less images used for the interface and layout, the better.

The tutorial I'm using for reference describes how to make a WordPress template from the design, upon further inspection; this is not actually covered in the tutorial, it is only suggested as a possibility. However, turning static HTML/CSS websites into functioning WordPress themes could be very lucrative.

The 960 Grid

I have encountered the 960 grid system before, when modifying pre-designed web templates for clients in the past. Mostly I have only been exposed to it via a CSS file called grid.css or 960.css. In the past I did not know what to make of it. Looking at those CSS files I noticed a series of classes called grid, prefix, suffix, push and pull; and all of them had derivatives (grid_1, grid_2, etc.). As it turns out, the 960 grid system is not an actual component or element of CSS, but a stylesheet created for ease of work.

What the stylsheet essentially does is offer a designer a pre-built group of classes that effectively divides a 960 pixel wide block into either 12 or 16 columns. So I am relieved to now learn it has a presence within the Photoshop Web Design community. I found a Web Design tutorial that uses this grid and dove in. Going forward I will be applying this gird to all my designs.

The template I created, using the 960 grid, is a beast! It is a Layered Photoshop file, weighing in at 56MB and it has given me some great ideas on how I can modify my other templates I’ve made. It took me pretty much an entire day and that was only the layout/template. The content is mostly filler with the exception of the graphic slider image I made.

High resolution version of the template viewable here:http://psypher101.deviantart.com/art/Portfolio-2-Photoshop-layout-393771255?ga_submit_new=10%253A1376694657

A Major Change

That's it... I'm switched majors. After a confusing re-admissions effort I am officially returning to school on September 30^th.  I am no longer chasing the Game Art & Design dream, it's too risky and with all the layoffs in the industry I'll be competing for the same jobs with people that have a lot more experience than I will. So I’ve decided to go Graphic Design & Web Design.

I already freelance as a Graphic Designer and have historically refused Web Design jobs, due to the fact that I did not enjoy the work. The fact of the matter is I did not enjoy it, because I am not an expert. Just like anything in life, if a person does not excel at a specific type of work it has a tendency to become frustrating, but also; with a proper amount of tenacity and dedication said person will eventually become skilled at that task.

If I get the proper training strengthen my skills in this field then I will be able to earn a significant amount of money. And the best part is that as a Web/Graphic Designer I can work from anywhere in the world. Don't worry, though, I will continue improving my painting skills. And one day I will be published. My manuscript isn't going anywhere. For now, however, Web Design projects and experiments need to take center stage.

Selma's Appaloosa (final)

A couple years ago my wife and I took a trip to Utah, to visit family. During this time I was introduced to her grandmother on her father's side. The elderly woman is named Selma. Selma suffers from Alzheimer's and spends her days in a hospital. Worst of all is that almost none of her family ever visits her. She's in the hospital, alone, day in and day out.

When Jamie was talking to her she described how I am an artist and I promised Selma I would paint her something. Then we got home and I started doing research; asking Jamie what types of things Selma liked. I learned that Selma had a pair of Miniature Schnauzer's, a gray one and a black one. I also learned that she had a special place in her heart for Spotted Appaloosa horses.

This painting is the result of that. Below I will describe the process.

This is the rough sketch. Here all I tried to do is figure out the perspective and angle of the horizon line. I opted for a canted angle to heighten the dynamic.

I brought in 3 photos, one for the distant background, another for the tree in the midground, and a third for the grass in the foreground. Here I also introduced the second dog sketch.

I blocked in some basic value for the black Miniature Schnauzer, using photo references to understand the pattern and coloring of the coat.

Here I blocked in the value for the gray dog.

Using the smudge tool in Corel Painter, I softened the pattern on the Appaloosa and painted in more contrast of value on the horse.

What happened to the horse? I wasn't happy with the composition so I extracted the horse into a new layer and painted it out of the background.

I did the same for the gray Mini Schnauzer.

Here I bring the missing elements back and establishing a more triangular composition.

At this point I drastically changed the gesture of the Appaloosa. I also started painting in color in Photoshop, using the Color blending mode. I then created a new layer above the others and started painting in the lighting.

FINISHED. By this point I had done considerable work on the whole piece. I completely reworked the tree in the background. Painting in leaves using 2 different scattering leaf brushes with 3 different hues. After the leaves were in place I painted segments of branches that weren't obscured by the leaves and finally added sections where the sky would be visible. I also added a cast shadow under the tree. In the foreground I added a lot of flower photo textures. I think it adds a lot to the entire piece. Finally I spent some time dialing in the lighting, making sure to pay close attention to bounced light.

Viper 3

Here's a little story about a character from my book who, until a few days ago, was only a faceless figure vaguely described in the words of my  manuscript. Before I continue let's have a look at him.

This illustration makes use of advanced overlay layers for texture.

Viper 3 is his designation. He has no name and when you read the book you will understand why. Viper 3 is a soldier in the Elysian army. More specifically, he is a member of the elite division of the Elysian military called Viper squad.

Viper squad is the fictional equivalent of the British SAS, though much fewer in number. They train in all the combat skills that every other Elysian soldier does, but hold themselves to a much higher standard. That training is supplemented with advanced political and espionage training. These guys are not only dangerous on the battlefield, but also from the shadows and the crowds of any city in Giaos, even during times of peace.

They answer only to Emperor Tiberius Elystar.

The weapon that you see Viper 3 carrying is a type 1, variant 2, mass driver. This firearm delivers arcanium infused slugs at blinding speed. Before the invention of these devices the most advanced weapon was the bow and arrow. The variant 2 mass driver basically fires explosive shells, granted the explosive element is derived from the mystical element arcanium.

Now, for the development process of this illustration.

The drawing started as an doodle in Alchemy. At this point there was no goal with the design, just sketching random shapes.

Then my friend Dima, who was hanging out that night, saw what I was doing and asked to play with Alchemy. I let him, embracing the concept of not falling in love with my work. It was his idea to give the character 4 arms. At this point the figure had no place, just a continued doodle.

I imported the sketch into Photoshop. Here I threw in a photo of an overcast horizon I found via a Google image search. I then started painting in the value and refined geometry of the figure. I also removed the second set of arms. Sorry Dima. At this stage I had the idea of making this piece a supporting asset for my book. Thus the addition of the lion facade to the gun.

I added color through an overlay later, keeping the same value from before. I went with a bluish grey for most of the armor, with golden yellow accents and finally red for the fabric and top of the helmet.

Credit: The final piece has specific aesthetic elements from a steampunk rifle I found on DeviantArt. It's hands down one of the coolest guns I've ever seen. Check it out here: http://johnsonarms.deviantart.com/art/Steampunk-Rifle-Outdoors-Photo-2-284228206

Refined Art Style for Echoes

It's been quite a while since I had a chance to work on my book. Lot's of life to deal with.

I'm starting to once again schedule time to rekindle momentum on the project. And so with that I present the refined art style.

Some of you may recall this Spread. The obvious difference is the new dependence on line work for fore-mid ground elements. I'm blocking out complete shadows in pure black; a happy side-effect of which is the drastic shift in contrast. So if printed in black and white, the piece will still read very well.

See?

I've been reading a lot of Batman New 52 graphic novels and have been reminded of my love for the genre. When I was in High School I sometimes thought about becoming a comic book artist. I never looked into it, but being an author never occurred to me, and look at me now.