The DINING & ENTERTAINMENT Magazine Logo & Planning With Thumbnails

When I found the Family Values logo sketches I also found thumbnails for the other magazine I had to edit/design called Dining & Entertainment Magazine. These thumbnails I did after I had designed the final logo and then had to work up some designs for a letterhead and business card. The two sketches on the second piece of scrap paper were for interior story layouts as I wanted to get an idea of how the text, headers, pull quotes and pictures would look as a whole. Even from these simply sketches you can get a clear idea of what I was going for at the time though they would change over the years I did them.

Here is the black and white version of the logo (for letterheads) and then the color version...

I added the color bar behind it to make it pop more as we always kept the text white as it always popped more as white than as another color. The color bar color itself was changed though every month depending on what we were doing. Below is one of my favorite covers I did and it was jam-packed with a lots of interviews that I did for that month, which was great since I really got to play with the design and layout of each interview as well as the cover. I try to give my covers room to breathe as well. Some magazines jam way too much text onto them and it makes them harder to 'read' at a certain distance.

BONUS: Here's a mock up cover with the super rare logo that only last two issues before we changed it. This was the second issue I worked on and this was the last time we used this logo. It was actually the first logo that I designed though and I really liked it as it had some tooth to it and looked like a steel-cut piece of metal and it had some energy to it. I went this way as originally we were shooting for a young and hip demo but that would change. Maxim was hot at the time and a lot of publications were trying to mimic the look. I got the idea from watching old episodes of Dragnet 1967 where after the credits ran at the end of the show there was a hand that came down and pounded out the Mark VII or something in the steel with a hammer. It stuck with me and so I thought a steel look would work well. 

Looking at it again after all this time, it's hard for me to call it a failure though. While everyone in the office liked it, it became somewhat of a designer's nightmare for me as it limited me in terms of the space I had to layout a cover. I had to run the photo flush left all the time to make it work and most press release photos simply weren't shot with enough bleed and it would have been a hassle each month to have to separate the person from the background and put a new background behind them that would fit. It was easier to simply run the logo straight across the top and then have a full square below it in which to play within. As the cover above shows, even by moving the logo down a 1/3 I still had some decent ratios to play within.

Hope you found this post interesting!

FAMILY VALUES Magazine Logo - Original Concept Sketches Found!

While cleaning out the studio I found my original layout sketches for the Family Values magazine logo that I created back in 2002 when I was hired to be editor/designer. The publisher had wanted to come up with something new for a look and he wanted a new logo as well. Above are the sketches I did with a ballpoint pen on some scrap paper. I did some other designs as well (but this one struck me as working well with the area that it would have to occupy on the cover and I liked it best) and then played with this one to get it to the next level.

Here's the final logo that I did in Illustrator as I wanted it to be vector art in case they ever wanted to make it bigger for something like a banner. I used these colors for the first two issues as they complimented the photos and text but then I would change out the colors to compliment the overall color theory or even to celebrate a certain holiday or seasonal theme. It also works well as a black and white image and could be easily converted if need be. I usually always design a logo with the idea that it must work in black and white first. Scott's Rule: If it works in black and white, it will work in color.

Here's a November cover for Thanksgiving where I changed it up so you have an idea of how it looked. The month before I changed it to black and orange for Halloween and it popped really well off the cover. It was kind of cool to find those original sketches still laying around here. Usually I don't save that stuff as thumbnails are mostly for the artist as a guide, but I have been saving more of it lately as scans just so I have them.

A Piece Of Digital Notebook Paper... Who'da Thunk It?!

Here's an interesting thing I found on my hard drive that I created back in 2003...a blank piece of notebook paper. Seems weird that you'd have to create something like that but I was doing a cover and art spread for Family Values Magazine for an article about safe schools for the August issue and I needed to create some props for the cover and for the main story interior spread where text would lay on top of it to give it a school time feeling. So I created a digital composition book cover since I didn't have one to scan and then I scanned some actual pens, pencils, erasers, and a ruler I had lying here so that I could use them in my design. I could have created those digitally but it would have taken time that I just didn't have. I remember scanning a piece of actual notebook paper and finding that it just didn't 'hold up' for actual use as the blue lines were so light and washed out. Even trying to save time and play with the levels in Photoshop was a waste of time so I created a sheet of digital notebook paper using the scanned page a guide. I kept the holes black for this look but I can pop those out and you'd be able to see through them if this page was laying on a table as you can see below from the final printed art.

This was some of my best design work at the time and somehow it really came together during the rush of the deadline to get it done. This is the two-page spread as I just wanted to give you an idea of how it was actually used. Even the wood table was digitally created as well. I haven't had a chance to use the notebook paper for anything else since though but I have the file so I have it in case I do. It might look good as a backdrop for some sketches as well to create a sketchbook feel. Anyway, I hope you all like this mini 'behind the scenes' process post!

HELL PLANET!

Hello all! I haven't been slacking here in the studio, just slacking on posting stuff. I've been doing quite a few backgrounds of late and making some new brushes in Photoshop to paint with. I would post some of the new backgrounds I've done but I'm afraid after I post it and then possibly use it a few months later, some would call me a hack or something. Haha. With most of them I can tweak to make them work for other stuff or situations but it's nice to have the work already built and up and running.

Here's a painting I did in an hour yesterday playing around. I call it Hell Planet. The main work was doing the planet as a star field and cosmos took about 2 minutes to create (literally if you know how to do it) in Photoshop and from there I decided to make it a planet that was on fire and possibly burning itself out from the inside. Came out pretty cool as a concept piece. Hope you all like!

Creepy Cave Of Mystery!

Here's a new background I painted this week for fun where I tried to play with the environmental elements a bit more to create a sense of mystery while having a touch of realism to ground it. I like doing caves (and other outdoor scenes) as they're organic and easier to paint than doing a city which is built with exact lines and perspective. These have perspective as well, it's just looser in terms of depth as I like to work with foreground, middle ground and background. The cave hole in the center is a separate piece so I could pop it out and put another background there if I wanted it to have more depth. Like if I added a city scene in the hole to show we were nearing the cave entrance. I do like the color theory for it and it has a nice warm feeling to it. Kind of like autumn fall season in mid October as the leaves are falling off the trees.

Some House Drawings...

After I finished cleaning up Scooby, I had to do two house drawings for someone and I took a pic as I was doing some final touch ups. The people I did them for had moved around quite a bit due to work and had around 8 houses total over the 15 years that I've done these for them. Since I draw differently in many respects now, I had to pull copies of the older house drawings I did like ten years ago and try to go back and match the style so that they would all look like they would fit on a wall together in unison.

Cleaning Up Some SCOOBY...

Pic of me slapping some Pro White over some recent comic pages so I could then scan them and do less digital fixing.

Back In The SPRINGFIELD PRESS For My St. Eugene's Elementary School Appearance!

Just got the new edition of the Springfield Press in the mail today and saw my pic from my second appearance at St. Eugene's school so I thought I'd post it here. I posted other pics for it in a previous post.

One Door/ Two Views - Background Art

Here's two angles of a door to a storage closet. Once again the characters covered most of them so it's kind of nice to see them unfettered by other elements. Both took about a little over an hour and a half each and most of that was figuring out a color theory that worked for it since it was nightime and an interior that basically had no lighting. I also changed the inside of the closet's main lighting to reflect a story element hence why one is green and the other is a tannish brown. I also kept it clean and crisp as opposed to the underground scenes which are murky, misty and spooky which I kept a little looser. I love the slight bird's eye view of the bottom door though.

Another Background - Exterior Shot

As with all my backgrounds they usually start in Illustrator and are drawn with the pen tool. Once it's all built to a certain degree and I have everything that I will need, I send it to Photoshop where I then paint the rest using my build layers as a guide and to help me select certain areas. The hard part is matching the look of the show, so I had to create a bunch of brushes that would give me different effects to get it as close as I could. The show had a sponge brush effect all over it and it was hard since each sponge effect had a different texture to it. I now have a certain way to paint and a workflow where I can create this kind of shot from start to finish in about 2-3 hours or so. Also, I painted this originally in day time colors and saved it that way as well. If I take a few overlays off of this piece it would be a daytime scene and hence could be used again! There also isn't a lot of overall detail to the store front as character art mostly covered the lower part of the piece. As with all backgrounds, they're just meant to ground and give placement to your characters, since in the end it's all about the characters!

Creepy Caves...

Here's some more of my creepy cave backgrounds. The top one was wider in the final version and I had to paint more to it to extend it but this was the original paint job which I kept. I keep it all. What's a little less hard drive space...

For the bottom one, each of the foreground rocks on the bottom one were on separate layers so I can make them visable or not, or even move them around if I want, by clicking on their layers. I made it a full painting without the rocks just in case I needed another generic cave setting. I also added the green night fog on it's own layer as well in case I didn't want it. That's the beauty to have all these layers for each painting. I can change things easily without much muss or fuss. This background took the worst hit as for all that work that no one will ever see. Maybe 10% of it was left to see once all the characters were added, but like I said, I can change the color of the cave to blue or something and it could be the Batcave!

How To Get The Most Out Of Your Backgrounds...

Thought I'd post some background paints I did and how I try to plan in the initial sketches of a background to create it in layers so that by clicking off some layers I have a different background that I can use for something else at some other point in time. I try, if I can, to design it and work it so that I can get multiple uses out of it be it a week later of three years later. It's kind of like being a set decorator on a TV show and having to make do with a small budget. With a couple simple changes you can save a lot of time and money. I bring this up as I've been watching the first season of Starsky & Hutch this past week at night and if you watch 3-4 a night as opposed to once a week, you can notice the set redresses and some of the same background props like a painting pop up in different scenes a lot more. All shows and movies do it to save money. Most Star Trek fans never noticed that the bridge of the Enterprise in Star Trek II (Khan!) was redressed and relit to become the Reliant! It was so well done that even hardcore Trek fans never noticed. The only reason I know it is because Shatner mentioned it in his book Star Trek Movie Memories. It's an interesting study and to see how with just a few simple changes, a set becomes completely different. Hanna-Barbera would do the same thing as well in their cartoons and create a long panaramic background and use it for many scenes to save money animating. They would do all their planning in the storyboarding stage so they could figure out how mnay backgrounds they would actually have to commission to be done.

Below is a big painting of mine that is around 11 x 17 in full size when I did it and was the original base painting that could be used for something for sure... BUT it had to be tweaked a lot for what I actually needed it for so I then saved a copy of the file as it was and then resaved it with a new file name and repainted it part of it. Character art will kill a lot of the work actually so no one will ever see the full background hence why I'll be posting some of them here. Some of these were really a lot of work and there's a lot of detail that got lost in the final image from being covered up. But they did what they need to do and that was to create a sense of tone and mystery to the story.

And above is the final after I did some 'digging' and made a hole that was used as an entrance and as an escape. I can also take out the blue room above and put whatever else I would want there as well. Possibly the hole leads to a desert landscape... or a spaceship! Just so long as it's in persepective to the rest of it, I can redress it anyway I want. The object is to keep it all separated in layers so that changes can be slipped in and out. It can also be changed color wise as well if I wanted it by moving the levels in Photoshop to lighten or darken it, or the saturation/hue to change the overall color tone! It was also cropped a bit as well to suit what I needed it for but as I mentioned, I have the original file to go back to if I needed it. One painting = Two uses... or More!

MYSTERY INCORPORATED - Another Teaser!

Here's a pic of the print that I gave out for a Christmas Gift to a lucky few this past holiday (you know who you are) sans the show logo and my blog tags. It was about 11 x 15 with a white border around it and it looked super sweet on gloss paper. Very happy with the painted backgrounds and color work I did on my Mystery Incorporated work, and since I was busy working on it and didn't have time to shop, I decided a week before Christmas to get some quick prints made and I just signed and handed them out as a gift. I thought I'd post it here for everyone else to see! Hope you enjoy!

The Best $130 I Ever Spent...

I normally don't recommend stuff on my blog but I feel compelled to for this great item. I bought a TomTom XXL 540TM 5-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator (Lifetime Traffic & Maps Edition) on Black Friday weekend after this past Thanksgiving and I have to say that this was the best money I've spent in a looooonnnnnnnng time. I got it at Staples (on their Black Friday sale which I saw in the sunday paper) and it only cost me $130 on sale. They retail it for $250 at most places, though you can find it cheaper online, but $130 was the best price around here at the time and it's one of the most popular TomTom GPS devices bought today.

It's incredibly easy to use and I had it up and working rather fast right out of the box. I downloaded the software and plugged it into my computer so I could download the current set of maps that it has and this TomTom version has FREE lifetime support for new maps, which is great since the roads in this country can change up to 40% per year. It's been a big help to me driving to different events recently and has made my life easier and less stressful as I used to hold printed out directions from MapQuest, which were sometimes faulty. The problem was constantly looking down and reading the directions, which was especially tricky at night when it's hard to see in the dark. I have mine stuck on the windshield next to the rearview mirror so it's pretty much in front of me but doesn't obstruct my view of traffic. I shall sing the high praises for this new gadget in my life! I've used it at night while driving back from some places and it's fantastic with it's night vision look. Just follow the red arrow. Greatest invention since the iPod in my mind! This is the TomTom product that I would recommend to anyone if they want to get to where they are going to in a fast and safer manner.

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The only other thing I could say is that after you take it out of the box and want to start using it, try driving around town locally using it and see how it works and how it directs you on the roads that you know. Program some favorite places that you go to and then go driving. Deviate from its planned path several times and see how it replans and corrects itself so you get to see how works first hand. It's really quite amazing to see. I say this as you don't want to open up the box and plug it in and drive to Florida without knowing how it works. It is pretty easy to use but you have to learn what little icons are when they pop up for gas stations, phones, etc. I give it 5 stars out of 5!