Spoke To The Graphics Class At DCCC Today!

This afternoon, around 2:30pm, I spoke to the graphics class at Delaware County Community College. My former Photoshop teacher, Robert Jones, had asked me to come in and speak to the class and tell them what I do. I've done this before for him in the past years as well so I offered this time since I had some down time. So for this talk I showed the class some of my layered art files since I think they would've given them a good idea of how work is done in licensing since it has many concepts that are used in graphic design and how to keep thinking in layers even from the initial sketch. I think I talked for about and hour and a half and took questions. Hope it wasn't too long 'cause I can ramble on! Ha! They seemed to have liked it so that was good. I took this pic of the school when I was leaving around 4:15 or so.

Life, Taxes & Hard Drives

Kinda stuck in a holding pattern of sorts this week. I did an audition last weekend, turned it in Monday, and then haven't heard back about anything yet... so it may have collapsed as a project (since even if I was approved they could pull it for time since the deadline was super tight) as it would have been slapdashed together to get something out. So who knows... work on Puss In Boots is coming soon though.... plus I did my taxes to get them done in case the government had shut down since who knows what part (if any) of the IRS would still be working if it did.

Other than that I've been sketching, digital painting and mostly backing up my external hard drives, reorganizing my files, and deleting old ones that I don't need anymore. It now seems that even 2TB drives aren't enough. Ha! Backing up my work and other files I've collected onto my Back Up drive (a smaller 500GB drive that sits next to my computer for immediate things that I'm working on or need to pull from) and then after about three weeks or so I back them up to the Back Up-Back Up drive (one of my main drives with mostly everything on it) and then again onto, not one, but TWO Back Up-Back Up-Back Up drives (two clones of the previous drive with everything on it, BUT with much more including comics scans, audio stuff, teaching stuff, etc. And I have two drives in case one fails. These two are the main drives that I can't lose though.) is an several hour process and I usually wait till the weekend at night to do it since you just have to sit and do it. It's a long and boring process but has to be done.

I seem to remember when I used to burn CD's and DVD's with data on them but now it's all about the external hard drive since they hold much more stuff and tranferring files over is much faster than burning. There was a time back in 2004 or so when I'd go to the computer store (no longer in business either) and buy 9 or 10 spindles of CDs or DVDs on sale so that I'd have them, but in the last two years alone I think I've only burned 3 CDs total! Technology is rapidly changing so fast that even the flash drives (or thumb drives) that were the rage for about a year have fallen by the wayside as hard drives have surpassed them in terms of speed and space, as well as keeping the physical dimensions of the drives down to a nice compact size that you can put in your pocket. 2TB drives are a little bigger in most cases but are about the size of a hardcover book.

It may seem excessive to some with all the backing up but I laugh at those who lose all their stuff when their systems crash and they didn't ever think to back anything up and have now lost it all. It's a large peace-of-mind to fire up a drive and back up the day's work and then go to bed knowing it's safe. Once you accumulate a large amount of stuff you don't want to lose it. Even working from the hotel room from my previous trip I would back up the night's work onto a flash drive and then a small external hard drive as well since I didn't want to rely on my laptop though I'm sure it was safe. Laptops can get man-handled going through the airport security and being thrown in the bins as they go down the conveyor belt.

I'm the Back Up Kid!

Captain Blue Hen's Mascot - Bucky Blue!

Thought I'd post the original sketch I did of Bucky Blue who is the mascot for Captain Blue Hen. Captain Blue Hen is a comic store in Newark, Delaware and I was asked a couple years ago to come up with the character as a way for the store to promote comics. Above is the actual raw sketch I did on copy paper with ball point pen. Once I scanned it in I then wanted to do the final art as vector art in case they wanted to blow up the art for something big. Bucky is a little kid (and like most of us did) is dressed up in an Adam-Westy-kind-of-costume and using homemade props as weapons. I used a clothes hanger as a grappling hook once or twice myself as I scaled the picnic table growing up.

Below are the two main sayings that they wanted to incorporate with the character for a poster and t-shirt.

And here's one of Bucky swinging by for their Christmas Card...

So for process junkies, it was a pen and ink sketch and then the rest was done in Adobe Illustrator.

LANESCAN Tri-Fold Brochure Design

Here is a tri-fold brochure I did for ARCM Corp. back in September of 2003. There was a lot of information to tell and only so much space to do it in as the client wanted the mailing card added to it as well at the bottom. I think it's one of my best design jobs and one where the art and text all worked together. It's like a puzzle most of the time trying to get the pieces to fit. Art was all done in Adobe Illustrator and then assembled and laid out in Photoshop. The art of the cars, trucks and roads were done as vector art since the client needed the art also blown up to trade show banner size as well. The backside of the brochure is a little bland since it's a mailer but I'm still happy with how it all came out. I did a bunch of stuff for the company that year before it was sold to another company who then took it over.

From The Sketchbook: Mexican Jumping Bean!

Some things defy explanation. They just pop in your head and the hand draws it.

From The Sketchbook: Crazy Banana!

Don't ask...