FedEx

Mid last week i was contacted by my rep about a quick editorial job for Forbes Magazine. Officially being my first job through my rep, i was really excited to get to work.

The job was off an article about FedEx. After talking to the art director, a section of the article was outlined for me to illustrate. Basically it was about how many FedEx employees and other outside parties are involved in delivering flowers from one side of the country to the other. The art director and i agreed on something pretty simple, but also dynamic...and any job that involves drawing flowers and hands i am all up for. The main stipulations were that the flower somehow stood out color-wise, and that the hands were a bit translucent. It was nice to talk to a client that actually wants me to use the color palette i would naturally use, instead of trying to brighten it up.
- The first major problem here, was i didn't want to do everything digitally...so that would mean that i would have to draw and scan each hand element individually for it to be transparent in the end. I tried to switch the hand positions up as much as possible while still making them look natural, as well as "dressing" the arms/hands differently while not making it look chaotic.

- I laid the main color separations out by doing my ink trick on the back of the paper and then scanning those in as well. After laying the flat colors in, i was getting worried that this would not end up very well. I have enough trouble figuring out a skin color for one form, let alone eight.

- I then blended the flat color separations by laying in separate gradients. Sometimes i go a little overboard on this, so i was trying hard to keep the gradients light. I also added a little more color to the flower, feeling that a bright red rose was just a little too much.

- I then laid in gradient washes to show light source and shadow. I really had to work with this because some of the highlights were getting super blown out. And considering each hand was colored entirely, and that i was working with basically nine different images at the same time...this wasn't an easy task.

- After setting different levels of transparency for each hand, i then went into the background. I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with the background, so just decided to layer in different textures and then mess with gradients and opacity....this ended up working pretty well. after laying in the final wash that washed out everything but the flower, i felt that the image just looked too heavy and went in and added some red/purple tones to warm it up a bit.

Unfortunately due to the fact that i have like 4-5 jobs going on at once right now i have fallen behind on a few that i was really excited to work on. The next few days is going to be catch up time. It seems like i have been setting myself up for projects to take a long time, due to the work and detail entailed in the stuff i have been doing. Hopefully all of this will even itself out eventually.

And to top it all off after my own severe irritation and the complaint emails i have gotten over the last few weeks, i have decided to attempt and redo my website. I plan is to basically make it look the same, but function differently. There are some aspects of what i have up there that i absolutely love, and some i completely despise. I am also going to try and work out a new main image, considering what i have now is not going to work for what i am planning....and that just might mean the skeleton costumes are coming back. I have also been somewhat rethinking the design for this blog, so maybe there will be a change here too.

After a year of having my trusty Sidekick II by my side and never ever ever being able to actually hold a conversation on it due to terrible reception and poor receiver/speaker quality, i decided it was about time to suck it up and buy the Sidekick III. Since Rachel is the primary on our account, she unfortunately was invited to join the hellish phone party that is T-Mobile costumer service. After being patient for almost two hours and then yelling for another half an hour at unsuspecting phone support, i received my phone in the mail two days later for cheaper then either of us could have imagined. So far i am extremely happy with it...the reception is great, and the added bonuses of a memory card and an mp3 player is fantastic. The battery life is still shit, but i didn't really expect that to be any different.

As of about 3 weeks ago, i am now a licensed driver for the first time in my life. This is both fantastic and terrifying, though i have not taken much advantage of it (so far i have only driven alone twice...once to the gas station for soda, and once to pick up Derek in north county). But Rachel has a four day weekend this week, so i am hoping to go and pick up a new mini sd for my phone and hopefully grab the new Paper Mario for the Wii (and maybe Prince of Persia too).

I have been told in the past by clients that it is rather dissuading to read my blog and hear about how much i love playing video games, but don't worry guys...work always comes first.