Core Portfolio: Illustrations

Core Portfolio: Design & Children's Books

25 Packets, 1 Mission: Promotion

Here they are. My promotions packets, ready to make their journeys throughout the country. They have all been briefed on their mission goals. Now it is only a matter of time to see how these soldiers do. Good luck boys. Good luck.

Visual Essay 2 Reworks

Quick screenshot of Skates and Skirts logo near completion

Here is a screenshot of the logo I created for the Ice Bears Skates and Skirts women's club. It is very near completion. I just need to incorporate the team logo into the design and then make a black and white version and such to cover all bases. I had a lot of fun with this project, as I enjoyed the challenge of creating a logo for a women's group geared towards a very male-dominated sport.

NPDA Front and Back

Here is a screenshot of the front and back of our NPDA poster, at least the illustration side of things.

Early Promo Package Mock-Up

Here are some photos of some early mock-ups for my illustrator promo mailer. I was looking up ways to fold an earlier design I'd come up with when I stumbled upon this folding technique which I don't remember the name of at the moment. I saw it and realized it worked well with my Ice Bears mountain illustration, so I basically got to morph one of my illustrations into a folded piece of art work/card holder.

As you can see from this shot the 2 mountains in the front are actually printed on the other side and folded over to create a pocket for my response card and other images. The colors on my postcard design are nowhere near correct, and I think I am going to change the color scheme of the mountain image to match the color of the response card (which I so brilliantly printed the reverse side upside down on my mockup).

Chattanooga Mocs Billboard Design 1

This was my first concept for a billboard (yep, a billboard) for the UT-Chattanooga 2010-11 basketball season. I really enjoyed designing this one and hope to get around to my 2nd concept too. For this one I used the image of the crowd in the background as a directional lead for the eye to land on the tagline "Tradition Lives Here."

One of the challenges posed with designing for their basketball program is that both the men's and women's teams need to be portrayed on the same billboard. However, Ryan, the marketing director at UTC, was very pleased with this design. His critique of it was also very thorough which I appreciated. We started with this billboard design as a test project to see how my remote internship next semester would work. We are still working out the kinks, but doing this project and getting such positive feedback has me very excited about my internship in the spring.

New NPDA Poster Front

This is a new concept for the front of our NPDA poster. It is still in the theme of playing cards and based off of one of my newer thumbnails in a previous post. It is a stylized version of a king's/queen's robe, right at the frill. The Roman numerals are the upoming years for the event (2011-12) and I left the 2 spots open in the middle to allow for dates, with the spot at left open for the NPDA official logo.

"Everyone Deserves A Habitat" HFH poster

This is a poster I created a few weeks back for the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga's chapter of Habitat for Humanity. I only recently posted it because I just received the official information listed at the bottom of the poster. I had a lot of fun making this poster and thought it turned out pretty well.

1st Colored Spread from Book Dummy

Here is the first spread from my final Children's Book project tenatively titled "Flying Isn't Falling." Timmy is once again the main character and he conquers his fear of flying with the help of a magical hot air balloon ride one afternoon in the park. This spread is pretty near completion and consists of pages 4 and 5 in the book, the early section where I explain his fear of flying. I'm liking how this is looking and am excited to work on the other 2 color spreads.

Early Sketches for Skates and Skirts Logo

These are two concepts I have come up with for a logo for the Knoxville Ice Bears Skates and Skirts club. It is a women's club recently created by the Ice Bears and I really wanted to take on the challenge of creating a logo for hockey that women would like. The top image is a stylized version of a female grizzly bear who's whispy outline morphs into a hockey stick at the bottom. I thought it would be cool to have the "Skates and Skirts" text start in the gap between the hockey stick and the bottom of the grizzly's mouth. The 2nd one was one I came up with after looking at a bunch of women's hockey logos. It's my adaptation of the stylized outline again, as it seems to work well for this line of logo design. And yes, those are colored pencils you see used there. I just wanted to get a quick feel of how the Ice Bears color scheme could work with these ideas. Again, it is early in the process, and next I will be seeing if these logos work well with text intertwined with them.

Visual Essay 2 Progress

Here are 4 images from my 2nd Visual Essay. This essay deals with the current scandals surrounding amateurism in the NCAA. The top image is one basically defining amateurism visually as a process by which the players for these colleges generate tons of revenue for them but don't get to reap any of the benefits. The 2nd image is one commenting on one way schools are combating agents trying to attract players in college by banning them practices. Therefore I turned the gym into a club scene and the agent isn't on the list. The third image centers around the idea of "runners" or "freelancers" as they are called shopping players around to agents. Therefore, I turned the players into product, and a runner into a salesman. The 4th comments on the dilemma most star athletes are faced with in college. Surrounded by piles of debt (an average of $2,591 a year, and that's with a full scholarship) the temptation to take money from an agent is very provacative. Feedback is welcome on these images, and in light of the recent (as in the last week) developments of the Cam Newton case, and seeing as he is the front-runner for the Heisman right now, I think I would like to do a 5th piece on that story.

New NPDA Sketches

So I went to the public library, grabbed a couple books on the history of playing cards, checked 'em out, took 'em home, plopped myself down, and looked at design after design. Here are a few sketches I came up with after perusing these fine pieces of literature (chock full of really nice images as well).

The top left one has Roman numerals for the "2011-12" part that has to be in it. I got that idea from an 1848 deck from Vienna. I flipped the NPDA logo halfway to mimic how a card is reflected, and all is incased inside a close up of a king's robe with suit designs as pattern on the frilly stuff. The hard-edged suit signs were spawned from a Russian deck I looked at.

The top right one is modeled after 15th century French design of showing a full version of a jack, king or queen standing to the side of the card with pattern all over the frill.

The third one is based off a modern design I looked at. I decided to make it king and queen just to cover both genders. I think the way the title reads could use some work, but I liked using the little twirls and simple wavy lines as hair.

And to be truly honest, I have no idea where the 4th design came from. I just started drawing and that's what happened.

Any feedback and stuff that is working/isn't would be great.

NPDA Sketches

Group Flyer for Ice Bears

This is a flyer I recently completed promoting Knoxville Ice Bears Group Nights. The space left in the top right corner of the image is for seperate company names and branding or places they would send this flyer to. I played with the idea of making the flyer look like a ticket to a game, using the low opacity image as that light image that usually appears behind the event on sports tickets. I also played with letting the hockey player guide your eye over to the rates bar at the right.

Birthday Flyer for the Ice Bears

Here is the flyer I created for the Ice Bears. I had a lot of fun creating it and enjoyed incorporationg the mountains from the logo into the design of the poster. I love when I can combine illustration with design to create a final image.

Some Sketches

These are some sketches I did for a flyer I'm working on for the Knoxville Ice Bears, a hockey team up in Vol country. These sketches are of their mascot Chilly as I am working on redoing their birthday party package flyer. It's been a fun process so far. We shall see how the final turns out!

Revised Visual Essay Pieces

Here are my reworked pieces from my first visual essay. The one at top is a combination of my original Redskins piece with the piece depicting the family leaving a Braves game. It is an attempt to show both the disgruntled Native American and family bonding that come through the team. The rest of the images have more compositional and color changes as mentioned in our class critique.