Multi-sport Billboard for...Southern Miss!

Yes folks, my design services have trickled on down into Southern Mississippi. I have recently started doing some projects for the Golden Eagles and this is the first one we've wrapped up. It's final size when you see it while driving down the road is 10.5' tall x 36' wide. I always find billboards interesting to work on because it is a piece that your "audience" is not just going to stand in front of and focus one. You have to get your message across quickly and directly. I love doing them because you get to be very loud and bold with the output. This was quite a fun piece to work on and I hope to be posting more stuff for USM soon!

A Couple Items for the CF Foundation

I recently started doing some design work for the the TN Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and figured I would put up a couple pieces I've done for them over the past month.

The top item is a new logo I created for the East TN chapter for their annual Martinis and Movies Gala. The foundation is switching to a new branding system at the start of the year so I only had the three colors you see in the logo to work with. I think it turned out very well, as the film strip worked very nicely as a frame for the martini glass.

The bottom item is a poster I did for the TN Chapter showcasing their 3 Blind Wines event in November. They were working with earlier version of the poster where the wine glasses dominated. However, I went the route of letting the title of the event stand out. I took the wine glasses from their original poster, tweaked them slightly and let play a secondary part at the top of the poster. For some reason as I was designing this poster I kept seeing a sunbeam in the background in my mind, so I included it in the poster as well.

Process of Mocs Caravan Logo

It's been a lengthy process making this logo, but as I near completion I thought I would take a moment to show the process in coming up with the final design. Above are the original sketches in my first go-round of ideas for the logo. Some early idea discussion came about of using a bus for the whole caravan theme; however, in my sketches the idea of the train seemed to fit better both with UTC as well as Chattanooga's history. Next, came the inclusion of the coaches, which I tried in two versions, with bodies and without. Through my discussions with the folks at the UTC Athletic Department we decided that showing their full body would work best as I had included some little hints in there as to which sports they coached. From there we then decided to try a version of the new train logo UTC just recently had developed and thus came this next round of sketches:

 
After this batch was done, it was decided pretty quickly that the 3/4 view was the winner, as it was instantly recognizable as a train whereas the front on view felt a little weird. We also decided to take the text out of the train and move it below (as well as move the coaches down there to) to come up with a 3rd and hopefully final design. With this in mind, I then went in and began work on the final version, and also began to work with the different city names, as "Birmingham" and "Atlanta" present different challenges. And now, I am here:

Here are a couple versions of the final logo. As you can see there is a 5th member in the caricature crew, that being the chancellor of the UTC who we decided to add during the last sketch phase. It has been a fun project, and I am pretty happy with the results. It was fun to delve into caricature work on this one, as well as combining my graphic and cartoon styles into one piece.

Mocs Caravan Logo Sketches

Yep, I sketched with the help of the mighty fine people at Crayola and their wonderful 64-pack of wonderfully colored wax sticks...or crayons as we like to call them. These are part of a little revising I'm doing as I create a logo for the UTC Mocs Caravan logo. They are looking for a logo to promote their coaches travels around the South for their respective programs. I have some caricatures already developed and a couple early concepts I haven't posted. These sketches incorporate the new train that is in the UTC logo package. They wanted me to try the sideways version you see at the bottom. I think it looks really cool, but have left it without Scrappy at the wheel or any coach caricatures because that seems to be the best way that concept works. The top concept will have Scrappy leaning out the conductor's spot and the coaches atop the smokestack.

A BFA in Process Shot

I thought I'd take a moment to show a sort of before and after shot of how my BFA piece is coming together. To the left you see how I start out a panel, dropping in huge splotches of color with a much larger than need brush. Then, after lots of refining with smaller brushes, you get a panel that looks like something to the right. Also, this is a nice sneak preview of page 4 of my piece :)

BFA Progress

The top image is the first two sets of panels for page 2. The bottom two images are the top and bottom of page 3 respectively.

2011 UTC Football Schedule Poster (Sketches)

I'm currently having a lot of fun with this project. How could I not? I am designing for my favorite sport: football. These are my current digital sketches for the Chattanooga Mocs 2011 Schedule Poster. I am looking forward to starting on the final version soon. Right now we are working out the finer details of players to use, wording, etc. It's been a blast so far and I can't wait to post the final product!

My Artwork...in Billboard Format!

Yep folks, my artwork was plastered across Chattanooga a couple weekends ago. The UTC Basketball team had a "Blackout" game against Furman on the 21st of February and I was part of a massive promotional campaign that was thrown together in 5 days. I learned about the project on a Wednesday and had about a 24-hour turnaround. The top image was the design I liked best of the three I created for them to choose from. Once I sent it to the people at UTC they made a few tweaks per the billboard companies guidelines to give you the 2nd image you see. My gradient date and fading outlined figure were lost, but it is still cool to see my work on a billboard! This particular picture is courtesy of my fiancee, who grabbed a shot of it off Brainerd Road on her way to work.

UTC Newspaper Ad

 

As you can see, the folks at UT-Chat used one of my newspaper ad templates in the Chattanooga Times Free Press a couple weekends ago! It was a really challenging project, as the space for the add is only about 3.5" x 4". It was just awesome to see my work in a newspaper! The top image is my Photoshop file from which the ad was taken. Of course some things got lost in the newspaper printing, but overall this project was a great experience. The folks of Chattanooga should be on the lookout for more ads during the season!

Some Scrappy Sketchin'

For those of you wondering what I've been up to with my internship with UT-Chattanooga Athletics I just recently wrapped up some newspaper ad templates for them to use for the rest of this basketball season and am tweaking the format for the upcoming football season. I had one of my ads appear in the Chattanooga Times Free Press this past Saturday (hopefully a picture will follow soon).

Anyway, now I am on to my next challenge, which is creating a little one page comic for the Scrappy Kids Club. After tossing the idea around over the phone today, we decided on promoting success in the classroom with this first run. I am in the process of refining the story line, but below you will see some preliminary sketching I did just to get in the feel of drawing a humanoid-mockingbird.

BFA Preface Piece Development

 

Thumbnails 

 

Initial Sketch after Thumbnails 

Revised Final Sketch

UTC Tennis Media Guide Covers

 

Here are the cover designs I did for the Mocs 2011 Tennis Media Guide. The front and back are sitting next to each other above, with the front inside to the left of this little blurb. The front was quite a design challenge, since I had to fit 6 seniors' photos with their info on there. I tried to establish a little unity of the front and back with the use of the bird and carrying over the "Chattanooga" wordmark from the front. I also tied the cover to the overall branding from this season with the yellow bar on the back, which was used in their billboard designs for football. The front inside was a play off of part of the design from their cover last year, using the yellow zig-zag to guid you through the page. It's a fun internship so far and I will keep posting all the work I do along the way!

My logo for Skates and Skirts is up on the Ice Bears website!

Hello all!

Head over to the Knoxville Ice Bears website and you can check out my Skates and Skirts logo running for the "Ladies Night Out" article. Awesome!

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.

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.

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).

"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.

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.