find a pen tool page/site/tutorial

Last week, we worked on the Pen Tool chapter of the book. The pen tool is a great one, but it can also be a bit frustrating. I would like each of you to get on the web, use a search engine and find a web page/site/tutorial that further discusses the Pen tool. Once you have a found a page/site/tutorial you like, go to the blog and add a comment to this entry that includes the web address of the page/site/tutorial you found.

2007 Adobe Design

Adobe contest A great student art contest put on by Adobe. Will trade the logo/brand redo project for your entry in this contest.

Spring Semester 2007

Project changes

for Project 3 we will do a poster using the theme "you as a superhero". This is based upon a contest that Illustrator World ran last year.

for Project 5 we will do a creative resume.

for Project 6 we will do 4 panel cartoon strip/graphic novel.

Project 5 - due Friday 1/12/07 5:00 PM in my Dropbox

The 5th Project is a creative résumé. At a minimum this résumé must contain a stylized image of yourself and the usual and expected information that an employer would want to see on a résumé. The starting image must be a photorealistic image of yourself of your choosing. This image must be Live Traced, posterized, or somehow altered by tools in Illustrator. The final result should not be photorealistic. It should be well designed and something that you would include in a real résumé. Think about your font choices and your layout options. The image can be placed in a variety of positions, it can for example, hold a clipboard or a briefcase. It could be kneeling on one knee or leaning in from the edge of the paper. Other elements not specified such as background images, text boxes, text on a path, can be included in this project as well. Use your creativity.

Export a jpg of your finished work and include that and your original ai file in a labelled folder that you put in my dropbox by 5:00 PM friday 1/12/07.

Graphic Novel related articles and tutorials

Project 4 for this semester was a four panel strip for a Graphic Novella. The theme for this was "the Burgermeister". This style of illustration has been around for quite a while and lends itself quite well to Adobe Illustrator. Have a try at it and enjoy the below resources if this type of illustration interests you.

Blazed Entertainment looks to have several decent tutorials on drawing that fit the Graphic Novel mode.

How Not to Run a Comic also offers up a list of tutorial sources.

Joel Fagin has a list of comic-centric tutorials as well.

Illustrator CS2 tool tips

Here is a good article on Illustrator CS2 tool tips. The article is on the Informit website, which is a very good resource site for all sorts of applications. Bookmark it!

Open source "tool" that does vector work

Never heard of this one before. Inkscape is an "open source" tool that create vector imagery. Much like Illustrator.

Here's a blog with some examples of VERY photo realistic figures. Lots of work. Most of these were doen with the gradient mesh tool.

more articles

a few more links to interesting articles

Family portrait artists

Creative Bush

Designer Today

Due next Monday (October 30th) - a feature complete draft sketch of your character. Printed out on paper can still be pencil only. Color is OK as well. Time to start making this project look good.

Do a bit of research on branding / character creation. If you find an article post it as a comment to this blog entry.

Illie and Pshop connected

Adobe seems to be working on ways to get Illustrator and Photoshop closer together.