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FS Logo Design Process - Symbol
After over 4 years I decided to start working on a new personal site. The last time I made updates was back in 2009 and since then I haven't been paying too much attention to it, however I feel it's time for me to try some different things with it in terms of web design, responsive, mobile first and other such trends. The first thing I needed of course was a logo. Today, I share with you the creative process behind the logo. Inspiration/References The logo is inspired by a college team logo, I wanted it to have this reference because the idea is that the site will be a creative laboratory of things I want to learn and experiment within the realm of HTML, CSS and Javascript. Another reference is the San Francisco Giants logo, I love the angularity and the way the letters have been super imposed. Sketches Some explorations for fun Illustrator Once I had some sketches I started creating the digital version. The logo is basically made of rectangles and triangles and as you can see the images below, I started adding basic shapes and improving upon them. Grid Negative space shadows Using the same triangles from the corners of the "S", I created basic shadows, and then made them as negative space. Compositions Colors Final Symbol After an afternoon of fun I ended up with a nice symbol, very aligned with the design principles I had in mind, especially to have the look and feel of a college sports team. I still want to make some optical adjustments to make sure the proportions are right. The next step then will be to show you the web site :)
Case Study: One Zero by Husam Elfaki
Today we're going to show a step by step process of a piece designed by Husam Elfaki for the art collective Intrinsic Nature. For the new chapter called "Experiment 10", Husam designed this really stylish digital illustration, check it out! Husam Elfaki, also known as Galaxy Turbo, is a designer based in UK, working with intereactive media, print, web and other medias. The designer also gave us a little explanation about the piece itself: One Zero was created for the release of Experiment 10 by Intrinsic Nature, with the idea of celebration of the group, its achievements and a promising future for the collective. As my debut contribution to the group (and an anniversary release), I wanted it to be very expressive, free, and representative of my current works. That said, there was no preliminary sketching or concept, just a vision. Step 1 The IN logo was the obvious starting point as I felt the final piece needed to revolve around the group; I was fixated on an idea of celebration and I decided to see how I could expand on this idea, and add my own flavour to the identity of the group. Experimenting with diagonal treatments began. Step 2 My sentiment was that the logo needed to be central to everything that was happening in the final product, the centre of attention. Making the logo 3D was part of making it a more eye-catching element in the final composition, and so I added more colour overlays and I stuck to a blue/pink/purple colour scheme at this point. Step 3 This piece was also about experimenting with shapes, so I created some glass forms to interact with other components in the final output. Here I added a shape outlined with the pen tool and started reducing opacity, warping portions of the image to resemble distortions you would see through a magnifying glass for example. Flat glass shapes were also introduced to complement the logo. Step 4 After the previous step I asked for help on how I could emphasise this idea of celebration, and one member in the Intrinsic Nature artist panel shouted "fireworks, lasers, dragons, confetti!". I added some fireworks and some lasers hoping to create something impressive, shifting my composition and adding lighting corrections to compensate. Step 5 I got into the flow of adding more shapes and lasers to the piece and it was starting to feel more like my own piece. Unfortunately that meant the fireworks were losing place in the chaos of all this abstraction, so they had to go. In light of that, I was finding myself seeing a more interesting piece that may have been stimulated by celebration, but turned into something completely different. Now I needed to spread this mess outwards as too much was going on in the middle. Step 6 By spreading my elements outwards in the diagonal direction I started with, the piece immediately became more interesting as the viewers eyes could now follow a false path I was creating. This wasn't intentional nor does it have any underlying meaning, but it meant you could catch some of the details I was adding along the way. Final Result More magnified glass shapes were added in the end, so that I didn't have to reconstruct them if I wanted more happening underneath those shapes. The laser closest to the foreground and the white diagonal lines would be my finishing touch to add more depth to the complete product, with colours strengthened to emphasise certain places and add points of interest. And here a couple o links where you can find more about Husam and his artworks: Website Devianart Twitter Facebook Behance
Case Study: Cafeka by Studio Alopra
Today we are going to show a irreverent project done by Studio Alopra, Cafeka is a oustanding experimental project realized with the will to mix stop motion with 2D animation. This is probably our first case study about a video/animation, so I hope you guys enjoy and also learn something from the steps took on this production. As the directors told me, this production was developed during more than one year, with everyone of the studio involved. During the 4 nights at the location 600 frames were generated from this final photo shoot and at least 400 of cups of coffee were used. So let's see it and If you want to know more about Studio Alopra, please acess their Website or follow them on Twitter or Facebook. Brainstorm and Storyboard All this idea of mixing concepts relates to coffee and the writer Kafka ("Cafeka") began on a brainstorm between the directors of Alopra on a late night day. The main idea was to develop a visual concept that could express the metamorphosis of Kafka but also using the coffee as a analogy. As you can see, the movie go quite similar with the original storyboard. Pencil tests Having the ideas set, the first thing they had to do was to create and develop the 2D animations that would be engraved on the coffee cups. This was a really important step, since not only the number of frames were going to be defines, but also the number of cups. The drawings in this step are just sketches, later they will receive a ink and shadowing using the pointilism technique. Pencil Test - Cafeka by Studio Alopra from Marcos Torres on Vimeo. Pencil Test 2 - Cafeka by Studio Alopra from Marcos Torres on Vimeo. Acetate sheets and Studio Photo shoot In this part, the original drawings were engraved on the cups, by using acetates sheets involved on them. This was quite necessary, since this was the way that they could understand how the drawing would be on the round cup chape. To avoid waste they used both sides of the cups, later they would donate all the cups as gifts to cliente and friends. Having all set, they tried a first photo shoot inside Alopra Studio, to undersand aspects like animation speed, number of frames and time limit. Studio Photo shoot by Alopra Studio from Marcos Torres on Vimeo. Final Photo shoot After all theses tests and studies, they made a 4 nights photo shoot at Café da Oca. If the help of a professional photographer to take the photos, they had enough material to start editing. Post-production After the photo shoot, the photos needed some treatment. So, after many hours of work in Photoshop, trying to adjust color levels, light and retouch minor flaws, they had all the material to do the animation. Also, they hired a Sound Studio to create the soundtrack. Cafeka - Making of from Alopra Estudio on Vimeo. The Final Video Cafeka from Alopra Estudio on Vimeo. Thank you guys! I really want to thank Elton, Armando, Nicholas and all the rest of the team at Studio Alopra for letting us show this awesome project and for all the material that they gave us to make this post. Also thanks for the little gift.
Step by Step Pieces by Marek Okon
You probably already know Marek Okon, even If you don't know who is exactly him, you definetely already saw his artworks. He's one of the best digital artist nowadays, working a lot for the games industry doing concept arts for games like Crysis 2, War Hammer 40.000 and Napoleon - Total War. I've found these stunning step by step pieces on his website and though you be really cool to share with you. If you want to know more about Marek, please acess his Website or his Devianart Profile. War Hammer 40.000 Book Cover for "Hardcore" by Andy Remic Napoleon - Total War Book Cover for Fabryka Slow
A Brief Introduction into Graffiti Typography
As some of you, I always noticed the graffiti on the streets of my town, and I used to do that since I was a kid. I always wanted to understand what those letters meant. Part of not understanding is due to the fact that I didn't know much about graffiti and its culture, but as soon as I got in touch with some graffiti artists I started to understand how they do their work and why. So, my goal with this tutorial is not just to showcase and explain a bit of graffiti typography, but to help to break the prejudice that a lot of people, even in the creative area, got with this kind of artwork. I know that, even If you don't like graffiti at all, you will not look at it on the same way after this post. Before we begin, let me inform that our main goal is to teach new techniques, tips and share our knowledge. We're not sponsoring vandalism or any type of crime, we just want to explain and teach how to do this kind of typography. We deeply trust in our readers, so what you're going to do with this knowledge is really up to you. Do the right thing. Letters styles on Graffiti There's many classifications for the letters you see on the street, although most of they may look the same, they're all produce by different techniques and got levels of difficulty. To simplify things, I decided to put them on three categories: Tag, Throw Up and Wildstyle. Before I can show you some tricks on creating them, I gotta teach more about them. Tag / Pichação Tag is the most basic form of graffiti, is basically the graffiti artist signature. There's even a classification for the one who just do tags: tagger. A tagger is considered, in most of the cases, a inferior graffiti artist who tag he's street name everywhere, but lacks in drawing skills and/or creativity. Most of the street artists start their career as a tagger, then start developing a style from that. Tags can be done in such a enormous range of styles because they can be done with a large range of tools, from spray cans to markers or even clay. Let me show you some classic and stylish tags: Os Gemeos's TagRisk's TagAmarzz's tagIn Brasil we got a really unique type of tag, we call it "Pichação". Pichaçhão or Pixo is quite different of the tags developed in north america and europe, mostly because of the media that it was originaly produced: the paint roller. By the time the first graffitis started to appear, spray cans were very expensive in my country and so it was way better to use latex paint mixed with water, in order to last longer and do more tags. The taggers tried to develop an unique typography, influenced by CD and book covers, helped to create what some call the "Pixo Reto", a squared and thin tag, only seem on Brasil. Here are a couple of "Pixo Reto" examples: Marco GomesPhoto by Fórum Latino Americano de FotografiaMost of the tags / pichação are illegal, except the ones used in legal walls or at exibitions. The interesting thing is to observe the styles of caligraphy that can be developed, Evan Roth even made a study about it, take a look at the video bellow: Graffiti Taxonomy: Paris, 2009 from Evan Roth on Vimeo. Throw Up / Bomb / Scrub Most of you may reconize Throw Up as a bubble letters type, indeed most of the writers who practice this type of letter use round shapes, however there are many variations of it, let's see some. Ricardo NKS's Throw UpOs Gemeos's Throw UpRimeA throw up is called Scrub when the lines inside the letter body are not complete filled, like it was done on a hurry. In fact, most of the throw ups are illegal, that's part explain why they are not so elaborated as a wildstyle piece. Take a look at the one done by Revok: RevokSo, I hope you understood a bit about throw ups, here's a good gallery with you want to see some samples. Wildstyle / Burner In my point of view, the wildstyle pieces are the ones that make Graffiti so memorable, because they are big scale pieces with 2 hours to even a month of work. There's no rules or a pattern when comes to wildstyle, but there's a lot of techniques that are commonly applied when you're learning how to use spray paint. 3D, Shadowning, Glows, Gradients are used by most writers while trying to develop a unique and memorable style. So, let's see some of this pieces: PoseToniolo by Sei LáHolie NSKDilkNychosRimeHere's a good glossary of terms used in the graffiti area, you should read in order to understand some slangs and terms used to describe and categorize pieces. Tips on creating your own graffiti type Well guys, I will try to explain to you how to do a simple process of a wildstyle piece. Of course, is really up to you to define what effects and calligraphy you're going to use, there is so many ways to do it, so this will be just a quick introduction. I know most of you probably never touched on a spray can, so what are we going to do is to try to simulate the dinamics of a street situation, using a spray can in Adobe Photoshop. However, you should try do it on real life, that's the only way to understand and learn such aspects as spray hardness, types of cap, gradients and other tricks. But I hope the following exercise can help you on some way. Sketch Ok, so the first thing we should do is to know exactly what we will write. Most graffiti artists write their own nick/street name, for this sample I'm going to write just "Abduct". The Sketch is basically a simple structure of the future typography, you should from now on use only the brush tool (the shortcut is the letter "B") on this exercise, no eraser or ctrl + z / command + z, you will understand it soon. Set a color for the background, try using white on, somehow it seems to be easier to create on it. Now, define 4 colors to use, think it as spray cans, on the beginning is way better and cheaper to use just a few colors. Always use the same color of the background, because this will be used as a eraser in real life. Let's try to draw the letters using a close tracking, use a 10 px brush, If you have a tablet this will be way easier, but If not you sould try it with mouse, it's not that harder. Use the color you want to use for the letter fill to do the sketch, why? Because in a real situation you would save ink by doing it. You should try some more round or really squared shapes, as I'm doing here. Remember: don't use the eraser, If you fell it's not straight or round enough, do it over the other trace, forget about ctrl + z. Fill Now let's fill the letter with the color we used for the sketch, don't be afraid, you will remember what part is each letter. Let's add a second color fill inside them This may look really horrible by this point, but we're going to fix it on the next step. Add a really thin black stroke, just to identify each letter. Cutting Lines Cutting lines are probably the most used and basic technique on graffiti, why? This is actually the way to reach sharp and squared shapes, also is by doing this, you're going to make layers over in order to fix some mistakes. Let's see a simple example, I created this square with blue and red inside. I want to create two red triangles, so this is actually what I should do: Do you get it? You're actually using the brush as a eraser to make shapes straight and hide mistakes. Although this may take a lot of time to master, you gotta try, because the results are solid. So now you're going to adjust the second fill using cutting lines. Stroke You may be asking yourselves: "Why should we do the strokes after the fill?" Well, pretty simple, because of the dripping. If you start by doing the stroke, chances are you're going to redo it many time because of the fill that may drip or blur over it. To adjust the stroke, do the same procedure here, cutting lines and patience. Glows and Lights Most graffiti artist really enjoy adding some glow and lights to the pieces, it looks really cool indeed. Let me show you just a simple tip: make an "X" with a white color, then use a blurry brush and here it go. This is quite simple, but as you keep evolving you can learn a lot about lightning and shadows. Final Considerations I hope you learned a lot today, not just the types of graffiti, but also learned a bit how to do this kind of typography. There're no rules or guidelines when it comes to graffiti, the most important thing it's to try and push things to another level. That's it folks, I will try to make another posts about the subject, explaining other techniques and stuff, work hard and have fun.
Case Study: Black Fly by Jotapê Pax
Today we're going to do our first graffiti Case study, so for this occasion I had the pleasure to hang out with one of the most notable graffiti artists from Brazil, Jotapê Pax. For more than 10 years Jotapê has being doing graffiti thru the home town from the Abduzeedo team (Porto Alegre), one thing I always noted was his signature drawing, I little black fly. Well, to be more specific let me show you some of the artworks where these fly appears: Spray techniques are really though to master, Jotapê has been doing it for a long time and so he could explain me how to achieve such final effect. Bellow I,m going to explain the steps that he take to create his flies. The process Step 1 (Shape) Jotapê always start his fly by drawing the shape of the eyes, the body, the drip and the wings (sometimes he rather doing the wings later), this step is basically a rough of how will be the final work. Step 2 (Fill) In this step he would paint all the body with a black fill, leaving the eyes circles intact. Step 3 (Color) Using white and orange (or other color), he would paint the eyes and make the reflect on the body, this may look strange and blurry at this point, but later he will adjust it. Step 4 ("Recorte" / Cutting) In Brazil we call this technique "recorte" that means cutting in english, "recorte" is when you adjust the lines and shapes of the work by using the color of the background, giving a better definition and a sharper look to it. Here Jotapê used the black color from the fill to adjust the eyes and make the division on the body. Step 5 (Lights/ Reflects/ Transparencies) Is really common to add lights and reflects after the "recorte", it's like a final touch to the piece. Jotapê normaly add some lights on the eyes and some transparencies on the wings. Ok, enough talking, let's see how the pro do it! On the video bellow you can see all the steps (not exactly on the same order) of how Jotapê do he's remarkable fly. Black Fly by Jotapê Pax from Marcos Torres on Vimeo. Let's see one more time, from a different spot. Let's see another fly he did on the same day on a different type of wall, this one was dedicated to our website :) Black Fly II by Jotapê Pax from Marcos Torres on Vimeo. A huge thanks to Jotapê Pax for giving us the opportunity to see how he do his work closely. If you want tosee more of his work and know more about him, you can acess his Flickr.
Knorr Quick Case Study and the Work of Cassio Braga
Last weekend we had here in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the first Photoshop Battle, an event that we organized in which designers and digital artists had to compete in this sort of design battle of creation. The winner was the super talented Cassio Braga from StudioMe. Cassio Braga is an art director and digital artist from Candelária, RS but currently based in Porto Alegre. He is graduated in advertising from ESPM and have already worked for some big Porto Alegre agencies such as Escala and DCS. My biggest goal is to make good ideas come true, either through good photography or illustration. Knorr Quick Copa Gerdau Renner Copa Olympikus Lombas Detran RS Nacional Páscoa Case Study Knorr Quick Since I started working at StudioMe I had this idea of using all available resources to show off the quality of our work, that would include stockphotos, photography, 3D and photo manipulation. As you can see below everything started off by putting the ideas on paper, then it was all about mixing the available resources. First sketch Photo by Claudio Meneghetti Book on a counter photo by Raul Borges Testing some renders and models Final Render For more information about Cassio Braga visit his website at http://www.cassiobraga.com.br/ . We also recommend that you take a look at the StudioMe website.