Illustration Friday: Flying

Posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago at 9:27 pm. 1 comment

flying

Who doesn’t love a dog jumping into a lake?  That’s true bliss right there.

Spent a lot of time on this one. I have no idea why I decided to have it be a night scene – dang, that was hard!  Flash sucks with gradients. I need to find another program to draw in, I don’t know if I like what Flash does to the lines anymore.  I like the vector freehand paintbrush tool though, just wish it wouldn’t do wacky things sometimes.

ETA: Woah, this looks way dark on my work PC. Forgot that Macs like to display things a bit lighter, might have to fix it up later. (And fix those raggedy gradients)  Oh well, whatreyougonnado.

Illustration Friday: Germs

Posted 10 months, 4 weeks ago at 8:08 pm. 3 comments

germs

This is my first time participating in Illustration Friday (I stared something for last week: “Patterns”, but didn’t finish it so it doesn’t count).  I’ve known about IF for years, and always wanted to participate – but I always had some really great excuses: “I need to have a real website before I can start posting artwork”, “That scanner is SOOO far away and it’s not even plugged in”, “Oh look, a beer and a TV”.  But now’s the time to get in there and start illusterating some friderays.  Todd is giving it a whack too.  Check out his awesome rendition of “germs” on Flickr or on his blog, Snugglefux.

Mo-Graph, as they say

Posted 11 months ago at 7:14 pm. 0 comments

Recently at work I got to take a little break from web app massaging for a fun Flash animation project.  It’s basically just a little movie that shows people how to use Facebook Connect in the Wacom Community site (which eROI designed and built).  I had the pleasure of working with one of eROI’s awesome designers, Andy Hugelier, who put together some great visuals and had some fun ideas for how everything should move.  Working off his storyboards I put everything together with some basic timeline-based animation in Flash.  It was super fun and kind of gave me the animation bug again.  Though it might not seem as though this type of animation is similar to character animation, you use a lot of the same principles in motion graphics that you do with making characters move (squash & stretch, follow-through, exaggeration, timing).

So, anyhoo, it’s up right now on the Wacom Community homepage. Woowoo!

eROI has done a bunch of other cool projects for Wacom, too, including: Power of the Pens and the Bamboo Touch microsite.

PB+J with Odosketch + Bamboo

Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 9:07 pm. 0 comments

I came across this fun Flash drawing app, Odosketch, the other day – when I attempted to draw something with my mouse (needs kind of a big monitor otherwise the girl’s head gets cut off).  Tonight I gave it another try, using a loaner Wacom Bamboo Touch & Pen that I brought home from work. (See PB+J full size) Odosketch is cool but frustrating for me because I like drawing with thick, clean black lines – and it won’t let me have those, gash darn it.  It’s fun though if you have more of a painterly drawing style.  But it is a fun challenge for me… and it’s cool to watch the drawing progress with super speed.  There was another Flash drawing app that let you record your drawing and play it back, but the name of it is escaping me right now…

“What I did this summer” by Jill B., age 28

Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 8:20 pm. 0 comments

Switzerland, Vermont, gardening, biking, house projects… yep, that pretty much sums it up.

summertime

What, you want more details? Well, here you go.

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Going to Switzerland, BBL

Posted 1 year, 3 months ago at 1:57 am. 0 comments

packing for Switzerland

Digging in the dirt, and other shenanigans

Posted 1 year, 3 months ago at 4:28 pm. 2 comments

We’ve had a few nice sunny weekends in a row here in Portland, which gives us a false sense that summer is FINALLY here (until another two straight weeks of clouds and rain hits us before REAL summer actually starts).   The warm weekends came just in time too; Todd and I were going  a little stir crazy waiting out the rainy weekends.  We snowboarded for the last time this season about a couple months ago and since then we haven’t had much fun-time outdoorsy activities to preoccupy ourselves with.   So when the sun came out again (hallelujah) we were itching to get outside.  Our first choice would be to spend some time surfing, but the swell hasn’t been amazing enough to warrant battling the weekend crowds at the coast.  Sad!

So instead, we’ve been doing the next-funnest thing.  Yard work!  I never thought I’d say it but I’m totally addicted to digging in the dirt now.  I’ve been pulling weeds like a madwoman, Todd’s been building all kinds of planter boxes and things and we are both trying to grow some veggies for the first time ever.

So, here’s what the backyard has looked like, at least for the last couple of years.  We didn’t do anything to it last year, except for Todd’s once monthly weed-wack-a-thons to keep the grass manageable.

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Springtime Odds N’ Ends

Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 8:01 pm. 0 comments

I uploaded all of the business cards I made for SXSW to Flickr, and here they all are!  (This is before I wrote my info on them)

Or check out the set on Flickr.

I did end up giving all the cards away while at SXSW.  Did you get one?  Let me know which one you got!  I didn’t keep track of who got which one, with the exception of two (Ben Huh got the orange card with the kitty cats, and I think Heather Armstrong got the one with the dog holding the flowers).

South by South …wha?

Posted 1 year, 5 months ago at 1:14 am. 2 comments

Todd and I are packing are bags for Austin, where we will be spending 5 glorious days being complete internet dorks at SXSW.  I feel really lucky that I get to go this year.  Things just happened to work out so that I’m not really spending an arm and a leg (maybe just an elbow and a foot).  I’m really excited just to be involved in the spectacle, and hope that I at least learn a little something along the way.  I feel overwhelmed by the schedule… at many points during the conference there are 3 or more panels or events that interest me happening at exactly the same time.  Torture…  But I suppose that’s how these things go.  It’d be boring if you didn’t have to make those tough decisions, wouldn’t it?

Aside from all the learning and being inspired, SXSW is also a time to meet lots of cool, interesting, creative and smart people.  But those cool, interesting, creative and smart people are going to be meeting a lot of other CICSPs too.  So how do you make them remember you, and the awesome conversation you had about social media or Playdoh?  Lots of people do business cards, stickers or other types of swag.  I thought about making some MooCards from my Flickr photos.  But I don’t really pride myself in photography – so if I had to pick something from Flickr to make cards out of, it would be some drawings.  Then, I thought, why not just draw some doodles on some frickin’ cards, write my name on them and give them out?  cards7 Continue Reading…

Animate your music

Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 11:36 pm. 0 comments

I love love love love love good animation that goes along with music.  If it’s good music, it’s even better.  Here’s a little collection of some of my favorite most excellent animations set to music.  Some are bare bones hand-drawn animation – some are live action mixed with motion graphics. All are cool.

Röyksopp – Happy  Up Here | Directed/Animated by Reuben Sutherland

New single by Röyksopp.  Awesome motion graphic work, fun fun dancy song.


Happy Up Here from Röyksopp on Vimeo.

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