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Whats up everyone, I've had the pleasure of working on some pretty unique projects since October of last year, so I thought I would take the time to post an update. First, a logo design project for an independent book publisher called Cinnabar Moth Publishing LLC. Since I had the opportunity to work with these clients before(see TMIJ), laying out the vision of the design was straightforward and fluid. This especially holds true since the design is a direct representation of its namesake.  It is also one of the rare occasions where my client had a clear idea for specific details that included size, orientation, color, and complexity. So, upon discussing their needs, I was able to seamlessly incorporate their ideas into my design methodology; moving from concept to completion expeditiously.  Since this project required both a logomark and a wordmark, we reviewed various san serif font styles in tandem to ensure style compatibility and legibility.  After analyzing our choices, I proceeded to finish our initial draft in a vector format using Inkscape. Having a vector image is especially important for print materials since bitmap files don't scale well. Vector images use mathematical formulas to keep the integrity and fidelity of the original design at scale. This was doubly important in my clients case since they needed the logo formatted for banners/advertisement, book bindings/spines, business cards, and icons. You see can each of those versions below, as well as an optional detail oriented design for my clients to consider if they felt the need to liven up the simplified logomark.  Its quite rare for me to work in vector tools, so the experience was really enlightening. I was able to identify areas of my workflow that could help bring about more precise and easily modifiable designs in the future. What do you guys think? What other insects do you think would make for suitable logo designs? Write your thoughts in the comments below. As always, don't forget to like and share this post to see more content in the future.
Until next time, Peace Hello friends, Welcome back to another entry on the SunKing Designs blog. This time around, I wanted to provide a look at a design that has been sitting, incomplete, for at least 6 years in my sketchbook. I think its safe to say that many artist start projects that typically wind up unfinished for even longer periods should they get distracted by other prospects both exciting and more time consuming. However, it might be a bit more rare for anyone to revisit an old design without completely revising it, but since there were no "glaring" issues regarding the initial portrait, I elected to maintain most of the original design since I thought it would be a waste otherwise.
Originally, the client requested a logo for their craft beer brand, "Holy Craft". At the time, I was working together with a friend specializing in Advertising, so I must give him credit for suggesting the image of a priest. You can see the reference photo collected via Pinterest to the right. I think the recommendation was well suited for the brand, but I concluded that plastering a random priest on a label would be a bit too "on-the-nose" and thus not very creative. Since priest are supposed to follow their faith diligently, associating the imagery with alcohol is adversely impious. I think this contradiction makes the design more appealing. So, after some discussions, I suggested we "darken" the tone of the portrait by sharpening the bone structure around the cheeks, elongate the nose, and protrude the eyebrow ridge. This naturally allowed me to increase the age of the model through his hair and adjust features in the face such as the lips, eyes, and forehead. This is certainly an occasion where the devil is in the details, since I went as far as to extrude the ears to replicate a more sinister expression. To dramatize the features even further, I implied subtle burns along the shadowed portions of his face just to add a bit more uneasiness to priest's character. Overall, I think the portrait was a success, but since the project was abandoned before we could address the typography the logo failed to be much more than a character portrait.  Fast forward years later, the acute imbalances in my original render became much more obvious with fresher eyes and accumulated experience. For the sake of the blog, I mirrored the image above and highlighted key points of interest. 1. The left hemisphere of the skull was out of perspective. This makes the forehead appear larger and flatter than it should be. Since the cranium is a round object, portions furthest from the viewer should turn back into space accordingly. 2. Though details in anatomy become more unclear in shadowy areas, I darkened the area around the cheek so much that the skull starts to lose form; again becoming too flat. 3. I think the unfurling parchment style "text box" was both cliché and off-center, so that too was nixed. You can tell from its absence that the entirety of the logo would be leaning to far left should I have left it. To further acknowledge this imbalance, I went ahead and highlighted the space around the head with red and green. Green being the most ideal proportion of space compared to areas in red. After editing these areas, I selected a bold, gothic, san-serif font that featured a more contemporary style resulting in the final image below. Using the in-program measurement system, I was able to find the correct proportions of the composition from the typography to the portrait.  By this point I decided to change the name of the brand since the project was no longer being pursued by the original client(hence the name "Devils Craft"). Yet, I was still unsatisfied with this simple monochromatic rendering and opted to add a splash of red to push the design into more "ominous" territory. Since the Devil is commonly associated with red, I was inspired to replicate the effect of blood splashing across the entirety of the design. If you look carefully, you'll notice some of this red coloring has stained the color of the priest, effectively bringing the design to a finished state.  What do you think? I'm pleased to finally release this piece after such a long period of time. Its a shame that this design couldn't have been used for an actual product but perhaps I will get the opportunity to design a new beer label in the future. What would you like to see me design next? A coffee logo? Perhaps a fruit juice product? Leave your thoughts in the comments below and don't forget to like and share this post!
Until next time, Peace Whats up guys, I haven't posted one of these in almost a year, so I'm definitely overdue for a revision of something. As noted by the title, I decided to remake an old character design of the now 2x US Open Championship winner. Originally I created a turnaround sheet of Osaka early last year, after Nissin's disastrous Cup Noodle ad campaign that featured a totally whitewashed Osaka. Because of that disgraceful mishap, I ended up rendering the turnaround sheet below. You can read more about this design on my blog, here.  Sketchbook For the purposes of animation, the above turnaround sheet serves its purpose, but I can't help but notice that some poses are off model and the execution isn't as tight as it should be. Overall, the piece is not the greatest representation of my knowledge of anatomy and design; which makes it an ideal candidate for revision. So, for this "Throwback Thursday", I've scrapped this turnaround for a brand new composition with different goals; starting with the sketch seen left. I wanted to focus my drawing skills in areas I'm particularly strong in, gesture, anatomy, and design. Using a few references, I designed a pose that exposes Osaka's power and grace on the court. I knew I wanted to keep Osaka's color blocked tennis outfit, but also incorporate those same colors onto the court in a dynamic way. Since this affects the harmony of the overall composition, I took care to apply value in specific areas, for specific colors to maintain compositional balance in the future. Final Render The differences are obvious but there are a few key areas I paid special attention to. First, in regards to color/hue, the variety and depth of shadows, visible highlights, and subtle temperature shifts. Next, in regards drawing, a consistent line of action, linework, weight, and clothing anatomy(particularly the skirt). Lastly, in regards to design, economy of space, balance, and composition. Though I am fairly satisfied with this render, I still think I can make improvements. What do you think? Whose another athlete I should consider drawing? Whats the most difficult part of the body for you to draw? I had trouble getting the hand holding the racket just right; its super tough. Leave your thoughts in the comments below. As always, don't forget to like and share this post.
Until next time, Peace Whats up guys, Its been a while since my last post, but I've been extraordinarily busy with a surprising increase in commissions these last few months. I've done so much between a logo for honey-infused water, Beelieve, album covers for DinoJr., and my marathon run of podcast thumbnails for the Musicks. Expanding the breadth of my services comes a commission that desired branding for a growing Twitch channel. Banner At first, the client only required a banner that featured the channel name, subtitle, and watermelons(seen above). It wasn't a fussy project so I looked into ways that could describe the goofy but mature personalities of my clients. I started by sketching a pattern that could be stamped seamlessly. This naturally became the background element of the banner. And since Cindy and Jay have a warm, home-bodied nature, I felt it was appropriate to reinforce that idea by mimicking the texture of wallpaper with a soft overlay of noise and box blurring. Icon Next was the icon design. We knew we wanted caricatures of the two, so I collected their photos and went to work sketching. There weren't many iterations of face shape and technique, but I did play with different hairstyles for Cindy's caricature. Developing the sketches would later help me design various expressions for their emotes seen below. As for the application of color, I used a brush within the Krita suite that recreated the effect of pastel chalk. Again, I wanted to involve those previous ideas of a friendly and inviting nature at all levels of the design process, "painting" included. Expressions Finally, subscribers to the channel are awarded emotes to be used during live streams across the Twitch platform. Using the above icon as a base, I designed various expressions based off of the most common emotions. Since there was an upload limit of just 8 emotes, I provided some extra options just in case an image failed to communicate or otherwise be appealing to my clients. Final Emote Selection        Taking care to maintain consistency between the channel icon and the provided emotes, I elected to simply copy and paste the base painting, altering color and shape accordingly. What do you guys think? Which emote is the strongest? Weakest? What troubles do you have when drawing expressions? I occasionally have trouble staying on model, but I think I've improved since college. Leave your thoughts in the comments below. As always, don't forget to like and share this post!
Until next time, Peace  Hello SunKing Design Blog Fans! I am UntidyVenus aka Izzy. Today I am sharing with you some of my illustration and drafting process, which I won't lie, I don't document often. It's not because it's some big secret, but because I’m just too lazy and I never thought that anyone would be interested. Then the SunKing himself asked me to write something up and so I procrastinated for… 4 months? Yeah, four whole months. So here we finally go! I start with an idea. Today I was feeding my pet shrimp (yes I have pet shrimp, that's another blog post) and was thinking about silly shrimp puns. So the idea came for a tee shirt/sticker design. I tried to come up with as many bad and terrible shrimp puns as I could possibly come up with, to get the bad ideas out of the way first. "Shrimptastic, shrimprific, shrimpzilla, shrimpnado, Shrimply irresistible, Shrimply the best, Shrimply Amazing etc etc etc."Reference I collected the best close ups of neocaridina I could possibly find. Then I hit Google. There are thousands of types of shrimp. My personal pets are Cherry Shrimp, aka Neocaridina, Taiwanese shrimp red variety, etc. They are tiny, less than half an inch (about 12 mm) so my personal observations wouldn’t suffice and I don’t currently have a macro lens for my camera. After researching the shrimps every last detail, its time to start doodling. Finding your best way to “shortcut” real life is the way to finding your style. After a few shrimp doodles in my sketchbook, which a cat spilled coffee on before I could get a picture (sorry!) it's time to pick a pose and start sketching. Sketching & LineWork My preference for sketches is a mechanical pencil with an architect's lead. The lead is hard, therefore very light, and comes in a variety of colors (well, red and blue) that blends in beautifully with watercolor if I am unable to erase it all in the end product. I start with a motion line, or the spine of the subject, and build the shapes from there. Since I work mostly in watercolor I need a waterproof marker for line work, my preference are Sakura Microns. Palette Selection This is not a very in depth swatch grid, but it suited my purposes of seeing how the paints act alone and together. Now that the line work is done, we need color! I decided to pull out my never used Koi brand travel set for this. I purchased it thinking it would be great for travel and plein air painting a few years ago and maybe tried it once. So, essentially never used. Whenever working with colors, you need to know how they will react to each other, so I made a swatch grid. After playing with paint on a fresh sheet of paper, its time to jump in! Looking at my references I found the shrimp are red, but also translucent, that is, light passes through them but they aren't totally transparent. So, a warm red with cool red shadows should work well for this. Tools & Application I used a Trekkle all purpose paint brush, I have been using it for a few years now and it suits my needs. You don’t need fancy paint brushes to paint watercolor, but you do need at least one RIGHT brush. A brush that holds a lot of water and comes to a fine tip is really all you need. I lay down a coat of the warm red for the first layer, thinking about the highlights, where the light would touch the shell, and the shadows as well. While the paint is still wet you have the ability with most colors to drop more fresh water in where you want less paint, and “push” more paint into the parts you want darker. Once that was dry I added a second layer of the warm red, quickly followed by some of the cooler red. That way I could blend the colors. I live in a very dry and arid area (on top of a mountain in Utah!) so things dry very fast, which means I have to pay attention and work faster. Digitization & Clean-Up The shrimps are done! I now take the watercolor to my scanner, and scan them as super high resolution. I personally have an older Epson Workforce that scans around 600 dpi, dots per inch. Thats MUCH more resolution than I need for almost anything, but I like having extra pixels during the clean up process. I bring the file into Adobe Photoshop, and select and copy a shrimp. Each one will be its own file from now on. Shrimp one gets pasted into a high resolution file, and I proceed to use the eraser, clone tool and zoom to delete the background so he is transparent (and yes, this is a male shrimp I did not paint a “saddle” or the ovaries into him) and use levels to correct any color changes in scanning. Font SelectionI take my puns very seriously, so I select a font that matches my line weight on my art, have someone outside double check my spelling (autocorrect doesn't know shrimply, so will miss my SHIMply!) and save for use!
These guys are now ready for upload on your favorite sites! I have them available on Teepublic and RedBubble, as well as stickers on the way from StickerMule!  Thank you so much for reading, and supporting your local blog! Feel free to message me on instagram at UntidyVenus if you have any questions or comments, as well as on the Everything I Learned From Movies (EILFM) podcast!
Whats up guys, Like many of you, I too am spending most of my days indoors. I typically work from home when working on art anyway, so not much has changed in that regard.  Sango is that guy, I've been listening to Da Rocinha 2 on repeat for months lol Anyway, I got a selection of music that you could listen during your quarantine. There is some house, baile funk, techno, hip-hop, french pop(?) in this batch. If thats not your vibe, perhaps check out my J-List.
World looks crazy out there sometimes, but thats probably the best time to chill. What do you all think? What have you been listening to these days? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. As always, dont forget to like and share this post~
Stay safe and stay healthy Peace, What do you all think? Are you interested in other genres of music? What would you like to hear next time? Perhaps more of the same artist? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. As always, dont forget to like and share this post~ Whats up guys, Perhaps you all have been eager for an update. If not, oh well, I have a lot to post that I've been holding on to for the past 2 months anyway. So lets get into it! I was contacted by a friend whom wanted to produce a piece of work to be used as a gift and simultaneously be used as an album cover for his buddy's music(Ghostpops). Intrigued by the prospect, I undertook the commission and got to preview(listen?) the mix. I was immediately impressed by the quality of production and unique implementation of samples throughout the 32min EP. Upon multiple listens, I generated a list to describe the track in a way that could lead to some visual references I could research while creating the Pinterest board below. Some of these words included:
After I became familiar with the mood and tone set by Ghostpops production style, generating sketches became relatively straightforward and easy to layout the rest of the vision.  At this point in the process, I would generally elect to present my best ideas to the client, but since this was intended to be given as a gift, I elected to narrow the selection through my judgement alone. So, I figured the profile view maintained the integrity of Bart's iconic silhouette while providing the opportunity to integrate my own interpretation of what his anatomy could be in a cross-sectional "medical" illustration. However, just as important, was the placement and selection of specific types of plants to balance the exposed elements of Bart's anatomical design and framing.  After I clarified my compositional design discrepancies through a line draft, I was able to move forward with multiple value studies that could demonstrate the most accurate expression of tone. Finding the right balance between the values is arguably the most important step in keeping your audience engaged with the image. I took the time to write all sorts of notes that would incrementally fine-tune these subtle details until the final color stages. At this point in the process, I began to allow my references to influence my color selections. I felt that this decision would allow the image to fit among its trendy contemporaries while increasing the possibility of its virility on the web. Since the above images were drafted in color pencil, they didn't quite capture the richness of the palettes I intended. However, I believe they captured the mood of the Ghostpops' EP in the most accurate sense. It was at this point, I allowed my client to choose which of the 3 palettes best suited his interest. From there I took the composition to a digital finish using Krita.  Though there are some areas I would definitely improve in yet another iteration of this design, I was satisfied with my results. On the other hand, both my client and design recipient were so pleased by the work, I was later hired again for an even larger project to be continued in part 2 of this blog. What do you guys think? Would you have chosen a different color theme? What is your opinion of using pop-culture to supplement design or composition? As always, leave your thoughts in the comments below and don't forget to share and like this post.
Until next time, Peace Happy New Years! How was your winter holiday? Full of good times and happy people I hope. In order to start the year off on the right foot, I thought it would be a good idea to update the site with some of my most recent commissions. Whether the news is surprising or not, I received a few comments from folks whom were unaware of the extent of my artistic capabilities. I hope this year gives me more opportunities to showcase my skills, as it can only lead to my portfolio expanding in breadth. That said, I'd like to start off that conversation with an acrylic painting I was commissioned for during the holiday break. I was instructed to paint a couple rowing across a pond in a semi-impressionistic style. Here is a side-by-side comparison of the reference photos below.
To be fair, I think some painters would take the time to make small scale sketches to inform the overall design and technique to be utilized in the final piece. However, considering that time and money weren't that much of an option in my case, I decided to jump in, prime my canvas and loosely sketch out my plans.  Its here that I would like to acknowledge the general misconception most people have between drawing and painting. Fundamentally, the two are different in how each applies the order of design elements and how strongly each individual element is emphasized according to the necessity of the final product. For those unaware, the elements of design are: Space, Line, Shape, Form, Value, Color, and Texture. When drawing, the artist is highly reliant on both line and space to express their vision. Since a single pencil/pen is limited by its lack or limited use of color, an artist need not worry about its effects as they progress the image to completion. Instead, the artist must constantly be aware of space and shape in the early stages of the work since accuracy is highly valued. On the other hand, the characteristics of a paintbrush prevent an artist from relying too heavily on line at all. In fact, depending on the painting style, there should be little-to-no line-work implemented until the very end of the painting process. That means painters often rely on shape and form to block-out areas within the space to create a composition.  Accuracy may still be important, but paint has the flexibility of being covered up by more paint. White space does not share this type of forgiveness for artist who draw(though an eraser may be enough in some cases). So, as you can see in the following image, I've blocked-out large areas of the painting to reflect the process mentioned above, eventually reaching a point where the only negative space left is of the subjects on the boat.  I should also acknowledge the amount of strategy and planning that goes into painting. Since the medium dries quickly*, pigments must be mixed with enough quantities in advance, and specific brushes are necessary at various points in the process, therefore, the activity requires a lot of patience and discipline. This becomes especially true once a person becomes more focused in the smaller areas that require more attention to detail.  While I'm pretty satisfied of what I managed to complete in just 2.5 days, there are many areas I'd like to improve the next time I'm commissioned for a painting. Since I use acrylics, the medium tends to dry quickly which prevents the smooth blending capabilities common among oils. Since that is the case, I want to try "painting into wet" more often. You can actually see this technique along the hull of the boat in the photo above. Next, I want to improve my atmospheric perspective, i.e; diffusing background elements into the sky to produce depth in the composition. Finally, I want to buy finer brushes to paint smaller areas in greater detail should future projects require it.
Otherwise, what do you guys think? Would you like to see more traditional paintings in the future? What styles would you like to see me attempt? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. As always, don't forget to like and share this post~ Until next time, Peace Hello friends, Welcome to another edition of Toriaezu Tuesday. This week I've decided to reflect on some of the music I've been listening to over the past couple months as I prepare for the JLPT(Japanese Language Proficiency Test). As that is the case, this list will be dedicated to exploring Japanese music exclusively. Now, I'm not sure what your impression of Japanese music is, but the production isn't tailored for everyone when considering the pop or rock aspect of the music industry. These 2 genres are by far the most popular among the general population, but fortunately for you guys, I have no horse in that race.  The group, Tempalay, has a very unique sound, so I highly recommend them. After digging through the proverbial crates, I've compiled a playlist of alternative, smooth melodic sounds that aren't so grating to the ears. I've only selected a handful of artist this time around, but if you're interested in hearing more or knowing the titles to the full on Japanese song titles, leave your request in the comments.
What do you all think? Are you interested in other genres of music? What would you like to hear next time? Perhaps more of the same artist? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. As always, dont forget to like and share this post~
Until next time, Peace Hello friends, Long time, no see. Last month was extraordinarily busy between moving house, vacationing in Barcelona, accommodating my grandparent's first visit to Japan, and of course, work. October was joyful overall and I'm kinda sad to see it fade into the past as we move into the end of the year. Hopefully, 2020 will be just as eventful. In any case, I have a backlog of things to share with you all, so I aim to publish the content that has slowly been building up in my sketchbook over the past few weeks. Lets start with a long overdue, WIP Wednesday. Not too long ago, I was commissioned to create a logo that could merchandise the image of an upcoming rap artist. I've worked on logos for bakers, business consultants, student organizations, pod-casters, Twitch Streamers, cannabis marketers, and others; but never a rapper. I thought taking on this project would be an exciting opportunity that would continue to prove my flexibility at challenging different markets; often requiring different artistic styles and techniques. As always, I discussed the use-purpose of the logo, the message my client want associated with it, as well as stylistic options to be considered throughout its development. After concentrating our meeting to a few notes, later translated as keywords, I created a Pinterest board full of reference photos to help focus the vision of the final design.  Its rare that I have a client with a vision simple enough to be distilled into a few basic ideas, but I think it worked out in the best interest of the overall design as I managed to fly through the sketch process with little resistance.  However, due to the nature of the line-work and my ideas for how to approach rendering in the future, assigning the appropriate values in the correct order, in the right places was by far the most challenging part of the process. I think most people would not be so considerate in attributing so much time to this part of the production, but finding values that elevated and maintained the integrity of the design is paramount in how readable the work is. My exercises focused on no more than 6 values, with varying proportions over 20 different sketches. If you look closely at the images below, you can read some of the notes critiquing some the flaws and points of interest to maintain in each consecutive iteration. From here on, the next stages require a few color iterations to ensure the accuracy of my vision. Perhaps you can grasp what I'm going for by the references I've collected through Pinterest. Otherwise, you all can look forward to the final design in the coming weeks. What do you think so far? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. As always, don't forget to like and share this post.
Until next time, Peace |
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