NOS Energy Drink

I love the packaging on this energy drink. I don't think I could ever drink it, but it's an awesome brand license. There's supposedly an aluminum bottle package available too but I haven't been able to find it in stores.

For those of you that didn't grow up around classic muscle cars or the whiny little things kids drive today, NOS is Nitrous Oxide Systems. NOS builds nitrous oxide systems for race cars. It's that little red button you see in movies that makes the car suddenly go even faster and blue flames shoot out of the exhaust pipe. NOS built a brand image with their blue bottles and orange logo that's so recognizable that it's now licensed to other products.

NWN Portrait Changes

This is kind of funny. The Neverwinter Nights game once pushed out some new artwork in an update because several of the original versions were derived from celebrity photos.

ColourLovers

I saw ColourLovers mentioned on Local Girl's day in pictures. It's a somewhat interesting way to browse color palettes for designs. I usually sample colors from another design that has the right "feel" to it, but this lets you see lots of color combinations in isolation. They have patterns as well but I can't seem to find or understand the licensing of them.

Technocrati tags: graphic design color

Respektör

The latest trading card. This is our first non-kid source drawing. Scot Nusekabel did the original and it's pretty much intact on the card. I did re-tint the skin (and legs) and make the face a little friendlier. I'm pretty happy with the image, but the overall card didn't flow as well as I'd like. The drawing is great but once it was on the finished card, it's not what I'd envision as a "super hero trading card". The printing had some mottled colors in the shaded red areas, so I suppose I needed to go ahead and airbrush down the texture in the drawing or completely re-shade it.

The background is again pretty simple, but a medieval or fantasy feeling background was just too distracting and this guy would be out of place on a modern one. The calming blue doesn't help, but it looked the best against the drawing.

The name is kind of a last minute pick from a hundred ideas that were even worse (Hector Respector? Mr. Respect?). To top it off, the back of the card had a typo.

Super Initiative Man

Meh. Here's the second trading card I did. It's ok, but I really wanted something bold and dynamic. This guy is very classic 1950's comic book retro and I don't think he pops off the card as much as the first card did. In retrospect, the blue background is just to calm and peaceful. But with that much red in his suit, not many other colors worked as a background. I'd started a non-abstract background with buildings but wasn't going to be able to finish it in time for this card. Plus it added too much gray given the gray cape, which also covers so much of the background that it would have been a waste. To top it off, somehow this card was printed slightly larger than the last one, making it look like the card was a full bleed that had a trimming mistake, instead of having the regular white border of the last card.

Again I just didn't put the time into it that I wanted to. Hopefully with most of a month ahead of me I can get the third one going in time to mostly achieve what I want. I've got three decent sketches of female superheros but we're trying hard to keep it exciting for boys. I think I'm going to divert more substantially from kid's sketches and just use them as rough ideas.

What makes this old?

Tugboat Annie (Dell Mapback 192) 1934 Author: Norman Reilly Raine
Originally uploaded by Hang Fire Books

I'm trying to figure out what makes this look old. Ok, the face isn't a style you see today. The stamp-like logo in the top left corner helps. The type and the imperfections on "A DELL BOOK" probably do too.

But the major thing, I think, is the noise or stippling everywhere. If all of the drawn part was solid or shaded without any noise, it would look pretty modern and similar to a lot of Flash work we see today.

Super-Responsibility Strength Man

I just finished this for church. It's our first of a series of super hero trading cards, loosely based on the 252 Basics virtues. It didn't come out too bad, considering that I only got to spend about 5 hours on it. The basic character shape is modified from an online superhero creator. I wasn't too happy about doing that without copyright clearance, but the site encourages people to share their creations, take screenshots, etc. so I think they implied permission to use it in a non-profit way.

Here's the original concept drawing from one of the kids. I think I captured his intent. I've got a half dozen more concept drawings for other cards. If I spend the time on them I might be able to develop an actual comic style, which I've never done. I didn't even doodle comic character sketches as a kid.