I don’t have a lot of the details yet, but I’ve been invited to attend FITC Toronto as a live blogger. I’ve never been to an event like this so I’m expecting to have a lot to write about during the three days of the event.

In my first blog post ever on this site, I wrote about missing FITC and hoping that I would find myself there in 2011. So this event is like a full circle effect for me. The work put into building and feeding this blog has paid off and allowed me to attend a show I otherwise couldn’t experience. If you’re going to be there leave a comment and let me know.

A special thanks to Shawn Pucknell for the invitation.

It’s been awhile since I contributed some new work. Since projects are moving a bit slower than I like, I posted some of my favourite shots from my iPhone using Hipstomatic and Instagram. Enjoy!

The truly wonderful people at Abduzeedo featured a tutorial I published for them this week. Anyone who was interested in how I created the World Collabs 4 “Terrorize” poster can check it out right here.

I was happy to create this tutorial and also include a PSD for download so that anyone can see what my steps were and play around to unlock their own techniques. Fabio Sasso spoke about this concept of open-sharing in the design community and it has altered how I view my own work on the web.

I didn’t ever have a problem showing my friends exactly how I did a project, or anyone who may ask in a comment or on facebook and email. But I probably wouldn’t have uploaded my PSD files like Fabio does. Fabio mentioned this reluctance in his presentation at Montreal meets this year. He said that it felt like a mistake publishing his workflow and giving the working PSD files for anyone to own, but he did it anyway. It paid off. His free sharing turned into countless designers now turning to him for their design questions. Rather than save up his knowledge and bank it for his own projects, he shared it with all of us and because of that designers look to him as a key figure in the design world. You can view this presentation at Montreal Meets.

Cheers guys, have fun and thanks Fabio Sasso and Francois Hoang at Abduzeedo!

The first thing I’m going to talk about is how I render my shapes. I usually start with either a shape or a closed path I create with the pen tool. Rasterize it, then select the smudge tool.

Select the middle of your shape and start pulling outwards into open space to extend the shape or do the opposite and pull the open space towards your shape to tighten it up.

Start sketching out how you want your work to turn out. Don’t worry about any of the details yet. Just draw in the darkest portions.

Next, create a new layer. You will be adding some mid-tones right now that will layer on top of the dark spaces you already created. In my example, the black lines are the first layer and the grey sections are the second layer. If I were to turn off my second layer, I would be left with the black shape from above. Just like before, don’t focus on shadows and highlights, just try and get your shapes to look right. You’ll building on them later.

All done? Create another new layer. Now you’re going to do the samething again. Tighten your mid-toned shapes until you’re satisfied that your work is complete and you’re ready to move on to some highlights.

Start by adding some soft highlights where appropriate and then use stronger highlights to focus on the brightest points of those original highlights.

The next step will be to add some depth with some textures and then adding some shadows around the top of the eye socket. Select a soft black brush and paint your shadow then select multiply on your layers palette and adjust it’s transparency. For the texture, there are countless of options available online. Put out a good description of the texture you’re looking for and you should be able to find something useful. Pick one and layer it onto of everything and select the best blending mode in the layer palette. I like to add a layer mask to adjust how the texture works within the artwork.

Now we’re moving onto the eyeball. select the area with the pen tool and then fill in a solid colour. The colour you choose now, will be framing the eye.

Add a layer mask on your coloured eyeball and mask the edges.

In this image, I copied the red eye with the layer mask and changed it to blue. Then I masked out the edges of the eye to bring out the red from the previous layer. So now the blue eye layers over top of the red, but the edges are masked out to bring out the back layer and create this gradient on the eye.

Just like in the previous step, I used a soft black brush to draw in his shadow and used a multiply blending mode.

The highlight was a white line I smudged into place.

The last step is adding a honeycomb texture onto the eyeball. Experiment with different blending modes to get the effect best for your project. Happy painting.

When finished, I added the eye into a poster I was working on for the Abduzeedo World Collabs 4 contest. To view this poster, click here.

Living in Montreal, I’ve only found one event that could match the intensity of a Montreal Canadiens playoff game: and that’s a Georges St-Pierre title fight.

Georges St-Pierre (or GSP for short) is one of the most successful and popular fighters in the UFC. He’s famous for being a man of solid character inside and outside the octagon. Many Montrealers have met this local hero and all share the same raving review about how down to earth and grateful he is for the support standing behind him. Josh Koscheck will attest to just how fanatical this city is for their gladiator. He knew he would be booed mercilessly by the hometown crowd, but the look on his face during the weigh-ins spoke volumes to the love this city has for GSP.

This poster is to commemorate all the success GSP has had in the past and is sure to have in the future. I wanted to create something truly stunning to look at. Something strong, reflective of a warrior. I planned to use the same colour palette and styling from the Fender book. I referenced a lot of early century propaganda posters and the vast body of works by the great Shepard Fairey.

One of my illustration assignments back in school was to study the style of cubism and create a theater poster for a fictitious production. At first I dreaded the idea, but once I looked closely into the master’s work I was anxious to start experimenting. I would end up with something completely different than any other illustration assignment and that was cool to me. I ended up creating a poster for Alice in Wonderland and that ended up being my favourite portfolio piece I created while in school.

I decided to go back and experiment with it again because I had received some good feedback on the Alice in Wonderland poster. A piece I created years ago and wasn’t sure I should even have in my portfolio anymore. I chose Adidas as my subject.

This album artwork was based on a previous design I had created earlier this fall titled “Tonight The City’s On Fire”. I wasn’t satisfied with only having a front cover and wanted to elaborate and create something more substantial so I extended the project to cover a complete album.

It was very easy to incorporate the design into Powerman 5000’s album for the obvious reason that the title’s were very similar, but that wasn’t the only reason. Powerman 5000 is a band that embraced the pulp science fiction of the 50’s and 60’s in their original album artwork and I love that style. The image in the background reminded me of the sci-fi puppet space travel shows I used to see on tv.

Photo Credit to Patrick Kerby

So guess what? I won World Collabs 4! I’m so excited to have won this competition.

My good friend at Aoiro Studio and winner of the World Collabs 3: Francois Hoang arranged a poster GIVEAWAY of his winning entry. He received a lot of interest and so I will be doing the samething! Anyone interested should contact me in the coming weeks for information on how you can get your own copy.

For more information on the World Collabs Competitions visit Abduzeedo’s website.

To view the concept site Click here.

A great way to showcase your skills as a designer is to show that you’re always thinking ahead in your design tasks. How would this logo look big? How would it look small? Can this print work translate into a website?

Building on the Artwork I created for the Fender Catalog, I made a front-end design concept for a matching website. The site would feature a scrolling headline to keep readers familiar with news, events and products. Fender uses this in their current site and it’s a smart tool, they are constantly releasing new products throughout the year. It’s a great way to get the word out about their products and what featured events are coming up.

“You don’t need a client to work. If you want to create something, just do it.” Great advice from James White of Signalnoise. He reminds designers every week on his broadcasts to stay busy creating new work, even if that means working without a client. Be your own client, create something you want to see in your portfolio.

Last month I featured an incredibly well-executed annual report design by Wanken. Having never tried an annual report before and seeing just how much work goes into creating one like Shelby’s, I was inspired to plant my feet into a new design project.

The Subject

I chose Fender Guitars as my subject client because it was a product that I was very familiar with. I’ve been somewhat of a guitar-geek for about 10 years now. In high school I worked in a tiny guitar shop spending most of my time reading through product catalogs, wishing the minimum wage I was collecting would eventually land me my dream axe. That never did happen, but I digress.

Fender has a rich history of creating excellence backed by a lineup of legends in the music world like Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. The company has been around since the breakout of Rock & Roll and Blues. They were the innovators behind the first electric guitar. Known by many names over the years, the modern Fender Telecaster® is synonymous with Rock & Roll and Blues history.

The Direction

When I sat down a started thinking with my sketchpad my final concept was to create somewhat of a throwback to the early days of the Fender brand. Without realizing until much later in the project, subconsciously the design path I was on had some help from a 2006 Pepsi commercial. A child Jimi Hendrix stumbles upon a Pepsi machine and a Coke machine on opposing sides of the street. After considering his option, he chooses a Pepsi and takes his first sip. In that moment notices a Fender Telecaster in the window facing him. He then looks over his shoulder and sees above the Coke machine was an accordion shop. “That was a close one” is the final tagline.

So that was the theme that was running in my head. Something that you could see on the set of Back to the Future when McFly steps out of the Delorean and into 1955.

We are surrounded with giants waging wars over our attention during our free time. They want nothing more than to capture our attention when we rest our feet after a day at the grind. Can’t catch your favourite program at air time? No problem, DVR or TiVo it. Buy an On-Demand cable package. Just sit and watch it.

“You love your American Idol? Well here’s a list of other great shows you’ll like.”

It’s easy to get lost in the noise. Just don’t forget to unplug sometimes. Live a little and step out. Tomorrow isn’t a guarantee.

Photo Credit to Patrick Kerby

The lovely fellows at Abduzeedo launched a new monthly contest for designers looking to explore the methods of some of their favourite designers. Designers are asked to submit an original incomplete design piece, and it’s up to the participants to complete the work. The contest is open to anyone and this third installment featured none other than Canadian Colour-Wheeler and design broadcaster, James White of Signalnoise.

I tried to approach this design as if James and I were working on this together. During his weekly broadcasts, he often addresses his inspiration being toys and characters from his favourite childhood cartoons, comics and videogames so that was going to be my approach. I wanted to feature something very common from the early 80’s that could work well with the rainbow flare style James uses.

I guess picking Voltron or Heman would have been more accurate to something James would draw inspiration from, but where’s the fun in that? My Little Pony, let’s roll out.

Be part of the creative-chat every Thursday at 3pm EST on the Signalnoise Broadcast.
To participate in the World Collabs contests, visit Abduzeedo.com.

At my last job, I always had my sketchbook in my bookbag to draw during my lunchbreaks. Part of my job was searching through stock photos to find decent usable materials. I came across this photo and just had to draw it for some reason.

I grew up in South Porcupine Ontario Canada. It’s a small town known mostly for gold mining and subjecting us to Shania Twain. Ya, that was us. Like a lot of kids growing up in northern Ontario, I was in love with playing hockey. Goaltending to be specific. I’ve been a goalie my entire life and as a kid the one thing I wanted more than anything else in the world was a crazy cool airbrushed goalie mask. Eventually many years later I would order my first professional paint job. I drew out a precise sketch in colour of what I wanted and sent it away. About a month later, I received my mask almost line for line to what I’d asked for. I was truly impressed and decided to learn how to do this for myself.

A few years later, it’s time to change the green monster because I clash with almost every jersey. I wanted something with more neutral tones that could compliment most jerseys. So this time I went ahead and painted the adapted Monster myself. I went with a neutral whites and greys for the skin and as an accent I painted the gums a mix of dirty blond to chocolate brown. Now this helmet could match no matter what colour my jersey happened to be.

*Funny side-note: Immediately after altering the green helmet, I was recruited to play for a team wearing classic green North Stars jerseys.

This was an exercise in improving the value (Black and white contrast) in my drawings. I found an interesting collection of models covered in black greasepaint. The light would reflect off the black grease to a give extreme white reflections. Perfect for drastic light and dark values. I like to give myself exercises or projects in my sketchbook. I’ve heard from multiple designers and artists in a variety of different medias from graphic design to painting that everything stems from drawing. So work at it.