Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Fringe - observers - September.

Okay... let's see here. Recently I watched all of Fringe and well it's added to the list of my favorite shows / sci-fi genre creations. So, I had a sketchbook in front of me, I grabbed a pencil and drew this:


This kind of sketch is a BAD BAD BAD idea for converting into vector and very difficult to work with. I knew that as I was shading away with the pencil. I also knew that when I was scanning it and placing in Illustrator despite of knowing better than that.

I rebuilt it with Besier curves (with the Pen tool and other shapes) and this is how it came out:


I looked at it cringed and decided to add spice by adding text-filled shapes. Played with it for a while:


The collar text says "spicy". It just didn't go well with the shape.. Anyway. Looked at it more, squinted and decided to add more changes. So I re-sketched the face and redid it in more of a graphic novel style. And then redid both of these:


Last one is my favorite. I drew the symbols with a stylus - was fun.

I got stuck for a while - couldn't find the correct observer font - all the links to the one everybody said was good were broken :( . Eventually I found a pdf with all these symbols, I print screened it a couple times and just used LiveTrace. I hope it's the correct symbols at least - in the blue version the top word is supposed to be september (or SEPTEMBER) and the second row reads "i love tabasco".

Other fonts used: Arial, Broadway, Ecliptic BRK.

Note: Whatever it is you do in Illustrator ALWAYS work with a copy of the shape - whether it's going to be used in conjunction with another shape and pathfinder tools, a path for a text, or as the original template for derivative shapes (like for reflecting, shearing, etc.). If you decide you don't need it just delete it later. A lot of times it's nice to lock and hide it - or place on a separate layer just for those (depending on how complex your work is).

No comments:

Post a Comment