Getting off the Ground: Design Deconstruction

Finally, as promised, I present to you the original drafts to the story logo project from their comic style beginnings to their logo-like transformations. Our class was assigned by professor Babcock to tell three stories: one traumatic; one financially successful; and one good experience; using as few images as possible.
At first I had assumed by "as few images as possible" he had meant for us to try to tell as much of a story using only a small amount of images presented in a comic strip style manner. So my original designs were rough as far a draftsmanship went, but they told three distinct stories using up to four to five panels each.


The first story told of me going to see a great movie with a friend at a movie theatre; Children of Men. I used recognisible (if outdated) imagery to tell the story: using a old projection to indicate a movie, as well as a thumbs up to indicate my enjoyment of the film.


The second traumatic story told of how another friend of mine nearly had his heart stop at a party, and so we to him in an ambulance to the hospital until he recovered. I used stick like figures and recognisable images like a broken heart, a stop sign, party balloons, and red cross ambulance, and other images to clearly create an atmosphere of the tension of the moment.


The third story was a bit more simplistic and less thrilling; I had mad money by designing a cover album from friend's heavy metal band. The imagery was the most simplistic here; using a pencil to show I drew something; the images I drew on; and the money in "$" icon for to show how I profited.

When we first presented them in class; I thought mine had fit about what the professor had required of us. However, there was one person that clearly understood his overall goal; showing three neatly drafted designs that not only used up each of his or her three pages effectively, but only used one panel in a logo style fashion to tell his or her story.
Seeing the more bold and decisive imagery gave me the clarity to make a more efficient revision on my stories, but knowing the cost of simplifying and enlarging my imagery would require a sacrifice in the complexity of the stories themselves.


With the first story, I reduced the story from going to the movie theatre to see "Children of Men" to just seeing a good movie. To show I had it at the movie theatre, the image was turned into a movie theatre ticket. To show I like the movie, I gave the ticket an icon of a projector with a happy face. The design flowed nicely to me.



The second story proved the most difficult to simplify, because the story felt too complex to try to reduce with one image. Babcock suggested trying to combine a two people in a before and after effect, but every attempt to combine to people gave off the idea of a sexual encounter gone wrong than a near fatal heart attack. So I settled on two different variation of the story. One version shows a man with a repaired broken heart, while the other used traffic sign lights to tell the story in three steps; the red light to show the heart stopped; the yellow to show I was shocked back from hiatus; and green to show it was working again.


The third story was easy to retell with imagery. I simply showed a pencil drawing a dollar sign on a t-shirt, which indicated I drew an image for a profit.

Reflecting on the project altogether a month later, I have to say it is interesting to note how much the digital age has done little to change certain aspects of logo design. While technology had advanced the way we transfer information and communicate (as well the the technology itself reducing in size but increasing in function); when I used a image I thought people would recognise, I would often would use an outdated icon that had a more distinguished shape rather than the most modern design. Most film projectors are either on computers now or set on a much larger system than the small projector I drew, but as far a a image people could visually recognize and register as a film projector, that was the most effective to draw. It will be curious to see in the future what logos and icon will endure the farther away we progress from it in terms of relevance and technological development.

Illuminating Illustrators: J.H. Williams III

This week Illuminating Illustrators takes a look at an artist who has gained a lot of recognition by the comic book industry, but his use of colors, line, and space are so unique and inventive it is a shame that the recognition has not extended out into public appreciation. J.H. Williams III has been an illustrator for over fifteen years in the comics industry and has already worked with as the main artist for some of the top creators in their field; including Warren Ellis, Howard Chaykin, Grant Morrison, Chuck Dixon, Greg Rucka, and Alan Moore. Not just a spectacular penciller, Williams ofter does his own inks, paints, and occasionally lettering as well, blending all of the mediums in such a visually appealing way that also tells the story in the most effective manner.

The majority of Williams' career has been working for DC comic, his beginning work as a comic book artist was the 1995 miniseries "Deathwish" and the short lived series "Chase." Recognised more for his developing art art than for the stories, Williams worked on small but unique projects like Howard Chaykin's "Son of Superman" miniseries until his biggest opportunity arrive from one of the most renowned comic book writers of modern history: Alan Moore.


Creator of successful and intellectually stimulating stories such as "V for Vendetta" and "Watchmen", Moore approached J. H. Williams III to be the illustrator for his upcoming comic series in 1999: "Promethea", Alan Moore's 32 issue religious superhero saga in which he used mysticism and deep psychological storytelling to state his opinions on the concepts of religion and the unknown element of life in the adventures of a archaic superherione (a Wonder Woman with more emphasis on the mythology and feminism rather than the issue of sex, if you will.)


Alan's complex storylines and worded imagery were matched above and beyond with Williams choices of inks, digital and watercolors, and mixing mediums for the entire 32 issue run as he served as both interior artist and cover designer from 1999 to 2005. Williams was able to develop and hone his artistic style thanks to the demanding but satisfying writing of Moore.

After "Promethea", Williams collaborated with equally cerebral writer Warren Ellis on surreal science fiction spy series "Desolation Jones"; using his ability to adapt his art stlyle to the requirements of his writer once again. Williams would first get to experience mainstream comic work when he began to work with psychedelic writer Grant Morrison. Infamous for for his graphic and mindbending storytelling on his mental "Arham Asylum" and "The Invisibles" comic series, Morrison asked for Williams to work on the three issues on his second story arch of his current Batman series in 2007.


Using dark tones and sharply designed panels, Williams work brought a new class of visual storytelling to a popular series. Despite the current absence of Batman in the series, Williams continues to work on the current Detective Comic series, which stars the new Batwoman, since 2009 with writer Greg Rucka, this time experimenting with watercolor and harsh digital colors to contrast the lifestyle of the superherione from her regular identidy.

William work continues to impress with his ability to use painted an digital media in such and effectively merged manner, and will hopefully continue to do so in the future. His website can be located here and his flickr account here for more images and contents on his work process.

Seventh Lecture: Digitized Designs

On this following Wednesday it came the time for us to turn in our logo designs on our illustration board.I had two designs prepared; a fruit basket/sailboat and a coffee cup hand with stream for fingers. As I tried to touch up the coffee hand an accidentally split ink over the project and I had to scrap the look. I used a more organic look with the basket when I was experimenting with the ink, and the cup hand was a bit more straight. We compared our logos in class and Babcock appeared satisfied.

With the observations finished we proceeded to follow him into the computer room to learn about scanning and Adobe Illustrator. He used a kind of online chatroom/instruction tablet that let him show us how to scan images onto the computer and how to take the images and give them a cleaner, more professional look using applications on Illustrator such as pens, transparencies, arrows, lines, and magnifying images to get even the smallest details right.

Due to some malfunctions with the scanner, we had to postpone our own work with our logos on the computer until next time. Hopefully, We'll also be able to upload our designs from our storytelling logo project, which I hope to show on our next text. Should prove interesting!

Illuminating Illustrators: Paul Pope

Round two of Illuminating Illustrators brings to the ring a newer artist that has been garnering a bit more attention for his loose but brilliant visuals that he uses for comic books as well as his own clothing line.



Paul Pope has worked for as a freelance artist for both Marvel and DC comics; but made his start as an artist in Japan telling a story of a girl and her robotic guardian in space, called THB, an ongoing series from 1995. Paul eventually worked on DC's mature comic line Vertigo to make two cyberpunk stories, "100%' and "Heavy Liquid",in 1999 and 2003 respectively. Both stories attacked mainstream attention for their youthful pacing and retro futuristic designs reminiscent of "Blade Runner"'s ghetto future cityscape and the tales of the people/technology occupying it.



Pope's style can only be described as kinetic; a pageful of ink strokes that give and energy to his characters in just one panel that some artists cannot pull off in their entire careers. His costume designs are very innovative and are recognized for bringing a more realistic aspect to characters that often would seem ridiculous in real life (Batman, Robin, etc.), particularly when Pope returned to his retro future world with "Batman: Year 100" in 2007.
Set as a detective mystery, the design of his Batman has the look of an intense luchador, turning what is commonly mocked as spandex into a Kevlar/leather mix. One of the more stand out designs in the story is actually the motor-cycle ridden Batman, a intimidating look that would heavily inspire the bat-pod for the blockbuster hit "The Dark Knight."




His story telling is much like his art; fast paced and eclectic, and has won him some of the top award in the comics industry, such as the Eisner Award for his work on "Batman: Year 100", a very prestigious illustration award.



Currently, Paul Pope has finished clothing designs for Italian clothing company Diesel and DKNY, and has moved on to a new comic format idea called Wednesday Comics, where individual stories about certain DC characters are printed each week, with one artist contributing one part of their character's story on one page in a twelve week process. Pope is working on the character Adam Strange. His larger project is a giant graphic novel epic called "Battling Boy" which will be released sometime in in 2010.
Paul Pope's blog is called PULPHOPE his art can be located at under his alias ernest borg9 at flickr.com.

Fifth and Sixth Lectures: Simplifying Symbols and Stylizing Signs

After a leave of absence on Monday to extraordinary circumstances due to illness and medical difficulties, I returned on Wednesday to class to find that not much had progressed from the last class. We still were looking at ways to simplify and improve our logos. The majority of ideas mixed some kind of fruit or food with a human or mechanical device; such as a fruit basket sailboat or a hand in the shape of a coffee cup; a island the shape of a fish and a woman as shapely as a wave.

The idea was to find images that could relate to each other with a small logical connection, no matte how obscure. The thought behind the basket boat came from an old cartoon image of a tug boat, but made me think of all the foreign exchange with South America and the Caribbeans that takes place. I had a woman in the shape of a wave because of the natural curves of a woman but also the idea that several women use swimming as a good form of exercise. Some were just silly concepts; like the zombie pizza, with the droopy pepperoni eyes and melted dead cheese face.

Some ideas Professor Babcock liked; other he didn't believe convey their information well. The one I was having the most difficulty with was the idea of a nuclear bowling alley where the bowling ball had a bio hazard sign on it and would explode against the pins. The ball looked to much like a beach ball, and Professor Babcock concurred with the thought.

Logo designs balance a line between having to portray complex ideas using regular symbols in weird combinations and making sure the images are appealing to the audience/consumers. The professor expects to have a logo made next class on a illustration board, but our next class won't be till a full week later due to First Friday and Labor Day on Monday. I'm excited to try out multiple techniques with my brush, pen and ink.

The Fourth Lecture: Cultures and Combinations

On Friday Professor Babcock toured around the room and examined our multitude of drawn symbols for the various aspects of everyday counterpart of our lives. The student that sits next to me is from England in a small town called South Port. As the teacher passed by his series of drawings the professor noticed a pound currency sign on his paper and a dollar bill sign on my own. The student commented on how he was still adjusting to America but it also made me think or other cultural differences. Later, after the teacher had inspected my own paper, I compared my tiny drawing of the world to the other person's own rendition. Once again, the cultural difference was apparent; my drawing was centered on displayng America, while his displayed more of England/Eiurope area on his global drawing.

Later in class, Babcock discussed how much research can go into the design of a simple logo. In the case of the Olympics, a council decides the theme for that year, and then selects a series of words and images that would best represent those themes. Themes that usually show up involve tradition and comradery, but the location of the Olympic event has a major impact on the visual imagery too. My thoughts turned to when I had to research Barcelona, Spain for a design project and found the overall design for the event centered around the look of Pablo Picasso designs; the image of a brush painted running man as the logo and the mascot dog was based of Picasso's designs.

Babcock explained that now we had created all our everyday images, it was now our turn to combine these objects into forms that could prove visually interesting but still appealing, and to have them done over the weekend. My excitement for the weekend as well as the challenge of the project are evenly tied.

Illuminating Illustrators: Jean Giraud (Moebius)

Illuminating Illustrators is a section about artists who may receive some recognition for their work but need to receive a little more attention from developing artists to see how much of an impact these artist have on the style and possibly the techniques they wish to use in their own careers.

This first article is about one of the most influential artists of 20th century filmmaking but outside of certain films his name barely gets registered. His designs have had influence on some of the most popular science fiction and fantasy films of recent history, and the way the world has viewed the future for over four decades.



French artist Jean Giraud, under the illustrating alias Moebius, has created some of the most complex and futuristic landscapes and technology for his graphic novels, such as the "Long Tomorrow" (pictured left), which have been the inspiration for such popular films such as Blade Runner, Escape from New York, Tron, and even Star Wars; but none of his comic works or illustrations have been published into English in over twenty-five years.









Jean Giraud began work as a comics illustrator on French western comic strips in the the early sixties; his most famous set of stories about a former soldier/gunman named Lt. Blueberry. In 1963 Giraud created the alias Moebius for his science fiction/fantasy stories, and built a reputation outside of France for fantastic detailed cityscapes and inventions of the future.






By 1975 he had co-created Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal) Magazine as a way to show more mature comics to a widespread international audience, and would go on to collaborate visual designs for directors such as Ridley Scott (Aliens, Blade Runner), Luc Besson (The Fifth Element), George Lucas (Star Wars: The Empire Strikes back), James Cameron (The Abyss), Steven Lisberger(Tron), Ron Howard (Willow), Hayou Miyazaki (Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind) and others to help them create some of the most iconic costumes and robot designs seen on the silver screen in over half a century.


Despite his contribiutions, however, neither has his long running Blueberry series (which had been running on and off for nearly three decades) nor his science fiction works except for a series call "Incal" has seen any type of American publication since 1991. His last American collaborations in comics was a 1989 short series called "Silver Surfer: Parable" with marvel visionary Stan Lee, a short story for Dark Horse series "Concrete," and artwork in a graphic novel adaptation of the Halo video game series from 2006. He also did artwork for the video game series "Panzer Dragoon".



Jean Giraud. Age 71.

The Third Lecture: Condensing and Creating Logos

Wednesday in our introduction class we displayed our refined, bolder, and simplified illustrations of our stories. Several people had reduced their stories down to one image, but others were still having difficulty grasping the concept and were still trying to use multiple images to tell their personal events. It can be a challenging task, but everyone has their own unique method to figure out artistically the way they wanted to convey their messages.
Professor Babcock seemed pleased with the efforts of the class, and used examples of what some of the students had drawn to discuss the next project. Handing out a series of articles and images from books, the professor began to explain how illustrators and designers are often expected to take several concepts from a client and turn them into simplified, singular logos. A customer who is describing their company or product in multiple ideas and terms expects many of these artists to take all this information and turn it into a unifying symbol that represents a normally positive aspect of that company or product.

As reemphasized from a book called "A Smile in the Mind", artist often combine two or more images that are already recognizable symbols in a way that lets both retain their history but ads a new association/message to both as well that would not have been possible when separated. A mint leaf in the shape of lips; a road in the form of an "A"; a fish shaped like a hand, and several more examples or abstract combinations. For the rest of class, the professor instructed us to write down as many word and ideas that we commonly think about and associate with; followed by us trying to draw each of these images to present next class. It is an exciting assignment to venture into.

The Second Lecture: Gesault Pychology and Minimizing Designs

On Monday we began the class with a discussion about turning in money for out Art subscriptions, but then we moved onto our first drafts of our story designs for three separate events. I had assumed the professor had wanted us to try to tell a personal but still complex story with as few images as possible.
I had not expected him to just want an one panel illustration/logo for our stories. Only one person had achieved this effectively, with clear detail explaining that he or she recycled; had found a cheap house or apartment; and had found a dog with a new ad.
Babcock then began to explain about the principle ideas of Gestalt Psychology. The concept theorizes that the human brain likes to fill in gaps of visual information even if the actual details aren't there, which basically is one of reasons optical illusions are so fascination to look at.
Some of the more effective artists/advertisers use these concepts to drawn people to a project they've been working on by adding or subtracting the information the audience sees. Some old cigarette ads in magazines that used to try things like adding third arm to a person in the background so that a person flipping through would sense something was off on the page and turn back to it.
Recently, a Dr. John Heilman posted the 10 most basic Rorschach tests on Wikipedia; and not just the images, but what the most common responses to the images were and what they meant psychologically. He may be facing trouble for it, but it is fascinating to see how people can perceive visual information and what it can say about aspect of their identity.
At the end of class we formed groups to discuss how to minimize our stories, which was pretty easy for two of my stories but my most complex story about a friend whose heart had stopped at a party needed some tweaking. I believe I found the answer and worked it out. Here's for the best.

My 2009-2010 Classes and Goals

As I am an Illustration Major, the majority of my classes are art classes for this semester, but I also do have a minor in theatre. I am currently taking Introduction to Graphic Design and Illustration, Life Drawing/Anatomy, Painting I, Art History Survey, and Typography.

Eventually, by spring, I hope to take Art History Survey II, Life Drawing, Painting II, Printmaking, and possibly Drawing/Design III depending on the availability. Due to my minor in Theatre, though, I may be considering to take stagecraft, stage movement, and a yet unknown set of courses depending on the time and function of the class.

The choice in my major and minor comes from an overwhelming fascination of story telling in any form. I enjoy film , graphic novels, novels, stage productions, television shows, etc. and how each achieve a different way of communicating with the audience by mixing several medias and senses together in both original methods and traditional ways.

Graphic novels can be exceptional fascinating the way a person subconsciously create noises and motion from the images depicted on a page to make up for the lack of the actual sound or movement. I hope to work in one of these medias; illustration, film, or theatre, and keep myself open to as many options as possible with my major and minors so as not to limit my opportunities.

The First Lecture: Materials, Magazines, and Minimalist Messages

On the second day of our intro to graphic arts class Professor Babcock showed us the materials he used for his professional illustrative work and suggested materials that all the students could use. Some of the students were shy, but he eased the tension by telling an intersting fact about the psychological effect of how the levels and spacing of a room can effect the student's perception of the teacher.
He proceeded to demonstrate the refinement of using sable brushes and how they are expensive but durable as opposed to breaking and wearing down several cheap brushes to compensate. He also showed different quality inks and pens to show the what inks are appropriate for some projects and what cartein pens could accomplish more for fine detail or just to use as to fill space.
I've always been curious to know about these difference in quality material because as I venture into the world of illustration, I've noticed that several artist describe the kinds of brushes and inks they use but until now I've been unable to see the actual brushes and inks, let alone how they vary.
After the demonstration, the professor gave a list of art magazines that he said were signifigant for graphic design and illustrators to have in order to learn, update, and be inspired by as we develop as artists. All of the magazine supscitions seemed expensive, but hopefully worth the price. Money is currently tight enough as it is and art students often have to spend a lot for materials without monetary opportunities to pay them back. Some sacrifices must be made in any ventures.
Towards the end of class, he began to talk about the use of basic and uncomplex imagery to send messages to the common public. He used a term- Semiotics- which he said was the study of the meanin of things. He drew a dot on a chalkboard and called it an eye, saying it can take just a dot and people will interpret in one way or another. It reminds me of a scientific test in the eighties where they showed babies the image of a person smiling and reduced to the common smiley face drawing to see if a baby could still recognise and respond positively to the drawing becauce it had similar friendly features as a person smiling. The babies reponed to the smiley faces positively.
The right symbol or image can be one of the most powerful tools a person or media can use; wearing a cross lapin, or a elephant or donkey banner can divide a room in the right situaton.
Professor babcock wanted us to apply this concept in a series of three drawings, using simple signs and symbols to tell about stories we experienced. I feel I have done well enough with these drawings, and I am curious to see the stories people will tell.

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