First Flash Website Complete! (The Adventures of Sitruc)

I did it! I completed my first flash website. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Vivre Promotional Product Brochure

Moving right along on this project. The plan is to actually digitally custom design my own bottles for Vivre. I am taking a MAYA class next semester to learn all about 3D modeling and texturing. But until then, this brochure is the final Vivre project I have.

Vivre Vodka Business System and Packaging Designs

Update on "The Adventures of Sitruc" Flash website

Here are some shots from my progress. I have been working on this all weekend and finally feel like progress is being made.

Vivre Vodka Logo Update

Here is a look at some of my logo ideas. There were probably 50 others not here. Plus at least a hundred thumbnails/sketches. I went with the flame idea in the middle. I am working on a package design right now. I will post that when I am a little more confident with what I have.

The Adventures of Sitruc

While I should be to the point where I am building my flash website by now, I am not. This character thing has taken me a lot longer then anticipated. I am still not even close to having my characters done. But I have the general design of the website laid out. Hopefully I can finish the characters soon and start building the actual site. But I am still having fun. Learning that drawing characters is pretty hard. I have the images in my head, but getting them on the sketchpad just the right way is difficult. And this is why it's taking me so long. I am being really picky. But here are some glimpses at more "concept art" for my pretend game.

Also, each of the characters were inspired by one of my roommates. This has actually helped me a lot more then I thought it would. Each character has started out with a personality that I understand fairly well. It has made my characters a lot more believable. I notice it anyway.

"Not a very good drawer."

I had a teacher once tell me that I shouldn't illustrate an assignment for an Illustration class because I am "not a very good drawer." So I used photographs for an ILLUSTRATION assignment. My ability to draw has been one major hurdle I need to overcome. I love to draw, I just suck at it. But practice makes perfect. This semester, I have been forcing myself to at least sketch something once a day. While it may not show to others, I have already noticed improvement.

To further challenge myself, I have decided to turn an assignment I have in my Interface Design class to create a flash website into an illustration focused project. So I am now illustrating characters for a mock video game. The characters and their bios will be featured in my website. This is all due in about two weeks and progress is moving slow. But I am up for the challenge.

Here is some what I have come up with in the last 9 hours I have been working on this. Keep in mind, I am NOT an animator. I admire and respect artists who can ACTUALLY do this stuff. I can only dream of gaining that skill. I actually spend a lot of time studying and reading about Disney animators and artists. I have loved them since before I could talk. (Not an exaggeration. Ask my parents). So I pray none of them ever see this horrible attempt I am making. But the important thing is that I am having fun doing this! I love it. So here ya go:

Neither of these characters are completely finished, but that's what I have so far. I have 3 others to create. My goal is to get them all to this point in the process by Thursday. By Saturday, I would like to have them all completely done. And somehow through all this, I will also be working on the website as I go. It's going to be a busy couple of weeks!

Kinetic Typography

Here is my final Flash Animation. This is my first time using Flash and am secretly really proud of how it ended up. Hope everyone else enjoys it too.

Early Sketches for Vivre Vodka

Still working on it, but the final will be fairly close to these sketches. The flame idea is staying anyway.

Shamu Swims Six (Logo & HTML website)

This was my first time ever using HTML. The website is for Shamu Swims Six (a semi-real band). I first created their logo and then the website.

Here are some early stages for the logo.

And here is what the final ended up looking like:

Next are some sketches and comps from the early stage of my web design:

And here is the final:

LINK: CLICK HERE

Animated Poster

I guess it's time to finally update this blog. I have a lot I need to post in here, but will start with this project. The assignment is to create an Flash animation of a movie clip. (Kinetic Typography - youTube it). Before getting to the actual animation, we were required to create a well-designed poster from the clip first. This is my poster. The animation is a work in progress, but definitely coming along and I am surprisingly enjoying this project a lot.

Lost Identity?

For my first post, I decided I would show you all the process I went through to create my personal identity. Above you will see just a small fraction of the hundreds of thumbnails and sketches I made while creating my logo. I started this project last fall and ultimately ended up with this design below.

I wasn't ever entirely satisfied with this identity. I feel like it is successful and designed, but it didn't really represent me like I wanted it to. So in January when I started putting my portfolio together, I took on the task of redesigning my personal identity. I ended up going back to thumbnail sketches. I again sketched pages of ideas. I then started playing with some of the sketches I liked with different fonts.

After weeks of unsuccessful attempts to find my identity, I finally found something that worked for me.

The copy above is what the logo looked like after a lot of modifying. I just skipped showing you all the tedious steps. So next, I needed to find a color that worked.

After playing with a lot of different options, I ended up choosing a combinations of blues. This color scheme made the logo feel a lot more like a "design" logo. It's funny how colors can completely change to concept of the logo. I also felt like the blues fit my personal characteristics better. So here it is:

Next, I created a business system for my identity.

And there you have it! The creation of my Personal Identity!