Schoolism.com: Silhouettes

As I mentioned last week, I’m taking a character design class online from Stephen Silver at Schoolism.com. Last week’s lesson was on silhouettes. A strong character design will have a clear silhouette that is visually interesting, making the character instantly recognizable. To illustrate, I’ve taken Jafar from Aladdin and shaded him in. Notice how clearly everything reads:

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Our assignment was to take Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, and fill a page with little thumbnail silhouettes. We were told to play with shapes, trying to find a simple and clear design for the character. The good thing about doing fast little thumbnails is it forces you to think in broad, general terms and not get hung up on the details. When you are just concerned with the overall shape, your thought process can flow and brainstorm. The goal isn’t to do terrific sketches, its to get a lot of ideas onto the paper so that later you can develop the best ones. It’s a great exercise and I highly recommend it. In the future I hope to make it part of my process when designing characters for clients projects.

Here’s what I turned in:

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Mac users can save twenty bucks

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Here’s a tip for all you Mac users with .Mac accounts. Apple charges $99 per year for the service, but you can get it at Amazon.com for only $79. I just renewed my .Mac account through Amazon and it worked. Saved twenty bucks.

Not a .Mac user? You might want to consider it. .Mac (pronounced “dot-mac”) is 10GB of storage on Apple’s servers that you can use in a wide variety of ways with simple Apple software that you probably already have on your Mac. It’s great for backing up data, publishing online (i.e. a website or your vacation photos), or syncing data on computers, for example.

I have a desktop mac and a laptop, and .Mac allows me to sync both computers so that iCal, Safari, and Address Book are the same on both machines (you can also sync Mail and Keychains if you want).

The service is not always stellar. I have my computers set to sync with each other every day automatically, but on my MacBook Pro there’s a glitch. I have to sync it manually. Apparantly this is a common problem. But at least I know my info is the same on both computers, especially iCal, which I use to manage all my projects and deadlines.

.Mac is also good for backup, storage, and sharing media. Each customer now gets 10GB of storage space online. Way more than I need for syncing, but great if you are publishing your own website through Apple, share photos and movies online, or want to back up a decent amount of data. (10GB isn’t even close to enough for me to back up all my computer graphics work, so I use external hard drives for that which I keep in rotation at a safe deposit box). But I do backup my Quicken files to .Mac, in an effort to help keep my business and personal life separate.

Give .Mac a looksee.

CreativePro.com

CreativePro.com is a great resource for, well, creative pros. They’ve got some helpful articles, and a free email newsletter called “CreativeProse” that almost always has at least one item/article that interests me enough to read. (Which, unfortunately, is not always the case with email newsletters.) Check out a couple of recent articles from a regular feature titled The Art of Business:

Winning Back Lost Clients
Price Wars

You can subscribe to the CreativeProse newsletter here.

Mike Weiringo R.I.P.

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Sad, sad news. From newsarama.com:

The comics industry lost a luminary this weekend – Mike Wieringo passed away Sunday of a sudden heart attack. Details are still sketchy as of this time, but according to close sources, the acclaimed artist had chest pains at some point during the day and called 911, but the responders did not make it in time.

Wieringo was 44 years old. He was a vegetarian, and “one of the healthiest ones of us in the bunch,” as his longtime friend and collaborator Todd Dezago described him. Currently, there are no details about services or a funeral.

I didn’t know Mike personally, but I was a big fan of his work and visited his blog often. He was an incredibly talented artist and, from what I understand, a really nice guy as well. My deepest sympathies to his family and friends.

Disney Toys

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A few months ago I was hired by Peter Green Design to develop some toy ideas to pitch to Disney. I was given a list of possible toys based on three Disney properties (Little Einsteins, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and My Friends Tigger & Pooh) and asked to do a rough concept sketch for each. A few were chosen to be considered as official Disney toys, and I was asked to do cleaned-up color versions of those roughs.

From there they went on to Disney. I’m told there’s a chance a few of them may actually make it into the production pipeline. With any luck, we may see something in stores by Christmas.

Either way, it was great fun to finally work with some Disney properties. Designing toys, I found out, is almost as fun as playing with them.

Sherwin Schwartzrock Has a New Website

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My friend Sherwin Schwartzrock is a super-talented illustrator, designer, and comic book artist. He does it all, and all very well. He’s one of those guys whose work really raises the bar for the rest of us…which means I have to work harder to try and keep up. He recently started a blog, and now he has finally updated his website with loads of brand new content. Stop on by, you’ll be glad you did.