Hyperlapse Video - Adding a white space to my pencil drawing Mindtap

AS I have uploaded this to Youtube I felt it wouldn't hurt to turn this into a post. This post shows a hyper-lapsed video taken from my desktop, showing me whiting out, removing scuffs from the scan, adding shadows and adding in highlights. This is a pencil drawing depicting The Mindtap, I imagined it to how a brain leak might feel...



Thank you for watching. This Hyper-lapse video was made using After Effects.





Artwork Copyright Jimm Odell 2017(JD - Illustration)

Satzuma : Design & Development Projects Update Summer 2016

ORANGE WITH A SPLASH OF BLACK

“its black and orange!” That was the first thing I noticed when I received my current employer shortlisted me and sent me a link to their web address! What's not to love about black and orange – as a kid orange used be my favourite colour and now I practically dream in it. I felt that it has been long overdue that I should post a blog update with regards to some of the creative projects that I have had the honour of working on in the past couple of years. These range from designing Air applications, websites, characters, product videos, intro's flash animations (now Animate CC) and many more.

Bit of Action Script 3

THIS WAS AN AIR APP AND BROWSER DEMO
FOR DIY PHONE CASE PRODUCT

Stand design at the Harrogate Show - TETO!

My Rufus illustrations for the book cover artwork!

Website Interface

Packaging for the Smartphone Joystick

Above, I have added the interface design and the screen grabs of the working iDesign application, this was built in flash and written in AS3. The other projects cover the trade show picks, illustration, UI and some packaging.

Not Just Design And Development.

Satzuma is a company that cultivates a think different approach, be it in marketing and design or its approach to business. Having the opportunity to work with like minded team and being at the forefront of the creative process has given some invaluable experience in creative direction, hiring staff, working with freelancers, collaborating with business development and of course, recruiting fellow design interns!

"Satzuma illustrates three important skills; Do one thing well, make it a fun thing and think different"

- Guy Kawasaki, Former Marketing Chief of Apple

"I have worked with Jimm for over 6 years across hundreds of commercial projects. Jimm's ability to produce my ideas or concepts quickly by carefully listening and understanding to what I need or want commercially makes the difference. His design skills by hand and computer combined has always produced highly creative and unique pieces of work which has formed one of the main corner stones of our business."
– J Ramm, Satzuma LTD

Thanks! :-)

Quick Techniques For Reducing Banding / Posterization in Photoshop - BRUSH STROKES

Posterization – Rough Techniques For Reducing Banding!

Notice the subtle rings around the soft brush?

What is it?

If like me you work as illustrator/designer, I’m sure you will have run into the dreaded banding aka Posterization If so, I will go into detail shortly. Please note; this is told from an illustration and design bias.

Illustration in Photoshop has been a blessing for me. Edit, undo, save as, copy, paste, re-colour artwork the list goes on. This issue comes when working with radial and linear gradients and tones of black and grey. Working with a lot of black and orange as part of the colour palette, I have had to figure out ways for dealing with or working around banding. For example, when I’m rendering characters like Rufus the rat, he has grey body with even darker creases in the body, getting the shading and highlights to blend hasn't always been easy - banding has been a big issue. As it stands, I’m still uncertain as to how to get a completely smooth finish when rendering by work with a grey and black tones. I can offer some methods for reducing this so called ‘banding’ effect and the bane of drawing Rufus. 

For additional information this has been written based on the specs of the my iMac - OSX, but this issue has proven to effective on a TFT Screen using windows 7 and older versions of PS.

My Setup 1 : New Document ‘I like RGB’

From the off I have tested this on Photoshop CS5 and CC with similar results from version to version. 64 bit – 32 bit RGB to CMYK I’m not entirely sure if this has an influence aside from whether you are working with 8 bit, 16 bit and 32 bit; the later offering marginally tighter rings and hues. For this example I have worked with A 300 DPI document, in RGB using 8 bit (this can be changed later) also with the colour profile listed below on an iMac. This is by no means a significant contribution to the final out come but maybe worth noting. 

‘tangent alert’
 Using RGB in the early stages is my preferred method, not everybody’s. Isn’t this madness? You won’t see genuine colours of your artwork! Well unless, your screen is calibrated exactly and your using pantones, guaranteeing what you see on the screen to print can be tricky anyway. Besides, I work across both mediums of screen and print. 

Method 2 :  Ultimate Trick - Brush & Noise

I’m assuming that you are running into this issue whilst using a soft edged brush tool in Photoshop, based on that, I would advise turning the 'noise' on under the brush panel (as shown - press F5 bring this window up) this helps in the blending of steps with greys as shown below. As far as I can tell, based on my work, this improved the overall smoothness and graduation of the tones from light to dark regardless of bit mode or any other. You can also dabble with the filters if you are using large radials (That would be a different article). 
As you can see below, the black brush at the top has rings (banding) and the one below has far fewer the brush used on the lowest part of the blob has noise switched on. The speckled effect will be less obvious once you take your artwork to print.

See how the rings blend together of the lower part of the blob?

Method 3 : Big to small, playing with scale

Another trick for tightening this banding is by shrinking/scaling down your completed artwork. When you have applied the 'noise' and finished the process you can physically shrink the image to hide some of the messier details - an illusion essentially. 


This is a method that I have used not only to disguise banding when digitally painting but also to give the appearance of tighter line work and detail.



Step 1 piece of art = 100%
Step 2 scale art to = 75%

So when you print the document some so the details and blemishes are hidden away from the naked eye. This approach can also hide some of the rings in banding with added element of noise!

Conclusion
You will see the benefits for this when you come to printing your work, especially if you are working with shades of grey.

To summarise - Add noise to your brush mode.

Hope this helps!

This method was used when illustrating/digitally painting Rufus the Rat for Satzuma LTD

Tweet

Faces Sketch - Mechanical pencil from morning travel sketchbook

Random Sketches From Journey to work

Here is another random set of sketches/ doodles from my morning sketch book.

Jolly women! monstrous ugliness, people, sleep... and... well - stuff!

If you would like me to draw something for you please get in touch, I'm available for commission.

Randomness is welcome

Thanks,

http://jdillustration.jimmsdesign.co.uk/