Work is underway on creating collateral for IMATS Los Angeles. There are several things in the pipeline right now but one of the items that I just finished and is all ready printed is this poster advertising the L.A. show.

Putting this image together included masking the girl, the bird guy and the building  from their original backgrounds, creating multiple layers of texture and then placing text and logos.

Masking the girl was most time consuming because I had to go in and paint around each of the ornate beaded strands hanging from her hair piece. I also did several color adjustments, some minor shadow work, removed piercings and acne, enhanced her eyes, etc. (Nothing is real. If you see a magazine cover of some beautiful woman with perfect skin, don’t believe it. Someone like myself has worked it over digitally. Think of it as art and not a representative image.) The bird man has a very rough mask since I just have him fading out at the edges. I then altered the transparency of the layer to enhance blending and to knock him back further. Same with the image of the Pasadena Convention Center.

The textures were built in many different layers including gradients, half-tone dot patterns, lightly airbrushed masks and bright hot spots of color. By doing them on different layers I am able to shift them around and alter their transparency and blending properties independently until I achieve the composition I want. The overall composition is very close to what I had in my head at the outset. But the details with in the composition get arranged and rearranged until I achieve the right balance.

Even though the text doesn’t go on until later it is a constant factor in how I am designing the piece from the very beginning. If it wasn’t I would end up with an unbalanced piece and/or not enough space for all the information I’ve been tasked with communicating. I design the text the same way I do the image, using a hierarchy of what I want the viewer to see first, second, third and so on. Once I’ve determined what order I want information processed I then use size, color and placement to make it happen.

You can learn more about IMATS LA here.

Make-Up Artist issue 84 was a rare issue in which I did a few different illustrations to fill out a couple articles. I don’t usually get to do this but both the “Out of the Kit” article (See previous blog entry: Drawing Barry) and this feature article about Motion Capture needed something extra to grab the reader’s attention. The article’s original title was “Make-Up and Motion Capture: A Marriage of Convenience.” This immediately triggered an image of a clueless groom getting married to a less than pleased bride.

I penciled the piece in my sketchbook, scanned it in and then did the final inks and colors in PhotoShop. I then assembled it along with the title in InDesign. I made the decision to shorten the “Motion Capture” part of the title to “Mo-Cap” because I felt it was snappier and echoed the sound of “Make-Up.”

In addition to the title illustration I also wanted to place an illustration later in the article to go with a pull quote. The idea of the Mo-Cap Groom wanting a kiss from the apprehensive Make-up Bride was too good to pass up.

More images from Issue 84 are here.

Occasionally I get to break away from just graphic design mode and do some illustration work for the magazine. Being the Art Director this is my choice but more often than not it just doesn’t call for it. Make-Up Artist magazine is primarily a trade magazine that exists to show case the art of make-up artists and not my own personal portfolio book. But sometimes, as with the illustration above, there is just no other way to communicate or make interesting the design of the article.

For the “Out of the Kit” column in Issue 84 make-up artist Barry Koper wrote about needing an inexpensive beard form. He decided to use a styro-foam whig head for this purpose. Only one photo was supplied showing the final beard form that he had made and it was rather dark and uninteresting photo. Again, my job is to make the page grab the reader. I took this opportunity to draw Mr. Koper contemplating how to use the whig head he found. In the layout there is a word balloon with a pull quote from the article and though balloons going up the page to the photo of the final beard form. In the end I think it adds a little bit of humor and fun to what would have been an other wise lifeless page.

This is the opening spread for our Summer Movie Preview in Make-Up Artist issue 84. After looking through all the images I had for this piece I saw what the title was and there was no question in my mind that using Scarlett Johansson from Iron Man 2 would be the perfect opening. She exemplified every word in the title. So I did cut-out of her from the background and put my title art together. This is also a perfect example of how my title art drives the design for the rest of the article. I didn’t have a clear idea of how I wanted to layout the photos in this piece until the title art was in place with its overlapping orange boxes. After that the theme seemed obvious.

One of the things I’ve mentioned before on this blog is how I approach all my article designs with the need of “entry points.” These are areas on the page that catch the reader’s eyes and break up the monotony of plain text. It gives the reader different areas of interest to “enter” the article. For the piece the info boxes you see with brackets were not a part of the original written text. I made the decision during production to add these as a way of giving readers quick bites of information before they dove into the rest of the text. These along with sub-headlines and caption boxes give the reader a choice of how much or how little information they want to pursue.

You can see more images from Issue 84 here.

I’ve been so busy lately that my time to update the site with Make-Up Artist issue 83 details has come and gone. However, I wanted to post at least one piece from this issue and talk about it a bit. I chose the below opening spread from a feature about artist Alex Box.

I like the simplicity of this spread. When I first got the photos for the article this image of the girl with a flowing pattern caught my eye immediately. Sometimes when I start work on an article it’s tough to nail down exactly how to open it. But quite often, as with this spread, I see where I want to go right away. I knew that the photo was strong enough to stand on its own so I decided on a very clean design that wouldn’t detract from it but enhance it.

The original title of the piece was “Outside the Box” or something along those lines. For good or bad I tend to go very literal in my title designs. So I immediately began designing the box graphic in Adobe Illustrator. I made a simple square and then used the 3D extrude & rotate tool to made a cube which I rotated around until I had in the position I wanted. Then I expanded the object so I could manipulate each of the cube’s faces. Using the scribble tool I tweaked each side to exactly where I wanted the detail to be. Color scheme for the title was inspired by the quirky acid goth make-up that Ms. Box wore to IMATS London. After completing the initial layout and turning it over to Editorial for proofing the Managing Editor, Heather Wisner, decided she wanted to change the title to “Box Set.” I changed the artwork accordingly.

You can see a few more of my Issue 83 designs here.