Anyway, here’s my latest review of last week:

• Created some artwork for Vector Pack 13. Specifically some stuff for Robots, Flow, and Bound. The robots were a lot harder than I thought actually. But I think they came out ok. Here are some that I did.

  

• I put a new shirt up on emptees. It’s really just a logo, but it was done for a shirt. It’s some 3D lettering for Fearless Records. It was meant to give off a strong rock n roll vibe. I quite like how it came out.

  

• Arsenal 2 is just about ready to launch into public Beta. Our goal is Thursday!
• Speaking of Arsenal 2, I had to get a Merchant Account and Payment Gateway so I used Merchant Warehouse to do that. Never did it before, but it was pretty easy. Now we will be able to accept credit cards on our site yay! And we’re thinking of getting rid of Paypal altogether. Why? Because Paypal is nothing but problems. From echecks, to chargebacks, to no seller protection, etc. Just watch this video which explains my thoughts exactly.
• We are working on new site for Ballher, a girl’s basketball clothing line. The design was already provided by the client, we just need to make the website work and get his shopping cart and blog installed. We’re using Wordpress and this plugin called WP-Ecommerce.
• We’re getting our aquarium filled up today which is awesome.
• We put in plans to actually make a break room, so we don’t have to eat at our desks every day.
• We’re in the process of building this really awesome Hoodie Template Pack. It’s more than just a template pack though. To be honest, it’s like an all-in-one hoodie design package. It will allow you to create all-over-prints in a few clicks. It will be setting the standard for apparel templates for sure. I think we’ll be releasing that this week.

Anyway, November is insane for the Arsenal. So if you’ve got some ideas for articles or tutorials for our zine, and are looking for some cash this year for the Holidays and a boost in your site’s traffic, hit us up!

The Grid

Now that you have your font pretty well figured out it’s time to get into the computer. First things first, setting up Illustrator. I like to first turn on the grid. This is the easiest way to transfer your font from the grid paper to the computer. To turn on the grid go to “view” under the menu bar, then “show grid”. Once you have the grid on you should turn on the rulers (also under “view”). Make sure to adjust your rulers to points instead of inches or whatever your default is. Just right click on the ruler and select “points”. The reason you want to be working in points is because that is the measurement system that fontlab uses too. Now what I do next is to figure out the height of my cap height, ascender height, median, baseline, and decender.

Now as a little refresher from our last tutorial remember that the cap height is just under the ascender height. The median is about 60 percent the total height between the baseline and ascender height. Might need to use a little math here; take your total height and times that by .6 and that is going to be your median. This isn’t an exact rule but traditionally that is where the median is placed. The height of your characters should be about 700 points high. I’ve noticed that sometimes when you import a character very small fontlab doesn’t perfectly paste the character’s nodes. If you have a character with lots of rounded areas sometimes fontlab will paste nodes weird. There is only a slight difference but it can be a bit annoying. Make sure you NEVER scale up your font once you get into fontlab.

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The Font Toolbox

Alright, now that you are all set up it’s time to get crackin’. How I start out is making a font “toolbox”. What I usually do is make a variety of different forms that I’ll use for the rest of the font. This way you make sure that all the forms are completely the same. Here is an example of a font “toolbox” that I use to make Usonia. Amazingly you don’t need that many pieces to create a font. If you are making a script font a toolbox probably isn’t going to work well. What you might want to do is simply scan in the grid paper and trace directly into Illustrator.

Every font is different with different accents you may want to add to the characters. The best thing to do is to figure out what pieces you’d like to use pretty regularly and make the shape. The key here is usability, try and make the shape as usable for as many characters as possible. These are the types of shapes I make: stroke, serifs, shape that connects strokes, additional accent pieces. There isn’t a hard and fast rule to making certain shapes, just make pieces you see yourself using a lot. Cool, now we are good to go onto putting together the letters.

So what I do at this point is refer back to my drawn shapes I made before, this is basically like my blueprint for the characters. What I do is copy and paste the pieces out of the toolbox I think I’ll need to start arranging them into the characters. If you find that you need to make a stroke make sure that you expand the stroke so that it turns into a shape. To do that go to “object” then “expand”. A little window will pop up that asks if you want to expand the fills the strokes. Just click OK.

As I am working on a font these are some of the most common tools that I use:

Transform: Sometimes you want a shape to not change size, just orientation. Use “object” then select “transform” from the drop down menu. You’ll have all your options there to pick whatever you’d like to do. It’s a lot faster than trying to completely redraw your shape!

Direct Selection Tool (open arrow): I use this tool a lot if I want to delete or move particular nodes.

Pen tool: I use this a lot to make extra pieces. I like to make rounded parts of my letters a lot so I most often use the pen tool for those. If you want to make a rounded corner then click in one place on your canvas, then try and pick a place diagonally away from that point and hold down your shift key and drag and it will use only 90 and 45 degree angles to make the curve.

Zoom tool: Really zoom into your font to make sure that all your separate pieces are lining up right. I usually zoom into my font for fine tweaking whenever I am moving a piece into place.

Once you have assembled all your pieces together you’re almost done. Make sure that all your strokes are expanded and you’re ready to merge the shape together. If you don’t expand your strokes you will run into issues since fontlab doesn’t read strokes, only shapes. It will see a line but nothing filling in that line, so strokes in fontlab just look invisible. So now that all of our strokes are expanded we can merge the shape. Open up your pathfinder tool. There are several different options you have here. The one you will most commonly use is “merge”. This one takes all the shapes you have selected and merges them into one shape. To help avoid problems later on its best to just merge in Illustrator and get the font looking EXACTLY how you want now. I only like adjusting kerning (space between letters) in fontlab.

Now let’s say you want to make a grunge looking font. Grab one of our grunge vectors and you can overlay that on your letter. Now with both selected click in the pathfinder tool “minus front”. Generally this should work for you but honestly I’ve noticed this tool is a little funny. If this doesn’t work or subtracts pretty much your entire letter then try another tool or select only part of your letter with the direct selection tool and try it then. Sometimes a process of elimination works best.

Ok now that you have all of your shapes together it’s time to do a little cleaning. So what I’ve noticed with the merge tool is that it will add extra nodes sometimes to the shape. What you have to do is zoom way into your letter and, using your pen tool, delete these extra nodes. This may seem sort of tedious but sometimes fontlab can make your letters look jagged so getting rid of these extra nodes leaves you with a smooth curve. What we’re trying to do is make sure that the font is as PERFECT as possible before you get into fontlab. Once you get into fontlab, believe me it’s all downhill from there!

So once you have done all of these steps for every character you’re probably pretty tired! Making a new font is a LOT of work. So take a quick break, and grab yourself a little snack! Once you’re fueled up it’s time to make your characters huge! I’ve noticed that fontlab has a default size of 700 points tall. So you could start out at that size. Make sure you grab ALL of the letters and special characters and size them all at the same time. You spent all that time getting them perfect, the last thing you want to do is size them up individually and then they’re all different sizes. Amazingly you can really tell if some letters aren’t the exact same size. Keep in mind that it doesn’t matter if you go outside the canvas area, since you’re not printing this it doesn’t matter if the characters are all inside of the live area. Usually when I size up my fonts they go pretty much to the end of the entire work space! What I usually do is turn on my rulers and put guides at 0 and 700 so I know exactly how large to make the letters. Well that is pretty much it for Illustrator.

Now we’re ready to get into fontlab so get ready for the fourth and final installment sometime next week!

Last week Go Media’s Arsenal released Tennery & Ladies Short Sleeve Templates. This week Go Media has two major resources to announce - Vector Pack 13 & Fingerpaint Textures! To celebrate the new packs, we’re sharing the discount code usually reserved for existing customers only. So, when checking out, just use the code: thirteen to get 15% off the already super low price. We know times are tough, but that shouldn’t mean you have to go without the latest design resources! Hope this discount helps. Be sure to use it right away because the code will expire in two weeks, on November 28th.

Freebies

It wouldn’t be Vector Pack season if there wasn’t a freebie involved! Here are seven pieces from the new Vector Pack 13 - my favorite from each pack. Each set has a lot of variety, and it was hard to pick a favorite! Definitely check out the real thing over at the Arsenal.

BONUS: We’re also giving away two hi-res freebies from the new Fingerpaint Texture pack! If you’ve downloaded either of the Watercolor Texture Packs, you know how useful these things are.

This is the door from the front stairwell into our office. We’re on the third (top) floor.

This is looking back at the front door from inside the office. We just got this lobby furniture! Thank you IKEA.

Spinning around and looking from the lobby area straight back. That’s our sales manager’s desk front and center.

Here is my desk. You’ll notice the Ikea Galant and a drawing table on the right.

Standing near my desk and look back across the office.

This is a fancy metal counter we have “floating” in front of the sale/project manager’s desk.

Behind the sales manager’s desk are these cabinets.

Here is a look through one of the glass walls in our conference room.

Here is a close-up of the conference room table. Yes I made it! It took a large piece of plywood, contact paper, large logo printed on paper, glue stick, Xacto knife, two colors of stain and lots of Polyurethane. I’ll let you figure the rest out.

This is the Aquarium. Obviously it’s not set up yet. We just got this in today!

This is the fancy glass we have suspended over our half walls.

Here is a close-up of how that glass connects to our half walls. These cables go up to the ceiling. It’s really quite amazing.

Designers hard at work.

More designers hard at work.

One more designer hard at work.

This is our messy area. As you can see, it’s messy.

This is the back hall where we have two enclosed cubicles, two bathrooms, HVAC closet, server room and a storage closet.

This is cubicle one. Eventually we will be putting our Wacom Cintique back here. Don’t laugh, yes, that IS a CRT monitor.

Here is cubicle two. I’m not sure exactly what will go in here. But we are about to paint one wall with “Idea Paint.” It turns any wall into a giant dry-erase board.

Well, that’s it. We’re very excited to be in here. There are a number of items that need finished - like our library and the aquarium. But it’s been a fantastic upgrade from my house so far. Hope you enjoyed the tour.

Before I left I got in touch with a few designers who are working in Copenhagen and got some great recommendations for sights to see relating to design. One such place is the Danish Design Center in downtown Copenhagen. I was really fortunate to set up a meeting with a designer, Morten, who is currently working there! He was kind enough to give me a private tour of the museum and introduce me to an amazing instillation artist Mads Hagstrøm. He currently has a show at the DDC called FlowMarket.

For me, FlowMarket was an intriguing user experience. On a long table he set up a bunch of different syringe bottles labeled with different emotions: happiness, truth, sensitivity and so on. At the end of the table there is a stack of shopping baskets, indicating our insatiable desire to be consumers. This piece really spoke to me because, in my opinion, we place far too much importance on material possessions.

Morten and I also walked through another exhibit called Sauma, user-driven design. Several of the pieces were typical house hold items but designed in an intelligent and beautifully simple way. One item in particular that I thought was interesting were these jackets with Velcro all over the outside of them. If a couple people wearing them bumped into each other they would be held tightly together. Some of the objects were more practical than others but they each were interesting perspectives on how products might be improved.

Denmark is known for the furniture design; the Egg chair seems to be their claim to fame. I flipped through a few interior design books with Morten and he explained that Danish homes are all very sparse in the amount of objects placed in a room. The beauty is in the negative spaces. This seems to be a trend emphasized in all aspects of design in Denmark.

There was a really interesting juxposition between old and new in Copenhagen. All the exteriors of the buildings were extremely old with lots of beautiful details on the outside. Inside most of the rooms were filled with modern furniture that had absolutely no decoration. I also learned that IKEA is pretty much the worst place to shop; it’s only for people who are really poor. I love IKEA, most of my apartment is furnished with IKEA furniture because it’s beautiful and simple. You can’t find furniture that is so beautiful for such a great price in the states. Well in Denmark, IKEA isn’t exactly a novelty since it’s been there for years.

After meeting with all these designers I got a pretty good perspective about the difference between American design and Danish design. One thing I found interesting is that in Denmark it seems most clients want very simple designs, with pretty much only typography and no frills to anything. Here it seems that most clients want everything but the kitchen sink! Danish designers seem to crave wanting to try something new that is overly designed and crazy looking, while I want to make all of my designs extremely simplistic! I found that really fascinating. I guess no matter where you are in the world you want to try doing something that is different from the norm.

My overall opinion of Danish design is that they strive to focus on the beauty of negative spaces. Their work is extremely simplistic but shows a wide range of stylistic voices through utilization of simple elements. Their sensitivity to typography was the most inspirational to me. I commend anyone who can use Helvetica for everything but still have the ability to make each piece unique.
Experiencing another country was so amazing and inspirational. Now, I just need to figure out the next country I will visit!

We’re kicking it off with the Tennery Typeface and latest installment of Apparel Templates.

Tennery

I remember when Oliver started working on Tennery last summer. I was a big fan of it even in the early stages, and I think it shaped up into an incredible typeface. It’s really unique and yet totally applicable - and comes with three weights plus oblique versions. The lower case ‘y’ in Tennery is one my favorites. Definitely worth checking out.

Ladies Short Sleeved Templates

You may remember that last month the Ladies Long Sleeved Template Pack was released. Jimiyo wrote a pretty sweet tutorial about his process for mocking tees back then, but he was actually using an early version of our Ladies Short Sleeved Templates . A lot of you commented wanting to know when those would be available. Well today is the day!

We listened to your feedback about our first Apparel Template Pack and made a lot of changes for this latest version. They’re now in PSD format (no more Tiffs!), have layers that make it even easier to change the shirt color and new highlighting (in addition to shadows). The biggest change is probably how much easier it is to paste ‘Your Art’ right into the shirt area. No more mask dragging. Just paste & go.

Arsenal 2.0

Finally! We’re getting really close everybody. We’ve totally outgrown the current Arsenal, and we’re pretty pumped to be able to do a better job giving you fresh design ammunition. So get excited for more reliable downloads, forums, better search, and user accounts!

We’re opening the flood gates on new design resources. Look out for a ton of new stuff this month!

Before we get into the meat of this tutorial I want to give you a crash course in font terminology. I know it’s not exactly the most exciting thing but I seriously think it’s good for you to know this before we get too far.

Sans serif: A type of font that doesn’t have accents on the end of its strokes.

Serif: A font that has little accents on the end of its strokes.

Vocabulary to Know:
Baseline: The line that the letter sits on.
Median: the middle line where lowercase letters end.
X height: the distance between baseline and median, traditionally 60 percent of the total height of the cap height.
Cap height: the line where capital letters end.
Ascender height: The line where ascenders end, only slightly above the cap height.
Ascender: the part of a lower case letter that extends above the median.
Decender: the part of a lower case letter that goes below the baseline.

Sketching

Now that you have your inspiration and an idea for your font it’s time to put it into action. I think that some designers sort of forget about the sketching process. It’s honestly the MOST crucial. The beauty of sketching is there isn’t a sense of commitment. You can crank out loads of ideas very quickly since you aren’t worried about making the design look perfect. It’s a lot faster to do 10 loose sketches on paper than trying to do the same thing on the computer. I remember one of my professors once said that the computer is a tool, no different than a pencil or pen, don’t rely on it to design for you.

There are several different ways in which you can draw some ideas. I use a combination of ways to get my thoughts together. Usually I use a scroll that’s always on my desk for sketching. The reason I use a scroll instead of a piece of paper is because I like not being limited by how many sketches I can do. Plus, it’s all contained in that one roll so I never have to worry about losing a sketch.

In the sketching process I will draw a few characters that I think might help me figure out the characteristics of the rest. Here are the characters that I usually start out with first: a, e, g, n, d. You can also do a few capitals as well like: A, E, G, M. From these characters it will give you a good variety of forms that are pretty similar in other letters. Start out designing these letters and see what you think. If they’re working try some more, if not then you haven’t wasted your time designing an entire font that sucks.

Draw a variety of perspectives of the font as well. I usually like to draw a few pieces of the font to show how different pieces are going to connect. Don’t be afraid to draw really quickly at first. When you start seeing something you like, draw a few different versions of that idea to see what you like best. Never settle for your first idea. Sometimes I will also write notes on the side of my sketches just to remind myself of something when I do the final sketch.

This initial sketching time is sort of like a funneling process to get down to that one idea that you are really excited about.

Once you’ve got a pretty clear idea of where you see the font going, it’s time to get out the grid paper. This is when you are going to draw out ALL of your characters. I like to use grid paper just because I can get the proportions between letters right on. Keep in mind that all your letters aren’t going to take up the same width, but they should be the same height. Some letters like “M” and “W” are going to take up a lot of width but letters like “I” don’t take up much at all. At this point in your sketching you’re still not fully committed to one idea, so feel free to play around with different ideas. Sometimes I will do a few different versions of a letter if I’m still not satisfied.

Next Time: Going Digital

Now that you have all of your characters drawn it’s time to get digital. Sometimes I will scan in my grid paper drawings and just trace them in illustrator. You can also just look at the drawings to design the characters, whatever works best for you. If this is your first font maybe you should go from a scan.

I started using my Action Method Book from Behance again and pretty much stopped using tasks in Outlook. I find physically writing it down makes me feel more productive. I am not sure why. The Action Method books themselves don’t help me that much though because I don’t use them any differently than I would a standard piece of paper. I’m usually focusing on day-to-day tasks that are small and unrelated to eachother so it makes no sense to use the “action steps.” So why do I use the book? Well, for one, I have it and don’t want it to go to waste. And for two, it’s dotted graph paper and spiral binding just make it easy.

Anyway, here’s what I did last week.

• Continued discussion with CS Cart developers. We’re working on Arsenal 2.0 still - but we took a big step and they installed it on our server. We’re going back and forth testing and bug reporting until it’s done. Adam Wagner is clicking away as we speak uploading products and writing descriptions. That stuff takes forever. But it’s coming along nicely.
• Did a 3D model of this crazy zen product called “The Tetrad.” They call it the “art of stillness.”
• The shirt I did for Paint the Stars finally was released and is available for sale. They used a cut and sew technique to pull off the full frontal skull print. I think it looks rad.
• Paint the Stars is also selling the Candy Lettering hoodie I did for them.
• Worked on some new vector packs for the Robot and Bound packs that are going to be out soon
• Had a meeting with this guy from UPS to help us set up our shipping dept. at Go Media. Basically, we need an automated way of handing the shipping of our merch now that we have the space to store it. We’ll be selling shirts and posters and other goodies in our Arsenal 2.0 store.
• Submitted a few unapproved client designs to Jakprints for their “Touch and Feel” project. They plan on selling samples of high end printing techniques to allow their customers to get a more hands on look at their ability to do high end shirt printing.
• Did a type treatment for Fearless records. They had a small budget, so I chose to do a simple chromed out 80’s metal inspired logo. I still have to finish it…
• Did an interview with Designfeedr for their series on Black and White images.
• Did another interview with The Familiar Strangers. That should show up soon.
• Did some miscellaneous manual labor around the new office. Stuff is still being worked on and today was especially noisy as they install a few counter tops, a door handle, and finishing our conference table.

So what did you do this past week?

Btw, the artwork in this post was done by Chris Comella for a new screen printed poster we’re doing.

In this tutorial I will walk through the steps I used to create this illustration to bring alive the word “collide.” While you may not find yourself needing to recreate the word “collide,” I hope you will find useful the techniques I will cover:
- extruding text in Cinema 4d
- using displacement maps in Cinema 4d
- using the explosion deformer in Cinema 4d
- exporting to photoshop from Cinema 4d
- unique color enhancing techniques in Photoshop
- various layer modes applied in Photoshop for great light effects
(A basic knowledge of Cinema 4d and Photoshop is required)

STEP 1: Creating 3d text

I created a new document in C4d and added some text with the built in text tool.



I typed the word COLLIDE in the Attributes manager.



I applied Extrude Nurbs by making it a parent of my text.



Parent/child relationship shown above in my Objects Manager.



There’s a small problem at this point: The word “collide” is treated as one object and I want to manipulate the individual letters. In order to do that I need to Explode Segments from the Function menu.



Now each part of each letter is broken into individual splines and I can extrude them separately as well as manipulate them.



On a couple of the letters I need to Connect the inside spline and outside spline together. The “O” and the “D” need to be connected because they are 2 individual splines as a result of the Explode Segments function I applied. I selected the 2 splines and right clicked to pull up a menu. I chose Connect. Once I’ve connected them I am ready to extrude each individual letter and place them where I want in my composition.



I have applied an Extrude nurbs to each letter now. See my object window for clarity.



And now I’ve named each nurb so that I know what letter it is.



Next I will click on each letter’s Extrude Nurbs and adjust the cap to be a Fillet Cap. I chose 3 Steps with a Radius of 3. This gives a nice looking edge to each letter.



Next I selected each letter and changed it’s position and rotation into a random spot that I felt would work for this composition.

STEP TWO: Creating reflective material for my 3d text

I created a new material that I will plan to tweak a bit later to get better results. But for now I know I will want to add reflection, environment, and a color.



My reflection is set to 35% and I did the same for environment as well. These are just settings I am randomly choosing and require some tweaking as the project progresses.



I added a light and and a sky to my scene.



I created a material to apply to my sky. I used a picture of a sky. There is definitely a lot of experimenting that can be done with what you can place in the sky and how it will look in the reflections of the material on the text.



I applied the new material to my sky and experimented with the Projection method. Cubic ended up being what I chose based on the way it looked as it reacted with my text.



Here is the result of my sky being reflected on my text. You can load the same image of a sky into your reflection and environment materials but the results will look different than using a sky in c4d to be reflected. I’ve found that I have more control over the reflections this way. I can rotate the sky. I can change the projection method of the material on my sky. Ultimately, it allowed me to get the results I wanted with ease.



My text material wasn’t quite colorful enough so I added a tint of blue to the original material.



Here is the result of adding the tint of blue. Much better for what I am looking to accomplish.

STEP THREE: Using a displacement map to create my collision effect

I copied several of my letter from the word “collide” and will apply a displacement map to those to create the collision.



I copied my reflective material that I created for the word “collide” and then I checked the “displacement” box and loaded a texture. Cinema 4d has built in textures you can experiment with for the displacement. Usually something black and white will work best but it is not completely necessary. I chose “brick” from the preset surfaces. I’ve also used black and white jpegs of stripes or other patterns that I’ve created in Illustrator.



Here you can see I set the Height to 500m and kept the strength at 100%. This is definitely a step that I could get lost in time experimenting with different heights, textures, and even projection methods for this material. Each tweak will give you amazing new results to choose from.



Here is the result of my current settings on the displacement material.

STEP FOUR: Adding exploding bits and pieces to my collision

I added a pyramid to my scene that will be used as the object to explode. I increased the Segments to 5. The more segments you have, the more bits and pieces to explode.



For this step I added an Explosion FX. I will use the Explosion later. (notice the difference above)



In order for the Explosion FX to work, it must be a child of the parent (the object to be exploded being the parent). I adjusted the Thickness until I found a setting I liked.



Here is the what my exploding pyramid looks like after playing with the Time and Strength of the explosion.



Next I copied my pyramid twice. On one of them I left the settings but moved the position of the pyramid to quickly double the amount of exploding segments. Then on my 3rd copy of the pyramid I added an Explosion rather than Explosion FX. This gave me a bunch of tiny specs of metal flying through the air rather than the large chunks created from my other 2 pyramids.



You can see the addition of the tiny explosion particles in this render above.

STEP FIVE: Adding the final effects in Photoshop

In my Render Settings, I made sure Alpha Channel is checked. Then I make my final render by choosing Render to Picture Viewer from the C4d Render menu.



When I open the rendered .tif in Photoshop it contains the alpha channel I included from C4d.



I selected the Alpha Channel, deleted the background and added a solid black background on a new layer below my collide artwork.



I wanted a feeling of air & space around my artwork rather than just solid black, so I added clouds from the Photoshop Filter menu.



Next I made a selection around a portion of the clouds and feathered the edge using the Refine Edge button.



I deleted the extra part of the clouds with my selection and adjusted the Levels of the layer.



I found a picture of smoke to really give this collision illustration some convincing touches. Almost like a car wreck and the engine is over heated.



Next I copied and pasted the image then inverted it (command, “I”) and set it to Screen Mode.



I added a layer mask and revealed all. Then I went in with an airbrush on the layer mask and started erasing different areas of the smoke to make it look like it was interacting with the “collide” rather than just placed on top.



Here is what my smoke looks like after erasing bits of it. Next, I copied that layer and repeated the same steps to add some more smoke toward the bottom of my composition.



I felt the piece needed some more color to make it pop so I added a layer and airbrushed pink onto the layer with a large brush size. The layer was set to Soft Light and placed below my “collide” artwork so that it would effect the colors of my background but not my 3d collision.



I wanted to spice things up a bit and throw some lighting into my collision.



I copied and pasted the lighting into my composition, desaturated, and set the layer mode to screen.



Then I copied my layer of lighting and added a gaussian blur to the copied layer. I set both layers to Add and moved them below the layer I airbrushed with color earlier. This created some nice color through my lightning streaks.



The final result in Photoshop with all the layers displayed.

CONCLUSION:

I created 3d text in Cinema 4d. Then I created an explosion using displacement maps and exploding 3 different copies of my pyramid. Once I saved with an Alpha Channel for PHotoshop, I created a background for my 3d artwork by using the cloud filter and then using layer modes to create color and lighting effects. The most challenging part of this is getting the displacement the way you like it. Experiment with different patterns and different projection methods for the material.

Monday October 13th

1:30pm

I’m sitting in Cleveland Hopkins Airport waiting to board my flight to Orlando Florida. I’ve been booked as a speaker at Create Magazine’s design convention Create Chaos. At least for the moment my morning nerves have calmed down and I’m looking forward to the next three days. It’s the first such speaking engagement that I’ve undertaken. I’ve taught and spoken plenty at the office and at local design schools. I’ve even gone to career day at a local elementary school. But this is different. I KNOW kids at a school can benefit from my knowledge. The pressure to impress an auditorium full of fellow professional designers is a bit more daunting. I just hope that I can provide enough value to Create. After all, they have generously paid to fly me down to Orlando, given me passes to the convention and put me up in a nice hotel for two nights; all for one hour of work. I’ve never been paid so well.

If you’re wondering how I was booked as a speaker at a convention like Create Chaos, I think that’s a good question. I’m wondering it a bit myself. Go Media developed a relationship with Create magazine by submitting cover illustration. While none of our cover illustrations were accepted we did eventually land a gig illustrating an article for them. That article; Webtechnologic eventually went on to win an award. Our strengths in the area of vector illustration and apparel design must have lead Create to think we had some good information to pass along.

4:20pm

After surviving a turbulent descent and landing in Orlando I begin to make my way to the baggage claim. I need to pick up my bags then rent a car. The Airport is about 30 minutes from the hotel and convention center. Just before I reach the appropriate baggage gate I notice a nicely dressed young man holding a sign with my name on it: “Bill Beachy.” What the heck? Why is this man holding a sign with my name on it? Wait – I’ve seen this in the movies before. This young man is a driver! And he’s there for me! He’s not driving a Pinto either, it’s a black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows. And inside is a fresh USA Today sitting on a leather seat. Wow. This is luxury. Create magazine obviously has me confused with someone of great importance.

The “hotel” is no less extravagant. It’s Marriott’s Orlando World Center Resort. The lobby is a huge cathedral of a space with 10 story vaulted glass ceilings, restaurants, coffee shops and three glass elevators. Just outside is a huge swimming pool surrounded by palm trees. I’m talking Las Vegas casino style swimming pool complete with twelve water falls and a mote! This is ridiculous.
By the time I’ve checked in and made it to my room I’m feeling sweaty and exhausted. Traveling tends to wear me out.

5:20pm
There is one last bit of “work” I need to take care of before I can relax. I need to go check in with the Create Chaos people and pick up my all access pass and goodies bag.

6:30pm
After a quick shower I decide to take some of the notes I’ve prepared and head over to one of the many restaurants in the hotel. I can eat some dinner and plan out how/what I want to present on. I have not yet written my presentation.

8:30pm
Still feeling calm. The food was fantastic, but a bit pricey. I think I will raid the mini bar for a beer as I watch some tv and settle in for the night.

Tuesday October 14th (presentation day.)

9:00am
Ok, it’s a beautiful sunny day in Orlando Florida. My balcony overlooks a giant resort style swimming pool with a drink cabana. I’m officially frustrated as I sit in my room working on my laptop. I need to keep reminding myself that I am NOT on vacation.
This is the actual view out my hotel balcony doors. Yes, I have a balcony too.

I had not prepared a formal presentation because I knew I would have these six hours this morning. I’ll be working on this all morning and afternoon while everyone around me is running around having fun. What a drag.

Ok Beachy, stop your bitching. Coffee? Check! Sunshine? Check! Let’s get to work.

12:00pm
Presentation is coming together well. Downloaded some images from HQ – time for lunch break. Feeling good.

12:20pm
Back from lunch – just consumed a 12” Philly cheese steak sub. I think I’m going to burst. I’m feeling a massive food coma coming on; time for a power nap.

12:50pm
Back awake and feeling good. Time to get back to the presentation. I’m almost done. I’m taking three vector tutorials that I’ve previously written and combining them in PowerPoint to create one uber tutorial. This will hopefully fill an hour.

2:10pm
Presentation is done and I’m ready. I still have one hour and forty minutes before I speak. So far I’m feeling no nerves. I think I will double-check my event information. Then I will take a quick walk over to the convention center where I’m presenting to get a lay of the land. After that I think a short jog and shower will keep me loose. Once I’m back I can make a final review of my presentation, clean up and head to the presenters lounge. They have asked us to check in there 20 minutes before we have to speak. If I’m going to get nervous – that will probably be when it happens. Ok… off I go.

2:25pm
Ok, just got back from my walk-thru. I am now feeling a lot less pressure about this presentation. I was anticipating thousands upon thousands of designers floating around (like I had seen at other design conventions.) But this is nothing like that at all. The crowds are light and the few presentations I’ve popped my head into only had about 15-35 attendees per. So, I won’t be speaking in front of hundreds – just a small intimate crowd - phew.

I have discovered that this is their inaugural Create Chaos convention. That explains the light crowds. They have obviously spared no expense in putting it on. Everything is top-notch. The Create Chaos Café - which my goodies bag included $20 worth of credit for was full of fancy snacks, Starbucks coffee, salads, sandwiches, etc.. They are REALLY taking care of their guests. I anticipate that this convention will grow rapidly in the coming years. They are certainly pampering their guests.

3:20pm
Just got done with a short walk-jog around the golf course here. It’s an amazingly beautiful golf course; rolling hills, white sand traps and flower lined water holes. I am constantly in awe by this place. I can’t help but wonder where the money comes to make all of this possible. (For the record: I do not own stock in Marriott hotels. I guess I am just easily impressed by lavish things.)

3:35pm
Off to my presentation – still feeling calm.
Here is my class starting to fill up.

5:35pm
WOW! That was awesome. Just finished my presentation and I fell like I seriously rocked it. I didn’t feel nervous one bit. The turnout was good. I suspect I had about 50 attendees. I felt like I was being personable, funny and informative. After the presentation a number of attendees came up to thank me and make small talk. A few told me it was the best presentation that they had seen yet. Man, I feel good. There was even a good number of designers in town from Cleveland. It’s nice to know that C-town is representing.

Ok, time to go visit my boys at the JakPrints booth and grab some grub. Gratuitous plug: JakPrints is the printer we use for most of our print projects. They’re really great guys and do fantastic work.

Wednesday October 15th

10:00am
Well, it’s Wednesday morning. I really don’t have any responsibilities today. I didn’t think through this schedule. I should have flown back late last night. I need to grab a cup of coffee and work on my article about this trip (that you’re reading right now.) After that I guess I’ll attend some classes and do a little networking.

12:30pm
Ha. I’m sitting in the convention hall working on this article when a designer walked up to me because he recognized the Go Media logo on my shirt. Several minutes into our conversation another designer walked up to join the conversation because he was also a fan of Go Media! Dare I say that Go Media is famous? That feels really good to know that other designers are aware of our company and instantly recognize our logo. It puts a smile on my face. They were really nice guys. Shout-outs to Brian Little (motion graphic artist from Tennessee) and Ricardo Bernardini (owner of Tentara Digital www.tentara.com). Nice meeting you guys.
Ok, time to go find a good class to attend.

1:00pm
On my way to the class: I Didn’t Know I Could Do That in Illustrator, taught by Sandee Cohen.

If you’re wondering why an Illustrator whiz like me would be going to this class - well, I’ve been using Illustrator for 10 years and I’m STILL learning new things. It’s an amazing program. I always try to tell young designers that they need to give this program a solid two months of dedication. You will likely find that Photoshop is not the Holy Grail of design software after all.

2:40pm
Good class. I did indeed learn a few new tricks. To summarize in 30 words or less; Sandee showed us how to quickly change copy that is sent in all caps to sentence case - basically all the first letters of each sentence are capitalized and the rest are lower case. Then she showed us how to use the graphics styles. She showed us how to map raster images onto 3D shapes that were created in Illustrator. Finally she showed us how to quickly recolor vector artwork using the Live Color option. These were all things that I never really used much, so it was an informative class. Thanks Sandee.

3:00pm
Time to pack up and head back to Cleveland. My Chariot -er- Cadillac Escalade awaits!

7:00pm
Plane landed safely! Phew.

Home Sweet Cleveland!