Lately, I’ve been trying to steer my work in a different direction as far as workflow goes. Last week, I was commissioned to make this flyer for a new event at Relic Bar and thought about challenging myself to do it entirely in Illustrator. And I think it worked.

It seems most of the 80′s style (typography, colors, shapes) is embedded quite strongly in my designer DNA. I wasn’t aware of this until I started working on this poster and almost all choices of font, color and layout seemed familiar to me. Jason Marcus did the concept for this one, where we pulled one of the iconic 3D characters from the “Money for Nothing” music video by Dire Straits and we slapped him in the middle of a party.

So, on the composition side things were fairly straightforward, but my approach of only working with Illustrator threw me a few curved balls I wasn’t used to. The font used for the 80′s is hand-drawn (like the “Mostaza” on the facebook banner from last week), which is something I’m only starting to tap into with more confidence. The design of the two girls dancing around the guy was made by me, with some photo reference for fashion and hairstyles.

Hand-drawn type with different color version

Quick sketch thumbnails

The official Montana Colors shop in Barcelona is located at Carrer del Comerç, just a few steps away from the Arco de Triunfo, which in itself is a center point for about half a dozen shops full of comics, toys and art books. I didn’t know they had a gallery at the Montana shop, but it’s linked right next to the store where you get the cans and caps.

When I went in there they had pretty much just started the day, so they kindly let me take pictures while they loaded up boxes in the backroom. Needless to say I was blown away by the look of the place, it just looked so fresh and the gallery was even better.

Featuring an exhibition called Animalocalypsis Now, the gallery was composed of works by J.Loca and Eledu, two local artists who do heavy character design in their getups and work with a lot of crazy color combos. Hell yeah, I hit that. Hard.

One of the girls working in the shop told me that the exhibit was already about to end and that the last one had been sold out in under a day the last time. I thought that was cool and from the looks of Barcelona’s street art I would say you can make a pretty nice living in the city if you got a nice style and contacts.

After my visit to the store I headed my way to Norma Comics and Freakz Comic Shop, which I’ll talk about in a future post.

Inching a bit closer to the weekend, I meant to post this yesterday, but I got caught up on work. So now that the ball is out of my court, let’s check out the first installment of Reel Treats! 

Reel Treats is a compilation post where I grab most of the cool video production I’ve seen on the web during the last week and just show it to you guys and gals. The content I choose to show is veered towards animation more than other types of video, paying particular attention to stuff that I feel inspired by or that closely resemble my taste in the medium. That being said, there will be other content such as short films, trailers and music videos depending on what I find each week.

So before you see the first one, there’s also the selection of the week, which is basically what I thought was the best video out of all the ones I posted here. It’s a way for me to keep track of the direction I want to take while learning animation, because I only have so much time to learn things on my own, I can highlight the video and just mention the things I liked about it for learning purposes.

Alright? Alright. Let’s roll! (no pun intended):

Apocalypse Pizza Vidéo

This is the pilot for a French feature animation helmed by Andrés Fernández and JSBC about a pizza/video delivery business trying to stay afloat during the zombie apocalypse. Yeah, it’s far out there and flippin’ awesome. The pilot has a lot of stylized violence and I particularly liked the bit when the lights go off in the garage. Go check it out on Facebook.

Disassembled

This one you’ve probably seen already if like me you’ve been swept by the recent Avengers tornado. This animation made entirely by Dutch artist Junaid Chundrigar is equal parts retro design and awkward (but totally logical) laughs a la Ren & Stimpy.

Imago

This beautiful short film was produced and animated by Cedric Babouche, a prominent french animator that’s been shortlisted into the Oscars for his past work and has won several awards in his home country. This film featured watercolor paintings mixed with 3D animation for a very distinct, warm color palette and simple, but efficient character design. You can go into Cedric’s website and see some of the pre-production sketches for this as well as all his past work. I just found out about him this week, so I’ll keep an eye on his new project, Travel to Mama, which already looks mighty promising.

Fuse: A Gun Girl’s Detective Story (Trailer)

Can’t let the first installment of Reet Treats go by without some japanese animation. So this is known in Japan as Fuse Teppō Musume no Torimonochō and it’s an adaptation of an epic novel written by Kazuki Sakuraba. I like the animation so far, it’s clean and reminds me of french artist Gobi. Also, the setting for this seems to be the Sengoku era (according to ANN) which means it might involve samurai and I love me some jidaigeki anime.

So that’s it for this time. Let me know if you like the videos and if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you can always drop a line and make suggestions.

Right after my visit to the toy store, I decided to take a walk on a different route around the city, partly looking for a place to eat and partly looking for something, anything to look at for a few hours. Turns out I managed to do that, just not in that order.

Walking through the extension of the Rue Rivoli I eventually found myself at 45 Rue St. Honoré on a road the city had blocked due to reconstruction work. So I pass around this building with large window panes that peer into an empty room full of paintings of Marilyn Monroe and Wario made out of typography.

Wait wha?

I thought I’d seen that somewhere before, but never in my life did I think I’d find the art of french graffiti illustrator TILT around town. Well, I had to get in there right?

So I modestly walk inside the place with a rather sheepish look to my face, being that my french isn’t worth 2 cents and I could barely see the nice lady typing at the end of the hall. She just smiled and after seeing the big lump of a camera I had dangling from my chest, she waived at me to do whatever I wanted. And so I bring you the gallery you see above, which also features work by TILT’s fellow artist, Nasty, and Horphee.

The paintings were even more impressive after seeing the price tags on some of them. At first I thought they were living large on these numbers, but after a few days trying to survive in Paris and seeing how expensive it is, I believe they are living rather modestly.

Oh, on the food thing, I almost forgot. Eventually I made my way to a Quick Burger, the french version of Burger King, and ordered the now-extinct “Darth Vador” burger with the dreaded black buns. What can I say? I’m a sucker for Star Wars and the thing wasn’t bad at all, in fact it was the best thing I ate while in Paris. The bun wasn’t black though, it had pepper on it instead of sesame. I would’ve gone with a royale with cheese, but I figured I can get one of those next time and you can really only taste the dark side once (not a euphemism).

Looking at the amazing detail and color palettes, particularly in Uncharted 3, got me trying to emulate similar shading in some of my sketches and work, because it looked like the perfect balance between real life models and just a bit above animation. It also got me asking myself: who are the artists behind these awesome graphics?

So people who play the game probably know the big names: Amy Hennig who wrote and directed the story, Richard Lemarchand who was the lead designer on the series and so on, but I’m talking about the artists behind the shading and the lightning, the textures and concept art. So I did a little digging myself and found some amazing hi-res screenshots (heavy loading and SPOILERS that way!) of the work for both Uncharted 2 and 3 as well as the portfolios from some of the people involved in the making of the amazing art.

I decided to put them here on a list along with some of their art, but this is by far not the only people who worked on the games, only the ones I could find rather easily. Mind you, there’s a metric TON of more art (not only from Uncharted and in better resolution than here) in their respective portfolios and you owe it to yourselves to check it out if you played any of these games or just like concept art and scenario design. In no particular order:

Melissa Altobello

Texture and Shading on Uncharted 2 and 3

Dustin King

Level design, modeling, management and optimization on Uncharted 2 and 3

David Ballard

Environment artist on Uncharted 2 and 3

Adelle Bueno

Environment texturing, shading, UV mapping

Eva Krzeminski

Lightning for Uncharted 3′s E3 trailer and game cinematics

Jeremy Huxley

Texturing and shading on Uncharted 3

So, I’m in Switzerland trying to figure out where to go and what to do for two weeks and I figured I wanted to visit Paris, but I had no idea of what to see. Most people, when they hear you’re visiting Paris, start telling you to go see the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, etc, etc and all I really want to do is hit some comic book shops and arcades. Well, son… they got a lot of that in Paris.

After looking out for comic book stores in the area, I figured I would look for something different and then had the idea to Google up some designer toys (I’ve been looking for a Bertie bot for the last 2 years). And there it was: 45 rue de l’arbre sec, 75001 Paris. Gotta take the yellow ligne 1 to get to it, which is the biggest metro line in the city, mainly cause it follows the way of the Seine river.

Yeah, I was super far away from that line, but hey it’s adventure right?

Right. I dedicated one day of my stay solely to looking for awesome stuff connected to the ligne 1. So I look in my little map and I think “well hey, the Louvre is right there too!”. Awesome, so now I can go to the museum everyone’s telling me about and then hit some toy ogling. It’s close right? Well, son… it looks close in the map:

I go hit the Louvre, see the awesome architecture and sculptures and then it’s time to check out them toys. So I start walking and following the map, but there’s something wrong here. I’m seeing all these streets that don’t appear on the map and what I thought would be a 10 minute walk was actually a 30 minute hike through plazas and the Rue de Rivoli. Never say backpacking is easy.

About 30 minutes walking and I’m glad all streets are properly labeled, because that way I have some hint of guidance with the map in my hand, but still no go on the rue de l’abre sec and just when I was about to curse Paris to hell in spanish I see this:

Well, son… I think you should go that way. BOOM. Just followed the paint marks on the street for a minute, turn a corner and there it was, the Artoyz shop in the middle of a restaurant and some other store. It’s the freaking plant floor of an apartment building, how dope is that? Wouldn’t I want to live above a toy store.

So I go in and they have some amazing collection of toys on display right at the entrance, followed by some awesome books and DIY stuff in the back. The place is small, but it’s packed with all kinds of drool-inducing stuff like Casting Shadows from Coarse and the Super Iam8bit book. My pockets were scarce on coin, but I was still able to make it out of there with a Sticker Bomb vol. 2 book.

There were other places I visited that were equally mind-blowing for me, but that’s a post for another time.

These photos were taken at the end of July last year, while I was working the graveyard shift at Luna’s Castle aka the best hostel in Panama, if not the world. I started working there after I came back from Chile in February last year and quickly became addicted to being at the place and soaking up all manner of awesome things, from the paintings in the ceiling to the conversations with drunken Irish people at 5 in the morning. It was a blast.

So the photo I’m showing above is right from the window on the lobby reception and the one that follows is from the same window except looking to the left side:

Then there’s this picture of the city skyline as it looks like from the balcony overlooking the entrance to the Casco:

None of these were edited digitally, I just uploaded them as they were after looking at them for about 20 minutes and seeing how much it’s changed after visiting the hostel this past week. Have a nice Sunday, people!