Mathlete or Maestro? Pick Your (Brain) Side!

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Recently I worked with art director Chuck Beard of Pittsburgh Magazine on a spread image for an article about which side a person's core personality is wired, the right-side or left-side of the brain. This specific article is a guide to the various majors offered by colleges and universities ...and where these areas of study fall within the brain-side spectrum.

With this illustration I moved a bit away from my usual whimsy-based style... mostly because of the manner I rendered the large head in the image, which is more traditionally structured in an academic sense, plus because of the photographic-based little icons seen within the brain halves. Mixing photographic elements within my illustration is a tact I never use, but it seemed called for here because of the quasi-serious nature of the article, so I just went with it. I posted the basic image without the icons (bottom) and the full version with the icons and other graphic elements I created in position, which is how the art director used it in his page design (top).

The image was created with black (and white) gouache and brush on a gray paper, then all the color and various little graphic elements were created in Photoshop in layers. All the icons with the brain are object photo vignettes also enhanced within Photoshop.

I guess for all those who are left AND right brained equally combined in one personality, they would have to enter through the mouth in this illustration!

Move Over Mr. Clean

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I have completed a couple of projects for a certain client, who was also testing out the possibility of a new business venture, and hired me to play around with a new logo concept for it.

The character I created was, of course, derived from the name of the animal in the company name, OX... so it was just a matter of executing it in a graphic manner that seemed to match the tone that was expressed to me by the client. I was looking to be very simple yet provide enough detail in the line expression to give the character some life and animation. In fact, the logo will animate if the project sees the light of day... shaking his horns, stomping the ground with his hooves and snorting steam!

Since there is not yet any font treatment associated with the new business logo, for the purposes of placing my art, I also created the dummy type treatment seen here, so the art could begin to mesh with the logo in total... though my vision of the font's look is just temporary.

This image was created in Adobe Illustrator (vector-based) and just a matter of drawing the black line defining the ox character, then filling in a simple color wash. It seems the client liked the red version, but I prefer the blue version as I feel it better relates to the "steam" aspect within the service.
Who knows, maybe someday we'll all see this tough little ox being promoted on TV.