Artwork!

I suddenly got all artistic, and I wanted to share some images I created tonight.

First a little background: I've been thinking about a couple of different kinds of images, and it occurred to me that it might be fun to combine two very different styles.  Take the cool (or even cold) abstract style of mid-century modern designers like Saul Bass, and merge it with the emotionally overwrought style of some of the pulps.

I'll talk more about this when I have created some examples of what I want to do.  I'm going to just start with manikins in overwrought poses.  And also just playing with textures and contrasts of the "pure design" type cover.

This image was accidentally created in InDesign rather than Illusttrator. (I was wondering why it was SO HARD to do basic things like add and change points.  I wasn't working in a drawing program! D'oh.)  As a result, this manikin is not being as dramatic about trying to block that door as she should be.

I am, actually, pretty impressed at what InDesign let me do, and the tools it has.

However, because I couldn't export the image as anything but a pdf, I couldn't do anything to make it more sophisticated either.  I'll be playing with more in this series.

In the meantime, here is the cover I had the most fun with tonight. I was inspired by an old cover with a similar concept -- that is a sketchy, shadowy figure with binoculars where the glass is a highlight that really stands out.

I abstracted it a little more, and played with textures -- and also with different modes for the layers -- each layer is either transparent, or is in "Overlay" mode that draws on the colors beneath it.

This is obviously, a very creepy "thriller" cover, but I think it could work for mystery suspense, especially in the right series.  (The colors I ended up with was partly dictated by the effects.  They are so interlinked, that I can't effectively change them on this one -- but if I planned better, I could do this with different color palettes to get a different mood.)

Anyway that's what I've been doing on my summer vacation.

See you in the funny papers.