Two twelve-year-old basketball fans. A basketball star. An out-of-form New York based NBA team. The boys started an extra-ordinary campaign to convince the star to play for the team. They got the help of two family friends who are into marketing. The result: ‘LeBron Buttons.’

Read such interesting stories in my tweets of June…

Advertising

Freelancing

Logo/Identity Design

Print Design

Product Design

Resources

How hard can it be to make a car advertisement of 30 seconds?

James May and Jeremy Clarkson are presenters of the popular BBC show ‘Top Gear.’ In season 13, episode 7, they try to make a TV Commercial (TVC) for the new car VW Scirocco TDi. They go through everything: understanding the brief, brainstorming, initial attempts, review of the films, rejection, another brainstorming, review of films, again rejection… It is fun to watch the creative process behind a TVC. Hilarious!

Advertising

• How hard can it be to make a car advertisement of 30 seconds? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXE-l8wjug
• Online Piracy is killing your favourite artist. http://bit.ly/aR4xlm Advertising Agency: Publicis India

Art

• ‘Character design workflow and technique’ written by @PankajDesign for the 2nd Anniversary of antzFxWay.com. http://bit.ly/9dlTpH
• Meaning of colors in different cultures across the world: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/colours-in-cultures/

Interview

• Design-Milk.com is an online magazine dedicated to modern design. Want to know how Design Milk got its name? http://bit.ly/9Ba9e4

Logo/Identity Design

• How would you rebrand BP? A logo competition by GREENPEACE. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/tarsands/logo-competition.html via @aneesKa
• RT @vimalc: violet: i Protest! http://bit.ly/bW7yzZ
• I am the CyberPark Kozhikode logo designer! http://antzfxway.com/2010/05/19/cyberpark-logo-designer/
• Creating a Logotype Depends More on the Means Than the End. http://bit.ly/9OVM0i
• Some interesting logo designs: http://www.logodesignlove.com/unsung-heroes
• How can the initials TA also say TV? A typical problem, in that it involves two unrelated subjects. http://bit.ly/cb1Pec via @aneeska

News

• Today, our design blog antzFxWay is celebrating two years of its online presence. http://antzfxway.com/2010/05/20/we-are-turning-two/

Photography

• ‘Some pointers for better photography’ written by @ashmec for the 2nd Anniversary of antzFxWay.com. http://bit.ly/dwZsXL
• ‘Don’t Just Take Pictures, but Make Pictures’ written by @UrveshDesigns for the 2nd Anniversary of antzFxWay.com. http://bit.ly/bYuzrt

Print Design

• ‘Stay Green, go red’ by @MikeCampau. Excellent artwork! http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Stay-Green_-Go-Red_-posterwallpaper/54199

Product Design

• People have a 6th sense for knowing when someone’s taking their photo. For unposed shots, use this Super-Secret Spy Lens! http://bit.ly/zrus
• “A simple and little idea of packing for honey. We tried to treat jar as a playground for a character design.” http://bit.ly/aG1qGe
• Cafe table design inspired by the beautiful fireflies in the garden on summer nights by @VukDragovic. http://bit.ly/bMlSCU
• Interesting trophies for the Better Housing Coalition’s Groundbreaker Awards event created by Noah Scalin (@alrdesign) http://bit.ly/bGiBOY

Resources

• ‘Here is the secret to creativity… Reloaded’ written by @aneesKa for the 2nd Anniversary of antzFxWay.com. http://bit.ly/b5hIPN
• RT @gosquared: Liked our VI Editor Help Sheet? Get it as a wallpaper thanks to @aneeska: http://bit.ly/cw9aYH
• 7 Essential Tips to keep in mind while writing a post in wordpress : http://bit.ly/bEJ6us

Web Design

• Creative & cool! Enter a Twitter username to watch an animated “parade” of their followers marching, dancing & tweeting. http://isparade.jp

Guest Author

Pankaj Upadhyay is a Product Designer from IISc Bangalore. He is also a talented character designer. Thanks to Pankaj for contributing this article. Pankaj is available in Twitter as @PankajDesign

Let me first start off by thanking antzFx for giving me the honour of being a guest writer at their blog. The blog has been an excellent read and I’ll keep following it till the end of internet. If you are reading this then I suggest that you bookmark this blog, because it will be a gem in your design information arsenal.

When the ‘ant people’ (a.k.a antzFx) approached me for this post, they gave me full freedom to choose my own topic. I chose character design because I am as passionate a character designer as I am a product designer.

The web however, is full of stuff that will teach you how to paint and present an awesome looking piece; these are tutorials that will tell you more on how to work on Photoshop rather than the character design itself. Another thing that always seems to lack is the context. So, here’s what I’ll try to do: I’ll present some steps that I follow, and talk about the workflow of character design. That way we leave enough room for me to write more stuff on the topic, if this post gets the hits. Maybe then the ‘ant people’ will give me some money for all this

Step 1, Establish a context

By context I actually mean the story of the character. By nature, a story will always have a hero and a villain. Rarely the villain is the hero or vice versa. The main story should reflect on this character. This is true even for the characters that are designed as mascots and logos. A character will always have a story associated with him and the main story will always reflect on him.

Here’s an example:

“The story happens sometime in the future, after the 3rd world war has ravaged the world. Our hero has fought for the losing side, but was known to the enemy as the most worthy opponent and the fiercest warrior. Before the end of the war he was captured by the enemy and tortured. During the time he was in prison he found his long lost faith in god. His faith kept him alive until the enemy declared him dead and used him for a bionic experimentation for creating an elite soldier. All his memory was erased and he was put on a coma. 10 years after the fateful experiment and the end of the war he woke up with no clue as to who he was, or where he was from. He’s sent on a black ops pilot mission to his own country. In the mission he somehow discovered his true identity. Now the people who created this elite soldier have to endure his wrath because there’s only one thing on his mind – Revenge”

Step2, Reflect the story onto the character

Reflect the story onto the character, easy peasey.

Well ain’t I being a smug… what I said there is actually easier said than done. How exactly does the story or the past/present/future of the character reflect on him? I found a good workaround for this in a morphological chart. The name sounds gut wrenching but what it’s in essence is just a Microsoft Excel Sheet.  ^_^

Here’s how to do it, write down keywords and attributes form the story that may reflect onto the character. Make this the 1st column. Now in the rows write down the physical characteristics that may reflect this. This can be as elaborate as you want it to be.

E.g:

Step 3, Thumbnails, thumbnails, thumbnails

This step is the most fun, sit down on the table with pencils, markers, water colour, India ink and most importantly paper. You can use digital media as well.

Remember the excel sheet we just created? Well forget it. By the time you made that you have already subconsciously decided the look of the character. Now, start putting the guy on paper. When you think you are out of juice, search the keywords on the internet and make some more thumbnails. Stop when you think that your head is going to explode, after all, no character is worth blowing your head off right? WRONG, make some more thumbnails. Stop when your head explodes.

Here are some of the worst ones that I made; I am not showing you the better ones because sometime later, maybe one of those will end up becoming another cool character. Remember, your thumbnails are probably one of your most valuable resources. Try your best not to give them away

Step 4, making the final look

For this you would need the internet and if you choose you can switch to the digital media.

Select a thumbnail or a set that has impressed you the most. Now start making a neat line art from the ideas in the thumbnails. Put in features and accessories that may go with the character.  For the character we are discussing, I chose a hefty body type with a huge gun. I generally start with pencil and paper and use that drawing for my line art in Photoshop. My pencil sketch seldom has all the necessary details. Here’s what my sketch looked like:

Step 4.1, Filling in the colours and Stuff

If we want then this subtopic itself can be elaborated and made into another tutorial, which would actually be a good successor to this post *wink wink*. But if you don’t want to wait for another post or something like that, you could check out some of the tutorials available on the internet, you’ll find plenty.

Ok so next what I did was chose a colour scheme for the character. I wanted him to be a more like a comic book hero so I chose colours that would pop out, red and blue (+shades) looked cool as well as American . I tried to stay true to my pencil sketch as much as possible. Here’s what I got:

The colours were not as bright as I expected them to be, but this will do for now. There are enough Photoshop tricks to rectify it. The thing to note here is that the difference in tonal values of the colours is good and giving the desired effect of cloth, metal etc.

Step 4.2, Giving the character a ‘character’

This is the step that will bring our hero closer to the story. Remember the Excel sheet that you forgot? Well now you can choose the accessories that will go with the character.

First comes the gun: I made some basic thumbnails for the gun, and chose a futuristic heavy weapon for the character. The problem however is getting the perspective right for such a device. Here’s when your knowledge of a 3D package will come in handy. I made a basic model in 3D studio max and rendered it with the default material with a whitish colour. This step is actually not as difficult as it sounds. You model does not need to be accurate in terms of modelling; after all you’re not going to animate it. Just make sure it looks good from the angle you want.

Colour correction: Believe it or not it was all done just by adjusting the curves in Photoshop. (Image->adjustments->curves or Ctrl+M).

Painting the Gun, Ammo box, eye patch, rosary, Usb connector etc.: This is relatively easy because you don’t have to worry about the perspective of the Gun. With the colours finalized I painted in the accessories that would go with the character. The decals are one of the most fun things to put in, choose things that are cool and pertain to the character. Here for example, a tattoo that may suggest something about his nature (this is a free image from photo bucket by gorerotted666, thanks a lot to him). After all that the character was done and this is what I got:

Step 5, making the presentation and Finishing off

Placing the character in the right environment will give a sense of realism to the character. Right now our hero is just a guy standing with a big a** gun. The rest of the story can be depicted as a well thought of environment. I wasn’t really sure what I’d want for this particular piece, so I sought help of my friends and I liked one particular suggestion very much. Our hero could be standing at a high altitude on some construction equipment above a city like Manhattan. So I looked around and found pictures form the angle that I wanted. I had to do some cut paste, erase, clone stamp, liquefy and colour correction to a couple of pictures to get a single background. After placing the character onto the background it is just a matter of small tweaks to merge our hero correctly. Here’s what I had in the end:

I added some text on top of the piece just to have an interesting picture. You can choose not to do anything like that, for me I somehow loved the name ‘MADDOG’; it’s got a mean ring to it, so here’s what I ended up with:

Epilogue

The idea that I was trying drive home in this post was about the workflow that I take and some simple tips and tricks for my readers, I hope I have been successful in that. Of course, I don’t, in anyway consider myself an expert in character design. I am still in the process of learning, but I think I have taught myself just enough to talk about how I do things. So if you have read this post and liked it (or disliked it), please leave your comments. Please feel free to critique the tutorial, the artwork and the writing. It will help me in so many ways. Once again I thank the ‘ant people’ for giving me the honour; I’d also like to thank the academy, my mother and father and…

Have a good time folks, hope to see you again.

‘Good artists copy, great artists steal’

— Pablo Picasso (Later made popular by Steve Jobs)

Milestones of this blog

21-May-2008

This blog was started humbly as a personal design blog at antzFx.Wordpress.com.

The tagline was « My world | My Dreams »

The title of the first blog post is a modified version of ‘The Matrix: Revolutions’ tagline “Everything that has a beginning has an end.”

I set five goals in this first blog post. They were:

30-Oct-2008

This blog was moved from wordpress.com to a subdomain of antzFx.com. The blog was re-named as FULLfx.antzFx.com. The tagline is changed to “design blog of antzFx.com”

26-Feb-2010

Silently, the blog got graduated from a subdomain to an independent domain of antzFxWay.com. Now the tagline is “You have seen nothing yet!”

21-May-2010

We are celebrating the second anniversary of this blog in style. First time ever, we have roped in three guest authors to write about Character Designing, Product Photography and Photography Tips. First time ever, we are posting three blog entries on a single day.

Vital Statistics

What next?

This blog mainly features the design stories of antzFx.com. But from today onwards, you will be treated with more guest posts on various fields of design.

Dear reader,
Thank you very much for your continued support. We love to hear your comments.
Regards,
antzFx, FULLfx | Team antzFx.com

But do you know who choreographed this song? The answer is Longinus Fernandes and his name is left out in the end credits of the film.

“There’s one guy I should mention, we’ve mentioned a lot of people, I forgot the guy who choreographed the dance at the end of the film, he’s called Longinus [Fernandes] and I forgot him off the credits, and I only found out about it two weeks ago. I’m an idiot… and I apologize from the bottom of my heart Longinus”.

This is how Danny Boyle made up with Longinus while receiving his Oscar for Best Direction.

Why I am saying this here? Because, like Longinus Fernandes, I also had an experience.

You know that I was unhappy over the fact that CyberPark Kozhikode is using my logo for some time without my knowledge. When I accidentally found this goof-up a month ago, I contacted the authorities and I was promised that they are working on a plan to recognize my success in the competition.

I am very happy to inform that CyberPark officials recognized me as the ‘Designer of CyberPark Logo.’

I was invited for the foundation stone laying ceremony of CyberPark Kozhikode on 17-May-2010. A memento was presented to me by Mr. Bhaskaran, Mayor of Kozhikode. A cash prize was given to me by Adv. P M A Salam, Member of Legislative Assembly from Kozhikode.

The CyberPark foundation stone laying ceremony was attended by Mr. V. S. Achuthanandan (Chief Minister of Kerala), Mr. Mullappally Ramachandran (The Union Minister of State for Home Affairs), Mr. Elamaram Kareem (Minister for Industries, Kerala), Mr. Binoy Viswam (Minister for Forest and Housing, Kerala) and other dignitaries.

I would like to thank Mr. Binu A Pazhoor (CEO, CyberPark Kozhikode), Mr. Thomas (TechnoPark, Trivandrum) and Mr. Vasudevan (TechnoPark, Trivandrum) for helping me out and inviting me for the foundation stone laying ceremony of CyberPark Kozhikode on 17-May-2010.

Dear Reader,

Thank you very much for all the prayers, support and comments.

Photos of Foundation Stone laying Ceremony of CyberPark

The best finding of this month is “Pencil versus Camera” by Ben Heine.

The real idea came by coincidence while I was watching television and writing a letter at the same time a few weeks ago. Reading my letter before putting it in the envelope, I saw in transparency the television behind the paper. I then realize it would be great to make something similar in a single image showing 2 different actions.

Read my other findings too…

Advertising

Art

Inspiration

Logo/Identity Design

Print Design

Product Design

Web Design

I was reading the newspaper ‘Malayala Manorama’ and trying to have an afternoon nap. On the ‘Opportunities’ page, I saw the following advertisement.

The logo looked very familiar. Then I realised – it is my own design! I designed this logo as a part of a competition organised by TechnoPark Trivandrum, some 18 months ago. Since then I have never heard from the authorities about the contest results or the fact that that my logo is being used by them for about a year.

This post is about the experience of designing a logo for CyberPark Kozhikode. CyberPark is a Government of Kerala organization planned in the lines of Technopark at Thiruvananthapuram and Infopark in Kochi to build, operate and manage ITparks for the promotion and development of investment in IT and ITES industries in Malabar region of Kerala.

13-Nov-2008

26-Nov-2008

I prepared a PDF document explaining the background, thought processes and my contact details. I sent this document to the officer who was in charge of this competition. He acknowledged the receipt of my designs.

Then I heard nothing about it and I forgot about the design – until yesterday when I saw the advertisement.

My logo is already in use

Yesterday I did a Google search and came to know that by June 2009, my first logo was selected from the entries as the official logo of CyberPark Kozhikode. The only modification that was done to it is replacing the tagline ‘work is play’ with ‘creating opportunities.’ This logo started appearing in many websites. Below are some screenshots and links.

Page of CyberPark Kozhikode on the official website of Kerala IT

Home page of Kerala IT: CyberPark logo appears in the footer

Blog entry on ‘Blooming Calicut’ dated 25-Jun-2009

Discussion thread on SkyscraperCity Forum dated 26-Oct-2009

Blog entry on the official website of Kerala IT dated 23-Jan-2010

My attempts to get the due credit

I am happy that my logo is used by a prestigious institution of the Government of Kerala. I am sad because none of the officials contacted me about the selection. I am angry because a lot of strangers are using this logo for about a year and I didn’t get the promised reward.

I contacted the officer to whom I sent the entry. He didn’t have the old e-mails between us regarding this design. So I forwarded the old e-mails to him and he acknowledged that the logo is indeed my creation. But now, he is not in charge of CyberPark Kozhikode. He told me that he has alerted the proper authorities about this incident and hoped that I will get the credit for this design.

I have also e-mailed the officers in charge of CyberPark Kozhikode. I am awaiting a reply. I will update this post as soon as I have any news.

Update 1 on 22-Apr-2010

The CEO of CyberPark Kozhikode informed me that he will do an investigation and settle this matter as soon as possible.

Update 2 on 29-Apr-2010

The CEO of CyberPark Kozhikode informed me that “we are working on a plan to recognize your success in the competition.”

Update 3 on 17-May-2010

I am very happy to inform that CyberPark officials recognized me as the ‘Designer of CyberPark Logo.’

I was invited for the foundation stone laying ceremony of CyberPark Kozhikode on 17-May-2010. A memento was presented to me by Mr. Bhaskaran, Mayor of Kozhikode. A cash prize was given to me by Adv. P M A Salam, Member of Legislative Assembly from Kozhikode.

The CyberPark foundation stone laying ceremony was attended by Mr. V. S. Achuthanandan (Chief Minister of Kerala), Mr. Mullappally Ramachandran (The Union Minister of State for Home Affairs), Mr. Elamaram Kareem (Minister for Industries, Kerala), Mr. Binoy Viswam (Minister for Forest and Housing, Kerala) and other dignitaries.

See photos of CyberPark Kozhikode Foundation Stone Laying Ceremony (17-May-2010) here…

Whenever I find a relevant and interesting design related links, I tweet them so that I can refer to them later. Recently when I had to look for a particular tweet that I’m sure I did, I spent some time in doing a search in Twitter. I didn’t get any satisfactory results, so I went to my Twitter page and pressed the ‘more’ button many times and finally I fished out the link.

To make matters easy, I am going to archive my tweets at the end of every month in this blog. I will be grouping them under headings for easy retrieval.

Following are my tweets @antzFx in March, 2010.

Advertising

1. Today we are going to see some of the coolest and newest car ads of the world. http://bit.ly/9oRVPk Compiled by @ConceptDzain

Designer

1. March 2007: Jacob Melvin is worried about graduating. Today he is a technical director for DreamWorks Animation. How? http://bit.ly/c8Ouqq

Logo/Identity Design

1. A Steve Jobs presentation has all the elements of a great movie. Read “Steve Jobs’ Presentation Secrets” at http://bit.ly/3YQzt6
2. One of the great ways to add an impressive style to a #logo is to use Negative Space. See these 30 great Logo Designs. http://bit.ly/bnqAOs

Print Design

1. Smiley: An interesting business card designed by Driv. http://bit.ly/cWdSJj
2. Better run! http://bit.ly/aN6xZi
3. Explosive colors; excellent poster design by Danil Krivoruchko. http://bit.ly/7dcsCD
4. A unique, personalized & custom made wedding invitation card adds to the joy of the occasion. http://bit.ly/bYzgSo Written by @abdussalam123

Product Design

1. Industrial design student Andrew Kim’s (@designfabulous) Coke bottle redesign is beautiful and a smart use of space. http://bit.ly/bQum2h
2. Liked this! Furniture by Anthony Dan are flat packs, temporary structures made from recycled and recyclable material. http://bit.ly/58uflI

Resources

1. “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” But I’m revealing: http://antzfxway.com/2010/03/21/secret-to-creativity/

Web Design

1. Children and you will like it! Bembo’s Zoo http://www.bemboszoo.com/Bembo.swf #Typography
2. Xtra minimalism! Just saw http://www.NowDoThis.com/ Read more about the useful application here: http://nowdothis.tumblr.com/
3. Hilarious! ‘How a web design goes straight to hell’ http://bit.ly/4HMme7 Created by @oatmeal

On 11-Apr-2010, IISc Alumni Cell is organising ‘Science & Technology Run’ or better known as ‘SnT Run.’ I got a chance to do the branding work. I have handled the branding of SnT Run of 2008. People liked the banners and posters very much: especially the ‘shoelace’ one. Read the full story here.

So here I am, trying to outrun myself.

I am doing three separate designs for SnT Run 2010. They are:

1. Logo Design
2. Poster Design for publicity
3. Banner design for the event

In this post, I am explaining only about the item 2: ‘Poster Design for publicity.’

Initial Ideas

I exactly know what I am NOT going to do this year. I am not going to use the imagery of a robot running. I am not going to use shoelaces. Although the run happens in the green campus of IISc, I am thinking about a race track. I am thinking about the markings on the turf. Then I have a view of somebody running towards the camera. He is running to me as if there is not much time left for the event. Wait, can ‘he’ be the date on which the SnT Run is happening?

The setting of the stage

This photo is taken by Sanja Gjenero (Lusi) from Croatia. Thank you Sanja for allowing me to use this photo.

Applying Gaussian Blur to a feathered selection showing depth
3D rendering of ’11 April 2010’ in SolidWorks

Arranging the numerals and alphabets and applying blur

Adding shadows and applying blur

Adding the SnT Run logo on to the turf

The idea was that the date of SnT Run is approaching, so don’t be an onlooker, be a part and so ‘Better run…’

This is the finished poster. Click to enlarge.

Environment friendly posters are Green!

‘Run for science, run for environment’ is selected as this year’s SnT Run theme. Nowadays whenever people think of environment or eco-friendliness, the ‘green’ colour fills their imagination. So I am told to come up with a green version of the poster.

Desaturated image

‘Feathered’ track

Adding original image in the background

Adding a green layer on top of the feathered track only

Changing the opacity of the green layer and applying ‘Overlay’ blending mode

This is the finished green poster. Click to enlarge.

I will be writing about the other two designs (logo and banner) soon.

Software: Photoshop, SolidWorks
Design Date: 07-Feb-2010