Ape on the Moon: Contemporary Visual Arts » Digital Illustration

Digital Collage Illustrations of Thomas James

Alex Mathers — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:14:48 +0000

I’ve been watching our friend at Escape from Illustration Island, Thomas James’ illustration style evolve nicely over the last few years. His work exhibits an clever mix of realism, digital and traditional techniques that create something very distinct to the Portland, Oregon-based illustrator.

I’ve been focusing lately incorporating more digital collage elements into my work, which helps me to communicate difficult concepts in a much more effective way while developing a style and approach that is more unique to my true creative vision.

Dan Matutina Creates Edgy Google Planets World for Google Plus Course

Alex Mathers — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:28:03 +0000

I’ve been putting together a comprehensive guide for creatives and other freelancing heroes on how to use Google+ for winning projects and clients. Feedback has been really good, and the course becomes available on February 7th 2012.

I asked Philippines-based illustrator Dan Matutina to create the artwork for the course and to add some further depth to it. The brief was in creating a futuristic space-world that encapsulated the features of Google’s new social network Google+ as a professional tool.

This meant representing ‘Google+ Circles’ with planets and ‘Google+ Profiles’ with spaceships and zany control panels. The results, as you can see, were nothing short of fantastic, and I’m pleased to show them to you in the run up to the launch of the online course, which is available here.

Cover Image:

‘Part 1: Getting Ready!’ Cover Image:

Part 2: ‘Setting Up Your Google+ Hub’ Cover Image:

Part 3: ‘Taking Action!’ Cover Image:

The instantly downloadable e-course is available to buy here.

Philipp Zurmöhle’s Structured Sketching Style and Digital Drawings

Philip Dennis — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:46:44 +0000

We’re enjoying the energetic and structured pencil work from Philipp Zurmöhle. Based in Nuremberg, Germany, Philipp works as graphic designer for apparel at Adidas Performance, while also working on his own illustration and design projects. His work is a real mixture, balancing a more digital style with his pencil drawings. He tells us more.

My artworks have recently moved away from abstract graffiti-inspired drawings to more figurative ones. Those often show monkeys or other animals in a tribal or cult-like situation. They tend to have a vigorous expression, that contrasts with their almost soulless eyes. I mostly use pencil, ink and aquarelle on big sheets of paper.

For my commercial illustrative work, I use a combination of hand drawn elements and vector forms. I don’t like the very digital outlook of images, so I try to make all them look a bit more tangible.

Will Long’s Atmospheric Illustrations from Pencil to Digital

Philip Dennis — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:45:59 +0000

There are some really beautiful textures being woven together in Will Long’s illustrations. Using a mixture of pencil work, scanned-in surfaces and Photoshop elements, he creates these moody, often chilling scenes. We’re enjoying the cinematic quality and sense of stillness in them. He tells us more about his process.

“My work usually originates as pencil sketches with varying degrees of detail. Everything after the sketches is done on Photoshop. Some sketches I work from and others I scan in and work on top of.

By this stage I normally have a loose frame to build up and I lay out shapes with the polygonal lasso. I use a Wacom tablet and custom brushes to make textures or refine the shapes. I’ve also got a bunch of scanned textures, which I sometimes bring in, and on recent projects I’ve blended the white and light greys away, cut bits out and rearranged them.

At the end, I like to merge everything and blend it with a texture, or drop very low transparency colour layers over the top. The picture seems to sit better as a ‘whole’ afterwards— I think that’s just to satisfy myself and make it easier to leave it alone.”

Line Drawings to Colour Animation: ‘Tiji Colour’ by Akama Studio

Alex Mathers — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:07:02 +0000

I stumbled on this wonderful animation sequence by French animation studio ‘Akama‘, based in Paris. The opening few sections made me think of ‘colour by numbers’ painting as a child, and has got me itching to get drawing and painting again. Hopefully this short video will inspire you too.

Illustrations Inspired by Myth from Juan Chavarria Jr.

Philip Dennis — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:32:35 +0000

We love the simplicity in the way Juan Chavarria Jr. treats his pencil illustration in Photoshop. The restricted palette highlights the drawings beautifully. He describes below how he finds inspiration and creates his work.

“I read a lot of mythology, or tragic stories online. If I read something I could translate into an illustration, I instantly brainstorm in my Moleskin with a Staedtler pencil, or sometimes a Sharpie pen. When I find that I’ve accomplished the story told in its simplest way, I transfer that onto large sketch paper. When the drawing is finished, I scan and color it in Photoshop.”

Dale Edwin Murray’s ‘Hip Hop Head’ Series

Philip Dennis — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 20:15:48 +0000

Here are some examples from graphic artis, Dale Edwin Murray. We like the scanned-in textures he uses in his dital imagery, giving it a screen-printed, tactile feel. For more of sharp-edged forms and bold colours, check out his more recent ‘Hip Hop Head’ series on his site.

“I’m an illustrator and graphic artist and my work covers editorial, advertising, greetings cards, art prints and apparel graphics. All of my work is produced digitally but is made to give the impression, to varying degrees, of hand made printing techniques.

I try to combine halftones and textures with a bold, conceptual and stylised approach to create a contemporary take on mid-century aesthetics.”

‘Countdown’ an Animated Sequence by Céline Desrumaux

Alex Mathers — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:55:22 +0000

It’s animated work and visual imagery like this that gets me extremely excited about independent artists like Céline who can create pieces of such quality. I’m looking forward to seeing more from this talent.

Illustrations from the Eye of an Architect with Vigilism

Philip Dennis — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 15:06:58 +0000

With a constant play between digital and analog techniques, Vigilism creates beautifully gritty, imagined cityscapes. Born in Nigeria, now based in Brooklyn, he employs both his architectural skills as well as his eye for urban aesthetics to create these intricate and textural pieces.

I’m a Brooklyn-based artist/architect who splits my time between my emerging art profession, ‘Vigilism‘ and my design practice, ‘Freeform+Deform‘.

I have always had a fascination for creating visual narratives, architecturally-inspired futuristic dystopias, and urban-mapping strategies. From the outset, this work has been characterized by exploring the relevant potential for a variety of digital media, when combined with traditional methods of representation, in the field of architectural visualization. As a result, my illustrations which are typically outputted digitally, possess a textured and painterly quality.

My process includes combining hand-drawn sketches with photos I’ve taken of industrial textures and deteriorated paper surfaces with 3D models both designed by me and ones I’ve downloaded from the internet. There is also a constant interplay between the digital and analog in my work as I often print out digital images, sketch over them by hand, scan them back in so they can be modeled in a 3D software or retraced digitally, and then finally I degrade the integrity of the sharp digital lines thru inaccurately ‘vectorizing’ the image in Illustrator and layering on textures in Photoshop.

Jordan Speer’s 3D ‘Pop Hell’ Series on The Road

Philip Dennis — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:18:27 +0000

As the name suggests, Jordan Speer’s ‘Pop Hell’ series depicts scenes of surreal horror in bright, cheery colours. I love the peculiar atmosphere he’s created, especially with his unique style of rendering. Even more amazing knowing that it could’ve been made in the back of a van! Jordan explains.

I make all of my work with a Macbook, a printer, and flatbed scanner. I usually begin by acquiring reference images for the objects in each scene, then I model them in Wings 3D, a free modeling application. I’ll have anywhere from 10-20 reference images open at one time so I can quickly glance around and find the form from different perspectives.

I try not to be rigid during this process – often, I’ll end up disregarding the references and finding the form more organically— almost like a 3D doodle. After I’ve completed all of the models, I bring them into Cinema 4D and begin arranging, texturing, and lighting the scene.

I work primarily with isometric perspective. Because the perspective is fixed, much of this time is spent scaling, rotating, and arranging the objects to my liking. Sometimes, I’ll spend days on this— rendering and re-rendering and comparing the images. After this, I print the image on a cheapo home printer and scan them back in.

For me, this is an important step because the images becomes tangible for a minute. I’ve had bad experiences in the past with crashed hard drives and corrupted files— days or weeks of work disappearing in a flash— so, during this step, I can hold the work in my hands for a minute before sending it back into the digital nether.

Because I work from my Mac, I have the luxury of setting up shop wherever there’s room for my mousepad. Most of the time, this in a workspace in my room, and occasionally Spencers Coffee house— an awesome little cafe in my hometown of Bowling Green, KY.

Right now, I’m on the road— driving the band Sleeper Agent on a US tour and working wherever/whenever I can.

Usually, this means a hotel, a friend’s house, or the back of the van. Because of this, I’m attaching an image of the world I’ve seen the most over the past few months— the US via the open road.