Magical Animal Alphabet: Ennedi Tiger

This cryptid is believed to be a living Sabertooth cat that lives in the Ennedi Plateau in the east of Chad. There are two different species, and the one below is more like the one that lives in the mountains, with a stubby tail.

Not-So-Magical Animal: Donald

Of course, when I said that there aren't many options for D, I didn't take into account The Donald:

The Donald is a non-magical animal that wrecks havoc wherever it goes. It likes to build walls and dislikes political correctness, poor people, and refugees. He especially likes to grab unsuspecting women with his tiny little hands.

Magical Animal Alphabet: Dropbear

As I continue my challenge, I find that some letters are easier to find animals for than others. 
Case in point is the letter D. The most common mythical animal is a demon or a daemon, or some derivative of that. This is way too vague. Also dragon. Way too predictable. But I did find this interesting variety of "magical" animal:

Now, I've never heard of this animal until I looked for a D magical critter. Turns out it is a part of a contemporary Australian folklore designed to scare tourists. It features a large and vicious carnivorous koala that live in trees and drop on the heads of unsuspecting prey walking beneath them.

Magical Animal Alphabet: Cthulhu

Continuing with my self-imposed challenge, here's Cthulhu:

Cthluhu was invented by H. P. Lovecraft in the short story "The Call of Cthulhu", and described as "A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind."

Magical Animal Alphabet: Basilisk

The basilisk, according to Wikipedia, is the legendary king of serpents. It can kill with a single glance. The reason he's considered a king is because he has a crown on his head. It is also not distinguishable from the cockatrice, which means I'll have to find another animal for C.

Blended Cat

My friend Hanna recently wrote about the importance of learning. So now that I'm on a break, I like to take the time to learn some new skills, specifically software skills that I don't have much time to dedicate to while going through a quarter full of demanding classes.

The first tutorial I followed showed me how to use the blend tool in Illustrator.

This is what I got:

Fun!

Magical Animal Alphabets

As part of the project for my Experiential Design class, Printing Is Magic, I made a couple of magical animal alphabets, only A and Z so far.

My plan is to add more animal alphabets, since they are so much fun. My goal is to get one every day. We'll see how it goes.

Half Way Through Design School

So I have hit the half-way mark, finishing the 4th quarter of my two-year program. This quarter I got to do a lot more illustration than previous ones, as you can see below.

For my Merging Media class, we had to come up with a feature and a pavilion for a public park in Atlanta. I chose Tanyard Creek Park, which is fairly small, but since it's right along a creek, it is quite lovely. It also has a large open field, which I thought would be great for a pavilion.
Below you'll find my pavilion rendering, which includes a large dog-like structure with two smaller dogs that serve as a pool and a bench.

My park feature is singing birds. I made a short animation that shows what they do.

For Experiential Design, we had to create a pop-up experience for some technology product of our choice. I went with Zuta Pocket Printer, which should come out shortly.

For this class I ended up doodling a bunch!
Here's my book cover, featuring the event logo and the model I made for a "pager" (similar to restaurant pager you get when you have to wait for your table):

Below is a gif logo animation:


via GIPHY

Here are some of the illustrations I made for the inside of the book:

The event tent at Oglethorpe University during Orientation Week

Inside the tent, you can find Zutar, the fortune-teller printer. You just place the printer on a sheet of paper, ask Zutar a question, and the answer would be printed out for you.

You can also relax in the lounge area and enjoy a toast with no-paper jam, because there's no paper jams with Zuta

If you take a selfie with your magical graduation props and post it on Instagram, you can win a printer or (for a higher chance) a T-shirt. It was very nice of Jenn to model the graduation cap for me.

You can print your name on a free magical notebook!

For Information Design and Data Visualization, we had to design a currency system:

This system honors the working class and heroes, to remind everyone on whom our economy is based.

We also had to design a manifesto poster that can be grounded by making a connection to an actual organization that work toward the same purpose.
My manifesto is to use my generalist propensities to make people see that there's enough in this world to go around if we don't hoard it all to ourselves. Basically, to show that the people on the top should not take more than they need, cause that hurts everybody, which is exactly what the organization United for a Fair Economy does.

Instead of a poster, I made an animation (special thank you to all the people who gave me a hand):

Fiddling With Animation

I recently started playing around with animation, first in Photoshop (you can find an old Chick-fil-A logo animation I made a few months ago here), and now in After Effects. Here's the result of my first actual attempt in AE.

If you're interested in using After Effects, you might find this guy's tutorials useful. And if you want to export your animation as a .gif, this tutorial explains it well.

Tarot Cards

Recently I participated in a workshop, led by Josh LaFayette, for which we had to come up for ideas for tarot cards that would promote an album or a product. I decided to go with Morrissey's latest album, World Peace Is None Of Your Business.
I really enjoyed this creative process that ended up with some fun illustrations:

For the title song

for The Bullfighter Dies

The backside of the cards

For Kiss Me A Lot

 

















Below are some sketches I made before the workshop, where Josh was very helpful deciding which to focus on and what kind of things would the ideas stronger.