Design Process for Company Logo (Part2)

continued . . .

4. Revision (Typeface Logo)

I could sense the client was starting to have doubts about the direction of the design.
So trying to keep the design process moving, I put aside the graphics and focused on typefaces for the logo. Allowing her to see her company name in various typefaces could inspire a better direction. The focus here was to keep "small dog" in lower case and "BIG CITY" in upper case lettering. She really liked that concept for the typeface.

5. Revision (Graphics)

The next few days talking with her, I tried to convince her that the hydrant concept, (my personal favorite) was the stronger design in my opinion. At first she was negative of having a fire hydrant, something dogs urinate on, be the focal point to her company logo.
I tried to point out that a fire hydrant is one of the most popular icons (next to a bone) that you could have for representing dogs. But to me, not only does a red fire hydrant represent dogs - but also cities and urban communities. She liked that angle . . . so I began creating variations to the hydrant/dog theme.

After sending her the Hydrant theme samples, her response was now excited; She now felt like the direction was exactly what she wanted.

More to follow . . . 

 (Click Here to Continue to Part 3) 

Design Process for Company Logo (Part1)

The next few posts will be dedicated to showing a sample of my design process for making a company logo.

According to my records, this work was done in 2001, a little over a month after 9-11. The contract was to create a new logo/mascot for a new website. The site's goal was to sell pet items for tiny dogs that lived in larger cities like New York City. The entire process took 1 month to complete. This is not the full record of the work, but I'll try to focus on the main points and show the development as the project moved along.

1: Character Development 

I asked the client what type of dog she wanted to represent her company. She wanted it to be instantly recognizable as a dog - so this eliminated any exotic featured small dogs like a chihuahua whose features may not be immediately seen as a cartoon dog. It was agreed that a beagle Snoopy-like dog would work best.
I sent her several sketches of cartoon dogs, from various levels of comically exaggerated features -- to a very toned down character.

Her response was that she wanted fewer details to the dog. The character should be very minimal in design - yet unique enough not to be confused with any other dog character.

2: Concept Sketches 

I then sent a page of rough concept sketches showing the simplified dog character doing various things related to cities. She liked the idea of seeing a city outside the window. She favored the version with the side view of the dog - wanting to see his face.

3: Color Comps 

The following images were tightening up and colored including a couple of font/logos.

She felt the dog looked too rigid and angular. She was also starting to feel that maybe this wasn't the look she wanted. I sent her these follow-up colored comps making small adjustments and softening the dog a bit.

More of the design process to follow tomorrow.

 (Click Here to Continue to Part 2) 

Kid's Book Process

Below is an example of my process for doing the pages for my Children's Book, Bobby's Biggest Bubble. I'm finding this method to be much more time consuming than expected -- mostly because the files are getting so huge, which slows down the computer's response.

I've been placing every character and it's coloring on separate layers; this was the plan so that I'd have files that would be easy to adjust for an animated eBook version of the story. But when setting the artwork for 11.25" by 8.75" at 300dpi - every time I create a layer, the more memory is consumed. The more memory consumed, the slower the response and adjustments become -- until I'm waiting 5-10 seconds to backup and make a correction. It may not sound like much, but when something pauses the flow of creativity . . . it becomes a tedious and aggravating process.

Shown above are stages #2-4
Sketching is stage #1 and Shading/Highlighting is stage #5 

So now, I've been making adjustments and eliminating layers.I'm forfeiting the convenience of layers for animating the book -- but I need to get the book done first and hopefully keep my sanity for a bit longer . . . 

Daily Quick Sketch: Shark Dance

Side-by-side Corrections

Below are pencil sketches for the Raphael image I made recently.
I wanted to post these two sketches side-by-side to show how I struggled with his left leg. The pose seemed to work in my head - but when placed on paper, the angle of his leg and foot just didn't work at all. 

Pencil sketches of Raphael showing changes

Maybe I needed to enlarge the foot to give it a better perspective + depth -- or -- drop the leg lower away from the body. After reworking that foot several times, I decided that angle weakened the overall composition; so the whole left leg was changed and balanced out with the right leg.

Surprisingly, doing this made me see how far off I drew the center of his belt's knot. The belt was also corrected. Overall, the pose is not as dynamic as I wanted it to be, but at least now the leg is not a disturbing distortion.

Home of the Brave: Comic Strip

Long ago, in a age without stylus tablets or Photoshop, I had a comic strip which was printed monthly in a fanzine. I belonged to a online service called Q-link, which I was able to dial-up on my Commodore 128 for $.06/minute. (That's right, I had a 128k computer and spent about $60-$75 a month for an extremely slow 300 baud service. If any of this is not making sense to you - look it up on Google!!)

A strip from The Home of the Brave circa 1985

On Q-Link, I joined a forum of comic book people. The forum had collectively made their own comic book stories and images, which were gathered by the forum leader. He would then make photo copies, staple the pages together and mail them out to all members. This was the only way to share our works with each other ( and far more cheaper then downloading our works for $.06/minute.)

My contribution was doing 5 comic strips a month, based on my dysfunctional superhero family called, "The Home of the Brave". The star was Ollie, a teen who wins multi-millions in a lottery (by mistake) and decides to become a superhero. He is trained by his "Gramps", who lives in their attic and is thought to be insane ( but the truth is, he was the WW2 super-spy he claims to be.) The rest of the cast is rounded out: a sweet oblivious mother, a doubting curmudgeonly father, an insane candy store lady, a master disguise sidekick dog name Roger and reluctant frightened sidekick cat named Mew.

Very rare colored version of my comic strip (This one was my favorite of the bunch)

The fanzine lasted over 2 years (and later several pages of the strip were reprinted and revamped for a local paper called The Spa Times.) I tried to submit my work to various newspaper syndicates, all which said my work was good but the topic was too specific for the market . . . that people in general wouldn't have an interest in a superhero family. (Well over a decade later, Pixar's The Incredibles would prove those syndicate people to be very wrong.)

A sample of the 5-strip monthly format which lasted over 2 years in Comix Fanzine
These were the very first 5 strips of the series

Oh, and for those who don't know who Johnny Carson was . . .
LOOK IT UP ON GOOGLE!

Raphael of the TMNT

Several weeks ago, I did a Donatello image which seemed to get the most attention/traffic over everything else I have drawn during my digital painting exercises.
So, I did another turtle . . . this time it's Raphael.

Eventually, I will do the other two TMNTs and then compile all four images into one.

The original pencil sketch

Timmons

One of my oldest characters done in digital pastels.
I really like the texture and look of pastels for a kid's book. I know a story I have written that deals with food characters that I will do next year . . . I believe this is the style I will use for that story.

5-minute Sketch

Quick 5 minute warm-up sketch of a kitten.
Playing around with the nature brushes for the background.
The entire image was done on the Wacom Cintiq stylus.

Slugg!!!

Another character design from very long ago.
Originally this was a design for my cousin, but the look was too comical and wasn't what he was looking for.
This is original pencil digitally colored.