Digital Images

These are my sketches after I played around with them in Illustrator-basically I just scanned the pastel drawings, did a 6-color live trace on each of them, cleaned the edges and played with the color. The live trace gave them more a graphic quality. Unfortunately when they uploaded to blogger the colors totally changed (ex/ In illustrator, the coliseum is blue-ish) so ignore the colors here. Now, since they are vector images I can move them all around, change the sizes and put together my book!

Pre-Illustrator Images

So my images finally uploaded...but they are all upside-down and sideways. Sorry, you'll just have to turn your heads to see them...

Here are 3 of 15 of my sketches, before they were digitally altered in adobe illustrator

Inspiration

I love pop-up books, and I love Alice in wonderland...I like the idea of taking an actual world and visually transforming it into nonsense. My pop-up will not nearly be this complex though... I'm thinking like a one-page-pops-off-another type thing (i swear, this makes sense in my head) rather than the individual pieces popping up (for both time and sanity reasons)

This is really cool too, though much more complex and not exactly what I am planning to do. But really cool none the less. Check out other works from this artist- Google: Brian Dettmer book autopsies.

Images (?)

I've been trying to upload the scans of my pre-digitally altered sketches, but for some reason it will not work. More to come...hopefully.

Landscape

For my landscape I want to play around with the idea of cultural diffusion- each separate country has specific landmarks that define them. For example, the Statue of Liberty is AMERICAN, while the Eiffel Tower is definitely FRENCH. However, how many French people actually frequent the Eiffel Tower? It seems as if these landmarks are put in place to define a country to the rest of the world, however they have little to no modern cultural significance other than that they play well into the tourist industry. (Seriously, the last time I was at the Empire State Building, it was me and 200 Asian tourists).

Not that cultural diffusion is a bad thing, I just think that it is funny how these national landmarks are most frequented by people from other countries.

I want to make a fun, upbeat pop-up book to visualize this idea.

I plan on drawing a bunch of world landmarks in a fun, sketchy way, scanning them, altering them in illustrator, then creating a book with 'touristy' facts. Also, none of the landmarks are going to correspond with the correct countries, for example, the Parthenon may be in Japan, while a pagoda might be in New York. Its going to basically be a mixed up atlas, with the intent in spreading the meaning that these cultural landmarks really belong to mankind, and while they may have a historical cultural identity, they stand independent from their country of origin.

Sketchup...kinda like Ketchup!!

My name:

Unique Spring Break

Over spring break my friends and I went down to Chincoteague Island, VA to spend the week. The island isn't your typical spring break destination, as the 6th of us made up about 1/3 of the population (the other 2/3 were over the age of 60). We spent our days on the beach (wrapped up in layers of sweatshirts and pants), bike riding and exploring the wildlife trails (where we saw real wild ponies!!) and our nights at the Chincoteague Inn mixing with locals (Jim-bob and self proclaimed "Crazy-Drunk-Guy"). It may not sound like it, but it was the most fun I have had in a long time.

In addtion to Chincoteague Inn karoke night (where we were an overwhelming success with our rendition of Journey's Don't Stop Believing) I went on a sort of "unique object scavenger hunt", searching for visually appealing places where I would be able to stick my bumper stickers. The project itself was a lot of fun, and my friends became more and more involved as the week went on, pointing out places and objects as we continued to explore the island. It was really nice to have input from them, and in turn my Unique sitckers became a major disscussion point and source of entertainment.

I took a lot of photos of "unique places" and choose 11 to print. I've posted a few of my favorite here.


This guy, a Chincoteaque local was one of the sweetest people I have ever met. Not only was he interested in my project, but he immedietly jumped up onto his machine and posed with the sticker without question. He then continued to tell me all about his grandchildren, his oldest grandaughter (I think her name is Danielle, she is 4) loves to color and he thinks that she will grow up to be an artist. It was really cute.


Mr. Whippy's! The best icecream on the island- 97% fat free AND 97% unique!


I had to sneak on to private property for this one. I liked the look of the rust, and had to capture it. It was in the middle of a junkyard with all kinds of crap laying around. Right next to a truck was a big fishing boat that I almost stuck my sticker too...until I realized there were two people in the cabin who were watching me the entire time. Weird.



I didn't take this one to be a part of the project, but a group shot with the sticker was definitely necessary. My friends, they're pretty unique.