Analoge Rendering Course

Here are some old renderings that I did in the first year in the BA program here in Umeå. They are all made by using either markers or/and pastell (which I hate and have never used once since the end of that course!) but you can still get quite nice and smooth surfaces by using this technique.

Equipment: Copic Markers C0-C9, Verithin

Time: Probably around 30 min

This is an own design of a Teapot. The thought was that it should almost look like flowing water, but there wasn't really so much time to think of the design because the focus was on practising how to render chrome.

Equipment: Copic Markers, Pastell, Verithin

Time: Probably around 1 hour

This is a so called "speed shape" that is inspired of a whale.

Equipment: Pastell, Verithin

Time: Probably around 40 min

Equipment: Pastell, Verithin and a black Copic Marker

Time: Probably around 40 min

For this rendering I was looking at a picture in a car magazine and tried to more or less copy it. It became far from a perfect copy, but still a decent rendering.

Equipment: Copic Markers, Pastell, Verithin

Time: A couple of hours

Sketching...

Time: 20 min

Equipment: Pilot Ballpoint Pen, Photoshop CS6 (Liquify tool for some minor correction)

CD cover design - Restitution by Binary Creed

I have had the honor to design a CD cover for the Swedish metal band Binary Creed's new album Restitution. I have been working with it forth and back over a half year period and have had quite alot contact with the band members to get it just right. The story behind the album is about a deeply depressed teenage girl who is having an identity crisis and suicidal thoughts on top of that. But about halfways through the CD she has a "short encounter" with religion which helps her out of her depression and she finally starts to find her true self.

I have tried to get this story into the CD-cover as best as I could by making a sad and insecure girl who is sitting alone on a corrupted earth (symbolising that the problem behind her depression really is the fact that the modern world puts such an immense pressure on how teenage girls should act and look), crying tears of blood (also symbolising her suicidal thoughts). The wings behind her symbolises her beauty and strength, that she doesn't get know that she has, and also helps bringing in the fact that religion playes a big role in helping her on her feet again. The reason why "Binary" is written in black and "Creed" in white is to express the contrast between darkness and brightness that can be found all through the CD. I have also been playing with warm and cold colors to try to make the cover more visually interesting.

Below I will make a swift explanation of my design process.

The CD cover - Digital Version

Close-up details

When I got the job I started to look around on the web for inspiration and this is one of the images I found. I have been using this image quite alot in the making of the girl on the final cover.

Before the first physical meeting with the band I put down some hours on doing about 10 very different concept in Photoshop by basicly playing around with images that I'd found on the web, just to have something do discuss around. I was personally very found of this concept because of it's simplicity and it's clear message.

I also did some variations and one of them looked like this and was simply the first concept put on top of an image that the band had been using in the past. At first this was just a result of my childishness but after discussing with the band I got the following directions: "Make the concept where the girl sits on the globe, but take away the bigger shadow version of her and make it all a little bit more hallelujah." So that's what I did...

I also decided to remove the piano thing because it didn't really feel very metal. I have made the wings from skratch and this is how the sketch looked before I started making them.

This is the final "print version" also including the backside. When we sent the first cover on print it turned out really dark and half of the details where gone. So I decided to make a special version for printing which is alot brighter, just to make sure that the actual CD won't be too dark.

Here is the backdrop image that Binary Creed are using behind the band on their conserts. It's a version of the CD cover where I have cleaned away all the stars and only kept the main things: The globe, the girl, the wings and the name.

Equipment: Photoshop CS6

Time: Too long to count...

Photoshop Car Rendering

I have been planning to do a proper Photoshop car render for a while and finally I found the time to do it! The car is an own design and has no particular brand. While doing this I got some advice from some of my friends in the Transportation master program here at Umeå Institute of Design which is always nice. There is no CAD involved in the making of this render and most of the reflections is a result of good old trial and error, where I kept what I felt worked and removed the ones that didn't really add anything.. Towards the end I did two things to make it feel a little bit more interesting. This is far from the only way you can accomplish that but it's one way. First I did a merge of all the layers into a new layer (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E). Then I applied the effect called "noise" to the new made layer to make it feel a little bit like a photo. After that I found an image on the web of an empty painting canvas, or something like that, and I put that on top of everything (also on the sketch) and put the layer on multiply. Haha I'm sorry to say that it's fake if anybody thought that I had done the sketch on some really cool paper. It's really all photoshop, but I guess that you could get the same effect by sketching on some cool paper and then scanning it in.

Equipment: Photoshop CS5

Time: 10h+ (It is more or less my first rendering of this kind so there has been a lot trial and error and experimenting in the making of this)

Personal Logo Design Compilation

I decided to do some sketches for a personal logo/symbol for myself and I ended up with a decent amount of slightly different variations of the symbol. And then, just for fun, I arranged them in a way so that you can see how one symbol evolves into it's neighbors and after filling in the last of the missing links between the symbols I ended up with this chart. I still haven't decided which symbol I like the most, but somehow I think that the chart turned out to become a sort of art piece in itself. I'm not quite sure get where and how I will use this symbol, but I'm sure I will find use for it somewhere..

Equipment: Photoshop CS6

Time: 2-3 Hours (With mousepad....,)

Brokk Destruction Machine Sketching

Currently sketching for a school project together with Brokk, a Swedish Company who wanted us to create a new design language for their products. This is my key sketches where I found some interesting form elements to work on with. To be continued...

Sci-fi Life Drawing

This is what happend after I got bored in the life drawing class last week. I took a loose sketch where the proportions seemed ok and then I just played around, inspired of some kind of Sci-fi style. 

Equipment: Pilot V-sign and just a random red pen I found on the table... Photoshop CS6, for adding the gray

Time: 1 min ground porportions, 30 min building on the sketch and 15 min adding grayness in Photoshop

MC Sketch

Equipment: Black Copic marker and Photoshop CS6 (Cleaing away 

some dirt and correcting some small perspective issues with Liquify)

Time: 30 min

Equipment: Black Copic marker

Time: 15 min per sketch

Finishing the day by just sketching some random forms, which eventually turned into a motorcycle. I found something interesting in the 2nd sketch and I took inspiration from that and did a third which I put a bit more effort in.

Joystick ideas...

Here is some konceptual sketches for a joystick that we are developing in School (UID) together with Ålö, the world leading manufacturer of front loaders for tractors. These sketches are mostly made to visualise some ideas of a wireless joystick that I had and there is really no thought what so ever about ergonomics or usability. That will come later in the project. The reason why I played so much with the form is two things. 1. I want to have like a pallet of joystick related shapes that I can take inspiration from when sketching for the final joystick concept once we get there and 2. I think it's so fun that I can't resist putting some effort into the sketches. Actually this can be a problem because sometimes I have to be able to work quick and not care about how the sketches look. This is somthing I have to get better at and I have already come a long way. I think it's much about confidence in sketching. Once I get confident enough in my skills I won't bother if a couple of quick sketches looks like crap. 

Equipment: Pilot ballpoint pen, Pilot V-Sign Pen

Time: About 15-20 minutes per sketch.

Just playing around with some very quick and experimental joystick shapes. There was absolutely no real thought behind these sketches, they are more a result of just playing around with a black ink pen and seeing what it becomes.. I kind of like this quick loose style though.

Equipment: Pilot V-Sign Pen
Time: 10 min (about 2 min a sketch)