My iPad wishlist

iTablet, iPad, iSlate, Mac Tablet, whatever it is to be called. I have a bargain to make with you, Apple.

I'm a PC, guy. When I went to school I was trained on a Mac, because well, that is what people did. I work in the Graphic Design field where Macs are considered by most to be the only choice. But I have used a PC in my private life so long that I prefer the capabilities and the fiddly bits under the hood.

Be that as it may, I will change my cyber-religion and convert to the cult of MacFanism if you do one simple little thing. I really, really would love it if the screen on the new iWhatever has the capability interpret at least 512 levels of pressure via a stylus. I'd prefer 2000 levels, but I'll take what I can get.

I'm an illustrator and my holy grail is a fast, solid computer with a slim, one-piece form factor that I can draw directly on. And in order to draw with any kind of fidelity or finesse I need to be able to map Adobe Photoshop to recognize how hard I'm pushing on the screen.

Pretty please. Make this happen and I'll swear off Windows and even stop following Bill Gates on Twitter.

Thank you.

Milton Glaser Drawing in Real Time

MILTON GLASER DRAWS & LECTURES from C. Coy on Vimeo.

I'm very impressed with his purposeful strokes. It's amazing to see done in real time.

Digital Painting - Elizar

A digital painting I did for a RPG project I'm working on. He's an Elf with expensive tastes. The character brief was for an aloof character who eschews violence and tries to solve his problems with guile.

Conan, or CoCo if you're nasty.

I've been a big fan of Conan O'Brien since I wore a younger man's clothes. And as such I felt compelled to get involved in the current Conan vs. Leno vs. NBC situation in the late night world.

By getting involved, I mean of course, drawing a picture. The pic below is a vector illustration done in the style of a '30s-ish advert. I decided that a stylized wood-cut look would work well, chose a serif and san-serif typeface that suggested the period, added some color and here it is.

If it's not making a lot of sense, O'Brien has a trademark red-head curl and has the nickname "COCO".

Mua-Dib. The mouse that hops like a bitch.

Iron Horse

A demonic-horse hybrid I did for a motorcycle club.

Vector Chicken Diagram

A vector illustration showing an unfortunate chicken.

Vector Crest

A crest for a larger project. The file is completely vector.

A vector illustration for a postcard to promote a veterinary symposium. The file is fully vector.

Egyptian Lizard Man

This is an illustration I did for an RPG setting. It's a lizard-man designed to look like an Egyptian painting. The design was vector illustrated and the texture and edge treatment were done in Photoshop.

REPO Flyer

I got a project a while back to make a flyer for the Sacramento Horror Film Festival. Specifically to promote their showing of REPO! The Genetic Opera. The movie is campy, but it has undeniable charms. Perhaps because I had to re-watch it fast forwarding and freezing to get the details of his helmet right it has rubbed off on me.

I did a very raw initial sketch for the project to get the basic layout and position of the three figures. I decided that I liked the idea of the Repo man in the front with two Genterns flanking him. That initial sketch is below to the left.

After the first round the client was happy so I did a refined sketch (that involved watching scenes from the film for around an hour to get the details of the costuming correct). Then for the second proof I put the refined sketch with the copy incorporated. After that proof I flipped the text around so the angle was reversed, because it pulled the eye into the composition better. Then it was off to photoshop to rasterize the vector illustration and add the texturing. It was a nice project and I’m pretty happy with the result.

I did get a message back from the client:

Hey, so i took your flyers down to LA for the fangoria convention and people LOVED THEM. I ran into Terrance Zdunich and Darren Bousman and they LOVED them too. Darren asked for one he liked it so much. People were using the flyer to get autographs from them. GREAT JOB! I’d like to work with you again on more REPO art and poster stuff. Great work!!!

Tim M.

Illustrator 1.0 (1987)

Very awesome. This training video (originally a VHS)shipped with the early version of the software. Illustrator is the definitive vector drawing application in the world and seeing its first baby steps is really shocking.

SXSW Spec Work Panel

In my meanderings I came across an interesting spec work panel at the South by Southwest Conference.



I see both sides of the issue here. For those not in the know, spec (for speculative) work is giving ideas up front before any contract is signed. Typically this is done on the internet and spec designing has become proforma at some online freelance design sites. The idea is that you invest time, effort and inspiration on the off chance that someone will decide to choose your idea and pay you.

I have had clients approach me with sketches in hand that were done on spec by some other designer. It’s pretty shady getting a sketch for free and using that person’s idea and inspiration to try and get a discount by having someone else do the actual illustration. When I come across this I bow out from the job.

High end designers eschew designing on spec because it devalues their work. Design is a highly skilled field and the amount of fiddly crud you have to know is staggering. Easily comparable to any four year degree. We’re professionals and we deserve to be able to earn a comfortable living at this. It’s not reasonable to ask a skilled professional to put in 8 hours of work for $25.

Go to Craigslist for your town and check out the Creative Gigs section. I’m sure you’ll come across someone offering $25 for a logo, or maybe even offering the chance to create their logo for free.

Having photoshop on your computer doesn’t mean you’re a designer. Just like having MS Word doesn’t make you a writer. (In fact, most low-end designers don’t know that Adobe Photoshop isn’t a tool for creating logos. Really, it’s not.)

People working on spec or for next to nothing reinforce the notion that design isn’t worth much. That it’s unskilled labor that goes to the lowest bidder. For a small mom & pop coffee shop having a $25 dollar logo isn’t going to destroy them. But it isn’t going to make people take them seriously either.

On the other hand, designing on spec will likely be around for good. There is a market for it and some people will surge to fill that niche.

What I see happening is a stratification with high-end designers floating like a pudding skin on a vast sea teeming with low-end, paid next-to-nothing amateurs and semi-professionals.

The important thing is to make it obvious which side of the surface you’re floating on.

New Site

I'm taking my old and clunky Wordpress site and moving it over to the new hottness that is Blogger. I'm beginning my sixth month of serious freelancing and have begun to add digital painting to my bag of tricks. As of yet my paintings are a little rough, hopefully they will come along quickly.

I'll try to add more process documents than I did in the past. I guess we'll see what we see.

Sun Etching

This project was to create something that looked like a Victorian wrought iron sun with a face on it. As far as jobs go, this is fairly straight forward. One color vector lineart.

My process started (as typical) with a sketch. I initially thought of going with a pitted outside, but when I started the actual vector drawing it didn't look right.


I also decided that the wavy tines didn't look as good as the straight ones, and this is where it ended up.