It has been an incredible week here at the Echo Enduring Blog. The traffic has really been through the roof, at least in terms of my traffic history. I’ve had two post that have proven highly popular on various social media and design voting sites! The first is an article called “5 Things to Consider Before Designing Your Next Website” and looks to be on pace for becoming the most popular post ever on this blog!

The other article is entitled “The One Design Tool You Absolutely Need to Use,” and talks about the need for designers to use their minds as their most important design tool. It hasn’t done quite as well yet, but it has climbed into the top 7 posts, which is still pretty darned good for just five days!

I also picked up an iPhone last week, which has been pretty sweet. Of course, I’ve been totally addicted to it ever since. What an amazing device, with so many cool apps! Unfortunately, that’s also probably part of the reason that I have been less productive than I would have liked. Over the long term, though, I think that the iPhone will actually help me become more productive overall!

Now on to this week’s Echoes!

Logo – Evernote

Obviously, I have been looking at all kinds of cool and different apps for my iPhone over the past few days, just to see what’s out there. One interesting app that I came across was this one called Evernote, which I am currently trying out. Regardless of what I decide about the app itself though, I absolutely love the logo, and am including it as this week’s feature logo.

Evernote

For those who may not have heard of Evernote before, it is a an online note saving service that uses the tagline “Remember Everything”. You can also use an iPhone app to add and access your notes (as well as other mobile apps for Blackberry and Android, and desktop apps for Windows and Mac). The logo does a great job of representing the product, calling on a common belief out of folklore.

Traditionally, elephants are believed to have remarkably memories. It has been said that an elephant never forgets anything. Now, I’m not sure as to why kind of empirical evidence there is to support (or disprove) this myth, but it has certainly provided a great deal of fuel for symbolism and representation. The Evernote logo calls very clearly upon this tradition, by using a stylized elephant as their primary mark, emphasizing the notion of helping users remember everything.

The other part of the logo that I absolutely love is the way that the elephant’s ear folds down, in a manner that is reminiscent of many “documents” in contemporary computer iconography. As such, the logo really does a great job of fusing the symbolic implications of the elephant with the fact that the primary purpose of the application itself is as a means of recording notes to help remember things!

All in all, I think this is a brilliant mark, which integrates really well into the standard iPhone style icon!

Art – CP9

Apparently, this week’s artwork is a piece of fan art relating to the manga The One Piece, or something to that effect. Like almost every other manga out there, I’ve never heard of this one, but from what I’ve read it seems to have a devoted cult following, and I suppose that this piece forms a part of all that. I just think it’s really cool.

CP9

For me, the principal strength of this one has to be the rendering what I understand to be the central character, at least of this illustration – the front-and-center behemoth who looks like a cross between the Thundercats’ Cheetara and the Incredible Hulk. The muscle definition is enough to make the character appear as a perfect specimen of the massive man-beast. I also really like the way the fur is rendered. It looks oddly soft, which is an interesting contrast against the general look of the character.

As for the other folks in the background – they certainly make an interesting group. Like the cheetah-hulk man, they are all exceptionally well rendered, but I have to say that I am not entirely sure what to think about the samurai giraffe mailman. He’s either completely ridiculous or absolutely terrifying. I can’t seem to decide which. Mister zipper-for-a-mouth is pretty darned creepy too.

I’m sure this all has a great deal more meaning if you are familiar with the context of the original manga. However, since I know nothing about that, I will simply have to appreciate this awesome painting on the basis of its exceptional composition, vivid imagination and high degree of energy!

Tutorial – How to Make a Professional Buddy Icon in Photoshop

This week’s tutorial comes from the relatively new design blog DesignInstruct. Seriously, the site only launched a few weeks ago. There are only a handful of articles up there so far, but the site is growing quickly. This particular tutorial will teach you how to make a glossy looking person icon (or “buddy” icon as the tutorial states) in Photoshop.

How to Make a Professional Buddy Icon in Photoshop

This is a fairly straightforward tutorial, so people of most skill levels will be able to follow along. The only exception might be a brand new beginner. The tutorial does make extensive use of the pen tool and layer styles, so if you don’t understand those things, it might be a bit difficult to follow along. Fortunately, the tutorial does come with unique screenshots showing the settings for each layer style, which will be hugely beneficial to someone just starting out.

For this reason, I think that this tutorial can be hugely valuable. It certainly is not a comprehensive analysis or collection of everything that can be done with layer styles, but working through the steps in this one will help a novice, or even an intermediate Photoshopper, to really get to know layer styles better, especially as they relate to creating clean, glossy effects.

This tutorial also helps add a bit of weight to something else that I have been thinking about lately. Traditionally, I’ve always considered Illustrator to be the application best suited to icon design. Recently, however, I’ve seen more and more icon work being done in Photoshop. The argument for this is actually quite compelling. While Illustrator’s graphics are generally more scalable, if you design your initial icon large enough in Photoshop (512 x 512 for example), you should never need to scale it down.

Considering that you can actually achieve more effects in Photoshop, I’m beginning to understand why more and more people are choosing it as their application of choice for icon design – and this tutorial is an excellent example of the high-quality product that can result from this decision.

Website – Academy

This week’s website is that of a design firm simply known as Academy. The site is an interesting and unique instance of how to creatively structure content in a manner that appears very open, and almost random, but which sticks very rigidly to a grid!

Academy

The screenshot is actually from their Projects page, which is a much better example of what we are talking about. I would, however, also like to address their home page, which does something interesting to the logo. On this first page, the logo is fragmented into a series of squares, and then scattered across the grid in an abstract and almost random manner. The pieces are large enough, however, to be recognizable as parts of the logo. This creates an interesting effect and take on site branding.

One thing that I though would have made this even cooler would have been a simple bit of JavaScript of jQuery that would have allowed the user to rearrange the pieces into the proper order (minigame!). I actually tried to do this, with no luck!

Now, if we flip over to the projects page, there is actually quite a bit more content, showcasing some of the work that Academy have done. All of the images are cropped and structured into square or square-based blocks, which are scattered down and across the page. Content snippets describing each project are also found in simple square blocks, interspersed between the various images.

As you scroll it becomes very obvious that all the elements are very strictly placed onto the grid. The proportions of the images and the content areas are all uniform, though occasionally by multiples. For instance, some images will be two squares long, or two squares deep. This provides interest and contrast in terms of size, while maintaining an incredible uniformity in terms of alignment.

The same thing can also be said of positioning. Rather than placing every single element in the same horizontal and relative vertical position on the page, the designers chose to play with space, placing images and content in different areas and using a number of empty blocks to build in white space and help prevent the site from becoming to dense. They also made some considerations for varying browser widths, with some content elements shifting as the window shrinks down.

Of course, all of this happens without every breaking the perfect alignment of the grid, which in my view makes this a superbly executed site design.

Well that’s it for this week’s Echoes. Which ones were your favorites? As always, if you know of any designs, tutorials or art that merits being included in a future post, feel free to let me know about it!

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What’s one of the single biggest media explosions of the past couple months? How about James Cameron’s massively epic Avatar? Aside from the much-documented use of Papyrus for the film’s logo, it was a pretty incredible film, especially from a visuals perspective (I thought the story was good, but not outstanding). This movie is about a lot more than the story, though. It’s all about the incredible digital creation of an entire digital world.

When I watched the film last week, I was really struck by the vastness of Pandora (especially since it’s only a moon), and the incredible imagination that went into the design of the various creatures. I don’t even know what too call most of them, but they all seemed to have their basic form in animals I recognized. There were giant beasts that looked like a highly modified rhino, smaller predators that ran like wolves in a pack, and a much larger predator that was like some sort of giant black panther on some powerful, mutating steroid (one of my personal favorites).

Obviously, though, one of the biggest parts of this budding franchise is the Na’vi, those wonderfully blue indigenous people of Pandora, who call themselves the People and are the guardians of their beloved world. It seems to me that these people have already completely captured the minds of the worldwide Avatar audience, and that this film could very easily establish an enduring legacy that will implant itself firmly in our cultural consciousness.

Just look at some of these examples of stunning fan art:

Neytiri by Orpheelin

Princess of the Omaticaya

Avatar Wallpaper

-Avatar-

Avatar

Na'vi

Avatar Na'vi

AVATAR

Neytiri

Jake Sully

There are some beautiful images here (and you can see even more below), and the implications of all these creations and astounding. The film has only been out for around one month, and many people have already seen it multiple times. I went to see it with a friend, and am considering going back to see it with my wife.

The film and it’s story appear to have already pieced deeply into our cultural fabric, and while I’m not certain that there is anything in the film quite as iconic as a character like Darth Vader or Yoda, the plethora of fan images and frenzy of discussion and activity surrounding the film will grow beyond the screen. I personally expect to see the foundation of an entire franchise, complete with novelizations, graphic novels, toys, possibly a cartoon series. I would even expect to see some sort of cinematic sequel, despite the massive cost of creating the first one.

Of course, the Na’vi people are at the very center of all of this, as we can see through even more artistic renditions of them:

Na'vi

DERP NA'VI OC

jake sully

Neytiri

Neytiri

The Na'vi Connection

neytiri avatar

Avatar's Na'vi

Jake Sully Study

Neytiri

The immense popularity of these people raises some very interesting questions about exoticism and the human condition. I tried to include mostly original paintings and drawings here, but if you take even a quick look around deviantArt, you can easily find all sorts of instances where people have actually manipulated self-portraits in order to transform themselves into Na’vi.

This is nothing new, really. For years, there has been an entire sub-genre of fantasy in which people envision different types of humanoid creatures (often cat-like), in an effort to push past the mundane every-day-ness of their own humanity. It’s basically a form racial escapism (which is different from racism, since we are accepting that all of humanity encompasses a single race).

The very premise of the Avatar film takes this to a whole new level, though, since one of the key elements actually involves humans using technology to grow Na’vi bodies and temporarily transfer their consciousness into that body. It’s the ultimate fictional realization of this form of escapism! I think that this is at least part of the reason why these blue people, and the film surrounding them is proving so popular.

Avatar: Jake and Neytiri

Neytiri

My Na'vi

Na'vi

Neytiri

Ultimately, I see everything that’s going on here as a designer’s dream, albeit through a very specific form of design. I haven’t seen any interviews or special features myself, but I know enough about the special effects world to also know that hours and hours and hours of work must have actually gone into designing the Na’vi as a race. They had to look distinctly alien and foreign, but still resemble humans and be attractive enough for the audience to be drawn into their world.

It must have taken a significant investment, by a large number of incredibly talented people to bring the Na’vi from a conceptual people to an entire race of fully rendered digital characters.

Now imagine one of your own designs reaching such a level of cultural success as Avatar seems to be destined for. Perhaps it’s a logo that becomes as renowned as the Nike swoosh or McDonald’s golden arches. Or maybe it’s a poster that becomes so well known that an entire stream of similar designs emerge in tribute or reference, like the famous Uncle Sam poster. Maybe it’s a product, like the iPod, which defines an entire aesthetic, all on it’s own!

It would, I think, be incredibly arrogant and probably foolish to make such recognition the goal or purpose of any design. As designers our primary objective must always be to ensure the successful realization of a particular goal or purpose, which I do not believe should ever be fame itself.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t dream.

What do you think? I know I was kind of all over the map in this post, but I wrote it as a kind of showcase of and reaction to the incredible amount of beautiful Avatar artwork that I’ve seen popping up. Which ones were your favorites? Are there any other comments, reactions or ideas that you would like to add?

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I haven’t posted anything for a couple days now. I’ve been busy helping redecorate our living room/dinning room. Basically we just painted a couple of walls and hung some new artwork that we purchased on the weekend. However, I am taking a few minutes to post this incredible image that I came across.

Lately, I have been working through Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. I read the first five about two years ago, and picked Lord of Chaos up a few months ago. Currently, I am reading A Crown of Swords and loving the fact that most of it is from the perspective of my favorite characters so far (Perrin, if you must know). Anyhow, as I usually do with every series I read, I have also been perusing the internet to see if I can find any cool art (fan or otherwise) relating to these works. It was in one of these searches that I came across this absolute gem:

Moiraine Damodred by Pyji

The painting is of Moiraine Damodred of the Blue Ajah, the first of the Aes Sedai that we meet in the series. I won’t get into much more detail than that, since this post really isn’t about the books.

The point is that this is the single best piece of Wheel of Time fan art that I have ever seen. The style of the painting is really grungy, which I like, and the costume is really well designed. I also love the way that Pyji managed to really capture the ageless quality of the Aes Sedai in Moiraine’s face. Smooth as porcelain and very beautiful. It’s not the way that I have imagined the character to look, but somehow it still seems right.

Anyhow, kudos to Pyji for this awesome work, which I just wanted to share with everyone. If you like it, go check out her gallery on deviantArt. She’s got a really awesome portrait of the Joker too (a la The Dark Knight). Oh, and keep an eye out for another post about Wheel of Time art, where I am hoping to collect some of the best art that I can find from or relating to the series. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment or drop me a line!

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I have a lot of fantasy novels. In fact, I have an entire 6 foot bookshelf crammed full of them. I’ve never really bothered to count them, but I have them stacked two deep on some shelves and it absolutely sucks when I have to move them.

Still, it is one of my favorite places in the house. There are so many great stories there, and great memories. Some of those books I’ve had since the eigth grade, when my lifelong love affair with fantasy really began. Many of them also feature some really cool cover illustrations, which I will sometimes just go and look at, either for inspiration or for the sheer pleasure of the artwork.

Looking through them the other day, I thought that it would make a great blog post to feature some of my favorite works. At first, I was just going to post them all, but soon I found myself writing a little blurb about each cover. Because some of the covers were created by the same illustrators, I have also grouped them together under different artist headings.

So here they are: 12 awesome fantasy covers straight from my bookshelf. Enjoy!

Darrell K. Sweet

If you’re into fantasy at all, or even if you’ve walked past the fantasy section in your local book store, chances are you’ve at least caught a glimpse of Darrell K. Sweet‘s work. He is, I think, most famous for providing the cover art for Robert Jordan’s ridiculously huge Wheel of Time series. To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of most of the images, but this one really strikes a chord with me. I also think it’s Sweet’s best rendering of Rand al’Thor.

My favorite Wheel of Time cover

Todd Lockwood

Todd Lockwood is a master of his art. He is undoubtedly one of my favorite artists in the genre, and it’s amazing how many of my books have his art on the cover. I include two of his covers here. The first is from the Annotated Chronicles, a collection of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman – the foundational trilogy that established the DragonLance franchise and one of my favorite series.

Lockwood is a master at painting dragons

The other book is The Kingless Land, which I found in a used bookstore and, honestly, bought purely because of the cover. It actually wasn’t my favorite book to be sure, but the cover art remains one of my favorite images of heroic fantasy, so I absolutely had to include it here!

One of my favorite pieces of fantasy art...ever

Jean Pierre Targete

I don’t know much about Jean Pierre Targete, other than the fact that is work is eerily beautiful. I first saw this work in Fantasy Art Now, and incredible collection of works from many of the industry’s most talented emerging artsts. When I later saw this The Fair Folk on sale at Chapters, I decided to pick it up. I haven’t got around to reading any of the stories yet, but I sometimes take the book of the shelf just to look at the cover art.

Eerie and beautiful

Michael Whelan

Michael Whelan is a prolific illustrator, whose work has graced the covers of some of the biggest names in the fantasy genre, including Ann McCaffery, Piers Anthony and Tad Williams. His incredible artwork for the cover of To Green Angel Tower is, for me, one of the most iconic works modern fantasy. It’s also probably one of my favorite books in modern fantasy, so the two certainly go well together.

An icon of modern fantasy

Sorcery Rising is an interesting one. I’ve never been able to figure out exactly what it is about this cover that draws me in. There’s nothing particularly exciting, but I’ve always just really liked this work, which is vastly more complex than I think it initially appears.

Simply captivating

Stephen Youll

Stephen Youll is another prolific artist, whose art has also graced the covers of some of fantasy’s most popular works, including what might very well be the single greatest fantasy novel of the 1990s – George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. I really love this image, which I can only assume is Jon Snow and his direwolf, Ghost. There is another edition of this book which features the illustration across the entire cover, but I had a difficult time finding a decent image of it, so this one will just have to do.

Now, if you will excuse a bit of a digression, let me say that of the 12 books listed here, this hands down, the best. If you are a fan of modern fantasy, do yourself a favour and get a copy of this book. My only warning is that there is some bad language, and some overly intimate scenes which I just gloss over. Still, it’s an incredible book and the ending will blow your mind.

Just wish the illustration was bigger

Now back to the task at hand. I certainly don’t want to pigeonhole Mr. Youll as an artist who only paints wintery scenes, but here we have another one of my favorite book covers. I think it has to do with the snowy owl, which just adds a real sense of mystery to the illustration. There is also something about the design of this cover which really reminds me of some of the old Lord of the Rings covers. One problem I do have with this cover, though, is the simple fact that, based on the illustration, you would never know that one of the main themes of this book is the protagonist’s struggle against the demon/dragon that posseses him!

The owl's cool, but where's the dragon?

Steve Stone

More than any of the artists listed here, Steve Stone clearly works digitally. There is a definite feeling of photo manipulation mixed with digital painting in his work, and the cover for Shadowfall is an excellent example. I couldn’t say for sure, but it certainly looks like the woman (actually a goddess) looks like she could have been created from a photograph. Regardless, there is an incredibly sinister feel to this cover.

A truly sinister image

Keith Parkinson

The loss of Keith Parkinson, at the age of 47, represented a terrible loss for the fantasy art community. Keith, who is probably my favorite fantasy artist, has created cover illustrations for many of the most popular fantasy books. His work graces the covers of such writers as Terry Goodkind, David Eddings and Terry Brooks. His work also graced many of the game boxes for the once-popular online roleplaying game, Everquest.

Keith's first Sword of Truth cover

The Tangle Box is probably has my favorite cover from The Magic Kingdom of Landover series, followed closely by Witch’s Brew. The illustration is clearly Parkinson’s, featuring the smooth polished that he achieved so brilliantly with his oils.

Another great Parkinson piece

Luis Royo

There is no doubt that Luis Royo is an extremely talented artist. I only wish that the vast majority of his did not focus on scantily clad women. Call me a prude, but that’s just not the kind of fantasy I’m into. Regardless, I do like painting style, and his cover for Sara Douglas’ The Wayfarer Redemption captured my imagination and convinced me to pick the book up.

I really like the look and feel of this cover

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I was looking through some of the most popular items on deviantArt yesterday – something that I do quite often – and I came across this little flash gem, entitled “1000 Words“, by Wenqing Yan (known as yummei). Done up as a web comic, this piece combines stunning artwork with a very poignant story.

The artwork itself has an obvious Anime influence, and employs one of my favorite styles out of that genre. The eyes are large, without taking up the characters entire faces, and I love the somewhat sketchy line work, combined with a watercolour type wash. It reminds me a lot of the artwork from some of the Final Fantasy games, and even more of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (though with a distinctly less gothic feel).

Here are a few screen shots of the beautiful artwork.

Screenshot from "1000 Words" by Wenqing Yan

Screenshot from "1000 Words" by Wenqing Yan

Screenshot from "1000 Words" by Wenqing Yan

Screenshot from "1000 Words" by Wenqing Yan

As beautiful as the art is, however, it was the story that really captured my attention. Without really giving anything away, I would have to say that, while there’s nothing particularly deep in it, the story was enough to warm my heart and make me want to share it here.

So, go have a read for yourself. It’s pretty short, but certainly worth a read.

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I always find these posts fun on other blogs, so I thought I would do one myself. Today, I bring you the 10 coolest illustrations I could find of one of my favorite X-Men: Rogue, the southern belle. I’ve always thought Rogue was a pretty cool character. It started when I first started reading X-Men as a teenager (and was, admittedly, probably at least partially hormone-driven), but as I grew up I also came to realize that she really is a very complex and intriguing character.

The isolation of her mutant power – absorbing people’s energy, powers and memories by skin to skin contact – is a stark contrast to her obvious beauty. This makes for an extremely conflicted character who has been portrayed in many different and interesting ways over the years. The same is true of these 10 images. They are all quite different, and all put a different spin on the Rogue character.

"Rogue" by Overlander

"Rogue" by icyheart

"Rogue" by Summerset

"Rogue" by jFury

"Rogue" Pencils by Ed Benes; Colours by atombasher

"Rogue" by rocom

"Rogue" by Alex Garner

"Rogue - evo color" by Candra

"Rogue" by DennisBudd

"Rogue #3" by Rodolfo Migliari

Aside from the last image, I found all of these on deviantArt. I tracked the tenth image down through a Google search. Anyhow, if you have the time, check out some of the other work by some of these talented artists!

I’d also love to hear from you, so leave a comment and let everyone know which image is your favorite. Or, let me know what other characters you would like to see posted here, since I’m sure I’ll be doing more of these kinds of posts!

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In today’s post, I am thought I would show some of the stages of my digital painting entitled “Shimmer Fey”, which I painted for my wife. This should give you at least a glimpse of my workflow when creating a detailed illustration like this. Of course, every single project is different, but for the most part, these stages represent the way I work. Let’s start with the initial sketch.

Stage 1 -Original Sketch

Often, if I am working on an illustration of some sort, I will do at least one initial sketch on paper. Sometimes, I will scan that sketch and use it as a starting point. In this instance, however, I did everything right in Photoshop itself, using my Wacom tablet. The first stage was just a really loose sketch, which was basically just to establish the positioning of the fairy, and to block out some main lines.

Stage 2 - Basic Colours

Once I had the sketch established, I increased the resolution and started blocking in the basic colours. This helps to establish the palette for the piece.

Stage 3 - Much More Detail

This third stage shows the biggest leap in progress. By this point, I have added in the background (based on a heavily modified image of a forest), built up the flower on which the fairy is sitting and worked out much of the detail in the fairy herself. By this point, the basic feel and composition of the piece has been set.

Stage 4 - Final Image

The fourth stage is also the final stage. From the third stage through to this completed image, most of the work simply involved what I call polishing. I worked up a bit more detail. You’ll notice that I also changed the colour of the flower itself. Because I work with so many different layers in my Photoshop illustrations, it was easy to just apply a couple colour adjustments to the layers containing the flowers.

I also worked to create more depth through the use of light and shadow, and by applying a slight blur to the immediate foreground. If you compare the final product against the image in its third stage, I think that you will find that it has a lot more weight and dimensionality.

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