How does The “DoodleFeltery” sound?

It’s been a while, but I finally made another felted “thing”. Long story short: A friend threatened bodily harm if I did not continue to build my DoodleFactory® legion, and that was enough motivation for me.

For those who are curious, here are some progress shots of the little zombie guy (not) coming to life [hover over the image to get the control panel to make it stop]:

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10.10.10

Last Sunday was a unique day in LA, not only for the repeating numerical sequence of the date, but because it marked the first “open street” event, known as CicLaVia. For 5 brief hours, 7.5 miles of LA roadways were closed to vehicular traffic, and open to any person or animal on foot, bike, or other self-propelled mode of transportation.

My boyfriend is an avid biker. He’s used his bike to commute to work, done 300 mile bike-and-camp tours, and is constantly advocating for bike reform in LA. Me – I’m a rookie. I have a great bike, but most of the time I’m afraid to ride it on the busy streets of Los Angeles.

Sunday’s event was so relaxed and enjoyable. I’ve read estimates between 50,000 – 100,000 attendees, but it never felt crowded or overwhelming. I’m sure there were a number of people stuck in their cars that day who were inconvenienced and annoyed by the street closures, but all they’d have to do is ditch their car and join the fun to change their minds. Seriously, the best communal day in LA that I can remember. I hope CicLaVia returns soon, and often.

Mia Dyson

When I was at the Big Corporate Record Company, all of my co-workers seemed to be die-hard music fanatics. They played in bands, wrote music on the side, attended concerts every weekend – living, breathing and loving music. I was the Art Girl who couldn’t tell which group the guy in the photo was supposed to be the lead singer for.

Over the years, I’ve added my share of Eminem, K’Naan and of course Lady Gaga to my iTunes rotation, but my tastes have always leaned to indie bands and female vocalists (♥ Regina Spektor, Kate Nash, Temper Trap, Adele, White Lies, etc).

I recently picked up a new client thanks to a connection from the old record company. For the past few months I’ve done a handful of design work for Weapons of Mass Entertainment, a multimedia company helmed by Dave Stewart (of the 80′s Eurythmics fame).

Through this job, I was introduced to the music of Mia Dyson – an Australian singer/songwriter/guitarist now making waves in the US. It’s always great to work on projects you’re excited about, and this has been one of them. Mia and her record label have allowed me to push past the cookie-cutter formula, and really have fun with layers, grunge and hand-made elements interspersed in the design. I’m a huge photoshop junkie and being told I can completely manipulate a photograph is just the best assignment.

Take a look at the EP cover and poster I designed, then go check out Mia’s website: www.miadyson.com and listen to her music:

Ego Boost

If I’m ever having a low day, I just have to look at this email one of my production manager’s wrote about me a few weeks ago. And I quote:

“Irene is the goddess of art. For real, she is in books and stuff… Zeus’ place on Olympus was beside Irene’s crib.”

-D. Robinson

Hah!

Poor Man’s Portfolio Update

Ooh, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working! I have plans for a few posts highlighting some of the projects I’ve been involved in lately, but for now, here’s another installment of my Poor Man’s Portfolio, featuring some of the singles I’ve designed for Interscope/Geffen/A&M over the past few months.

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So, I Felt Like Felting

A year ago, I looked up instructions on the art of needle felting, which is a surprisingly versatile, and relatively easy way to make mini sculptures out of wool. Through the tutorials, I learned how to felt an egg and a duck, then jumped into free-styling my own creature based on a character I’d drawn. The result was less than satisfactory and I packed my felting supplies into the Closet of Abandoned Hobbies.

My recent adventures with “Danbo” rekindled my crafting spirit and I thought I’d take another stab (har har) at felting this weekend. Without much planning, I attempted to felt another one of my characters. The first guy I made turned out relatively cute, but he wasn’t quite right. I thought his small size (he’s about 3″ tall and the size of my cell phone) prevented me from getting some of the details in, so I sized him up a bit on my second try. I also added some wire into the limbs, so the larger one has move-able arms and legs.
I forgot to take more in-progress pictures, but here’s one on the left:

I may just have renewed my love of needle felting. I’m pretty happy with this larger size and may try to bring more of my characters to life in the future.

My First Indie Band Poster

Having a major record company as a #1 client, is nothing to complain about for a fledgling freelancer, but I’m starting to work on a few outside projects and I’m really excited for the opportunity to expand my design repertoire.

Today, I made a quick, in-store performance poster for my friend, and part-time indie record label owner. When I sent him the final comps, he said (and I quote): “That came out better than I expected!“ That could be read the wrong way, but I’m feeling optimistic and will take it as a compliment instead.

Check out the band, Quadron online, or better yet, go see them at Amoeba Records in Los Angeles on June 6th!

Poor Man’s Portfolio

For those of us living in the US, “the single” (in its physical manifestation) is a thing of the past, but apparently album singles are alive and well across Europe. I only know this because over the past 5 years, I’d worked on hundreds of these things at my former job. Actually, I’m still working on quite a few of these as a freelancer, but here is a smattering of singles I worked on (mostly from the last year or two, since I don’t have the files that go further back).

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Going Gaga

A few months ago, I worked on the USB packaging of the latest Lady Gaga album. I received my samples this week:

This was the Limited Edition USB character from the last album when she went through a brief “anime” phase. It’ll be interesting to see if there ends up being an entire series of Lady Gaga USB devices featuring her ever-changing personas.

15 Minute Retouch & Design

One thing that will eventually come out in this blog is the fact that I’m an incessant doodler. If I have a proper utensil and  surface available, chances are I’m scribbling something. Doodling used to have a bad rap, but I’ve read several articles vindicating doodling as a means to help one concentrate, instead of the contrary.

After yesterday’s poster club meeting, I’ve started to wonder if it’s possible for doodles to transcend the flat page. While Mike and Alan were discussing the recently adjourned poster club meeting, I busied myself with a pair of scissors, playing with the balance and shapes created when the two objects intersected eachother. Is this 3-D Doodling, or am I just fidgety?

In any event, I thought the interlocking scissors made an interesting graphic. I got caught up in the spirit of Poster Club when uploading photos to the Facebook group, and decided to make a quick digital “poster” to serve as an album cover and record of yesterday’s participants. Transforming this ordinary snapshot into something “poster-worthy” took only a few minutes in Photoshop.

There are a ton of free Photoshop actions available on the web, and one of my staples is the poetic actions set offered by dearcrissy.com. My favorite of the bunch is “epitaph”. That particular action results in a rich black and white photo with burned edges. I usually like to customize the image further by going into the layers and playing with the opacity and overlays to bring back some of the color. In this instance, I also added a layer with a diffusion glow to give the image a hint of grain and grit. Not bad for a couple of clicks of the mouse, if I do say so myself.