Jailbreak Betties and the power of ArtOrder

ArtOrder
If you have been following my blog for the past 3 months you would know that Friday is when I post my submission for the newest ArtOrder Concept Tuesday assignment. Unfortunately, I will not be taking part in next week's event. It does pain me to miss a week after being active since the beginning and never missing a week. The fact of the matter is that I have been putting to good use the advice and suggestions laid out by Jon Schindehette over at ArtOrder and I find myself very busy with work. So at least I have a good excuse, right? Fear not! I have set aside some time and I have already begun work on my Concept Tuesday piece for the following week (I just couldn't let that one slip by, too much fun.)

Jailbreak Betties
I have posted several Roller Derby related items here on my blog: shoes, a helmet, and poster. I have been active with the local team for a while now but my activity with them has really ramped up since my wife join the Tallahassee Roller Girls "B" team, the Jailbreak Betties. Such as my unsuspecting designing of the Jailbreak Betties logo.


The team was brainstorming and coming up with ideas and my wife had one and asked if I would help her out and quickly mock something up. I am just glad I instinctively started with a 12 x 12 300 dpi file because before I knew it they had selected mine and were moving forward with it. Thankfully it held up beautifully to a live trace in Illustrator and I was able to pass off a vector version to the shirt people. The team got theirs last night at practice and low and behold so did I.

Jailbreak Betties shirt (limited edition rare variant!)

If you are wondering why I have "Mr. Sapien" on my back, it is because my wife's derby name is Babe Sapien, in homage to the Hellboy character Abe Sapien. I was given some ad space in the brochure for this upcoming game and whipped up a surprise bit of encouragement for the wife since this is her first bout.


Good luck Capital Punishment and Jailbreak Betties in tomorrow's games. This is JB's first bout and CP's first WFTDA game! Good luck ladies!

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Roller Derby poster in process: Part 3

Welcome to Part 3 of the process of painting and completing a poster design for the Tallahassee Roller Girls. If you missed the other installments you can catch up here with Part 1 and Part 2. We left off in Part 2 with the finished approved painting.


As with all types of production there will be changes that are unforeseeable, both good and bad and there were both during the months I worked on this poster. To speed things along I will hit the high points, the Tallahassee Roller Girls because a national WFTDA team, formed a "B" team - the Jailbreak Betties, and lost their scheduled venue for this bout. All of these now affected production of the poster, with the venue change grinding the production to a halt.

Thankfully, in the fullness of time a new venue was found and all the details were nailed down and I could finally begin production. I am included all of this because these things are part of the process, part of what you need to expect and learn to deal with when working on a project.

After receiving all the information for the poster as well as a content template and typefaces that were used on previous posters I made a first pass layout of the poster.

First pass.

After getting everything that had to be on the poster arranged I ran it by Hope Stewart, who has been my go between on this project. Her note including increasing the size of the team names and venue (since it has changed), lighten the text, remove the "B" team logo, and visually separating the content along the bottom better. I got to work on pass 2.

Pass 2 - getting closer.

I was feeling a lot better about the poster as a whole after finishing pass 2. The suggestions had all lead me in better design directions and I felt we were getting close. I passed it back to Hope for a fresh look. She agreed that we were getting close, I just needed to fix a couple of things. I had the names of the venue as well as the Burn City Rollers wrong and the content at the bottom was still not working.

ALWAYS triple check your spelling as well as names and dates. Have at least 2 other people look at everything you are doing that involves text and get it signed off by someone up the chain of command before something is printed. Mistakes will always happen, but unless you can prove that you did everything in your power to make sure it was done right, it will be your fault. I speak from experience.

With these new notes, I give the poster another pass.

Pass 3, third times the charm.

Both Hope and I liked this third pass and it was reviewed and approved by heads of the team. Completion and approval of the 11 x 17 poster was just step one, I now had to create all the various smaller sizes and arrangements of the poster that will be used in the promotion of the bout. These included:

8.5 x 11 color

8.5 x 11 Black and White

8 x 10 '4 up' Black and White

5.5 x 8.5 black and white brochure cover

Creating the smaller sizes was a straight forward task which included minimal changes to the content. Because all the work was done on the front end of this project these last bits all fell into place and made for easy completion.

This concluded my end of production, I handed of the files to the printer and we are currently awaiting the finals back in all their various sizes. I hopefully will be working on some more posters next derby season, it was a real blast to work with the team to create this one. I hope you have found this 3 part process helpful.

If you are in Tallahassee on May 30th, you should attend the bout! This will be the first WFTDA bout for Capital Punishment as well as the premiere bout for the Jailbreak Betties.

Final poster.

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Derby Helmet

I was approached by the The Refalyzer , a ref with the Tallahassee Roller Girls, to make his helmet unique. He handed me a white helmet that had a green demon skull face already applied by one of the Roller Girls, Obsidian Whiplash, and asked me to do something cool. With my trusty paint markers in hand I filled in the rest of the helmet. With the blessing of the involved parties I also worked back into the green demon face to make it consistent with what I was doing. The helmet made it's debut this past Saturday at a winning bout for Tallahassee's Capital Punishment over Jacksonville.

The helmet in action at the bout! Look at it go... vrooooom!

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Roller Derby poster in process: Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of what will now be a 3 part process of painting and completing a poster design for the Tallahassee Roller Girls. There are possible changes to this seasons bout schedule so the content for the poster is in the air right now. Part 2 will follow through with the completion of the painting and Part 3 will be addressing the text and content.

Where we left off...

Picking up where we left off in Part 1 I was explaining how I try to work the entire canvas in passes trying ( and usually failing ) to give equal time and attention to the painting as a whole rather then over working ( like I did the face ) one piece. With this in mind, I will still begin to add larger details like the line work on the stockings. For an element like this, I will place it on a separate layer to allow easy editing or removal if it just isn't working. An element like the stockings could easily make or break the entire piece if they look weird or out of place. To make sure it looked correct I found several pieces of reference to see how the line work of stocking will wrap around an actual leg. I decided the best way to accomplish the look I was going for was to lay down paths using the pen tool and then to stroke the the paths using a custom brush. I was very happy with the end result.

Stockings added

By now everything has had some sort of attention paid to it, though as you can clearly see, some areas more then others. At this point I am really fighting the urge to start super detailing. I realize this is a good sign that I like were I am going with this piece as a whole. I stay focused and continue to work the entire canvas starting in the middle and working out from the face and hand.

The magic and the alligator begin to take shape

Now the detail work can begin. I start to lay down some of the lightest and darkest of values to begin to push and pull areas. I pay a lot more attention to detailing areas like the hair and scales. This is the point in the painting I do a lot more siting and observing of the painting. One of the greatest teachers I have ever had, Ed Love, explained that the act of making art is a conversation between the piece and the artist, a back in forth of mark making and responses to those marks. He taught me that some of the most important moments during the creation of art is during those moments you simply sit, observe, and THINK. I know some painters will turn their paintings to the wall for a while to get a fresh perspective. I stare and observe. This is when I address areas that are not working, look odd, or where I realized I made an actual error. I also begin to finalize the foreground and add last details such as the blades of grass ( on their own layer ).

Much better... and almost done!

Lastly I lay down the absolute brightest and darkest values and try to make the areas of importance really pop and draw the eye in. I give everything one last pass, making sure everything is working together to create the desired finished image. Finally, I consider this piece finished, though most likely some areas will need additional work once the text and content begin to be placed. I also still need to prepare a gray scale version of this image, but this will also need to wait for the finalized content.

All finished

Check back later as I will bring you Part 3 as soon as I am provided with the final content. I plan to cover any alternations needed to the painting, the lay out and arranging of the text and content and the creation of the gray scale image.

Part 3 is now up and can be see HERE.

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Roller Derby poster in process: Part 1

I have been commissioned to create a poster for the Tallahassee Roller Girls for a bout they have in May. With the permission of Hope Stewart I am going to give you a look at how I go about creating such a piece.

Getting started:

The theme of the bout is Déjà Voodoo and I was given a free licence to do whatever I felt was cool, consistent with the 'feel of derby', portrayed women in a respective manor, and touched on the name of the theme. Once I heard the theme I had an image pop into my head that is pretty close to what I ended up using.

Sketches:

At this point it is all about getting the idea out of my skull and onto paper (without making a mess). I did a series of thumbnails to work out composition and arrangement of text and once I was happy with one of them I sketched it up at full size and ran it by Hope for feedback and revision notes.

Painting:

At this point I should mention I use Photoshop to do all my painting. For this painting I am working in a CMYK 16 bit/channel document at 300 DPI with a .25 inch bleed. I am working in 16 bit because not only will there be the 11 x 17 full color poster but there will also be 8 1/2 x 11 black and white posters and a smaller black and white brochure.

Back to the painting...

This is were it gets fun and the magic happens. I will lay down a loose under painting to work out local color choices and to get a feel for where I want to take the piece. I usually have a color palette in mind but sometimes once I start working on a piece I find a different direction will work better in the end.

And so it begins...

I try to work an entire painting all at the same pace to bring up the final piece consistently. For this piece, however, I really felt the face of the woman was key to the entire work and so I heavily work it first.

4% done... now for the other 96%

Now it is time to move on the rest of the painting and begin to bring it all up to the level the face is at. Working broadly at first and slowly becoming more and more refined the image will take shape.

Slowly but surely moving out from the face

The magic begins to take shape

As I paint I will rework areas where the drawing didn't have enough information or I realized something just isn't working any longer. Slowly but surely the image begins to take shape. Don't worry Mr. Alligator, your time is coming!

This will conclude part one. Check back later as I finish the painting and layout the text to create the final poster image!

Part 2 and Part 3 are now up for you viewing pleasure!

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com