Making Texture: Another Happy Accident

Yesterday I was attempting to make a textured background for one of my magazine pages using an image I found of a bit of rust. With some twisting and turning of the image I managed to create this FREAKIN' AWESOME pattern in the texture!

Sadly, it was too detailed to use as a background but it'd be perfect for using as a tiled image somewhere else! I like these happy accidents I have! :)

My "Happy Mistake"

Last night I was trying to make a metallic-looking texture to use as a colour scheme for one of my projects. I'd made some spray paint patterns with gold spray but when I'd scanned them in they lost their shine and their glittery appearance so I looked online for a simple metallic background that I could use alongside the sprayed patterns and combine them somehow to create more texture.

I started off with two separate images:

The first the metallic surface I'd found and the second the spray paint texture I made. I tweaked the levels and using the blending mode 'Divide' on Photoshop my main tile was made.

This was the end result of that process. 

As I was using this to cover an A4 sized pattern, or at least part of it, I copied the layer a few times and rotated it, flipped it etc. So that it all blended in nicely together and so that when overlaid onto my pattern, there wouldn't be any harsh lines showing where a few images had been used and stuck next to each other to cover the entire page.

What I didn't realise however until long after I'd finished, is that the pattern I eventually made by piecing a few of these images together was something even nicer than what I had intended! 

This final result reminds me of a kaleidoscope effect, or even some sort of jewellery like amber or rose gold. I guess sometimes the coolest things do happen when you don't intend for them to! Or as my teacher once called things like this... "Happy Mistakes". (But that sounds a bit dodgy to me)

My Book Design: Professionally Printed

I came home yesterday from a birthday trip and amongst some other packages, this beauty was waiting for me. If anything I think it excited me too much... But it looks so cool! And knowing I made it just adds to it. I feel sorta proud of something and it doesn't happen often!

So relieved that it's another thing I can now cross of the To Do list! :)

The Impossible Repeat Pattern

Designed for a brief and based around the Penrose Triangle (aka the impossible triangle) I made this repeat pattern, which was intended for a music accessories company to base a new range of products around. The idea for using a triangle came to me when I thought of the older, more nostalgic cassette players or boom boxes and their play, pause and stop buttons.

The triangle idea was further developed by me rationalising that if this pattern was intended for a range of music accessories, a key feature of this would be movement (both the musical side of it, and for the people that would be using it: people on the go). The Penrose triangle was thought of as it symbolises something that never stops and that is continuous and related well to music as that is also something that is constantly evolving and moving and changing direction.

I have made a small Ident (logo) to accompany this pattern, but both still need a colour scheme added to them. I'm quite looking forward to experimenting with this a bit further!  

Book Illustration: Abstract Portraits

For one piece of coursework in the first term we were given a brief to illustrate a book to help tell the story. The book was Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which if you have read it will know is quite abstract and strange in its own right. With this in mind I wanted the images I made to reflect the story and tone of the book. These are not what I have used as my final pieces as I feel the intense colours were not a true representation of the darkness of the world in which the book is set, but are part of the process to getting there.

Style Tests: Glass Frog

As part of my animation I've started experimenting with different styles in which to draw my Frog for the sequence. I found one geometric style by Matthew DiVito, which really caught my eye and made me want to try it for myself... So I did. 

As much as I love it though, I think I'd be making things more complicated than they need to be with this particular style. I do love it though. He looks like a piece of ceramic in the 4th image!