Celebrating Milestones

I was lucky enough to witness two major events in family members' lives this year. First, my boyfriend's sister got married. And second, my dad celebrated his 60th birthday. I was heavily involved in both events mainly because I designed the invitations. I like doing graphic design projects more and more. I usually only do them for personal things, but I would love to start doing actual client work.

This is the front and back of the wedding invitation for my boyfriend's sister's wedding:

I collaborated on this one with my boyfriend. He's an artist as well. I did the text and layout while he did the illustrations. The three ovals in the middle were sticker designs that were printed out and stuck onto the bags of Costa Rican coffee that were given away as souvenirs to all the wedding guests.

And here they are printed out:

Not the best photos, but I just wanted to include this. They look great in person. Roughly 5"x7".

Here are the invites I made for my dad's surprise 60th birthday party:

I did all the artwork and layout on these ones. And here they are printed out with the green envelopes I bought to go with them:

By the way, the surprise was a huge success. My dad is a smart guy but not very observant at times, so it wasn't too difficult to keep all the planning hidden from him. Great times were had by all!

Buffs!

Here is something I drew after being inspired by all the buffalo I saw when I visited Yellowstone recently. I was also inspired by all the stupid people that got out of their cars to take pictures of the buffalo from like 20 feet away.

I was amazed at how dumb people are when it comes to wild animals. Especially when they gave out this exact flyer at the entrance gate to Yellowstone, along with a newspaper about the park and several other forms of warnings about the wildlife:

I just redrew the sign to be a little more humorous.

Deadmond Does It!

Here is a cartoon that my boyfriend drew and then I colored.

This is based on a real, hypothetical conversation.

NW Animation Festival

So, I got to work on a stop-motion short for a whole year at the Art Institute of Portland before I graduated a couple months ago. Roles I served on the project include student director, writer, animator, puppet and set fabricator, rigger, and compositor. With the help of about 30 fellow students of mine from the Art Institute of Portland, we created "The Box Game".

I've been submitting the short film to festivals for the past month, including the Northwest Animation Festival happening right here in Portland, Oregon! They accepted our film along with 77 other films from around the country and world. "The Box Game" will be showing on the third day of the festival, this Sunday. Pretty exciting!

Also, we had DVDs made specially for the cast and crew of the film. Complete with commentaries! I designed the DVD case cover and disc art using images from the film. Take a look!

Job Hunting

I found this drawing on my boyfriend's desk and decided to paint it in Photoshop. This is what it feels like to look for a job.

Hayden Bug

I have an idea for a children's book...

Blog Banner

I finally made my own banner for this blog, as you can see above. Here's the original way I designed it:



And here's what it looks like after I adjusted it to fit better up top:

Chainsaw vs. Super Hipster Part 2

Here's the clean up drawing I did by hand:

And here it is colored in Photoshop CS5:


And here's a black and white version just because I think it looks cool:

Chainsaw vs. Super Hipster

My animation friends and I had a Superhero/Supervillain themed party a few days ago. I was given a superhero name by my buddy, Dan Koss, a couple years ago: Chainsaw. I'm guessing it's because of my loud and forceful nature....but I'm only guessing. One of my other friends,Norman, dressed as a Super Hipster. So, I drew the most likely interaction that would occur between Chainsaw and a Super Hipster:

This is also how I was feeling this morning.

I want to clean it up by hand and then color it....soon.

Glorification

Here's a digital painting I created this weekend. It's me. This is what I look like in real life.

My Brainchild

This is my final project for Image Manipulation last quarter. We had to redesign an existing CD cover - front and back. I was calling it my brainchild for a while because I was working on it every day for about a month....plus, I just love how it turned out. Created with Photoshop CS3 and CS4.