SPRAWL | MECHANIC PHUNK, Take 2

Another take for SPRAWL'S Mechanic Phunk!

xister ADV page

A small adv page I made for xister.



And here is a first rough of another take.

Roma Film Fest | Official Image

My illustration work is featured as the official image for the edition 2009 of “Festa del Cinema di Roma” film festival.
Mystic defender Sarah Grimaldi from Xister did it again.

The claim of the 2009 edition is "il grande cinema attraversa Roma", wich sounds more or less like: "the great cinema goes thru Rome".

The work started more as a blend of graphic design and illustration, gradually shifting from the first revision you can see pictured down here in it’s step by step developing.

The first draft layout:


Polished linework and color flats:


Textured full colour illustration:


The idea was simple, the only things that stand out are the treatment of the film, I wanted the films to flow straight, planar, to celebrate the architecture of the auditorium pictured like a fallen spaceship in the background.

This image did not pass the final approvation so I had to start from scratch.

The main problem with this image was the total absence of life in it, was way too abstract: I was asked to bring in more life possible to exhalt the “festival” idea behind the whole thing. Keywords were: people, happening, engagement, entertainment.

Usually, from a graphic designer standpoint, I love minimal works, and I usually go very minimal when I have to do a graphic design job.
No decorative puke.
The sharper, the better.

On the opposite, as an illustrator, I like fresh and detailed linework, vivid color and complex compositions, with a subtle weird twist.

Basically I can say that while I like graphics to accomplish the communication of simple and strong concepts, I prefer drawing when I need to use advanced syntax to “expand” a concept rather than “contracting” it to a symbolic form.

The two approaches usually go along very well (lineart drawings + swiss typography = bliss), still for a very informal result.

Moreover, I like a pictorial approach too, like the polish movie poster illustrators do, but I usually use it for very serious and moody works. I have a limited expressive spectrum with it and it would not fit that keywords thing of the brief.
So I had to discard it. Linework will be.

First revision was not perfect but had a great feedback anyway so I tried to keep things together starting from those approved composition guidelines (an image that explodes in the white of the poster sheet) with a more cinetic push and more vivid details to concur in a rush of information. I wanted to build an image that at a first glance gives you the idea of a VERY busy situation were you can actually go in depth and find out what’s happening to the people involved. Graphically speaking I introduced the lineart layer missing from the first concept, with an explicit freehand look even on architectural and mechanic details.

My big problem was: try to draw without getting TOO MUCH cartoon look while keeping a super fresh result; focus on a strong composition that helps the whole piece to be easily recognizable among the other hundreds of posters you can find around in Italy.

Here is the first draft line sketch:


And here is the first refined skecth.


All the work is digital (drawn with a Cintiq21UW) and multilayered so the guys at Xister could split and freely rearrange content at will for different image formats usage, like using it in landscape mode rather than portrait. Linework is the result of my first test drive with new Photoshop CS4 brush engine*:


Coloring and texturing was made using Photoshop CS4 too.
Here are some details.








And here is the final 70cm x 100cm piece!



Hope you’ll like it!
See you at Roma Film Fest!


*: A small tech note
While I’m still impressed with the laziness of the guys at Adobe in fixing that tragic wacom tracking resolution glitch (10 releases of the most important raster graphic application suffered it. TEN BLOODY VERSIONS of a €800 painting software weren’t enough to fix it.), I must say that, AT LAST, you can use Photoshop for freehand raster inking without getting that “not so very cool mid 90’s smoothed pixel effect” on every single line you draw.

Well it’s still slower and less responsive than Metacreation/Corel Painter IX (which I still run under rosetta!) but you can live with it, especially when it comes to selection tools that in Painter are the worst ever made (you can’t expand/contract a freeform/channel/magicwand selection, so expect weird aliasing artifacts on ALL your bucket fills.) while in Photoshop, it must be said, they are top notch (well at least for today industry standards, but much more can be done, one day I will post my suggestions to Adobe forums).

New memory management was a big plus too. A 300DPI 70cm x 100cm image with hundreds of layers like this saves in 20 seconds for a 1.4 gb psd file. That’s quick (especially when compared to CS2, roughly three minutes per save, on the same machine – well still under rosetta.)!

SPRAWL | Mechanic Phunk

Cover illustration for "Mechanic Phunk" by SPRAWL, published by solar one music.

GOLEM | DRAFT CONCEPT, COLOR

Bah, step 2 was better anyway.

GOLEM | DRAFT CONCEPT, INKED

Clicking on the image brings out a nice resolution preview.
Next step: color.

GOLEM | DRAFT CONCEPT

See you tomorrow with the finished one.

THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN | 3

I finished the animation process, still have to do the post production, but I built a sort of beta of the whole animation. Many errors can be spotted here and there and most important: keep in mind that post production is TOTALLY garbage, it's more a placeholder for things to come, but it gets to the point for a demo presentation of the project.
I will post the final thing (no ugly flares popping out from nowhere etc etc) as soon as I have the time to fix everything.
The whole promo of "the dark side of the sun" will be shown early this week at the international documentary market "the sunny side of the doc" (no it's not a joke, and it wasn't intentional) in la Rochelle, France.
In the end I'm very happy for what came out in five days of work (thanks to Gabriele Gianni who helped me with the colour fills for the cels), I hope I will have the chance to animate again soon.
Here is a frame of animation and the whole thing on youtube HD (only the animation part, the full promo will be online very soon). Watch it fullscreen and HD, please.
Hope you'll like it.

Music by: Carlo Hintermann and Mario Salvucci
Editing: Piero Lassandro
Assistant animator: Gabriele "Hundred Paintbucket Fist" Gianni

CRACK 2009 | IPhone Fun

Colored two of the doodles I made at CRACK09 in Rome.

SUPER SPOON SHOT

C'è solo un capitano.

Details to follow.

THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN | 2

First lineart animation test.
Please watch it fullscreen for better resolution (HD available).

THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN | 1

My friend Carlo Hintermann is directing a film called "The Dark Side Of The Sun".
It's about a very rare genetic disease that causes lethal skin cancer when you are exposed to sunlight.
It will host approx. 20 minutes of animation, and I'm in charge for this part of the movie.
I will do everything, from scratch to finish, including backgrounds and compositing.
I want to test myself on a big animation project, that's why I'm in.
It's been a while I wanted to do this, and after seeing Makoto Shinkai's works I started thinking more positively about the chance to do an animation short, all alone.
Here is the first background (click the image to see it), a multi layered image that spans thru 8 HD screens to allow parallactic panning.
I'll try to keep posting new stuff as soon as I finish each step. The first minute must be ready on thursday so expect more coming very soon.

DEVO for LAMETTE

I did a 4 page ministory about DEVO for LAMETTE, Rock'n'Roll Special.
Here's the third page.

BACK IN GUM PALACE | REJECTED

Here is some stuff I made some time ago for MAMMOOTH album "Back in gum palace".
All the guys from Mammooth were very happy with both of 'em, but the producer said they were "too weird" and gave the work to another designer. It happens sometimes. Still a good chance to draw, and this is the only thing that matters.

THE PASSENGER

A (very) young director: my illustration for "The Passenger", a special issue about cinema.

HYPER ADVANCED BEAUTY | 5

PALAZZO DEI CONGRESSI: HUGE EXPLORER

Hey!
It's me!
When I got to dissonanze festival tonight, I was shocked seeing my drawings used THIS BIG.
Hah!

(SORRY FOR THE PHONE QUALITY PHOTOS, IPHONE CAMERA SUCKKKKS)

ARA PACIS EXHIBITION FOR DISSONANZE 09

Here are some crappy phone camera shoots of my illustrations 2 days exhibition at ARA PACIS AUGUSTEA in Rome.

DISSONANZE 09

Sarah Grimaldi, creative director for Xister, an advertising agency based in Rome, asked me to develop her concept for Dissonanze 09 music festival. My work consisted in 24 black and white 70x100 cm hatched illustrations. The visual/conceptual guidelines were to give a Darwinian scientific discovery twist to the artists involved into the festival. They should have looked like a hand renderd note of new animal species, something nobody has never seen before described in it's peculiar details by hand, pen and ink.

Here is the official image for the festival, neon blue graphic design and classy typography by Sarah Grimaldi:



And here are the illustrations for the artists. Design and Typo by allmighty Sarah Grimaldi.


















If you had the opportunity to see the printed things (20 A3 folded flyers weree created for the event promotion, one for each artist), you can actually appreciate the hatching details. For your web viewing pleasure here are some close shots of the orginal b/w versions (most of them are 25% of the final 70x100 cm thing).