Sometimes things just don’t go according to plan. I got a commission to do a sample character design and illustration for an educational course. It was a pretty interesting brief. The idea was that there were a bunch of little characters that lived inside a machine who were observing our world. Over the length of the course they and the machine would evolve and it all had to be designed to be suitable for animation – something I had been suggesting to the client for a while.
The sample was for a tiny amount of money but if I won the contract it was for a lot of work. More importantly it was a cool idea so I had at it with a will!
Another Bright Idea!
I was pretty pleased with the way it came out and so were the clients. I got the job. Hurrah!….. kind of.
Then the pain started. Millions of tweaks and changes which all had to be done in full colour, financially disastrous but still.
Does any one know how to switch this thing on?
Now my clients had their own clients and they hadn’t been showing them any of this work. A shame really because when they did the response was ‘ We don’t like the machine idea.’ End of project for Dave
Like I said. Sometimes things just don’t go according to plan.
Hi Dave,
I followed you here from “The Area – SBPro Forum”. Love your illustrations, here and on your website. I’m a big fan of vector. I see you use Xara. I’ve dabbled in it but I still fall back to Illustrator.
Sounds like you had a bit of a roller coaster ride with this job. The money side is a real bummer but you can be happy that you have an excellent end product.
Thanks Joe:
It was a little challenging but I got to do something a little different and get paid! The fact that it wasn’t used means I can actually post it. Quite a lot of my illustration work is for publishing companies so I can’t show anyone any thing until after it’s published.
Vector is the way ahead especially when clients keep changing stuff and we need to do hi rez stuff for print. For roughs however, SBP on my tablet PC just feels so right
I could never get my head around Illustrator. I just seemed to make me click too much
I will admit its gradient tools are catching up and it’s line tools are way in front – especially the new Blob brush in CS4, but It won’t let me use bitmap and plasma fills so it’s off my menu.
I’m currently looking at SerifDraw X3. It’s a bit like Xara but with loads of the extra features that the users have been asking for for years. Sadly it doesn’t have a demo so I actually bought it. They have a 30 day unconditional money back guarantee but I am very much warming to the app so I don’t think I’ll be taking them up on it. (If anyone reads this and is interested – buy it over the phone. They do way better deals than on the web for some reason)
Yeah, I’ve had DrawPlus X2 and X3 for a while now and it’s another of those apps that I want/need to spend more time with. The brushes are very good, especially as you can edit the pressure profile after drawing.
AH. Another drawing app Junkie!
Do you know, probably the best vector drawing brushes I ever encountered were in Creature house Expression. Lovely! And the Microsoft hat to buy it, gut it and turn it into their version of Fireworks. Very sad.
Manga Studio has good brushes too but awful interface and useless colouring. You can’t even export the vectors.
Heres living in hope that some one puts all the good bits in one app that has an unobstructive interface and that FEELS good to draw in.
By the way, your clients were wrong! These are fantastic. I am about to pull the trigger and buy SB Pro 2010 as well!
C
Cheers Chad:There is a promotion this month on SBP if you have an older version:
http://aliasdesign.autodesk.com/learning/resources/details/SketchBook%20Home_133911/
It just makes sense of the tablet PC!