Happy New Year!!

WOW! It's a new year and we're already 21 days into it. Time does fly. Many people make resolutions for each new year and those resolutions have probably fallen by the way side by now or are getting ready to. I have never seen the need or reason to make resolutions but as I have grown older I have started to set goals for myself each year. I try to come up with at least four goals in three different categories for the year and share them with my family and coworkers, that way they keep me accountable. I try to make goals for my family, my personal growth (This include me and my freelancing) and my job (the place I work for "real").

If I complete them or not doesn't always matter because working on them can be a growing experience and I can learn from what I do and possibly complete them the next year. I know it sounds like a cop-out but sometimes you don't always realize the turns life will take or how difficult some things really are. But if you put forth the effort you are rewarded with the satisfaction of trying and possibly setting up the next year to be great.


So, now you are probably wondering what my goals are.

Family

1. Vacation up north with family
2. Vacation at the beach (I know 2 vacations but one is with extended family and one is with my girls and wife. Each is a great time to get to know my family members, build relationships and make memories.)
3. Do some local day trips (Each year we try to do these. Some years we succeed.
   
4. Go camping (My girls are 7 and have never been "real" camping out in the woods or somewhere. So this spring we're going.)

Personal

1. Grow my freelance business
2. Read some of the books I was supposed to read in college
3. Sketch and draw more
4. Create and send out promotional pieces for my business

Work

1. Learn some new software (Not sure what yet.)
2. Bring more jobs in-house (We use an agency at work to do some of our jobs because I get swamped with internal projects.)
   
3. Create a work flow process (again this may be a challenge as we have many small one offs.)
4. Take time to meet my co-workers (This is important because many times we work with so many people but never really know them. We know their name but not really who they are.)

So those are my 12 goals for the year. Some things I have control over some things I don't but we'll see what happens as the year goes on.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all and peace on Earth.

Blast Off!

I recently bought Crumble. Crackle. Burn., by Von Glitschka. It is a very nice coffee table style book, with great illustrations from various artist using textures in digital media. It inspired me to play around with textures and see what I can create.

One thing I enjoy, is listening to old radio shows and finding inspiration from them. After listening to one episode, about flying in a rocket ship to a far planet, it inspired me to draw a ship as the author described it. Here is my initial drawing:


I took this drawing and scanned it in and imported it into Illustrator. I traced the image and recreated it in Illustrator and then added a background and some color. It came out pretty cool.


I liked it but it was missing something. So I played with it some more and then I remembered Von's book. It came with a DVD of textures. YES! So I transfered the image into Photoshop and started to go through the textures. After searching around I found some that would work for what I wanted and added them to the image. The picture became much more dynamic and had a really cool feel to it.

Here it is with the textures.


For now I think it is done. I may revisit it and tweak it here and there. But for now, I like "Flight to Planet X"