I finally finished the Lord of the Rings 50 gold certificate backside. I’m tickled with how it came out. Now I’ll work on my unfinished Middle earth map that has been laying around forever. I know there are a lot of maps like it out the but I wanted to make mine unique.
As promised I submitted a couple of pieces of long overdue Lord of the Rings Art I had never finished. I have a few more in the works. Mainly I want to finish the back side of the currency and a detailed Middle Earth map. Here’s what I have completed so far:
After I finish with the Lord of the Rings art I’d like to start work on some Game of Thrones stuff. There is a wealth of ideas to work from and the books hold a very special place in my heart. Even if George R. R. Martin never finishes the rest of the books it will still be the best adventure I’ve ever had reading. Thank you George!
Oh yeah, I donated my Flying Spaghetti Monster currency to the FSM site and they are now discussing how they want to use the currency. Join in the discussion now!
I’ve totally redone the vectorgeek site. I’ve deleted most of the history posts and all of the users so you’ll have to register again to make comments. It was a lot of work but I think the site is better for it.
I’ve got my Art Gallery back up and added links to the Tutorials and Resources section so you can click on a picture and then below the pic you”l see a link to download the file.
I just finished a special desktop wallpaper just for me. It’s a patch of the boat I was on in the Navy.
Stay tuned! Right now I’m on track to complete some special Lord of the Rings currency and maps. I shelved them a while back and never completed them but hope to finish them in the next few weeks. I want to delve into some art for my favorite book series and TV series “Game of Thrones.” I think I’ll have a lot of fun creating cool artwork for world because I’m so passionate about the books. They have to be the most enjoyable books I’ve ever read.
I got all worked up about a new tutorial that I saw over at Deke McClelland’s site. It shows you a couple of different methods for creating Railroad tracks in Adobe Illustrator mainly by varying stoke dash effects. I thought I would up the realism ten-fold and create a detailed Railroad pattern brush of my own. You can download it from here. I’ve also added some other pattern brushes for currency, cables, chains, telephone cords, and rose vines. In the fine art section you see my Rolling Stone logotype tribute.
My Kindle Fire Review
I just got my new Kindle Fire and I’m loving it. Yes I’ll admit I’m a bit of a Kindle fanboy but I’m also realistic as far as what to expect from this device. It isn’t an iPad killer and wasn’t really meant to be. This is also a first generation device so of course there will be some kinks to workout.
First off I should say I also own a Kindle 2 (3G), and two Kindle 3 keyboard models (one with 3G and one Wifi version). I gave my old Kindle 2 to my brother who still uses it and the Kindle Wifi version is for my wife. The Kindle 3 keyboard model with 3G is my main reading device and I have a library of about 50 books so far. You might say the Kindle has rekindled my love of books. I have an Amazon prime account and all the benefits that come with it including free shipping, Prime videos, cloud music storage etc. You don’t need a Prime account to enjoy the Kindle Fire but it really adds a lot to the experience. Being able to access videos and music from the Amazon cloud is really nice. I’m entrenched in the Amazon ecosystem and they haven’t let me down yet.
After 3 days of use here are 11 things I like about the Kindle Fire:
Easy setup. When you get it and turn it on, it’s already preregistered with all your Amazon account info. Wireless setup was a snap too.
It shows all the books you have and gives you easy access to your cloud music library, Amazon Prime videos, and Apps.
The 10 things I don’t like:
My final impressions are that this is a great device. Amazon didn’t hit it out of the park but they have done a good job at adding features that you can’t get with the other Kindle models. Having the ability to add apps gives it a good long future. The price makes it more accessible to people that can’t afford a $500-$800 iPad 2 or even a $300-$500 Android tablet. Considering I bought the Kindle 2 for $349, I’d say the Fire is an awesome deal. That’s the price of being an early adopter nerd like me.
The main reasons I got the Kindle Fire was for color magazines, comics and books. The cloud videos, music and apps were just icing on the cake. I definitely think I got what I paid for.
If you are considering a Kindle for Christmas and don’t want to plunk down $200 on the fire, I recommend getting one of the Kindle Keyboard models. Stay away from the Kindle Touch models. According to my favorite Windows blogger Paul Thurrott the new Kindle Touch models are atrocious and do not work correctly. Coming from another Kindle devotee that is saying a lot.
The August issue is finally out so I thought I’d finally post the artwork I did for their annual Jewellrey Supplement. I did the currency art, borders, and background guilloche patterns. Since this is for the UK issue only I don’t have a copy of the final versions. I’ll post some screenshots as soon as I get my copy. A special thanks to Anika at Vanity Fair UK and her wonderful team. It was a nice experience for me to work for such a great magazine.
Update: I finally got my copy today. I added some scans of the pages from the magazine.
Last week I just finished a commissioned artwork for Vanity Fair UK. They contacted me about my Counterfeit President artwork and asked if I was the artist. After I told them I was, they asked if I could do some currency art for their annual jewelry issue. I did the currency art and some border and background art for the other pages. They were really nice and helpful and seemed to really like the work I did. The issue comes out in August and then I’ll be able to post some of the art for you to see. This is the first time I’ve been published in a magazine so I’m pretty excited about it. I’m glad I had already done work like it for the Zoovolution project so I was used to working on a deadline.
I just posted 3 more pieces in my Zoovolution gallery that got approved this week. I really like how the 50 Zoukos came out. I’m really having fun with layouts and creating my own custom brushes, patterns and accents for these pieces. I could have taken some shortcuts and bought some royalty free scrolls and brushes but I like my art to be …well, my art!
I love working with the Todd and Chris at Web and Circus. They have been very helpful and encouraging.
Two down and 2 to go!
With the money I get for this I plan on buying Adobe Creative Suite Design Premium. My NAPP membership gives my a hefty discount and I need it. 
It’s got every art tool I’ve dreamed of. I’m really excited about the new features of Illustrator and Photoshop Extended and I’ve always wanted to dabble with Flash. I can’t wait to get my hands on them. Mordy Golding has a great writeup on the new features of Illustrator CS4. Oooh it looks like a whole bunch of my wishes came true.
I’m tickled pink. I’ve been hired to do some currency artwork for the online massively multiplayer game “Zoovolution.” I loved creating currency for previous works like Counterfeit President and Battlestar Galactica and thanks to those I got noticed. You can find out more about the game at www.webandcircus.com. I’ll be creating the currency “Zoukos” bills in 10, 50, 100, and 500 denominations (both front and back).
This kind of stuff is right up my alley. I can let my imagination run wild and with input from Todd at Web and Circus I can make something cool. It’s such a breath of fresh air after coming home from my day job of doing technical art for publications.
Stay tuned for more!
Since I’ve become a huge fan of the show, I decided to make some desktop wallpapers of my favorite sci-fi show. The Battlestar Galactica Galaxy wallpaper is just the first. I also scrounged the web for pics of the Squadron patches used in the show for my next little project. Since there aren’t any good pictures of them I decided to recreate them based on photos. Once I’m done doing them all I plan on creating some nice desktop wallpapers with them too. I plan on creating some nice cloth textures and stitch brushes so I can make them look like sewn patches.
