Vectortuts Peer Review Part: 2
Yay!! Vectortuts put my drawing up for peer review! \(^0^)/
I’m really looking forward to reading what people have to say. Thank you so much Vectortuts, you guys rule!
Vectortuts Peer Review
Today I was browsing through Vectortuts and came across this article. “What a great idea!” I thought, and I decided to man up and submit the ‘spiderdog’ vector illustration that I made for peer review. I was a little hesitant at first because I thought maybe they’d tear it apart, but hey, how else are you going to learn right? I just hope it’s not too late for the awesome folks at Vectortuts to look over it.
The spider-dog thing all started from a skateboard that we made at work (at Shopify we have design challenges, and this one was to make a cool skateboard deck). I’m not sure how it all started but I thought having a dog with multiple eyes was a cool eye-dea (SEE WHAT I DID THERE). Also, Burger King is awesome.
After I was done with the skateboard, I was pretty happy with the result so I decided to take a picture and vectorize it. It was a good exercise for getting more familiar with the pen tool. It was also nice because I learned more how to use the Pathfinder tools.
Silkscreening!
On Sunday I attended a workshop run by Spins & Needles called “Silkscreening 101″. At this workshop, we learned how to make our own silkscreen frames and use them for printing. We were to bring one black & white design to the workshop, so I decided to bring my Move Your Mountain design. I’ve always wanted to make my own silkscreen so I was super-excited for this workshop!
The first step was to build the frame. The frames were put together, and then the screen was stapled onto the frame so that it was really tight on the frame.
I forgot to take a picture, but after we built our frame we applied a thin layer of photo emulsion onto our silkscreen. While we waited for the emulsion to dry, we took a walk to Katari on Elgin Street and got our designs printed on an acetate sheet.
Shopify Propaganda Poster
At Shopify, we have “design challenges” every now and then. This week’s challenge was to create a propaganda poster. Below is the poster that I designed, I’m pretty proud of it 
FITC Toronto 2011
This year I attended Flash In The Can 2011, a conference in Toronto on Design and Technology. I was always under the impression that this conference was mostly about Flash, but my friend Grant Lucas convinced me otherwise. He went to FITC last year, and told me how it was more about design, workflow, and inspiration, and little to do with Flash. This got me thinking about going to FITC 2011, but when he told me that McBess (one of my favourite artists in the world) was going to be doing a talk I immediately booked tickets to the conference.
In this post I’m going to talk about the three speakers that resonated with me the most.