BDetails - An inside look into the art and work of Adriana de Barros

Hai, The Bird, and MailChimp.

2008-10-06T17:39:14-05:00

“Hai!, The Bird, and MailChimp.”

Last week, I was invited to respond to two interviews: 1) For Hai! Hire an Illustrator Spotlight (which is still pending for publication). And 2) for MailChimp’s Case Studies (Read interview here). Darren Di Leto (from Hai!) also invited me to send artwork for his promotional illustration catalogue that is mailed to art directors and magazines. There were 200 entries, and only 60 selected for the publication. I was one of the lucky ones, and I was kind of surprised given the quality of the work and well-known illustrators in the group.

Lastly, I submitted two designs to Threadless. “The Bird” went up for voting today. I probably should have titled this design as “The BirdS,” but my computer monitor was dark and I must have seen only one birdy. And the second design should go up next week: “The Moth - Life Cycle.”

Scene 360 Illusion

2008-10-01T07:23:57-05:00

“Scene 360 Illusion.”

In about a week’s time, I worked and completed a new Scene 360 project entitled “Illusion.” I wanted to expand the current news column at news.Scene360.com, and create a bigger space for artistic posts. This is the project’s scope:

The illusion project highlights artwork that is “unique”–amazing for its skills, level of creativity and vision. From Lego art, living grass graffiti to foot painting–we will cover art, design, photography and videos with artistic integrity that often causes us to think “WOW!”

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this, but I’ve dreamt about doing a website with a diagonal header for some years. I finally got a chance to put that idea into practice at Scene 360 Illusion.

Additionally, this week has been pretty good at Scene 360. Not so much for my concerns on other issues… I’m worried about the economy in the United States, and what will happen next? Things in Portugal have been gloomy for five years, I certainly hope it doesn’t get worse. Anyhow, onto the good news… Scene 360 was nominated for a Pixel Award, it is one of the top 5 online magazines. It was unexpected, because the competition is fierce, just in that category sits AdWeek. And in other categories companies like BBC and Sony have sites nominated. So not only is this a big compliment, but it gives myself and all team members strength to keep going and improving the magazine.

As a result of the nomination, I was invited to do an interview at MailChimp. I will let you know when it is published.

Collarfree’s Political T-shirts

2008-09-26T05:29:09-05:00

“Collarfree’s Political T-shirts.”

This week, I received a note from Collarfree.net about my t-shirt submission of “Believe. Change. Progress.”:

Can’t wait for your political Shirt?! Collar Free’s Political designs are now available on our Zazzle on demand store!

Our Obama and McCain T-shirts have been so popular that people can’t wait to get their hands on them. We have uploaded all of the political designs in voting onto Zazzle.com for on demand printing. We love their work so much that we also offer the designs on bags, buttons, stickers and mugs! Support independent artists and your presidential candidate and gear up today!

It has been a positive experience to get to know the team behind Collarfree project. They are friendly and upbeat folks with a mission to help independent artists. It isn’t everyday that you meet people this dedicated and supportive of illustrators and artists.

Aside from this, it has been a roller-coaster experience designing political t-shirts. Viewers take a lot to heart, and of course Politics cause reactions, yet I find that there is a lack of respect, which ends up with mean comments on the web. And it isn’t only related with political themes, if you go to design sites, celebrity sites—read the comments, and you’ll see that a lot of people who don’t like something or someone do not know how to politely express their dislike without offensive words. The irony is that these people comment under an alias, so the anonymity of the Internet does fuel these indiscretions. This is something I’ve been analyzing over time on the web (maybe it will push me to do an article about it, who knows?); it does upset me to read and see this type of behavior because it ruins the environment of a community project. And I don’t say this like you-must-agree-to-everything, no, each person is entitled to a different opinion… however, just because there is freedom of speech it doesn’t mean that you should forget to respect others, or forget common sense.

Here is a taste of some of the negative comments I received:

September 12th, 2008 - Posted at DesignYouTrust.com
Wow, that design is so horrible, it almost makes me vote for McCain.
-Gin, an Obama supporter (so far)

September 12th, 2008 - Posted at Emptees.com
Yuck another political Tee! You can vote for your terd sandwich,.. I will stick with my giant douche. Hooray US!
-HairyNipples

The two t-shirt designs that I did of Obama, I’ve had really nasty comments thrown at me and also really nice ones. “Believe. Change. Progress” was invited to be part of a political design directory: Wing Zingers (as a good t-shirt example for this current US election). And “Hope” t-shirt was invited to be a part of the Behance contest (“What Matters Most in 2008?”) and it is going to be printed in a special edition of Spanish mag, Modern Design Magazine.

Hope tee shirt

2008-09-11T11:36:32-05:00

“Hope tee shirt.”

I just completed another “Obama” political t-shirt design. This time for Frivole, a Miami-based apparel shop. This limited edition “Hope” tee shirt is by far the most optimistic fitted tee shirt in the galaxy made with a bundle of hope-ness!

You can pre-order it, here.

Top photo © Frivole.com

Believe. Change. Progress.

2008-09-03T05:56:03-05:00

Top Images © of Respective owners

“Believe. Change. Progress.”

I saw a post on Design You Trust about a political t-shirt contest “Obama Vs. McCain.” And since we’re close to the US Presidential election, I thought I might as well design something for this thematic t-shirt contest. My design is entitled “Believe. Change. Progress,” a few words that were plucked from famous quotes from Barack Obama. The concept was based on various photos of Obama, and I wanted to make his face look iconic and stylized. A simple design that looks somewhat abstract up close, but a few meters away looks like Obama is coming from the light. I’ve seen artwork from many artists such as Shepard Fairey and AJ Dimarucot—both designs in red, white and blue with front position of face. And I really wanted to do something different than what I’ve seen.

This design will be up for voting at Collarfree. Please cast your vote!

Madame Butterfly

2008-09-03T10:35:30-05:00

“Madame Butterfly.”

Yesterday, I got a chance to speak with AJ Dimarucot via Scene 360. We met online somewhere in the year 2000, both of us with artistic personal projects. Years have gone by and we lost touch. Now looking at his work, he’s become quite good at t-shirt designing. He’s dedicated this year to it, and acknowledged that apparel design allows a lot of creativity. It is almost like having a blank canvas… create! Which is fabulous to hear, and AJ gave me some tips… stating that I should explore my personal art style more for apparel design. And I will be doing just that. I’ve been trying to mold to an audiences’ style at Threadless, and to some level it has been frustrating to create beyond my comfort zone and tastes and also to still not meet their criteria. And I realize that 80% of the selected designs have been comical themes, with animals and fruits and what-have-you. I don’t do comical themes that well. But no matter what the theme is, the point of designing a t-shirt for most companies is to have a sellable design. So it is impossible to ignore the audience, they are the ones buying the t-shirts : ) Even though, I’d like to get a get a chance at Threadless, I’m going to explore a few other t-shirt sites: 1) Designbyhumans (where I created a print called “Madame Butterfly,” see below), and 2) Collarfree (which has an Obama vs. McCain - positive politics t-shirt contest and I already drew up an Obama print and waiting for it to go live to share with you).

“Madame Butterfly” is a reflection of things I like. Old era style with a touch of contemporary grunge-punk-dots type art. I remember with clarity the movie “M. Butterfly” (1995; directed by David Cronenberg and starring Jeremy Irons), a story about a “French diplomat falls in love with a singer in the Beijing Opera.” [1] Originally in the short story novel it is “a relationship between an American naval officer and a Nagasaki geisha.” [2] It is kind of difficult to forget the film with the surprise ending. Loved it! I think “The Crying Game” (1992) influenced a bit from the novel and opera. Lastly, I didn’t create the design in all four corners of the story, I got inspiration just from the title and the rest is a different storyline which you can fill in the blanks as you see it.

Please vote for my design at DesignbyHumans. Thank you!

“Madame Butterly,” a 4-color print on sand, grey or white t-shirt.
T-shirt design by Adriana de Barros

I love my Bug

2008-08-22T07:50:36-05:00

“I love my Bug.”

Let me explain a bit of this story. I wake up today and go directly to my online mailbox and there was an email with this subject line: “Your Threadless submission has been declined :(” I’m like “What?” I had been working on a really cool Beetle car (a.k.a Buggy) t-shirt design. The explanation for the rejection by Threadless is:

1. Your submission was declined because it contains copyrighted material. Pop-culture inspired designs sometimes have legal issues we would rather not flirt with. Unfortunately, this is the case with your artwork.

2. VW Beetles are copyrighted… we have had to pull all shirts that feature them!

OK, well I knew VW is a brand, yet look at my design. I have 250 beetles (insects) creating a car, that is an inspiration of the buggy and not an exact replica with four doors and engine. Maybe they confused the little critters for The Beatles, thinking Ringo and Paul were hidden in the design, kind of like “Where’s Waldo?” You can tell I’m a little pissed off about this, because it was a lot of work to do. And “copyrights” is such a vast topic for interpretation, that it is sometimes annoying to see t-shirts of actual beetle cars since the 70s, and that has never been a problem in pop culture. I tried to do something “inspired by,” because I love the car and own one, but still an original and artistic print. Oh well, I’ve submitted it to another t-shirt company and I’ll let you know what happens. (Continue reading… )

Avatars

2008-08-15T05:59:17-05:00

“Avatars.”

Top image left to right: My friends Jenny Eng (pic) and Lech Deregowski (pic), and me. We’ve turned into cartoon characters. This all started with a post by Jenny at Scene 360:

See yourself as a manga character at Face Your Manga where you can create an avatar of yourself. What’s great is that once you’ve created your image you can use the avatar as your icon for all your chat apps (you get a low res version of your avatar for free) or purchase products from the site with your avatar on it. If you find that you love your to pieces and want it plastered all over you things, you can also purchase and download a high-res version which you can then do with whatever you wish.

It is fun to see what we look like in the Manga world. Aside from this, I’ve been tuning into the network lifestyle to pimp Scene 360 and take it to new heights. I’ve read several articles about why you should not publish a magazine on Facebook. But I’ve seen a number of magazines succeeding, because much of their readers hang around Facebook. So I’ve been delightfully surprised that there has been an interest for Scene 360 updates through Twitter and Facebook. It is easier to connect to people through a cross-platform method of posting. A site definitely worth submitting news to is DesignYouTrust by Dmitry Utkin (I met him online way back in 2000 at Factory 512, a very successful design site and now he has a new one just as popular).

Video Channel

2008-07-31T06:57:55-05:00

Cover Image: View of Sydney (c) Brett Moulton

“Video Channel.”

I’ve been doing a lot of updates at Scene 360. The news column now contains images. And I launched a video channel at Vimeo about a month ago, which is doing fairly well. I’m hand-picking videos within the fields of animation, photography, design, painting, and music. It has been fun to see what other people are doing, and I personally enjoy watching videos that show the making of a painting. I hope to buy a video camera someday (I had one in high school, that was a while ago!), and film my painting process too.

The not so good part is my wrist and arm have been cramping out. I’ve been drawing alot for a new project and also have been on the computer too many hours a day for my own stuff and updates. My hand is not accompanying me anymore. So I have been taking it a bit slower these last days. Doing movement exercises in warm and cold water. Massaging hand and arm. Resting. Using left hand. (Laugh) I bought a 2nd trackball. Yes, I don’t use a mouse because that causes a lot of strain to the hand. But my laptop still had a mouse and I used it for a bit, and that instantly strained my wrist. So I decided to buy a 2nd trackball (mine is a Microsoft one with the ball to the left side of device–truly one of the few things I’ve liked from MS). Now, I have two. I always use a gel mat, it supports the wrist so that you don’t have it suspended in the air the whole day. And another method is to get a thick and narrow piece of glass to put on a desk to support your arm. If your desk is not L shaped, then the glass helps. Put your piggy bank and a few other heavy little objects to hold it. It basically creates a shelf for your arm to sit on. I do have an L shaped desk, but at home I don’t, my desk is an antique one without arm support… so the glass allows my arm just to rest as I click and do stuff.

RTPN Interview

2008-07-24T06:49:20-05:00

“RTPN Interview.”

As I mentioned about a month ago, I was invited to an interview by national TV channel RTPN (Farol de Ideias). The program was about “National creatives designing the world” (“Criativos Nacionais desenham o Mundo”) broadcast on June 14th; and the small number of guests were InteractCreative, Jump Willy, Triworks, mainly studios from up north in Portugal. I was one of the few in the central region. While watching the actual interview on TV, I recognized a name… Benedita Feijo from InteractCreative, she’s done some interesting illustrations with flowers and animals. I was familiar with her artwork via Re-Searcher, an illustration rep where we’re both at. So it was nice to see a face behind the work.

As promised, here are some photos from the interview broadcast. You can watch an excerpt of the program, and if you click continue you can see some shots of my office setup.