otak 3 pagi experiment

DBH Halloweek 3 Contest Entry - Bam-Boo!

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:57:00 +0000

Hello again. I know I haven't updated much, so I'm making up for it with this contest entry. I would say its one of my best illustrations ever, not technically, but for its idea. Well, I'd like to think so. Its my 2nd attempt in DBH, but this time I designed it specifically for t-shirts, using the t-shirt dimensions as a canvas. Here's the design and placement on t-shirt,

Support my t-shirt design, vote for me HERE

Description:

As you all may know, pandas eat bamboos. A lot of bamboos. What if the bamboo trees had souls, and decides to come back and haunt the pandas. This particular design illustrates how a bamboo can actually, be spooky and scare an unknowing panda.

Premise of the design is, the soul leaves the bamboo shell and goes around the back of the t-shirt, only to come back just beside the wearers neck to proceed with its devilish deed.

Here's a slightly closer look at my design,

Support my t-shirt design, vote for me HERE

If you like it, please support my design and vote for me HERE. I really hope I can get this printed because I myself want to try wearing it. Talk about self-promotion. Thanks for viewing and thanks in advance for voting!

To all who have voted for me, I thank you too!

Career Success Coach - Logo & Business Card Design

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:11:00 +0000

Recently, I had the opportunity of designing the logo and business card for a new company. Its a company that offers career training of various levels in the corporate sector.

Originally, I created a logo that reflects a stopwatch. I was happy with it, but the logo didn't convey the "career" side of things, so I decided to go with a humanoid logo. The concept of the logo is of a person raising his/her arms in the air in a victory stance, which conveys success. The necktie is there to portray that the person is a corporate employee.

With the business card, I went for a bright blue to get a sense of energy; as in the energy to make a change to success. Plenty of white space in the front for their key contact information and at the back, a list of the services they offer.

If you're interested in logo or business card design, just drop me an email at bemsixtynine at gmail dot com.

Illustration Friday: Drifting

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:16:00 +0000

I chose to draw on the topic of car drifting immediately after I saw the topic being announced. Fox beat me to it, but it has been in my mind for ages, so I had to sketch something out. Pardon the mess, I drew this from scratch, including the dodgy car design.

Concept: A professional racer drifts his car. Simple.

Operation Gift Drop

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:42:00 +0000

In 2006, I made another attempt with Wacom's e-greeting card contest. I wanted to give something flashier, so this time around I had the idea of putting Santa on poster, similar to what you see on film posters.

So the concept of illustration is, Santa is portrayed as an action hero, and the premise is that Santa has lost his loyal reindeers. But Christmas goes on and he has to complete the "job" of delivering all the presents. That's why its personal for him, and that's why it's called Operation Gift Drop. I drew Santa currently skydiving; equipped with night vision goggles to help him in the dark.

I thought it was a unique card, but alas, I didn't win anything. I did enjoy the execution of my idea though. :)

Click Read More to see the process flow of this artwork.

First, I sketched out a (very) rough outline of what type of posture I wanted Santa to be in.

And this is the completed outline. Sorry to skip a big step, but I didn't have any screenshots of how the sketch of Santa looked like.

At this point I added the pattern outlines to form a custom camouflage pattern for Santa's suit.

With a black-filled background, I painted the colours on Santa's suit, though I mistakenly added highlights in it as well.

I coloured Santa's beard and hair with all the highlights and shadows here. Also, I completed colouring his face. I also toned down the pattern outlines as I thought they were too distracting.

Added appropriate highlights on Santa generally

Added background elements including a lighted horizon, which is supposed to be reflections of the night-time lights, and I added a moon within clouds for dramatic effect.

Added highlights that matches the moon colour to make Santa blend with the background. Street lights were added, using a picture as reference. It was mostly just strategically positioned dots. You could probably see that. :P

Here's the final result, with addition of text, and a bit of motion blur on Santa to show some sense of speed while he's skydiving.

Hope you enjoyed this post. 'Til then.

Graffiti - Mouse Pouch

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:08:00 +0000

Just had to draw something and this what (sadly) I came up with. A sketch of the mouse pouch included in the laptop bag I purchased

Random sketches - Cat and Chair

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:51:00 +0000

I've been wanting to get back into drawing and sketching with the tablet, so I decided to just draw whatever I could find. I'm getting back into it now, I hope to get some presentable works in here soon enough. At the moment, just bear with me heheh.

This is a drawing of a cat sleeping on a clothes hanger, based on a picture I got from an email. I just had to draw something and this was stored in my laptop.

And this is simply a drawing of a chair right in front of my face in the office.

Thanks for viewing :)

Santa spoofs The Ring

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Sun, 24 May 2009 17:27:00 +0000

Hi again folks, I just realised that this is officially the 50th post for this blog, I know its not too much, but at least the blog is moving after a long hiatus. Thanks to my readers and followers for supporting me and for consistently dropping by my humble blog.

Unfortunately, its another blast from the past, but I figured its still something new for this blog.

Back in 2005, I wanted to enter Wacom's e-greeting card contest, in hopes of winning any one of their tablets, being a big Wacom fan myself. Was going for the funniest card title but I didn't make it in time. Its a bit messy, but I'm still proud that I managed to finish and materialise my idea.

Concept of the illustration? Well, Santa's found a new mode of transport, where he can warp through TV signals (farfetched I know) and because of this he can "teleport" to the TVs of the house he's visiting to leave presents. Unfortunately, he scares a mom and her child by crawling out of their TV, which is coincidentally in an unlit part of the household. Hilarity ensues as he looks more like the ghost that crawls out of the TV from The Ring.

Anyway as usual, here's the process flow of my greeting card non-entry:

Original very rough sketch for composition

Blocked in some flat colours and minor shadows

Smoothed out the colours on Santa and added details to his bag

Scrapped the details on Santa and added a lot of black for exaggeration

Finalised the details for the Xmas tree, mom, boy and the carpet.

Final artwork with appropriate comic text

Looking back at it, I think I've could have executed the idea better. Hope you enjoy the post. 'Til then!

Kamal - Hari Ini Single Cover Art

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Sun, 10 May 2009 12:26:00 +0000

My brother, the singer, released a single a couple of months back, marking his return into singing after being in a lonnggg hiatus. He released his single in GuaMuzik, so anyone interested should check him out there and support him by purchasing the song. He employed me to redo his cover art, as he wanted something that he'd like personally. Its nothing big, really, simple and functional, just the way he wants it. I took a shot of him with an off white backdrop and did the cutting and editing in Photoshop.

The photo

The finished cover art

Thanks for your support!

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:01:00 +0000

Foldees contest winners has just been announced but my card didn't get in the list. Just like to say to all who have helped rated my card, I appreciate it very much. I'll have to improve my designs further to get anywhere near the list of winners.

A Tribute For Juju

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:26:00 +0000

Another blast from the past.

This is the late Juju (pronounced joojoo), my family's cat for 17 years. She is of Burman/Persian mixed breed. We call her Juju because she's cross-eyed, and in Malay (or Bahasa Malaysia) cross-eyed is Juling. So we just took the Ju from Juling and doubled it Truth is, Juju was closest to me, cause I could mimic her sound exactly and I played with her a lot during my teenage years. Basically, I was very attached to Juju, and I never thought she'd leave this sudden. She died because she couldn't eat, as her teeth were gone and she had ulcers in her mouth. She died at the vet, as the doctors couldn't do anything even when put on the drip.

I did this in Painter, tried to get the details right as much as possible but the picture I had of Juju was pretty small. I played with several different brushes for this including airbrushes, oils and blenders. This was my first attempt on painting a cat.

Rough sketch based on her picture.

Painting in the general colours.

Final colours under the original sketch

Added a brown background colour

Added some elements to add texture and fill the negative spaces

The completed painting of Juju.

Hope you guys like it. I sure miss having a pet cat.

Relaxed in Pajamas : Illustration for for Blog Layout

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:07:00 +0000

Earlier on before Choul became my wife, she requested an illustration to go with her blog theme, and since she supported (and sometimes art directed) a number of my artworks, I obliged :). She wanted something cute, and colourful, and panda's have a special place in her heart. I don't usually create cute artwork but I'm pretty proud of this one, especially with the colours I've chosen. To the loyal readers of O3PE, you might notice that I've put this up before in my old post named Panda-monium, but the purpose of this post is to show (briefly) the steps I took to create the artwork. Note that I used OpenCanvas to create this.

Completed sketch drafted using blue lines for easy inking.

Inked digitally with black

Added the extra elements; magazine, Zune and a panda plushie. Tried minor colouring as well.

Blocked flat colours for all elements, still not final.

Painted in monotone blue to get values of highlights and shadows.

The final artwork completed.

Well, hope you enjoyed viewing this post, this was created a couple of years ago, but I'm still quite proud of this work. And yeah, Choul likes it too. 'Til then.

Foldees "Where No Man Has Gone Before" Entry

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:04:00 +0000

Its time again for foldees' latest contest, and this time the theme is entitled "Where No Man Has Gone Before". The premise is simple, you have to design a birthday card with a sci-fi (science fiction) theme. Since there's a lot of sci-fi flicks out there, I decided to spoof the most recognisable sci-fi flick/franchise known to man, Star Wars (now now, don't get angry Trekkies). Check it out:

A Jedi Special Day

Cover of the card

Inside of the card

Description:
At the cover, Yoda is depicted as talking to a budding Jedi, which is directed to the audience, I guess they should be called Jedience? Ok lame joke. Anyway, he speaks in his usual grand master-ish manner and says that its a special day today, with a serious face, the face that he usually makes when he gives advice or orders.

When the reader opens the card, Yoda surprises them with two things, a special unique light saber that is remodeled in such a way that it functions as cake knife. He presents this blue saber "knife" to the reader WHILE actively floating the birthday cake, while smiling too. And that clearly reminds you why he's a master Jedi. R2D2 gets out of hiding and joins the fun (equipped with party hat) all because its party time for A Jedi Special Day.

Before the Star Wars experts ask, there are two reasons why I chose a Blue Light Saber.

Its supposed to be a gift from Yoda, so its not his Green Light Saber.
Try as I might, the Blue Light Saber version wins hands down when printed

Rating has just started on 1st of April, and it will run 'til the 1st of May, there's still plenty of time to rate, so if you have the time, please rate the cards, and if you like my card, show your support and give me a good score. To start, go here and make sure you've registered with Foldees. This time around its more or less 40 cards in the running, so it won't be that tedious :) besides you get a free card.

So, ladies and gentleman, please head on down to www.foldees.com and start rating! Gimme a good score and please rate the others fairly.

Remember, don't rate this post, instead, rate my card AT foldees.com, I won't gain anything if you just rate my blog post :P

Thanks!

MINI Space - Always Open entry

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 18:49:00 +0000

I managed to create a design for the competition MINI Space is hosting, with the theme "Always Open". I know I don't have a huge fanbase, and its hard to go against established designers, but I had this idea of colours coming out of the Mini. I would say its very similar to what I've pictured in my mind. If you like my design, please vote for me here by clicking "I like it!" on the thumbnail of the design. Here's the entry:

So remember, vote for me! Thanks very much in advance!

Stylized Guile From Street Fighter - The Full Version

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 04:20:00 +0000

Here's the bigger version of my previous post. Rather than let it go to waste I'll show the actual artwork, so I apologise for the duplicate.

Stylized Guile From Street Fighter

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:46:00 +0000

Another in the series of stylised Street Fighter characters. This time its Guile.

Stylized Blanka from Street Fighter

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:47:00 +0000

Here's a stylised boxy Blanka I created by playing with shapes. I recently bought Capcom's Street Fighter 4 and I'm kinda liking the series once again back when Street Fighter 2 was famous.

Twitter Bird for Spontaneous Insignicancy

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 08:09:00 +0000

I've been procrastinating in putting custom twitter widgets for my blogs, so I'm pretty satisfied that I managed to include my personal design touch in displaying my latest tweets. Here's the twitter bird I've designed for my personal blog, Spontaneous Insignificancy.

Panda revamped for blog header

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:43:00 +0000

A year ago I made a special quick drawing of a Valentine's panda for Choul. Just yesterday Choul wanted to reuse the panda as her blog header. I decided to surprise her with a vector remake of that drawing, and I did a simple custom header for her as well. The surprise wasn't really a surprise since she knew I was vectoring that panda after a short glance at the screen.

I didn't change much of the original painting aside from adding a thicker black outline, and changing the heart colour to a reddish gradient instead of pink. Added a little bit of bulk to the panda to add a dash of cute in him. Here's the vector version:

After that, with a bit of mucking around with typography and some simple editing, I managed to come up with this header:

On other news, you may have noticed that I changed the header for this blog. This time I just played with 3D typography and again, using heavy outlines. Even created a separate vertical design to be used as a button on my personal blog:

Well, that's it for the latest update. I'm trying my very best to come up with something great for foldees' latest contest which is ending very soon. Hope I get to make it on time. Wish me luck :).

Glossy Doraemon

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:44:00 +0000

Everyone knows Doraemon, right? If you don't, well, its the big blue robot cat with no ears that has an endless supply of magical gadgets, and the rest of the description can be found here. Just covering the bases here, most of the people I know knows about Doraemon. Anyway, I decided to try making a speed vector with gradients, so I started playing with shapes and in the middle of vectoring, I decided to mould it into a Doraemon. Added some highlights to make Doraemon look more like a button badge. Here you go.

Rinspeed Chopster Vector Freebie at vectortuts.com

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:38:00 +0000

I recently tried and submitted my Rinspeed Chopster vector I did a few years ago as a freebie at vectortuts.com. I'm glad they approve the artwork (Thanks Sean), so if you wanna see how I vector a car, go ahead and download the file here. Its a bit messy, but that's how I roll mostly. To be frank, this is one of my most organised vector work. Enjoy.

Illustration Friday: Time

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:58:00 +0000

Just in time before the new topic comes on. Here's my illustration for Illustration Friday on the topic entitled "Time". Its just a play on the phrase "Time Running Out" with a slight twist. Vector from scratch in Illustrator.

Will try and join Illustration Friday a lot more, hopefully. Thanks for viewing.

Foldees "A Game of Love" - Entry

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 02:15:00 +0000

Foldees.com's third contest, "A Game of Love" was held right after their Christmas contest ended. To tell you the truth, I didn't think I'd put in an entry this time around, as I've been having a huge mental block for the past month or so. Well, the reason is, I was getting married in a month, and somehow or rather, my design mind has totally shut itself off. Fortunately, I did manage to submit this entry, although it took me the span of 4 hours, and I know it shows, at least I wouldn't regret not submitting anything, and at least the idea is unique :).

Cheat Codes

Cover of the card

Inside of the card

Description:
Cheat codes. If you play video games, particularly for a longggg time, then you would have heard of cheat codes. These cheat codes help you gain an advantage in games, and thats why the term "cheat" comes to play. The methods differ, but my card goes with the old school approach of button combinations. Press the right button combination and you gain cool stuff like unlimited lives, infinite ammunition, extra strength, invicibility or even unlockable items. So, how did it fit this theme? Well, for starters, its called "The Game of Love", and since video games are well, games, I decided to create a fusion of video game and the courting game to create one ultimate corny yet romantic card for someone interested with a girl, but haven't figured out what's the next move. That's the simple truth about this card.

Rating is going to end in a couple of days, there's still some time left to rate the card now, but if you do, just go here and make sure you've registered with Foldees. You need to rate 40 other cards as well, and it won't take you long, not as long as 70+ cards thats for sure. And if you completely rate all of the 40 cards, you gain a free card. So, give me a good rating to support me, and make sure you rate fairly for the other cards too.

Oh, and I'm officially married now, and I'm getting back in the game as soon as possible.

Illustration Friday: Voices

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 05:27:00 +0000

Just thought I'd try out Illustration Friday since I've seen emila doing it for awhile and milkberry just starting out. Very loose sketch, haven't got much time but at least its a start.

Foldees "A Comic Book Christmas" Contest - Rating has begun!

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:38:00 +0000

Hi again to everyone visiting my blog,

Foldees.com's second contest's submission period has just concluded recently. I managed to deliver two entries to Foldees and the last one just a day before the extended deadline.

Logo courtesy of foldees.com

This time around the official entries are cut down to 60 instead of 70 as Foldees wanted quality more than quantity. Lucky for me I got both my entries in this time. The theme this time is "A Comic Book Christmas" and contestants are supposed to design Christmas cards with a comic book theme. It can be any style as long as you have your comic elements in it. I incorporated a few different styles, including Japanese manga, American comic style and comic vector illustrations.

I posted two entries, and now I need your help to rate my card designs. I'm not asking for biased ratings, just a little bit of your time to rate my two designs. See, the rating system is a bit different this time, as they don't want it to be a popularity contest. So how do they deal with that? They set up a random card rating system, whereby you will have to rate the cards randomly as they come up. Think of it as a shuffled playlist you get with your music player. You can rate the cards randomly 'til you get to my cards if you want to, but if you rate all of them you get a free card sent to you or anyone else in the world since you get a coupon code. One more thing though, you have to register yourself in Foldees.com to rate. So, please be sporting and rate the cards :D

Here are the two entries I submitted.

1st Entry - Stormy Perceptions

Cover of the card

Inside of the card

Description

The card is a two-page gag. On the front page, you have a kid looking outside the window during a heavy thunderstorm. The power is out, and the flash of lightning outlines a mysterious dark figure. The kid sees this and his imagination runs wild thinking that the figure might be a ghost or a monster. The cover doesn't look like a Christmas card intentionally, as I wanted it to look like just any other comic.

The 2nd part of the comic is inside the card, whereby the "mysterious dark figure" comes in abruptly through the front door and it turns out its just a drenched Santa Claus breaking the silence with his trademark laugh. The kid breaths a sigh of relief (just below the Merry Christmas text). Well, that's basically the rationale for this design. Next..

2nd Entry - The Incredibly Angry Santa

Cover of the card

Inside of the card

Description

This card front cover is a tribute to The Incredible Hulk, in case you haven't noticed. I wanted to get a true American-style comic book cover this time around, so that basically explains why there's a bold title, price and a text box saying "1st Explosive Issue" at the bottom. The illustration is inspired by American comics as well with its bold lines and large areas of filled blacks to portray shadow. Santa is seen as being "incredibly angry" and bursting from his clothes, kinda like the transformation of Bruce Banner to the Hulk.

Now I'll explain the inside of the card. Why is he angry? Well he's not actually angry yet, but if you don't leave the milk and cookies (A Christmas tradition), the cover shows the exaggerated portrayal of an upset Santa Claus :).

This time around, the competition is pretty tight since half of these are international entries but I'm still putting some hope in it. I'm pretty sure there's a difference in quality with my recent entries.

So, please please please, help me and support me, the more the merrier, as I'm trying to win the stuff to get extra funding for my upcoming wedding (again!). I'm not asking anyone to be biased and rate me 5, just rate according to what you think I should get. After all, I'm tired of popularity design contests myself. I want to strive to produce better art and designs. Remember, even if you want to support my design, don't rate the others only 1, just rate the cards accordingly, if not I'd be accused of cheating. Shouldn't take too much of your time. Click the image below for you to go straight to the random card rating engine.

Thanks in advance, guys and gals, and if you have rated my cards and helped me for the last contest, THANK YOU VERY MUCH, I appreciate it a lot. Wish me luck for the 2nd time, I need it. :)

Foldees "A Comic Book Christmas" Card Contest

noreply@blogger.com (bem69) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 06:57:00 +0000

I know this is a late entry, and I can assure you, I'm not trying to "hide" this contest from the competition (huhuhu), I have just been busy, as you can see I haven't posted anything here. Well, recently I attended the prize-giving event held by Foldees for the "We Are All Geeks" card contest and I received my bounty for 2nd prize. Simultaneously, Foldees launched a new contest with a new theme, "A Comic Book Christmas".

What's it all about, you may ask? Well, you'll have to come up with something that is comic-ish in nature, doesn't matter what kind of comic, as long as people can relate to it, and of course, it has to be related with Christmas.

So, go ahead, storm that brain (lame I know) and submit a winning entry to ~~Chak~~ Foldees as soon as possible, as the contest is ending on 20th October 2008! That's right, don't be late or you might not make it. I can honestly say that the competition is going to be pretty close this time around, since we have a familiar theme, and a lot of people who didn't make it for the last contest.

Click the image above to go straight to the contest details. All the best!