Over a year ago, I sketched a ton of vectors ideas. They’ve all been sitting in a nice little folder named “IDEAAAS!” I created on my computer this whole time, rotting away. Only one sketch, my cartoonization of Joan Holloway, ever made it to the lovely, scalable world of vectors. What a shame.
I honestly forgot these sketches even existed until I happened to find them yesterday while ransacking my files for a decent photo of myself (which I never found). I was immediately drawn to a sketch inspired by the song “You Got Yr. Cherrybomb” by Spoon. Of course, since I’m incredibly superficial when it comes to song lyrics, the actual design has nothing to do with the song other than the fact that the girl is holding a cherrybomb.
Believe it or not, this is the only vector in my portfolio created in Illustrator. If you ever asked me if I used Illustrator, I probably said yes, and I definitely lied to you. I always found myself semi-embarrassed to admit to using Paint Shop Pro for my vectors. Most serious designers don’t consider PSP an acceptable program for anything. But I found it strange that the pen tool in PSP is almost identical to the one in Illustrator, while the pen tool in Photoshop is a terrifying mess I try my best not to think about. For that reason, the transition was surprisingly painless. I completed this little number in about a day and a half. They didn’t call me Speedy Gonzalez in high school for nothing…even though most experienced vector artists can finish a piece in a few hours.
I think I’ll tackle the sketch about tetanus next. That one looks like a hoot.
I always told myself that I would never add a design for my other website, Atomic Affliction, to my portfolio. I don’t really know why. I suppose after I created the cleaner, more professional Flamora, I began viewing Atomic as the trashy, old reminder of my scary preteen designer days. Yes, like the horrible website mother I am, I picked favorites. Go ahead, shun me. You would neglect your website too if you knew it was once associated with myspace. *shudders*
But, here I am, adding the newest design of Atomic to my portfolio. Sure, the site is still an absolute mess internally. All of you code purists out there would probably gouge your eyes out if you saw my files. Unfortunately, I’d have to recreate my entire site page by page to fix some of the leftover gunk. But for the first time in years, I’m completely satisfied with the design and the direction the site is headed. In fact, I’m actually beginning to like Atomic more than Flamora.
Having two sites is hard. I have no idea how some of you manage more than that. When I become involved in one, I begin forgetting about the other. Then I spaz out when I realize I was forgetting about said other site and start playing The Sims or Turmac Roll to calm myself down. Six hours later, it’s time for dinner and I never even opened Dreamweaver. Whoops.
This summer, I don’t think I’ll have too hard of a time juggling my sites. But it’s funny how quickly eight hours whizzes by when I’m at home on the computer compared to when I’m at school, slowly deteriorating in a very non-ergonomic desk. I was going to write this blog before 4:00 PM. Now it’s nearing midnight and I never even finished that tumblr layout I was trying to make, either. What the cabbage.
Ah, well. I still have two and a half months to sort this out.
