Richard Stelmach - Web Design and Multimedia Portfolio

Today I’ve continued to try and improve my illustration by choosing an illustrative style for a design. The theme was ‘added extras’ so I wanted to create an illustrative montage, quite a common technique, I imagine originating from pop art. This was my initial illustration.

However, I found that the black and white didn’t quite work with the design so I needed to add colour. Also as the design needed a heading and strap line with it the text on the illustration made it too busy.

The illustration progressed to this:

I again enjoyed bringing it into Photoshop to add texture and a watercolour feel. I like how it has a nice friendly feel to it so was fairly pleased with the result.

I followed the style throughout the page by creating the following illustrations representing various things.

I love Photoshop brushes and now I love illustration so I really enjoy combining the two. Finally I couldn’t resist over stylising the main illustration as an experiment.

I’m still planning on doing some artwork around the chav/knife theme. Also I want to buy some ‘how to draw characters’ books to try and improve my character drawing skills.

Of late I have more and more been wanting to get good at illustration. Illustration is very handy in design and although I can do illustrations I have definitely not mastered it.

There are a few things that attract me to illustration. Firstly the expressionistic aspect. I imagine you can just put pen to paper and let your ideas and emotions flow, without need to even have something in front of you to base your drawing on. Secondly I’m a big fan of manga and anime which often inspires me to try it out myself.

This confuses me a little. I did A-Level Art and I think I’m pretty good at drawing real life stuff, especially with the pen. But I’ve never been good drawing off the top of my head. This is not to say I don’t have a good imagination. I can design and have always had a creative imagination, sometimes a bad thing when I watch horror films or Ghost Hunters International! If it is the case that illustrators have such a vivid imagination that helps them draw, I definitely envy them!

On the other hand it could also be practise, much like the BBC programme the other night “The Making of Me: Vanessa-Mae”. It explored the nurture or nature debate and settled on 50/50 which I think I’d agree with.

So there could be hope for me yet! I’ve been thinking on getting some ‘how to illustrate’ books. I’ve always liked drawing so it could be fun even if I’m just recreating characters in the books etc. One things for sure, i really need a small scanner!!! Last time I desperately photographed some drawings, what a crap idea that was…

I have been yearning for a creative project of late so illustrating could feed my hunger. I’ve already had some ideas to do some drawings about chavs and knife crime along with some depressing strap lines, so I’m really pining to do that. Hopefully i’ll have something up here soon.

Earlier I had to do a banner of the 02 arena, I saw a good excuse to use illustration opposed to photographic. Later I stylised it more. I love the combination of bringing it into Photoshop to add texture, giving it an authentic feel. I also experimented with lighting effects (filters > render > lighting).

Here are some nice links for illustrations i’ve noticed lately:

• 58 Wonderfully Cute Illustrated Monster Characters
• Will Murai

I saw some others but can’t remember where now Sorry for the crap list!

O and one last thing, I did manage to get top for Pontefract Web Design! Woo, a small victory, atleast for my ego. Though I didn’t get top for Web Design Pontefract, how bizarre.

As some will know I am from Pontefract, the home of sweets, liquorice and many a happy memory.

The allure of Pontefract, is, lets say, quite subtle, an acquired taste. Perhaps it’s the bald lobster men (as ponte-folk have been described) drinking on a summer’s day with bloated stomachs that have been finely developed with many a pie or the dilapidated castle, a reminder of our former glory that puts people off. Ironically, it was the wise Ponte-folk that knocked it down themselves, sick of all the fighting it attracted. An important part of their lives, this peaceful chasm would need to be filled with drunken brawls erupting from the fine array of drink pits that Pontefract prides itself on. (pictured right: the unhappy flag is perhaps meant to detract people’s eyes from the ‘castle’)

“Bloody Pomfret”, Shakespeare said, a more apt name than recently described on the Pontefract Liquorice Trust site:

“…this gem is almost hidden from the rest of the world.”

Almost hidden, unfortunately not quite.

Yet it does have many a redeeming feature. Historic buildings, cobbled streets and green fields. I can’t help but love it.

Not famous for it’s abundance of web designers, perhaps in a moment of self importance, only a moment, I thought I may have good google rankings for Ponte related web design. Yet in moment of terror I realised I don’t even get on the list for Pontefract. Most disappointing. I realised I didn’t have any meta action, which seems to have become important again.

With my legendary victory over Ed Stelmach many eons ago, I thought my battles were over. But once again I must tussle the unforgiving realms of SEO to claim my deserved place at the top of “Pontefract Web Design” google rankings. I will let you know if I am successful.

Until then you will have to gaze at my latest website, mach4cs.co.uk, he really does do beasty (as in powerful) cheap computers. This and some other recent additions has left my first portfolio page looking its bestest ever. I’ll just have to make sure I don’t put something crap on now to spoil it.

Of late I have been enjoying the beauty of logo design. Looking through my blog posts this love sprouted it’s seductive roots about a year ago when I did these logo designs for a company in Leeds.

Soon after, these roots grew stronger and wrapped their loving grasp around my heart, squeezing creative juices onto my Photoshop, virtual computer canvas. Unfortunately my logo skillz had not quite developed and it sprung some mediocre logos I did for Dan Atkinson. The shame. Luckily I am not yet an arrogant designer and can say that many a crap design must be produced to attain beauty.

Then, a strange thing happened, I actually made the effort of moving my hand away from the mouse and picked up a pen! Yes, now I moved not only my wrist but my hand, fingers, arm, everything, to utilise an ancient device called the pen! By using this pen and the more familiar comupter, I managed to create a logo for idolised.co.uk, an unused masterpiece.

I don’t believe that using a pen is always necessary, but in this case I found it useful in developing the symbol which I could then cleanly re-create in Illustrator.

Shortly follwed by an unappreciated French Meridian logo. Luckily for the logo, it snuggeld up in its new fluffy home of creative binge, a sanctuary for many a rejected design!

Okay, now let’s get to the good stuff.

The great thing about logos is that they are the epitome of design. In one graphic you are expressing a message. It’s the core or essence of design. 100s of choices go into creating this small piece that could maybe only consist of a symbol. As well as creating the brand, it often makes or breaks a web design. Allot can depend on a good logo. And it is these things that I have find challenging and consequently satisfying.

My latest logos are:

and

yayyy…

For both I’m doing interweb spaces for.

Other bingers of note go again to my Rough Edges Photoshop brush set that has now got over 48,000 downloads and 180 votes to say its good! Woo! It also features here.

O and I also got interviewed by Hello! magazine….okay, maybe only for uk2.net, a hosting company…and they did say I own my own company (which I don’t) but hey, maybe some people have read my nonsensical thoughts! Click here to read. Ba bye.

Lately I have developed a deep and twisted love for Photoshop brush sets. They are a great way of quickly and easily adding texture and depth to designs and their usage can be seen constantly on the web.

I think texture and depth are particularly important in web design. Graphic designers get the texture and feel in the material they print on and often flat colours seem to work better in graphic design as lighting and texture come naturally. I think web designers often need to use allot of gradients and layering things up to give depth and makes things tactile, authentic.

This is where Photoshop brushes come into their own. You can of course build things up with images but brushes give a quick and fluid advantage where you can just stamp texture onto the mask of the layer or create imagery when you can’t find the right royalty free image.

Here are some recent examples I’ve seen Photoshop brushes used:

• http://www.mikeposs.com/
• http://www.pixele.fr/
• http://mesa.cityofgrace.com/

Adding Photoshop brushes is easy. Once you’ve downloaded some, all you have to do is open your brush pallette (F5), click on the little arrow top right and then click on ‘Load Brushes’, the new brushes will then be appended to your list.

Here is a great site for free brush downloads - http://www.brusheezy.com/.

I’ve also made my own brush set, you can download it here: http://www.brusheezy.com/brush/639-Rough-Edges

This morning I found out that I wasn’t attacked by a poltergeist last night, it was in fact, an earthquake.

After watching the new series of Most Haunted last night, which I particularly enjoy seeing Karl and Stuart getting their asses kicked by the ‘astrol beings’, followed by a new vampire programme, Moonlight, I perhaps wasn’t in the best states of mind for what was to come.

At about 1am last night I found my bed shaking, much like it does on films such as The Exorcist or An American Haunting and was trying to think what Yvette Fielding would do in this scenario to deter the attack. I didn’t go to the extent of attempting to establish communication with the being or ask it to throw a stone or coin at me (one of Yvette’s finest techniques), instead I hid under the covers.

Logically, and because the attack didn’t persist I later thought it must have been a rare earthquake. Luckily for me, it was. The news is saying it’s the biggest since 1984, in their best attempts to really ham it up but come on, it’s not exactly on the same scale as Valdivia.

Valdivia: 6000 dead.
British pissy earthquake: one bloke had his chimney fall down, it was probably knackered anyway, just wanted to get a claim in.

Today I managed to make it onto Best Web Gallery which, well, does what it says on the tin, as that annoying advert guy used to say. I check the site fairly often as the sites on there are always really nice.

One of my aims with the new site was to try and get onto some gallery sites so I’m really happy I’ve made it onto my fave! I’d like to say they randomly picked my site while perusing the web, but in truth, I begged for their approval. They must have felt sorry for me!

I have been attempting to re-design my site. I’ve tried to go for an information rich site and more expressive than a more simple showcase of work approach, which I find a bit dull and far too common place. Hopefully my design will have a bit of originality to it, with some of my own personal style. Style as in design style. If it was dress sense, it would prob look like a hobo.

Anyway, from a technical point of view, I plan to include a fair bit of of AJAX + PHP actionoly to it and probably some Mootools or JQuery ‘fun’. Mainly as a learning exercise but also to improve functionality. I also wanted to have a user rating system for all work and blog posts but I may have to leave this til later, as it’s already going to be pretty darn brain intensive.

Here is a sneak preview of the site so far:

Creative Binge posts have slowed to say the least to more of a creative slurge or rather slow drip. Even Ed Stelmach has regained his thrown as top Stelmach of Google, putting aside his Alberta responsibilities and taking a moment to laugh heartily, wallowing in his success.

Since my Facebook in 40 years thing that got on the digg.com front page and loads of other sites, I got a steady flow of Facebook friend invites. I think someone has copied me too with this Pension Book, it is better than mine, but has a bit of an abusive angle to it, which I’m not that keen on.

After that I mainly posted items that consisted of sick or had atleast some relation to eating disorders (see example). These were not as popular and soon the posts dried up, much like the sick, a stale remnant, slowly eroding away.

But, the future is bright, I am currently re-designing my website as this one has become almost embarrassing. It’s never a good sign when you fear people looking at your site so it must be changed.

This one is dated, with the next one I aim for a clean, modern and sophisticated look. I also want to add some nice features such as rated content, more dynamic info going on such as a Rant Box, comments on portfolio work and latest site updates so people can see what’s new. I want to highlight my Flash games more too, as people always seem to like them.

From a technical point, I’d like to maybe get in a bit of jquery actionoly in but it’s thinking of a reason, I don’t like features for features sake, there has to be a use. I keep getting alured by Flash CS3’s mobile phone support too. I would love to make some of my games available on mobile phones and it looks pretty easy, but this will have to wait.

Before I recently left the realm of Empire, I… I mean ‘we’ to sound more like a team player, made some high quality Flash games which you can play here:

http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/content/edxtra/christmas2007/games.htm#flashg

The Christmas site itself is rather nice:

http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/content/edxtra/christmas2007/index.htm

And my legacy, that is Bargain Finder, a means for the user to quickly and easily view the best deals on the website.

http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/content/bargain/index.htm

That is all.