Love Life Pain Tshirt

Inspired by "old-school" tattoos, with a modern simplistic line art approach, I sought out to showcase some of the beautiful aspects of life; and how the struggle goes hand in hand, making the wonderful aspects that much more beautiful. The concept came about after a particularly rough year, involving changes in personal life, professional and work changes, financial changes, a car accident, legal battle, and a family tragedy with my grandmother's sudden on-set dementia. The latter being the main reason I decide to make this T-shirt design, to be able to see her (as she lives far away). I'm also hoping to be able to start producing my own screenprinted tees and this is a good starting point. 


Check it out here: https://cottonbureau.com/products/love-life-pain

  Every share or purchase helps! Thanks for your support!

Love, Life, Pain

I've been working an "old-school" tattoo inspired T-shirt design. It still needs a bit of refining, but I wanted to post what I've been working on.

 The design is meant to show the important aspects of life. Living, love, and pain are intertwined. The dagger is another symbol of our pain and struggle through life, which only makes it that much more worthwhile and beautiful.


  This year has been quite a struggle for myself and my family (between a car accident, legal battles, unexpected work changes, and my grand-mother moving to a home and experiencing dementia), which is why I was inspired to make this T-shirt design.  It might be a very simple design, but it is something that is important to me and has a simplistic and deep message.

 We need to take the struggle, and hard times in as a blessing. We grow from these experiences in life, and we learn more about ourselves in these moments. I find so many of us, myself included, are too afraid to really live, or love. We are afraid to put ourselves out there, and do things in life that seem too challenging, or even unlikely. We are afraid we will fail. Crash and burn. We are afraid of getting hurt. We are afraid of the potential pain. But we need these moments. We need to go through struggles, and even fail sometimes. Through these failures we can learn and make something more. Through our struggles we will grow and learn to love life more. The lows will only compliment the highs.

 Being happy is only meaningful after  experiencing sadness. Life is that much more beautiful along side the struggle. Love is that much more wonderful with the pain. We need to face life, with the pain, and experience it all.

Elements of Time

 Here's a little design I did for a T-shirt. I wanted to create a strong symbol with heavy references to time. I liked the idea of an industrial, almost masonic vibe as well.

 The design will be screen printed on some tees, and I have a little something planned for the sleeve of the tees as well. 

I used to be an adventurer like you...

I used to be an adventurer like you...

 Here's something I did in an ode to Pendleton Ward's Adventure Time. I couldn't help but mix the classic Skyrim "Arrow to the knee" meme with Adventure Time. There's also a hint of inspiration from the Family Guy knee injury skit.

 "I used to be an adventurer like you... But then I took an arrow to the knee."

Drafted - My experiences getting on Dribbble

 I was just recently drafted on Dribbble and just posted my first shot (which you can see here at www.dribbble.com/VanionParadis/ ).

 If anyone doesn't know, Dribbble is a community based website, where designers and artists can post 400 x 300 shots of their work. "Show and tell for designers" is their slogan. It's a place to show what you're working on, works in progress, fully finished work, or even style experiments. Really Dribbble is what you make it, and it's a great way to connect with other designers.

 The problem is Dribbble is an exclusive community strictly for designers. In order to become a "Player" (as it's called on Dribbble) to post work and comment on other shots, you have to be invited or "drafted". There's ups and downs to this system; the quality of work is generally very good though. Players are only given a couple invites throughout the year (and not all players) so people aren't constantly being invited. This can make it difficult, even for talented designers, to become players. If you really want to be on Dribbble though, it's absolutely attainable (just takes a little hard work, patients, and persistence).

 My advice to anyone looking to get drafted on Dribbble:

 Do searches on Dribbble for things like "Dribbble Invite" or "Dribbble Draft". Players will often post shots when they have available invites and will run contests to choose who they will give their invite to. Do the same on twitter, designers often use twitter as a way to reach out and will post here instead. Have shots ready (400 x 300 or 800 x 600), designers giving out invitations will often want to see what kind of shots you will be posting. Contact as many people with spare invites as possible, send out emails, tweets, any way you can; more exposure is always good. In fact in my experiences, I wasn't always chosen to be invited but people liked my work and even posted shout outs to me to help me get more visibility; I also put myself on these designer's radars for the future. Personalize what you are saying in emails to your target audience, check out their works and likes on Dribbble, and choose what you will show them based on this information. It also doesn't hurt to show interest in their work... You don't have to be a kiss ass or lie, but talk about what you like or something that inspires (or intrigues) you.  Exhaust any chance you have, if people are offering invites, put your hat in the ring. If you aren't getting chosen: keep at it and keep improving and learning. Dribbble is a site about growing and learning, so it's more about potential than finished work with paying clients.

 Post your work on sites like Draft.Im (a great place where people with invites can browse prospects' works and draft someone), and loviv.com. Any community based art sites in order to get exposure will help. There are tons of tumblr Dribbble draft contests out there as well. Make sure you have a portfolio website or at least a behance.net portfolio and always link back to this.

 It might take a while, and even seem futile, but doing all this will definitely be great exposure and if you've got the experience and skill, you will get on Dribbble. In fact it might not even be the countless emails you'll send out that will get you that long awaited invite... It wasn't for me. It was a simple reply to a tweet at 3 AM that got me invited. Obviously everything that I did prior didn't hurt. I had more pictures on twitter because I had been sending out shots to designers, so it would have been easier for him to see my work right on twitter.

My trek to get on Dribbble was a great learning experience. I've had the chance to speak with some really talented individuals, whom I would have never engaged with otherwise. I've learned exactly what it takes to get there... I've been wanting to get on Dribbble for about a year and a half. However wanting it and just posting work is one thing, but really going for it and not letting any opportunities pass you by is another. I've only just started gunning for this as of January 11th, and I gave myself no other choice but to get on Dribbble, and worked at it. Now I'm there! That's one goal down. This mindset can really help in all aspect of life as well: if you want something, get motivated and work at it, REALLY WORK AT IT!

 Now let's see how this Dribbble thing goes... It's a new journey for me as well.

Fun at Camp

Just released a new shirt!

This design was inspired by woodsy camp and outdoorsman themes. There will be a second edition of this one here that I will put up on Threadless. I will also come out with a version that favors light coloured shirts.

 Grab one here: http://society6.com/motionlessporcupine/Camp-Survival_T-shirt#11=50&4=98

New Shirt

Just released on new shirt on Society 6!

 This illustration was originally made up as a birthday card for my brother. Now I've released a new version for prints and shirts. Check it out at:

HERE



 For more shirt designs feel free to check out my society 6 products at www.society6.com/motionlessporcupine/tshirts . There's also a few prints there as well.

Here's a quick preview of a new design I started:

New Business Cards just came in

My new business cards just came in! Luxe business cards printed over at Moo; 32 pt weight with black sides.

I think they turned out pretty great.

Happy F'n Birthday

 Saw my brother this Thanksgiving and made him this card because I missed his birthday a little while ago.

 Here's another print I made for another friend's birthday.

Van's Incredible Array of Vintage Products

 Lately, between jobs, I've been doing some vintage inspired design. Starting with a shaving cream box packaging and going into a whole array of "Van's" products. All these designs are squared and one side of some kind of packaging (for the most part boxes but also tins). I will reveal final packaging for some of these designs in the future, I might even get some printed and made.

Van's Old Fashioned Shaving Cream:
"It's been on the markets since before shaving was a thing!"

Van's Ho'made Poison:
"It's homemade with all your essential vitamins!"

 The shaving cream design is the front side of a box packaging, where as the poison could be the front for a box or, as displayed here, the top of a tin. There is a second version of the poison with a pink liquid as well.

 The ribbon on the shaving cream originally wasn't there. I just felt something was lacking under the "Cream" script, so I started an underlying shape which quickly turned into a ribbon, and eventually became what you see. I may have put a lot of zigs and zags/ folds in the ribbon, but I wanted it to be different and fun. The "Old Fashioned" title was added last as I felt that top ribbon was perfect for underlining a descriptive title, and this description just rolls off the tongue perfectly for this.

Coming Soon:

Van's Original Paper Clips
                  &
Van's Amazing Magic Powder

Building Progress

In my spare time I decided to model a cartoony styled building. This is a slow project that I do when nothing else is going one where I'll work on one or two modular pieces. Currently I am building each modular piece and showcasing them on the one building, in the end this will become an illustration that I'm planning for fun. I will later take these modular pieces and lower their poly counts and create a playable UDK level. Here's some of my progress so far.

 Here I started out with the base, all the bricks are extruded out (of course this will be flat in the low poly and captured with a texture). The windows and piping are all modular pieces. The roof currently is not, but that won't be difficult to change.

 Adding in more windows and doors really starts to bring this to life.

 Added on a little roof top door way.

 Now of course a fire escape is absolutely necessary even in a two story building!

 I just felt compelled to add this in. It took some experiment to get a gridded floor that I was comfortable with. If I were to go straight to the low-poly I could have just done a flat plane with a gridded texture and an alpha mask, to keep it see-through.

 Here's some more progess on the fire escape. After foolishly editing a cylinder for a good while to create a railing I realised it's much easier to use a spline and render it into a cylinder. (basically use a line tool to create the shape of the railing, click a button to make it 3D and simply edit the curves if there are any mistakes)

 Here's a bit of a detail shot. Everything is very clean and smooth at the moment, I am trying to keep things simple and clean to stay with the cartoony style. I'm sure it's obvious that some sizing is very exaggerated.

 Adding in a bit more to the scene, sidewalk, piping mailbox. It's slowly starting to come together. I'll post more once I can.

Random Things

Here's some random experimental things I've been up to including a series of posters and prints revolving around the Ampersand and all it's glory.

 This is a simple project making posters/prints around the beauty of the ampersand. I've always like the ampersand symbol in all it's different forms. This is also a great way to showcase some great fonts out there and will hopefully give me the chance to create some of my own typefaces.


 















 I'm trying to keep things simple and elegant to bring the focus to the ampersand and it's beauty and strong form.

Here's a preview of more in the works.

Now this is a little card I made up based on the letter M. I was trying to get a dark "Noire" sense to it. 

M

Designs, Contests, and Cigars

Recently I've started a few new ventures, including buying a sweet home printer so I can start printing my own prints. I've also done some new design work and entered into some design contest (and won one!)
Here's some of the stuff I've been up to lately, in particular these are some designs for a Cigar and Fine Wine Club.





The Storm Be Still...

 Here's something I came up with while working on another anchor/nautical themed print. As you can see it's based off the famous "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster from the WWII, which if I may say is quite frankly an excellent design. Simple, bold, and gets the point across. I'm not suprised that so many people make use of it and it's public domain status.

Below you will find a couple different worn out variations.

Sleek Texture based Business Card Backing

After completing my last business card I decided to start a different one with a complete different look. Here's the back side.

The metal texture was originally from a title screen I designed for Armoured Revolution (a current student game project). I made a few changes and added my abstract initials logo. Trying to keep things simple and open, while having that cool-sleek-realistic look and feel to it.

600 mL Montana Spray Paint Can Model

600 mL Montana Can (picture via Instagram)

Here's a 3D model of a 600 mL spray paint can (based off the Tar Black series). I'll be adding more details in the texturing and designs on the can.

Menu textures

Here's some menu texture work I'm doing for a title on a student game

New Header!

New header has been started and an in progress version has been uploaded up above. I got tired of having a half finished black and white header image and decided to start classing it up.

I hope to be finished this by the end of today.

Get your very own Steam Whistle!

I made this as an ode to Steam Whistle, one of my favourite local beers. I based it off of their logo, and modeled the whistle in the 3d, then gave this a worn poster look.

SyringeMan

 Here's the final image of SyringeMan, I kept working on it after handing it off and came up with this comic/magazine cover look.