The EyeWriter

Ninja November 18th, 2009

In 2003, graffiti artist and writer Tony Quan (aka TEMPTONE) was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease. This disease has left him paralyzed with the exception of his eyes. This is where the EyeWriter comes in. This eye-tracking apparatus and custom, open source software allows Tony and other artists with paralysis to create art using only their eyes.

temptone1

temptone2

Art is a tool of empowerment and social change, and I consider myself blessed to be able to create and use my work to promote health reform, bring awareness about ALS and help others.
– Tony Quan, aka TEMPTONE

Art , Posts by Ninja
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Ask Ninja 12: Vector swirls and curls

Ninja January 21st, 2009

In one week, I got emails from 3 brides-to-be, 2 bands, and 1 curious student all asking:

Q. How did you create the swirls in your First Kiss Illustration?

First Kiss

A. I drew all the paths using Adobe Illustrator’s pen tool—no fancy shortcuts. This was before I discovered the handy swirl tool. I would endlessly tweak and make many trips to my local Kinkos for large-format prints.

Now, I wouldn’t leave you hanging. Here’s my tutorial on making swirls and curls in Adobe Illustrator. It does require basic knowledge of the pen tool. If you’re not familiar with the pen tool, the University of Massachusetts Amherst has a great pdf guide and practice exercises here.

And for the truly pressed, I’ve included links to free vector swirls and curls at the end of this post. Now, on with the tutorial.

Step 1—Draw a spiral

Click and hold down the mouse on the Line tool to reveal the other tools. Select the Spiral tool.

Click and drag outward. If you’re a bit of a control enthusiast, you can also click on your art board, and a Spiral Options window will appear. Here, you can enter the spiral radius, decay, spiral segments, and spiral direction. I’m using the default 80% of decay, 10 segments option.

Using the Direct Select tool (white arrow), you can choose points and drag them outward to alter the spiral’s decay. Or as mentioned above, you can change the decay in the Spiral Options window.

Set the stroke weight to 10 pts.

Step 2—Covert to outline and modify shape

Object > Path > Outline Stroke

I like to work in outline mode, so I can see stray points more easily and then delete them. To access Illustrator’s outline mode, hit ⌘ + y. If you’re on a PC, substitute the ⌘ symbol for the Ctrl key. To exit outline mode, hit the same key combination again.

Once in outline mode, use the Direct Select tool to choose points and drag them to alter the line weight of your swirl.

Illustration , Posts by Ninja , Process , Tutorials
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Angrigami

Ninja November 19th, 2008

My attempt to transform all the anger and create something beautiful.

Ze Frank’s from52to48withlove project received both sweet and bitter reactions. In response to the growing number of angry emails, Ze made a new project—Angrigami.

A square sheet consisting of snippets from some of the emails received can be downloaded here. Cut it out, fold it into something pretty, and send a pic to ze@zefrank.com, to be included in this gallery.

If you’re curious to learn how I folded this, I’ll post an instructional pdf later.

Happy hump day,
Ninja

Posts by Ninja , Type
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Gocco Process

Ninja July 29th, 2008

This post is for Dave & Gen who have a Gocco, but have yet to use it! Hopefully, this mini Gocco tutorial from Lab Partners will get ya going. ~__^

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Tags: Gocco, Prints, Tutorials

Ask Ninja 11: Backgrounds

Ninja July 28th, 2008

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these.

Q: Hi… I can’t think of a background at all. I’m pretty good at drawing people, but I suck so hard at backgrounds, and it turns out that backgrounds are what my teacher wants to see. So I guess I’m asking you how to actually go about and do a background for a self portrait.

A: Hi Stormie! Ah, backgrounds. Backgrounds can be quite challenging, but they are very important as they set the stage for your narrative and give your image a sense of place. Backgrounds can be either architecture, natural environment, or abstract. In the interest of not having this post run too long, I will provide tutorial links.

A few things to keep in mind as you form your background:

How does your subject interact with this space? What objects does your subject come in contact with that makes this space believable?

Do your research! Make sure location, fashion, vegetation, and architecture are accurate for the time and place of your image.

I was originally going to upload work from working illustrators, but instead, I’ve dug through my collection of student art work to give you some inspiration.

Interiors

I’ve provided three examples from different artists who have all chosen bedrooms for their settings. Even though they all have the bedroom setting in common, the lighting, tones, textures, and perspective set a different mood in each image.