Twenty-Six Spins #11: Y is for Fluid

How are we not even halfway through yet? Blimey mate, I need a lie-down. To any daily blogger who makes being entertaining look so easy, I doff my cap!

Anyway, we’ll carry on through it all, because we’re a waterfall. This time, I was dealt Y and Fluid. The traditional form took me straight in this direction, and yet another excuse to try some Photoshop animation of a stop-motion ilk. Working swiftly here (or rushing, whichever you’d prefer) did create a softer, more stylistic scene than I’d likely have ended up with otherwise.

The saturated overlay of colour probably contribute to that end aswell, but I’m left pining for the black-and-white, ultimately. Not the finest execution, but there’s a concept there at least. Woo. Now for that lie-down, I think!

 

Twenty-Six Spins #10: V is for Sharp

We’ve made it to double figures. I’m as surprised as you are – or should that be as shocked as you are, since I got slightly overexcited by the rumble or two of thunder we had last night, and this was the result. I’m not sure lightning is the natural answer here, but it beats stakes, which was my original idea, and I’d say the sensation is pretty sharp!

There was a brief diversion into vector art, once again falling into the retro trap, but I didn’t think that was going to amount to much (rather like last night’s storm). Besides that, it was mostly one way, digital sketching to create some furious clouds and a striking V.

Twenty-Six Spins #9: G is for Neon, too

With neon coming up again, I got to thinking about laser beams. Originally I was going to try something out with spotlights, arranging the beams to make the G; quickly, it became clear that this was an idea best left in my head.

With that, I took the opportunity to go green (it was the last light I removed) and swept it across a pretty swift G shape, the beam itself tapering as it follows the spline:

I’m not sure the animated sequence does the letter justice or is even necessary, but it was fun to do.

Twenty-Six Spins #8: U is for Voxel

We so nearly got a ‘proper’ one there, as the wheel was close to flicking over to the V space. Goodness, that was exciting.

I included voxel – from my understanding, essentially a 3D counterpart to pixel – because I’ve had MagicaVoxel sitting around waiting to be used for some months, and thought this would give me the necessary kick to just make something with it.

Somewhat daunted by the interface and volatile camera, I thought it best to stick to something relatively simple for this first attempt, hence a simple but snaky U form – later supplemented with a maze-esque impression. Fortunately, placing voxels is pretty simple, so it didn’t take too long to complete.

Whilst I can’t personally claim to have been enraptured by MagicaVoxel on first glance, I expect fans of Minecraft and the like will get a lot from it, given time and adequate planning (both of which I forewent). A cursory Google will make its potential obvious. And it’s free!

Twenty-Six Spins #7: C is also for Neon

…and Catchphrase, which appears to be today’s homage. What better inspiration for neon, though?

It’s good, but it’s not right.

It didn’t take long for the wheel to spin me a double – I might have to reconsider the non-existent, non-binding rules should this happen often.

But this was a mega quickie, taking advantage of a small whisp of energy within me at the moment, thanks to these challenges. That’s pretty rad. The past seven days have flown by! I think also the fact that pattern didn’t come up again means a sigh of relief for all concerned.

I really liked the C shape from my latter dalliance with brutalism, and thought it’d be far out to try and mirror that in full eighties neon.

As you can see, I did start to venture into slightly more convoluted territory but thankfully I snuffed that out pretty sharpish. Cool!

 

Twenty-Six Spins #6: H is for Pattern

With today’s spin, it was time for some (hopefully) fun patterns! I’ve not really indulged in pattern for a while, so I knew immediately that this would be… interesting.

Trying to be succinct proved largely uninspired!

At this point I learnt a bit about Illustrator’s pattern capabilities, which I’ve rarely if ever employed in a near decade of using the software. I wish I’d known about the path merging and cropping tools in previous projects, too! Cropping some artwork and defining a pattern will allow you to use it as you would a regular fill, while maintaining its size. This means you can quite easily generate a seamless pattern:

I thought that looked just a bit naff, though, so I dialled it down and reattempted with curves and circles. What we have now is some wallpaper from 1973, apparently – not naff in the slightest!

This was the most challenging yet, by quite a way – as you can probably see from the developments, I seemed to blunder around all over the shop with not too many exciting results, and grew a tad frustrated for that. I feel like I’ve learnt something, however – that Pattern Tool should open up some possibilities for a second attempt.

Twenty-Six Spins #5: Z is for Industrial

There certainly are lots of good Scrabble letters coming up, but thankfully Z is rather a lucky one for Industrial. I straight away began thinking about old machinery, cogs and pulleys. There was with some diversion into nuts, bolts and a more conceptual conveyor belt/caterpillar track:

There could be some potential in the track idea; it’s simple and seems pretty adaptable. But not just yet – too much going on with the cogs.

Throw in some belts and roughen up the background – that’s about it, really!

Twenty-Six Spins #4: X is for Distorted

Distorted is another I was looking forward to. While I could have taken an X and just bent it out of shape, I took the opportunity to take it in the ‘glitch art’ direction. The outcome is apparently a homage to the early days of Freeview.

The final X is cut into rows, each of them transmitting a distorted, offset segment of the letter and distributed randomly with each frame. I did try some other compositions for the grid, using columns and squares:

Some nice looking Ks in there! The bright colour scheme was what I originally went with, but I chose to distort that by inverting and desaturating, muddying it up slightly. Lots more that could be done with this, should it come up again!

Twenty-Six Spins #3: J is for Spooky

Oooo! Time for some creepy stuff. With J usually sporting a generous tail and potential for serifs on the head, I moved away from Casper and thought some crooked, sinister trees would make for a decent response. It was also a nice excuse to return to the speedy, atmospheric drawings I got quite into last year.

I originally went for two adjacent trees, roots interwoven and branches weathered into a J shape, but later tore the tail tree down. Then, of course, came the surfeit of Photoshop effects:

The deep blue is quite nice, but I think the textures are enough, so ultimately I’ve chosen to stick with black-and-white. Let’s hope tomorrow’s spin is less spooky! There are actually fifty-two spins, aren’t there, since I spin two wheels each day… oh well!

Twenty-Six Spins #2: C is for Brutalist

I’d been looking forward to this, so for it to come up on only the second spin was most welcome. Brutalist architecture has such an abrupt, imposing character, it’s bound to create a commanding letterform.

This was mainly an excuse to go into 3D and play around with big slabs of concrete. I ran with the combo of cold pillars, stepped gradients and walkways to hopefully create a Brutalist C.

Below are some earlier developments, showing the concept in its earlier stages and some playing around with the camera to create the C:

I’ve already broken my promise of running with my instincts, as I found myself making the below after supposedly finishing for the day. I quite like it, though:

The results are much more interesting than yesterday, anyway. I wouldn’t mind seeing Brutalist come up again, to explore the theme with some different shapes and characteristics. Well, I suppose I could just do that of my own free will, rather than hoping the wheel lets me.