I don’t showcase my own stuff here a lot. I enjoy looking at other works on the web, so hopefully I can add a bit to that with my own.

I created what I now call the Harbury Series late last year and earlier this year. It was more or less an experiment using Google SketchUp, Adobe Illustrator, and a bit of Photoshop. The process involved modelling the people and place in 3D in SketchUp, then exporting a 2D image of the model to Illustrator. That’s where the night-time effects and outlines were added.

The results speak for themselves. What started as an experiment became a colorful, yet grungy world that these monochromatic people live in. It’s playful but has a sense of an urban feel to it.

Running / 2008

The first of the series is “Running“. Originally titled “The View,” it started out as an empty scene of buildings, inspired by an old cartoon I produced in Illustrator called “Brigham Avenue” (below, left.) I figured out SketchUp was the perfect tool to help enhance the scenes and add the 3D feel that gave it a lot of pop. The people are simply downloadable models from the SketchUp website, painted various colors.

Brigham Avenue

The citizens of Harbury were a challenge. The scene was too empty without any life, yet I was afraid to add any sort of realistic people in to the scene. The detail of the people would detract from the simple detail of the buildings and city itself. The colorful people, while not perfect, I felt were a good solution to the problem.

From there, I started to model various places of the city, producing more graphics to be a part of the series. I played around more with textures, and began to use an old version Poser to produce people with different poses and expressions. Eventually, I finished working on “Sitting,” which I think is the one people spend the most time looking at.

Sitting / 2008

People see the one I refer to as “red dude” sitting on top of Frary’s Art Supply, named after a former art teacher. Does he represent suicide? Granted, suicide was considered by many people in Frary’s class… But I didn’t consider that when making this one. Sure, he looks to be contemplating, but I simply intended for him to be sitting and enjoying the view from atop the building. But who doesn’t love a little mystery?

Waiting / 2008

“Waiting” is simply a man waiting. Maybe it’s not easy being green, who knows? But what he’s waiting for is just in the eye of the viewer. He could be waiting for his crack dealer. He could be waiting for his wife to come out of the bar. He could be considering whether to enter.

Smirking / 2008

Finally, I created “Smirking” to represent a busy city. In the other 3 images, there’s no a lot going on. Here you have several things going on: the yellow guy with the water balloon, the red guy waving for a taxi, and a blue guy possibly about to fall victim to the yellow guy.

They’re not perfect. Many outlines are off, the car windows are different colors in every picture, etc. But it was all a huge learning experience. If you’ve followed my steps a little bit, maybe you can do similar works. But give me a little credit, mmk?