Escape / KellyLWatson

Escape is just an interesting shot at the side of an old, brick building. Interesting that after all these years there hasn’t been something safer or more convenient developed than shoddy, ratty staircases bolted to the side of a building.

The Road I Seem To Keep Walking Down / Jocko B.

The Road I Seem To Keep Walking Down has had many post-processing effects added to it, but they add to the mood of the picture. The signs blocking the road add to the gloomy feeling you get. The picture portrays snow, which is usually something cheerful, in to something almost depressing.

Balcony / Miguel De Leon

Balcony is a case where a composition is simply stumbled upon. It’s unlikely that anyone planned the look of the flower pots in contrast with the blue and yellow background. Shame that bigger sizes aren’t available of this one.

Markus' Balcony / Andreas Solberg

Markus’ Balcony is probably my personal favorite out of the bunch. Keeping on the subject of balconies, this time the view is from the other side of a balcony. You’re looking out on to a village of houses and their bright lights. The colors in this shot really come together to form a great composition.

I Love A Rainy Night / J.D. Fielding

I Love A Rainy Night found the right viewpoint to take this picture from. There’s a reason why streets at night are always wet in movies, as it creates beautiful cinematography.

Old Bridge / ginamccaleb

Old Bridge is just that. A piece of old architecture which has since been torn down in place of a new highway. The author comments that the only way on to this bridge is by going around the “Keep Out” signs.

Raging Building Fire / eecue

Raging Building Fire is a shot that shows emotion. Not in people, but in the situation. Peaceful chaos, as the fire crew is there to extinguish the flame, but there doesn’t seem to be a single onlooker at all.

Sun And Signs / .: sandman

Sun and Signs shows a situation where everything was just right for a photograph. A very lightly-clouded sky combined with the bright sun and haze of the mountains make for a great, docile scene.

Another Sunset Study / SkipSteuart

Finally, Another Sunset Study just seems to be an experiment by a photographer to get colors just right. Not sure why any studying is needed, because this shot seems to be nearly perfect. The blue atmospheric tint on the gate contrasts with the green of the grass and orange of the sky, and the barn in the back makes for an excellent added focal point.

Sure, I get jealous looking at shots like these and marveling at the superb skills of these Flickr..ers, but even with a cheap digital camera and some quick Photoshopping, nothing’s impossible, right?

Ants!

Located outisde of one of the university buildings, this sculpute is hidden in what is practically a ditch, but you can’t tell from the photo.

Lucas Oil Stadium

My contribution to the thousands of stadium photos on Flickr. This is along the riverwalk in Indianapolis, where I’m stuck for the next few years.

Push Button For Panda

My favorite randomly-placed, colorful panda sticker by far. The panda, unfortunately, shall never come.

Time Expired

Quite possibly the most depressing photo in my collection, a dirty parking meter outside of what is practically an abandoned building.

BC's Bar

Mt. Vernon. It’s located at the southwestern tip of Indiana, and this is possibly the most exciting view of its abandoned downtown.

Yeah, I try not to keep it too long and boring. If you’re interested, check out the rest of my photos on Flickr.

“In studying the dynamics of the Rugrats’ bodies, one will notice a few basic traits: the necks are straight, long and skinny; the babies have faces that are much wider than long (while the adults have faces that are much longer than wide); the widest part of the head is the cheeks at the mouth; the eyes are circles or ovals with dots for pupils and when glasses are used, the rims are extremely thick; and each characters hair has a signature style that can easily be recognized, even in silhouette.”

Some of the tips are essential for anyone studying character design or animation. A good character is instantly recognizable. It even goes on to point out how the simplest, smallest details can throw off an entire character, and explains the terms “on-model” and “off-model.”

They’ve been on the web since 1994, and are aging well. Today, Kim’s works are still some of the funniest geek cartoons on the web.

Over a hundred of Kim’s best works have been put on one page at the Nearing Zero website.

Sanford Lane

Download it below, if you so desire.

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Enjoy.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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?

designfeedr dug up some very interesting illustrations that use vivid colors and lighting combined with dark backgrounds to really make them pop, such as these beauties: