HYPERDRIVE: the Art of Andrew Moir

A Couple New Ones...

2011-10-10T23:33:00.004-04:00

Superman
Brian Williams caricature, host of NBC Nightly News
Photoshop CS2, Wacom Intuos4

Mutant Attack

2011-09-09T01:28:00.003-04:00

Pencil, inked, scanned, Photoshop colored. Background detail done in Illustrator. Not my best, but I like the action, composition, and perspective. :)
Illustration Friday theme: Boundaries. This spacer's boundaries are about to be imposed upon by his mutated comrade.

Kitty Cop

2011-07-16T11:22:00.001-04:00

Pencil drawing scanned in from my sketchbook, Photoshop color.

Recent Illustration Commissions

2011-06-25T11:18:00.006-04:00

Superhero Squad

A Christmas present from a friend to her nephew (whose head is on the Iron Man suit.) I needed a lot of reference from online (images and videos) for the Squadies to nail their distinctive art style, and had a couple photos of the boy's face. I worked hard to make all the linework interesting, paying attention to shapes, width, weight, and flow.

The Cat Trick

My friend hired me to illustrate this as an anniversary present from him to his wife. I used photos for their three cat's heads, and rummaged online for the hockey uniforms, goalie net and rink line details. I created the little ads in the back in homage to the couple's culinary interests.

Note my new signature logo, an AM shaped and colored like a pencil, my favorite drawing utensil. Why do I use a signature logo? Is such a thing necessary? Who else does this? :)

Adobe Illustrator CS2

Recent Logo Designs

2011-02-18T22:30:00.006-05:00

Adobe Illustrator CS2
Paying work makes me happy! :)

Glenshaw Alliance Church Bible quizzers revamped t-shirt design.
Logo for Independence Professionals, LLC webpage. They work with mentally and physically challenged individuals.
Design for local beauty enhancement company.

Illustration Friday-- Mail

2010-12-19T00:46:00.002-05:00

Adobe Illustrator CS2
Tried my best to just use simplified shapes and concentrate on design, color, and composition. :)

Illustration Friday-- Sneaky

2010-11-19T23:39:00.005-05:00

Moroccan Mark/Adobe Illustrator
This man looks like he could be a little sneaky. :) Actually, this was a friend's Halloween costume, and inspired me enough to draw a caricature of him. :)

It's been a long time since I...

2010-10-23T21:10:00.003-04:00

...posted anything new. Well so, these aren't exactly new, but more like updated versions of illustrations I've already posted. Hopefully I'll get back in the swing of things soon, posting some new freelance and such. :)
Big Boss Man
Adobe Illustrator
Swim Against Death
Adobe Illustrator

Church t-shirt logo

2010-03-18T10:39:00.003-04:00

Adobe Illustrator CS2.
My pastor's wife asked me to make a logo for the Bible quiz team at my church. She said she wanted the chocolate brown/blue combo that's been popular for awhile. I think I wound up going a bit more teal than she originally had in mind, but she said she preferred how it came out. I told the printers I wanted this to go over the breast pocket area, but wish I'd have thought to have it printed over the whole front. Must be my conservative nature. :)

Big Boss Man

2009-11-16T23:31:00.011-05:00

For Illustration Friday's Unbalanced. Usually the old man gets a little crazy around mid-week, but Nerble takes it in stride.
Adobe Illustrator CS2
Adobe Illustrator /PhotoshopWeathered version: I exported the Illustrator file as a tiff, then opened it in Photoshop. I opened a photo I'd taken of a cracked asphalt sidewalk, then dragged and dropped it onto my illustration. I blended the texture into the main illustration using the Multiply filter, then manipulated the transparency until the illustration still dominated but the texture showed through just enough.
I changed the background into a layer, then added a layer underneath the illustration layer, and turned the color to brown. I erased some of the illustration layer to let the brown background show through. Then I created some additional distress drawing cracks, highlights and shadows the Dodge and Burn tools. :)

Sweating the Small Stuff

2009-10-23T23:29:00.009-04:00

I did this piece as a flyer for a Sunday morning Bible study I led. Unfortunately, I didn't get it to the printer fast enough (Yet another lame attempt to fit the Illustration Friday meme. This week it's Fast).
Adobe Illustrator CS2
I really enjoy the look of super-tight comic book inking, say, along the lines of The Art of Comic Book Inking volumes 1 and 2 by Gary Martin. Some of the examples in those books stagger my mind as far as tightness, getting the perfect balance of light and dark, and making all the lines work so the image comes alive, not just putting down lines however you feel like it. Another awesome book about inking is Rendering in Pen and Ink by Arthur L. Guptill; a big tome of a book that's worth every hour to read it.

The figure came first; the background and text came later. First I sketched the figure in pencil, scanned it into Illustrator, then traced it with the pen tool. I did all the blacks first, working out shadows and forms until it stood alone as a solid black and white illustration. I then started applying flat colors: 4 shades for the armor, 3 shades for the gold-lighted glass (I didn't know how many layers of color I would use originally, that's just how it worked out).

All the little tapered lines are, for the most part, blended triangles, shaped to fit whatever form I needed. I'm not a big fan of outlines. I do wind up using them here and there, but I'm trying to get out of the habit. I try to think more in terms of light, shadow, and dimension, trying to figure out how to make 2D pop out like 3D. :)

Swim Against Death

2009-10-16T01:39:00.008-04:00

Adobe Illustrator CS2
A moment frozen in time (Illustration Friday meme). I can't believe how long it's been since I posted last. For the most part I'm happy with how this turned out.

Close-up of chained swimmer.
I created the main body of the chains, turned it into a pattern brush, then drew them on a path with the brush tool. The bubbles are one bubble turned into a scatter brush and the path drawn with the brush tool.
Close-up of monster fish.
Used a bunch of different blends for the details on his face. I created the tentacle texture using the pencil tool with a thick stroke. I turned the stroke into outlines, copied and pasted a copy on top which I made lighter, and moved it around a little until it looked like raised ridges. I then masked them into the shape of the tentacles. Close-up of water bug master.
Used a water bug for reference, but changed things up a little. I wanted some sort of sci-fi device on the bug to indicate it's in control of the little robot creatures, but I don't like the thing I made. I'll have to come up with something better later.
Close-up of bubble woman.
The chain going around the bubble is four different brushes, a dark, middle, light, and green for behind the bubble. I cheesed how the the chain goes behind the bubble, so it doesn't really look right if you look too close, where it goes from gold to green. I'll fix that eventually. Also, sometimes a pattern on a path may look squished if your path is short, or look stretched out if your path stops just short of the pattern replicating.
There's way more detail on her than what I needed, since she's supposed to be somewhat in the background, but once I got started...

Anniversary Card

2009-06-04T10:26:00.002-04:00

Here's the front of the anniversary card I made for my wife. It's 3D Max. :)

8th Wedding Anniversary Illustration

2009-05-31T19:00:00.006-04:00

Canon Digital Rebel XTi, 3D Max, Photoshop, Illustrator. :) Here's a submission for Illustration Friday's Drifting.

Final Approved Blaze Logo

2009-05-03T17:09:00.004-04:00

T-shirt front and back designs.

Mock-up of t-shirt application:
Adobe Illustrator CS2

Latest Blaze design revision

2009-04-14T15:08:00.001-04:00

Illustration Friday theme: Poise

2009-03-29T21:42:00.001-04:00

Adobe Illustrator CS2

Isometric Work Samples

2009-03-28T10:53:00.002-04:00

Well, mostly isometric, except for the peppers and woman's head. :)
Adobe Illustrator

Corporate Identity

2009-03-27T20:27:00.002-04:00

Studeny Financial Consulting
Slip-ons

Portraits

2009-03-27T19:07:00.010-04:00

Some of these drawings are are close to 20 years old and a little beat up, but they scanned okay. :)

Pencil

Pencil

Pencil

Pencil

Pencil/Photoshop/Illustrator

Pencil

Pencil/Photoshop

Pencil/Photoshop
Pencil
Rapidograph/Photoshop

Pencil

Caricatures

2009-03-27T18:47:00.010-04:00

These were all done with Adobe Illustrator CS2. :)

Eva Green
Paris Hilton

Mel Gibson

Miley Cyrus

Jessica Simpson

Chelsea Clinton

Blaze logo continued

2009-03-17T11:59:00.002-04:00

Here is possibly the t-shirt back with Matthew 5:14-16. :)And some color variations to go along with that. :)

Legendary Guitarist Jimmy Page

2009-03-14T20:52:00.002-04:00

Adobe Illustrator CS2. :)

Church youth group logo

2009-03-12T17:33:00.006-04:00

Here's an idea I have for a t-shirt logo for our church's youth group. I don't know if the youth group leader will like it, but it's totally my style. I probably could have used a fancier text (I used Impact), but it's highly readable and stands out as well as I can make it.
I created the texture as a grayscale image in Photoshop, opened it in Illustrator, then changed the colors (Filters/Colors/Adjust Colors) to whatever I wanted once I had the texture masked behind the text and background oval. The lightning Z is a couple of blended shapes. :)

Illustration Friday-- Voices

2008-12-22T20:46:00.008-05:00

3D Max, Photoshop, Illustrator

The angel girl and baby Jesus are 3D. 3D isn't my strong suit, but I think they came out nice.

The background is a digital photo of two pillows; one to represent ground, the other sky. I used extreme selective focus to allow everything except the piece of ground the cradle is on to blur. I took the photo into Photoshop and beat on the color until I hit something I thought would work.

The stars and text are Illustrator. I created one star, then used the scatter brush option so I could simply draw a few paths and multiple stars would appear.
The text is Nueva Std bold, with a drop shadow behind it.

The Bible verse comes from the gospel of Luke, where he relates the astounding miraculous details surrounding and including the birth of our Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Luke also wrote the book of Acts, and is renowned for his historical accuracy and details.

Merry Christmas. :)

Blog revamp

2008-12-17T14:08:00.002-05:00

All of my older blogs had pictures imported from Flickr. I just deleted my Flickr page, which, of course, fouled up my old blogs; so, I figured I'll 'start over', instead of going through the work of digging through all my CD's to find the art that matches the blog, etc. I'm very grateful for Blogger's export feature which allowed me to save all my text to my hard drive. :)

2008-12-04T02:24:00.002-05:00

Adobe Illustrator/Adobe Photoshop CS2
I'm pretty happy with the way this logo looks. :)

Illustration Friday: Balloons

2008-11-28T14:08:00.003-05:00

Adobe Illustrator CS2

My current wallpaper. :)

Retro Car

2008-11-25T22:13:00.001-05:00

Adobe Illustrator CS2

Desert Hawks --"Sandstorm"

2008-11-08T14:11:00.013-05:00

Adobe Illustrator CS2
Starting an illustration for myself I don't usually have any plan, just an idea of something I want to draw. This piece turned out to be an exercise in curvilinear perspective.

I drew the robot first. I then added the car, man, and road, then realized I'd better do this in correct perspective if I want it to look right. I eyeballed where I thought the horizon should be drawing lines from the car to see where the vanishing points would hit. One hit well inside the picture, and the other way off to the right outside the frame. Without really thinking about how I'd do the rest of the picture, I fixed the perspective on the car according to these vanishing points. I realized quickly that my poor choice of the left-hand vanishing point location would distort everything to the left of that vanishing point, a big Mechanical Perspective 101 no-no.

Unless I wanted to move the vanishing point off to the left (what I should have done in the first place had I been thinking) and redo the car with the correct perspective (NOT a happy thought), the only other solution was curvilinear perspective, keeping the left vanishing point as the center point, sort of like 1-point perspective, and manipulating the perspective in a circular fish-eye lens fashion, much closer to how the humans see things as they turn their heads from the pivot point of the neck and look around. Not a problem really, but more work than I'd considered putting into this drawing. Turned out to be a decent solution, though, as the rest of the illustration fell into place after that. Nothing amazing, but it worked in a fix.

The colors are mostly brown and bluish-green, basically color compliments, with some yellow and violet added for drama and contrast. :)

New Art

2008-11-03T22:19:00.001-05:00

Adobe Illustrator CS2

Ninja Robot Monkey!

2008-10-07T21:02:00.006-04:00

Adobe Illustrator CS2

Here's a revamp of something I did a few years back. Just simplified shapes and (for the most part) solid colors. The purple background triangle was a vector shape, then rasterized. I added a little texture with film grain and other effects, then zoom blurred it to get the speed effect.

The title text, I think, is LCD. I copied and pasted two versions of the text and set them in back of the original, toggling each to either side and changing the colors to add depth and interest. I created a row of thin lines in front of the text, then played with the transparency and colors to achieve the t.v. lines effect.

I'm thinking he looks pretty rambunctious, with a spit-in-death's-eye attitude! :)

Birthday Boy Anthropomorph

2008-10-05T22:02:00.004-04:00

Adobe Illustrator CS 2

I don't know how much this actually looks like the boy I based the picture on, but for me, it captures some of his thoughtfulness and complexity.
Just a straightforward illustration. I created all the base shapes, then used the Offset Path command with negative numbers to make smaller inner shapes. The base shapes I gave darker colors, the inner shapes lighter colors, then blended.
I used the Free Transform tool to put the sidewalk and text into perspective. :)

Freelance t-shirt designs

2008-09-23T22:52:00.010-04:00

Here are a few ideas I put together for a t-shirt for our church.

Close-up of t-shirt back design
There's a big sign out in front of the church which (as far as I can reckon) uses Times New Roman for the "Glenshaw" and Arial for the "Alliance Church", which I used for my version. I then used a few different offset path thicknesses to achieve the 3D effect for the logo.
I appropriated the photo of the church from their website and traced it in Illustrator.
The background came via the scribble stylize effect. Front and back
Church name logo ideas
The logo with all the symbols is the Christian and Missionary Alliance logo, which I found a big version on the web and traced.
Adobe Illustrator CS2

Space Cat Enters Reptile Temple

2008-09-09T20:10:00.007-04:00

Adobe Illustrator 8/CS2

I created this at a time when I wanted to learn cartooning. I always thought of myself as a realist and considered cartooning beyond my grasp. I really had to go back to the basics, looking at lots of 50's retro art, abstract art, animation, Jack Kirby, and I don't know what all, to understand the idea of basic shapes and simplification in cartooning. :)

DJ Spooks freelance illustration

2008-09-09T19:32:00.011-04:00

Adobe Illustrator

I created this for a lady from Kuwait I met on Flickr. She posted a photo for me to use as reference.

When I first saw the photo, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the glasses.
I initially traced the head and facial shapes, which looked rather random and helter-skelter when I finished. I then manipulated the shapes --straightening, rounding, simplifying... trying to unify them, creating a flow with the shapes for a more graphic feel.
I used two different halftone screen sizes for the face and the cap. The sharp, detailed, and close-up photo revealed the man's pores, suggesting to me the halftone screen as how to imitate the effect. The cap was knit, and I thought the bigger halftone screen captured the feel of it well. :)

Running Cook

2008-08-30T08:57:00.003-04:00

I created this in Illustrator. I used a 4 square checker pattern, top row black/white; bottom row white/black, for the pants tile pattern.
I used just enough blue/white gradient and gray shadow to make the white jacket and hat stand out from the white background.
I kept my line work simple, varying the thickness to give some of the 'under areas' and shadow-y areas more weight, ala "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way" by Stan Lee and John Buscema. (A MUST have!)
I worked to keep the design of the character balanced, not just wanting to create a character, but an iconic image. :)

Clueless Cooks Banner

2008-08-29T00:32:00.004-04:00

Adobe Illustrator

A blog header banner for my wonderful friend Silla. Her current blog is the Bits and Pixels over in my links. :)