Rocket, Rocket, Rocket, Rocket Scientist

...but she's just like the second law of thermodynamics...



Anyways, I'm back with another piece. This one was made as a gift for a friend's wedding; I wanted to make something personal, since he's an old friend of mine. Bed, Bath and Beyond just wasn't cutting it.

Apropos of nothing, I thought it'd be fun to make him a space-age rocketship looking like it came from some old comic book. You might think it had something to do with the wedding, but...no. It was kinda just for fun.



I started with the sketch, and hoo boy were there a lot of sketches. I had only a vague idea of how this should look, so I played around with different angles for the rocket and exactly how the background should look. My main idea was to feature the rocket in a heroic 'blast-off!' pose, with old comic book-y action lines. Here are just a few...






Eventually, with a lot of sketching and Google image references, I came up with this...





Now there was quite a bit of cleanup work to do. I brought the sketch into Flash where I could clean it up (just solid colored shapes)...








I took the cleaned-up rocket and brought it into Photoshop where I could assemble a rough version of how the details and the background should look...





Through more consultations and advice from co-worker and A-1 helper guy Bob Rissetto I tweaked everything from the colors to the background layout and the details. From there, it was back into Flash to finalize the rocket...


And finally back into Photoshop to lay out all the comic book-y details. Photoshop has an excellent filter that manipulates solid colors into colored dots. Perfect for that comic book style. I was also able to track down a folded paper texture from the internets and use that as an overlay. Most people who saw the final image thought I'd actually folded the paper.


Anyways, after a lot more tweaking with the filters, colors, and background 'light rays', I got to a satisfying place. I looked to old comic books for more ideas, and they inspired me to add a white border, 'page number' (the date they got married, Oct 16th), and text box...



In the end I was able to print this out at 11x17, frame it, and hand it off with a ribbon tied 'round. This whole process actually went much quicker than the Robofish, and I think I like this end product better. It's a good lesson in giving yourself strict time constraints. Then the projects won't just keep crawling off into uncharted territory...








Until Next Time.