Category: portfolio

This is a portfolio of my work in many forms. It should give you some insight as to the products I might help you to create.

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portfolio

96 of 365 is a wretched prince of darkness in #Inkscape

Prince of Darkness - LeMasney Consulting
Prince of Darkness - LeMasney Consulting
Prince of Darkness - LeMasney Consulting
Prince of Darkness – LeMasney Consulting

 

Okay, so before you unsubscribe from my RSS feed citing blasphemy, know that I’m no devil worshiper. I promise you, I’m not here to offend anyone. As a design focus, you have to admit, this literary figure has an interesting illustrated past. I originally envisioned this sketch as a simple icon, a road sign that read devil crossing, with a simple silhouette of a human top and a goat bottom, but as I gathered the pieces for the figure, I realized that the detailed lines would come together very nicely as a more realistic illustration. To that end, I got some great free images from MorgueFile and Flickr’s The Commons, so that I’d not need to worry even about attribution. I got a picture of a goat’s head for the horns, a public domain portrait of a bare chested fighter, and a picture of a deer for its hind quarters, and brought them all into Inkscape and bitmap traced them. I had to do some flipping, node removal and resizing to get all of the elements right in relationship to each other, and after that I connected the disparate lines with the calligraphy tool. I had to rebuild the hooves on the deer, connect the hind quarters to the man’s chest, and place the horns, hat-like, upon his head. Finally, using the pencil tool set to 50% smoothing, Spiro, and shape: triangle in, I made 5 tails, and capped each tail with a point. All said and done, I wouldn’t want to meet up with this guy.

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portfolio requests

95 of 365 is a sababa buddha in #Inkscape @Amy Kaufman

sababa Buddha
sababa Buddha
sababa Buddha
sababa Buddha

Amy recently gave me a brief lesson in Hebrew. I was never really been exposed to very much Hebrew culture until later in life through friends, and I’m always fascinated with the detailed traditions and elements of that culture. I’m fairly certain even in the little bit of the Hebrew alphabetI have in this sketch, I’ve misused what I learned, because there’s this thing about dots that I just don’t get, and I’m not really clear on the differences in some of the characters. The characters you see there represent, from right to left, the Hebrew characters of Samekh, Bet, Bet, He, but I think it’s supposed to be Het.

At any rate, the characters together render the word and idea of sababa, which according to Amy and other sources is more than just a word, but rather a way of life. It’s also been described as cool, chill, going well, on the right path and other positive states. It’s a deep concept, and I like it a lot. In my mind, I thought of it as a very zen state, which led me to the thought of a buddha (not necessarily the Buddha) potentially being (in a state of) sababa. So, referencing Amy’s notes on sababa, I found and placed the Hebrew characters in Inkscape. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it happened without any changes to the configuration.  I found a great buddha image in morguefile which I cropped, brought into Inkscape, bitmap traced a few times, and underpainted with the watercolor effect using the calligraphy tool.

Thanks to Amy for the inspiration, and the lesson! Above all, I recognize that I’m doing a religious cultural mashup here, and in that, it might be taken as offensive. There is absolutely no intent to do that, but rather to possibly have some cross understanding of a common state of being in many religious viewpoints.

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portfolio requests

A portrait of Sarah Badawy – LeMasney Consulting

A portrait of Sarah Badawy - LeMasney Consulting
A portrait of Sarah Badawy - LeMasney Consulting
A portrait of Sarah Badawy - LeMasney Consulting
A portrait of Sarah Badawy – LeMasney Consulting

Hey, all. This one was fun. Sarah, who is a long time worker for me, but also a supportive friend and confidant, was nice enough to share a picture for the 365 sketches project. I had a short conversation about what she was looking for, and she mentioned that she liked my self portrait with a scowl, because it had a Japanese emoticon styled face, which I really only subtly realized when I made it. She often uses reversed or japanese styled icons in her emails, and the way she writes and types really is one of the tiny but many fun and interesting aspects of her persona.

A portrait of Sarah Badawy - LeMasney Consulting
A portrait of Sarah Badawy – LeMasney Consulting

With this in mind, in Inkscape, I imported her donated image, bitmap traced it, and removed some background elements, all of her facial features, and a cup of bubble tea that she’s drinking in the original photo. I simplified the nodes, which numbered over 8,000, resulting in just over 1,000 nodes. Using the calligraphy brush set very thin, I added a line to create a shirt, and another to create a chin, neither of which emerged from the bitmap trace.  With a thicker brush size and less opacity, I added color for her hair, shirt, jacket, foreground and background. I added a star using the shape tool. Finally, I created her facial features with the text tool. Thanks for the image Sarah, I hope you like what I did with it!

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design principles Illustration Inkscape portfolio

A highly reflective sphere

Highly reflective sphere
Highly reflective sphere
Highly reflective sphere - LeMasney Consulting
Highly reflective sphere

Here’s a simple sphere that moves a bit away from my regular reflective treatment.

In Inkscape, I made a black sphere on a gradient background. I duplicated and intersected the sphere and made the intersection white to imitate reflectance of the ‘floor’ part of the background gradient. I made a white rectangle and converted to path, then bent the top and bottom paths to make the reflection of an overhead lampappear to bend upon the top surface of the sphere. I created center gradients for both the black and white parts of the sphere. I added a grey, blurred, flat gradient for a shadow beneath the sphere. Finally, I duplicated and lowered the opacity of the black sphere and moved it down to create a reflection of the sphere itself in the ground.

Hope you all enjoyed it!

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4 ghosts from Pac Man reimagined – LeMasney Consulting

4 ghosts from Pac Man reimagined - LeMasney Consulting
4 ghosts from Pac Man reimagined - LeMasney Consulting

4 ghosts from Pac Man reimagined - LeMasney Consulting
4 ghosts from Pac Man reimagined – LeMasney Consulting

For the love of Pac Man

So, like many of Gen X, I was highly influenced by the introduction of Pac Man, and feel like the colors, sounds, and excitement that came over me the first time I saw it changed me in ways that I didn’t know until I started to study design. I was never particularly good at the game, and still I have trouble getting past the first level before losing interest. The first time I saw the game, it was inside a Wendy’s Hamburgers in Northeast Philly. It was about the size of a dishwasher, doubled as a table, and had a short queue waiting to play it. The version I play now is free and exists on my phone. It really is the end times.

How I made the image.

In Inkscape, I started by making the simple ellipse, rectangle, and Bezier shapes for the ghost outline. I combined the rectangle and Bezier path, the duplicated and flipped that shape to create the back of the ghost “skirt” In fact, two more dupes were made in order to create the 3d effect of the skirt. I found a public domain skull and bitmap traced it and carved it down to just the eyes and nose, then added it to the ghost. Then I added the candy coating effect. I duplicated the ghost 3 times and affected the color to match the Pac Man colors. As a final touch, I added the final frame of the Pac Man sprite (when he is captured) to the background. I hope you enjoyed it!

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portfolio

It’s good to be Queen – LeMasney Consulting

It's good to be Queen - LeMasney Consulting
It's good to be Queen - LeMasney Consulting

It's good to be Queen - LeMasney Consulting
It’s good to be Queen – LeMasney Consulting

So there’s lots of reasons for this. First I was thinking of my beautiful wife, and how by mutual agreement, she pretty much has the power in our house, lives, and marriage. She does so much more with it than I would anyway. I also was thinking about the game of chess, which my 5 year old Jack and I have begun to explore in simple pawn only games. I was holding one of the queens in my personal board set which I got for my birthday about 5 years ago, and thinking about how beautiful the forms are, and it all came together as inspiration for this design.

In Inkscape, I imported a photo of a queen, and used the guidelines in Inkscape to create horizontal markers for changes in the form from top to bottom. Using the rectangle and conversion to path, I used the node tool to shape out the queen. I added a checkerboard in the back, the text over top, and finally, I used the new 0.48 beta spraypaint tool in order to create the bokeh effect you see floating in the background.

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