one step to be recognized as vector artist (part 2)

hi everyone, if you have follow my post, you should know that i said i am ready to become a contributor in istock. Yesterday the result came back apparently i was rejected again, even i submitted my best 3. : )
No biggie, gotta take things more positively...rejection means that i am still not good enuff, or maybe i know what all vector artist knows what to do, but doing it the way which they do not accept, every stock site has a set of their own standard. Especially when they are very strict on picking contributor.

Nevermind i will keep on trying to come up with stocks with more commercial value, perhaps, character styling is not a popular stock image where designers would look for. But yeah, there's a good news too....and i have achieve my first steps to become a vector artist. www.vectorstock.com had accepted me as a contibutor, while developing more stocks for istock submission. i will be posting my works in vectorstock.com.

to conclude, thank you for your support and love, personally to vector stocks, appreciate your approval to accept me as a contributor, hopefully i would be able to come up with vectors with more commercial values, and secondly i don't give up on my character styling interest.

No pix post this time. :)

Design Icon: Ora-ito

Designers ....designers...designers.....we are surrounded by many many products design by product or industrial designers. However some of the designers are so well known, as if nuthing will go wrong if it's art directed or design by them, and more often the cases, people starts knocking on their doors, rather than them knocking on others. on the other hand, some just took industrial designs as a part of the jobs, and they do as demanded by the client. So if you're a designer what and who will you want to become, somebody who dictates the designs, or let the client to dictate on major part and you help them to execute in a rationale way.

Well, to me both way will do (truth and reality sucks) you need to earn money for living, especially when you are in an asian country, alot of the unethical manufacturer would just copy and replicate whatever is famous or workable within their boundaries, it saves up so much when it comes to cost of development. However if one designer would need to follow a client's or an investor's view, i would seriously think that the third party would listen to advice, edgy thinking with high level of acceptance, and most importantly having a sense of taste.

let's look into what i labelled as a branded design icon, there's heaps of them, namely giorgio armani, giani versace, marc jacobs, and all you can think of in terms of fashion apparel. but today i want to review a person which basically sparks my interest in industrial design, and believe everything can be a part of design, just the matter of wanting it to happen or not. He is Morabito, a french carrying partial of his name, forming a wellknown personal design icon named Ora-ito. being kicked out from a design school, he decided to design products and create fake ads at the age of 21. He published the ad of an ibook and several series of louis vuitton products, that creates a hype  of people making inquiries to purchase product.

He had earned his fame from there, and later won the oscar best product design award for heineken alumimium bottle, and later develop many many interesting product design, interior design and so forth. here are some of  his works.

and many many more. and how i know about him. it all started from a handphone which i bought, and it was designed by him!

wanna know more about him, visit  http://www.ora-ito.com

Wedding day

bells ring, people's laughter, most of the them laughing, cheering and drinking, shouting, dressing smart and playing games, 1 or 2 person is not so happy (might happen), crying in joy....yeah this is what you will see, hear and feel during you or your frens big day.....yes it's the wedding day. In most chinese family where i grew up from this should be once in your life...anything more than once is not something to shout out loud in most cases for a typical asian chinese family(at least).

So, there's a mix emotion in this occassion, some with tight budget but with high requirement might face some problem or stress..those with loads of cash, have it easier than others....but for most of the cases, since its a once in lifetime thing, the bride would hope for everything to be special. (ideally). some groom would want something special for the wife. Well this is where design become important....let's spill out something which can be specially design for this event?

1. Wedding cake
2. Wedding ban ring
3. Wedding invitation card
4. Wedding tracks (sound design)
5. Wedding suit and gown
6. Wedding Backdrop
7. Wedding Arch
8. Wedding door Gift
9. Pre wedding Album
10. Wedding Album

If u have the money u problem could come out with 20 more item, but out of the 10, theres half of them, where u can play around with. i personally designed wedding ban ring for me and my wife, character design of both of us for our wedding card, and wedding track CD cover as door gift, and a personalised pre wedding phootgrapher. Below is the design of wedding ring, both our initial starts from "T", so i designed my wife's ring to have 2 "T" connect where the head of the "T" holds a diamond in the middle, the challenge came in when i do not fancy diamond on my ring, so when both "T" joined to gether, it looked like a normal ban ring with square cuts in the middle. I spend weeks to resolved, finally something snaps, initially i have a line to separate both "T"s but i am still unhappy, suddenly the ideas just snaps. And i have brief my gold smith to have one of the "T" in polished finished, and another "T" is in matt sand blasted finished. Walahhhh....i am very happy with the outcome, i guess this could be one of the first project i did for product  (jewelery) design.

Second project which i wanted to share is on character styling or caricature. Why is this related to wedding? LAst few weeks, a friend of mine called, and this is how it went

Tsong: Hei, you working in agency right? u got any contact to print a backdrop?
Me: Yeah, i have. why
Tsong: oh its for my wedding, they charge me RMXXXX, and let us choose the whole backdrop from a template, and all of it are very busy. My wife din like it. We want something more stylized and clean. Do u have any idea.
Me: i can think something out (in my mind, it will be great if i apply my interest in character styling on somebody instead of it being always drawing myself, so i din tell him anything and started sketching the night by retrieving their pre-wedding pic from his facebook)

So, i have sketch out a rough character and the whole concept backdrop from my ipad, and send the jpeg to them, and they agreed on the concept, in fact the wife's quite excited about it, once everybody agreed, i starts to execute with illustrator, and changed the couple from holding a love shaped balloon with their name on it to, entering a hall with red carpet and they wedding celebration words on the walls. Once set, my first client approved, i have sent out to print. and wallahhhh this is the outcome:

one step to be recognized as vector artist

its been quite a number of years since i thought i should become a vector artist first, but how? i starts researching about contributing to stock library and wow it just doesn't look as easy as it seem for me. I have been trying contribute to one of the quite reputable stock image site "istockphoto.com" and in order to control the quality of their stocks to their consumer, they have a proper evaluation. these are the steps.

1. u need to read their guide and expectation from them
2. u need to take a test and pass all the technical question which they impose.
3. third u need to submit 3 sample works to them. and if you failed, they will forfeit you for a certain time frame for you to be able to submit again.

from my last attempt, and i have failed many many time, and the last forfeit period is 90 days, can u imagine waiting for 90 days to be able to re-submit works to be assessed? Well, i have pass through the 90 days, however, i feel that my previous submission, i wasn't so ready and i decide to open a new account, with a new virtual identity with the name of "qswitcho". and submit my best 3 to be assessed, hopefully this time, i will pass it all without trying to resubmit again.

this time around i make sure, i check all the artwork, with very clean up point, with proper colour coordination, without any open paths, and so forth. Today i will share out what i have submitted, and cross my fingers, meeting their expectation. To be able to become a contributor in the stocks meant something to me. With their strict policies and quality assessment, over the period of 2 years, i have learnt that to come out with concepts is hard, but to execute simple drawing that meets a professional requirement requires equivalent effort, and if you are not familiar with all the functions of the software it's sometime hard to meet what they want.

here you go, my best 3 submission to become a stock contributor: