The Twilight Cafe

Twilight Cafe is a menu and restaurant concept that was inspired by futuristic themes and motifs of the 50s as well as stylizations from the cartoon The Jetsons. Boomerang shapes, things relating to outer space, colors blue, pink, red and green, the future, exploration and modernism were heavy themes that shaped the design output during the 50s and the early part of the 60s. I decided to first create a menu design using these ideas. I wanted the menu to be playful, intriguing, reflective of the look and feel I was going for and interactive to some degree. The prices and selections of the menu items had to represent the time period and style. Prices were of course going to be much lower. For example, a burger might be 50 cents or a sundae might be a nickel rather than what the prices are today. A restaurant such as this would offer traditional American foods that would fit into the theme.

I discovered during my research that it was common for many restaurants during the 50s to offer juices and fruit selections as appetizers. Today these items are normally sold as side orders or placed within the beverage or dessert menu so it would look rather unusual to see juices offered as starters now. These two pieces are vector illustrations and were created entirely in Illustrator. I also created a tangible copy of the menu. I printed out the layout for the menu, had it assembled, laminated and presented as a real menu that a restaurant would actually use.

"Club Worship Flyer"

As with all of my other business and advertisement concepts, this one is themed very specifically. If money were no issue, I'd definitely establish a club called Club Worship in a hot spot or location. The flyer presents Worship as a themed night for a fictitious club called Club Panorama but Club Worship would be an offshoot of that club...so it would be an addition to that franchise.

Club Worship would be based on a solar theme. The club's interior would be a mix of oranges, yellows and orange-reds, but mostly the latter two hues. The walls would be glazed to give a candy-like appearance and there would be lots of sun motifs and decorative references about the entire interior space. The club's style would be lush, warm, sophisticated, inviting, and hip with a very intoxicating setting.

The club would showcase bands, spoken word poetry, storytelling nights and eccentric but funny stand-up comics. Bar would be full while featuring an assortment of special house cocktail drinks and there would be a kitchen serving tasty and decadent foods at the honey-colored cushioned tables and chair sets made with blond wood arranged around the various floor sections in different lounge areas (including the sun deck and patio spots).

This flyer is a fictitious advertisement for this club concept created in illustrator and taken into Photoshop for depth. The female character is dazed and possessed by the glowing and dazzling lights around her and especially above her head.

Originally the design for this piece was for a class project in a design advertisement and marketing class that I was taking. The objective was to come up with a word and associate and image with it to not only create a statement but to also highlight another word within the original word. I chose the word worship...focused on HIP in worship and decided that the female character that I'd illustrate around the word selection would be designed right within the word "hip" around her hip area.

The implication was of a woman obsessed with being beautiful, being hip, "in", "popular" and accepted. Her eyes were to be glazed over, completely showing white, and she'd be looking upward in a complete haze totally worshiping the idea of beauty and fame...the limelight (represented by the sun)...all the while holding a sweet lollipop which represents innocence, yearning and craving.

“Pygmy Halloween House”

This was created in Flash. Last year around mid-summer, I began working in Flash for illustrative pieces. This was a different process because I primarily use Illustrator (in accompaniment with Photoshop) to create most of my pieces.

Flash has its advantages as an illustrative tool because if you are setting up art work or art assets for Flash animations for games, characterization and shorts, the native files are smaller and remain vectorized rather than larger imported bitmap images.

The objective was to create a Halloween themed scene. The first thing I thought about was a nocturnal haunted house illustration but I wanted the house to look spooky in a quirky, off-beat and playful manner. I also thought about making the house look like gnomes or pygmy-sized being lived in it...hence the proportion of the fencing and tree around the house and the size of the house are off-kilter.

“Sukra”

Sukra is possibly another character in the Pink Laughter Kingdom world concept.

She enjoys eating a lot of bitter and sour treats that make her cry and frown in a very intense expression. The treats are often very sickly sweet smelling which are deceiving to the noses of visitors to her domain. Sukra enjoys singing catchy but dramatic and tragic songs about misfortune, neglect, remorse and the like. Her melodies are sing-song, puckish, dark cabaret and vaudeville in style.

She was created in Illustrator and taken into Photoshop for further enhancement.

"The Land of Xroi"

Remember to Click on Images to Enlarge

The Land of Xroi is a game concept...as well as a story idea. I am going to develop it further in the future along with all of my other game ideas. The game is kind of difficult to describe because the static view is so abstract. It would incorporate some functions of a pinball, time management and arcade game.

The object of the game would be for the guided rabbit-looking character with a face-eater belly to traverse through landscapes picking up and eating as many egg orbs as possible without getting deterred by random taunting and trickster-like creatures and objects in the game that would try to block him and/or take away the egg orbs before he reaches them. The more egg orbs collected, the higher the score and the more special abilities the character can unlock to help him in his quest.

The music of the game would be as quirky as the graphics and background images. Think Katamari Damacy in some respects.

As a veteran gamer since the inception of Atari 2600 and the mid-life of Intellivision, I am passionate about anything involving game design and gameplay. I'd love to develop one of my game concepts into blueprint prototype stage and perhaps after researching on protecting my work, network with various developers to see if I can spark a deal. That's definitely on my list of to-do's. I am interested in games for the casual games market as well as for consoles and handhelds.

This design will be also refined as I think of more ideas. It was developed in Illustrator and then taken into Photoshop. However I enjoy using feathering in Illustrator for creating the look of painteresque highlights and shadows on objects and scenes. I find that with this feature, you can do work that looks as if it was either created in Photoshop or involved using gradient meshes in Illustrator (without using gradients).

"Panash"

I have many alter egos that are based off of various sides to my personality and moods that I often fall into. Panash [PA-nosh] is a character that I created several years ago. He has a suicide king complex and he is also one of the characters to my Pink Laughter Kingdom word concept which I will be developing into fantasy-adventure a book series over time.

I created him in several modes. Sometimes he appears in a red rather than blue clown suit with knives as hands and amid a background of fireworks and brilliant light displays. His hair is wild, chaotic and has a life of its own. He often ties up his hair with balls of light orbs in the colors lime-green, purple and sky blue but sometimes he lets all of his hair down and they appear more like abstract snakes or dreadlocks shooting out in various directions in a reactive manner.

I started a company with some friends and former schoolmates about a couple of years ago. The entry, where I talk more about this, can be seen here on my post about the 3rd Eye Cinema website design.

He was created in Illustrator and Photoshop CS2.

"Cake Wonderland"

I am always full of ideas...especially concepts for products, services and businesses. What I love as much as design is the idea of taking an idea from concept stage all the way to prototype stage. Concepts for me need to come out of theory at some point and I am thrilled when I can do this with any of my ideas.

This illustration was inspired by my fondness for pastries, desserts and especially pastry shops and bakeries. I've dreamed of opening up my own shop in the future when money and time allows for this. I'd sell petits fours, cakes, cupcakes, tarts, creme-based confectioneries and much more.

It would be a place of delight and pleasure. Along with my intrigue for ideation, I enjoy the idea of branding. Branding goes hand in hand with conceptualization. An idea becomes an actual identity; a product or service which enhances one's lifestyle.

Cake Wonderland was one of these ideas. I plan to develop it further someday...to create a full blueprint for the business plan.

I find that having mascots or character icons is very effective for promoting a brand. Character depictions become the emboodiment of a business. I chose the character Airo from my Pink Laughter Kingdom world concept. He is one of the characters in this story world.

He is known as the elusive pastry chef. He head, always topped with a tasty cake on a platter, which acts also as a permanent hat, becomes iconographc for the cake shop, Cake Wonderland.

This piece was created in Illustrator and Photoshop.

"Interworldly Creatures"

What happens when two creatures seemingly from different worlds meet one another and discover that they are not only very similar in several ways but that they are linked together romantically through fate?

This illustration is a theme related to the real-world dynamics of interracial dating, particularly between black women and white men or within the arena of black and white relations. The subject has been reinterpreted in an imaginative out-of-this-world context.

I think that by bringing it into this fantasy realm, people can step back and take an objective look at the underlying message. I also think the story stands on its own as a playful and innocent love story between two different but similar creatures.

I created this illustration originally in Illustrator 10 and brought it into Photoshop for further enhancement. This piece, like many of my artworks, has gone through a few rounds of revisions. I am happy with the way it has turned out so far. I especially like the glowing and textural effects that I included on both of the creatures' bodies. I am intrigued and highly stimulated by anything that glows, radiates, shines and gives off radiosity. I don't see a lot of digital designs that incorporate the effects of radiosity.

Radiosity is a term often used in or by 3D programs. I like to use it outside of the category of 3D computer graphic jargon.

If a bright blue ball sits on a shiny marble white flooring with a top left light source, not only will that ball cast a shadow and display a reflection on the marble flooring, but the blue coloring of the ball will cast a subtle blue tint onto the marble flooring right underneath it. That would be an effect of radiosity. I love that effect both in nature and in art.

I try to incorporate this into my work whenever I can or when it seems that it would be a very effective element too add.

Ginger's Song

My favorite thing to do is to tell a story and to illustrate it in some fashion.

The art piece "Ginger's Song" has gone through a lot of revisions. The character even looked different in the beginning. Not drastically so, but Ginger was less refined. I like that her features remain odd and characteristic so that you know that although she resembles a human, she belongs in the fantasy realm.

Ginger's Song is a short story concept that I have yet to write. The story is about a young girl with a talent for playing the piano. While practicing in her room on her scaled-down piano that her mother purchased for her years ago, she thinks of a new tune that she's quite fond of and wishes to try out on the piano. At first, the tune doesn't sound right. Some notes are off and it's incomplete.

When she manages to finish composing the tune, something very fantastical happens. One of the walls in her bedroom starts glowing around the edges and eventually breaks away completely to reveal a hidden world. She sees a valley of lush green rolling hills, marbled white fluffy clouds in the sky with a brilliant and crisp sun amid a pale lavender sky tinged with lemon tints and an inviting quaint little schoolhouse with children playfully running around on the grounds not too far in the distance.

Ginger realizes that this special song that she's created is the key to this enchanting world. Anytime she wants to visit, she knows she can play her song, Ginger's Song.

"Fantasy Checkerboard"

I really miss working in 3D Studio Max…I haven’t worked in the program for awhile but I am a huge fan of taking 3D work into Photoshop for a fusion effect. I am currently looking into getting a licensed version of Max so that I can begin creating new photoshop/3D fusion projects again. A friend installed Max on my old computer and currently I am not able to get a hold of the installation disk…so that was the beginning of my hiatus from working with 3D.

I created a traditional and plain black and red checkerboard set with a wood base a couple of years ago with Max. I decided to update the look of the board in Photoshop today. I wanted to give it a magical fantasy look so I themed it in purples and pinks with glowing accents for the checkerboard pieces. I definitely like the revision. It makes me want to have a glowing checkerboard set just like it.