School project S6 – Sandblasting kills

For this project we has to create a poster expressing the horrors resulting of sandblasting jeans. What’s wrong with sandblasting jeans? Look it up on google. Here is the translation of the text featured on my poster.

The damned of denim. Thousands of workers are condemned by the sandblasting of jeans. Exposure to silica dust cause irreversible lung disease called silicosis. It is contracted by workers who inhale it. This desease continues to grow even if the exposure has ceased. Many companies refuse to abandon the practice of sandblasting, including: … (logo of companies).

As you can see, my approach was the horror movie poster. It is a photo-montage of around 15 images and bit of digital painting from my part.

 copyright Dany Pepin 2012

School projet S4: Editorial Illustration

For this project we had to create an editorial illustration based on a random magazine article provided by the teacher. We then had to include this illustration in a spread layout. My article, called “French Attraction”, depicts the recent popularity of French schools in the English community of Canada. French being the second official language in Canada, being bilingual open a lot of opportunities in the workplace. My illustration shows  a fictional city (mix of Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver) in the distance with a see of people lined up and seeking a job opportunity. The bilingual people, having an advantage over the others, are carried by “French” blimps over the crowd and directly to good careers high up the skyscrapers. The addition of a magnet holding the characters is a simple reference to the title. The illustration was made with color crayon and the layout in Indesign.

 copyright 2011

School project S4 – Idiom illustration

For this project we had to pick a french idiom from a list and create a black and white illustration portraying the expression. We had to use dots and lines for shading. Colors, with the exception gray, were allowed but only to add  some impact to the illustration. I picked the french idiom “Péter le feu” (farting fire) which basically mean “being full of energy”.

 copyright 2011

School project S4 – LAFF poster

For this illustration project, we had to create a poster for a real client, The Latin American Film Festival in Ottawa (March 17-27 2011). My poster won the competition and will be posted all over the city.

My concept behind the poster was to feature Latin America and its culture. I chose a hot pepper as the focus of this piece because it symbolizes the strength and the warmth of it people and because its shape can resemble the South-American continent. From a good distance you only see a pepper with text wrapped around it, but those who will look closely will be able to see all the culture elements (art, history, entertainment, etc.) surrounding it. Since the Latin American culture is colorful and festive, I added some ribbons on a bright yellow background, which creates contrast. The left image below is the original illustration while the right image is the edited version has with the client modifications.

 copyright 2011

School project S3 – Board game

For this illustration project we had to pick an existing board game and make it more interesting. We had the choice between, Clue, Monopoly, Pay Day, Risk, Snakes and Ladders, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary. I chose the latter, because the original board game had a very simple design.

My idea was to create a board full of doodles and illustrations that could be used in certain cases during gameplay or just to add some fun. I wanted the board to look like an actual game of pictionary, not a boring path of aligned squares on a dark background. I decided to make the path of squares as real post-it notes since you are always drawing on little pieces of paper. I even included a coffee stain to make the illusion more convincing, as if you were playing on a table make out of doodles. To create contrast, I kept the original letters (categories) on blank colored squares to make sure the path didn’t compete with the white doodle background. Each of the 104 illustrations have been numbered and the answer sheet is available for player. I’m sure you can guess most of them. Click on the image below for a closer look.

 copyright 2010

School project S3 – Sports Movement study

For this project we had to show movement and exaggeration to a certain degree in a sport related illustration. The illustration format was predetermined, it needed to have the word “Nike, Play.” and the athlete needed to touch 3 sides of the images. Also, any motorsports and the use of a background was prohibited. Out of all the sketches of different sports I showed the teacher, he wanted me to do cycling. Not an easy task to show movement in a sport where the athlete is always constrained to his bicycle. On top of that, he wanted me to go out of the box and try a technique I didn’t even know about, “scratchboard” (working from all black and scratching out to show white). I used Corel painter 11 with my Wacom tablet and added color with photoshop. I’m happy with the result (below). You can see the cyclist focused, clenching his handlebars, raised off his seat and pumping hard to climb a hill. Movement is also shown in the wheels circular scratches.

 copyright 2010

School project S3 – Skateboard design

For this illustration project we had to create a skateboard (or snowboard) design using only color pencils. So I took out my prismacolor crayon and draw a design that I called « Skate or Die ». You can see muscle behind the teared flesh. A reminder of what can happend if your skating unwisely. The tattoo of the letters DYP are simply my initial with a Y in between. You can see pictures of the process (here) and the final product (below).

 copyright 2010

School project S3 – Feeling stressed out?

It’s been three months since i’ve posted on my blog. I never imagined that I would be so busy and stressed out.  That was actually the theme of our very first exercice in illustration class.  Here are my three sketches; « pulling my hair out », « To much thing to do » and « Butterfly in your stomach ». (see below).

In the uncoming days, I’ll be posting almost all of my 32 projects of this semester.

 copyright 2010

Staircase Wall Art

After my girlfriend and I decided we didn’t want to paint the entire staircase the same color as the living room wall, I was tasked with designing an artistic transition instead of stopping the paint in a strait line along the wood ramp. So I started to play with circles and rings in photoshop and designed a retro-modern transition. The rest was only a matter of carefully hand paint the pattern. I’m very happy with the final result (last picture).

Visual test in photoshop (above), final result (below)

 copyright 2010

School project S2 : Cover art

For this art project, we had to create a book cover from an already existing book or movie we liked. I chose the book/movie “Perfume : The story of a murderer”. This is a 16×20″ acrylic painting on canvas. If you saw the movie, you will understand the cover, if not, hopefully it will intrigued you enough to read the book or rent the movie.

 copyright 2010