Emoticonputer Sketch

Looking great everyone! Hope my piece is up to par with everyone else :)
Anyone who's had an online conversation with me knows I'm a sucker for emoticons! They are very valuable emotional cues that may seem immature, but can easily send a powerful message and sometimes tip the scale between a friendly message and a nasty one. Like the article says we have a natural tenancy to read emails with a negative tone of voice, so my solution is to create a universal new keyboard fully equipped with all the emoticons and emotional abbreviations you'll ever need so you'll never accidently piss off your boss, spouse, or grandmother ever again :D


This is where I need your expert advice. What do you think about the position, gesture, and scale of the hands? I'm thinking I should crop into the keyboard more so you can clearly read the emoticons. And if you can suggest more emoticons and abbreviations so I may fill up all the keys that would be great!


Cheers,
Sam :) 

Emoticon Portraits

This is a great topic by Sam Singh!

Immediately, I pictured people with emoticon faces. As in the article about email etiquette, we sometimes rely on emoticons to relay a feeling that we cannot impress in words. But is it because emoticons are convenient, and words take too long to edit and arrange? Emoticons are a part of a universal language spoken in the virtual boundaries of email, chat rooms and other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. A single emoticon can communicate more than one meaning. ;p (the winky face) can easily follow: "I think you're a babe, ;p" or "You're too young for me, ;p". These emoticons are multi-functional! But when something is so versatile, it can be generalized and a specific notion is lost. Really, you miss out on sharing something personal like how great your day is when all you post is :). I'm not hating, I'm just pointing it out. I use emoticons, too. :p, like there.

I am going to do a series of portraits of different people (maybe 9 or 12). But instead of capturing the physical features that identify our distinctiveness, faces will be simplified to convey a universal emotion. I'm thinking of doing them in pencil and acrylic...

And lastly, here's an excellent emoticon illustration I found online today.

It's an Emoticon Love Story (by Miss Tal).

http://www.miss-tal.com/show.php?name=heart-story

:S

This is really fast, sorry it looks rushed but I'm about to go to work. What I'm gonna do is a series of little spot illustrations.

My concept is to take famous paintings and portray them through emoticons.

I suppose I could say it's a commentary on modern societies inability to adequately portray emotion. Also that an increase in technological capabilities has led to a decrease in traditional ability within the art community.

Mostly I thought it was funny...

I'll post some refined roughs in a few days.

Emoticon -Sketch

This is my sketch for the emoticon or ":S" theme. I wanted to show how little our text based relations convey. There's so much missing from them, even from phone conversations, but for many of us it is the only contact we have with some of the people in our lives. Increasingly, it's also the favored way of communicating. I remember seeing a guide to using the phone that was released right after it became a popular house hold item. it had sort of schematic and cheesy illustrations. That's what I thinking of when I was drawing this sketch, so some of that may have come through. Let me know what you think. It will be rendered in a print.

Cheers,

Jacquie

Pattern Sketches

Going along with the topic of “Patterns” I thought it would be fun to work around

the idea of 'Behavioural Patterns' so after some light research, by which I mean googling

the words 'behavioural' and 'patterns'. I came across this excerpt

“There are common patterns of behaviour exhibited by many species,

and a few behaviour patternsthat are exhibited by all species. Since all

species need to reproduce, eat, and try not to be eaten be someone else, all

species exhibit some type of reproductive behaviour, foraging (eating) behaviour,

and defensive behaviour.”

My concept is to have different animals sitting in a bar. This struck me as a solution

to the idea because a bar is a location in which one forages for for food and drink.

Some also use a bar as a place to begin engaging in reproductive behaviour.

Defensive behaviours can also be seen in bars. Whether it's avoiding unwanted

advances or getting into a fight.

I really just wanted to draw a manatee with a cocktail...

Ready! Set! Go!

Hi all!

Well it's time to kick off this blog. The goal here is to get our illustration mojo going and produce some kick ass work. By the end of 30 days (we hope) we'll have some finished illustrations to show. And for you kids following along at home, feel free to link your efforts in the comments!

So the theme for this month is Patterns

On your mark... get set... GO! (NO SLACKING!)

Here are my sketches for the theme of Patterns. I chose to illustrate the pattern of tides governed by the moon. I've been spending way too much time in the Canadian Gallery at the ROM (I'm a design intern there) so those patterns are showing up in my sketchbook. Let me know what you guys think. The shape of the illustration is the size of the illustration I'll be carving so that isn't very flexible...but other than that anything goes!

-Jacquie