First off I just want to thank everyone who came out last night to support, there was a lot of love in the house. I’d like to thank PNCA, it’s the best school I’ve ever attended. I’ll probably be hanging around even after I graduate. I wanna thank Paul Platosh, Jason Resch and everyone from the C4D Studio. My beautiful girlfriend Sarah. My family, Dad, Mom, brothers & sisters. My awesome friends. There was so much support last night, I could hear it in the crowd. The audience choice award means the world to me. It was an amazing experience, I’m still processing the whole thing. I came out with some pretty sweet prizes: a new wacom intuos tablet, Adobe CS3 Master Collection, a laptop backpack from Crumpler, a rad Unipo toy from UNKL, a Stash DVD, The latest issue of Wired and Plazm magazines and an amazing overall experience. Finally I’d like to thank everyone who organized the Cut & Paste event and the judges who volunteered their time. It was an amazing experience, and I feel honored to be a part of it.

As promised I’ll show you the designs that I had practiced and practiced for the event:

1st Round: Currency. I was nervous as hell up on stage under the hot lights. The start caught me off guard, but I eventually got the hang of it. This first round was probably the quickest 15 minutes of my life, but I managed to get the whole design completed on time.

2nd Round: Cabaret Poster. I was worried about this one. I didn’t have quite the spark of inspiration that I had for the first piece. My friend Corah did an amazing job modeling for the photo. I took on snap and it was golden. My design last night turned out way better than any of the practice rounds.

Final Round: One of the 7 Deadly Sins, surfboard graphic. I’m bummed that I didn’t make it to the final round. I was a lot more stoked on this graphic than my cabaret poster. A surfboard graphic is quite open as far as creativity goes. My original concept was to do an angry thug to illustrate wrath. I realized I needed to tie it in to the sea somehow, so I changed it to the thug of the oceans, the shark. I might hang on to this character for later use. I’ve grown attached.

I hope everyone had an awesome time last night. If you like what you’ve seen and want to see more, I can usually be found blogging on my recently launched Sketchblog, or my website.

http://www.micronhero.blogspot.com
http://www.micronhero.com

Don’t have time to write much. I’ve been training all day, just going through my designs over and over again. Over the weekend I’ll put up all of my practice work that I’ve done to prepare.

wish me luck! hope to see a ton of people there.

I’m out….

This week I’ve been asked the question: How do you train for an event like Cut & Paste? The answer is this: Draw, draw, vectorize, draw some more, work on the vectors some more, color, think, eat a sandwich, go for a bike ride, draw some more, lay some type down, tweak the type, draw some more, vectorize, repeat. I just hope I don’t have a Gred Oden incedent, where I need emergency carpal tunnel surgery before even being able to compete. Knock on wood.

This week’s Portland Mercury has a full page write-up on Cut & Paste. It’s placed opposite one of those huge, scabby anti-meth ads. The article profiles the graphic designer creative class and Portland’s place as a mecca for such people. I seem to fit the description pretty well these days with my perpetually casual garb and red eyes from staring at the computer screen for too long. It’s an excellent piece. Props to Marjorie Skinner and the Mercury. After the competition us contestants can all scramble to get a cover over to the Mercury the fastest.

Just some sketchbookery mixed with some vector magic.

It’s wednesday, which means my training time is quickly dwindling down. I’ve settled my three concepts, so now it’s a matter of practicing them again and again. No training or practice can prepare a person for the actual event though. I say this without knowing what it’s going to be like under the stage lights and the gaze of the crowd.
I’ve been sketching out ideas in order to refine my basic concepts. The first round is going to be the most competitive because their are 8 contestants with 4 being eliminated. The heat is really going too be on.

When given an assignment, be it for school or a client, an image pops in my head. This image is like a big ball of clay with no thoughtful shape to it. The gears in my head turn and I work that image until it starts to take shape. At this point I put my pen to paper and just start moving it. The emotion and energy is spilled onto the page in a chaotic matter. Using these sketches as a rorschach test, I start to see more and more possibilities. This describes a pretty standard starting point for most artists. It’s all about making form out of the formless, shape from the shapeless. The biggest block to overcome is the utterly infinite possibilities of a blank page.

After today it’s T-minus 4 days and counting. I spent all day in my studio generating concepts. Working with a pencil, markers, pens, putting whatever comes to mind down. Idea generation is all about laying it all out and then seeing what fits together. Some thoughts point in the right direction, others are cleared off the table. You massage the concept like a ball of clay until it’s warm and malleable. Once the concept is established the visuals can come out. I’m working hard to make sure my ideas are solid. By the end of the week I should have three well thought out designs that I can execute on command.

If you’re anything like me, and the fact that you’re reading a blog right now might suggest so. You spend a lot of time surfing around, reading the odd blog post, hopefully finding some good music. While I have the collective eyes and ears of the PNCA community I’d like showcase some tracks that’ve provided me with genuine inspiration.

First off is The Good Ghost, aka Sean Niesen. I went to high school with the guy, and now he’s
attending the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Recorded and produced by the artist himself, these tracks work so perfectly well as a couplet. I’ve never gotten tired of listening to them. All of the original copies, released through Marriage Records, have sold out. His sound is akin to The Microphones and perhaps Animal Collective. These tracks are a pure product of the Pacific Northwest, they’ll take you on a magical journey. Just right click or control click on the links and save the MP3s to your desktop.
The Good Ghost – Brother Pigment

The Good Ghost – Slymer

The Newspapers approached me at the beginning of the summer to see if I’d be interested in doing an album design for their upcoming Lakeview EP. I’ve always wanted to do an album cover, so I jumped on the opportunity to work with the guys. We met over beers and tossed ideas around. They were great to work with, giving me as much creative license as I wanted. The tracks and art work well as a cohesive unit, both complementing each other. Minimum Wage is one of my favorite tracks off of the album, melodic through and through, with hints of CSNY harmonies. You can find the Newspapers boys on Myspace, as well as on iTunes. I suggest tracking down their album, so you can get the physical packaging with the artwork. It should be available at Tender Loving Empire.

Newspapers – Minimum Wage

Newspapers on Myspace

I just finished coloring this graphic. I plan on formating it as desktop wallpaper and offering them for everybody to use on this blog. I just need to resize it for all of the various desktop resolutions that are most commonly used. Let me know what you think. I’m trying to figure out which of my digital pieces I should offer up for the holiday art sale.

Aside from completing this graphic today, it was also the Cut & Paste orientation. I got to meet my competition and play around with the Wacom Cintiq tablet display for a little bit. We got out three themes for the contest. It’s going to be intense. I’ll try and show my creative process as I’m developing my themes. For strategic purposes I’ll have to keep my actual designs under wraps. Gotta maintain the element of surprise when I hit the stage. Make sure you’re there!

EDIT:
as promised ealier in this entry, here are the images formatted for a variety of popular desktop resolutions. Give you dull desktop a color overhaul!!
800×600
1024×768
1280×1024
1680×1050
1920×1200

Today as I was coming back from getting the coffee, I encountered a FedEx guy at the door of my apartment. I saw him punch 01 into the callbox, which is my apartment number. He had a package for me so I signed for it. Inside was a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 3: Design Premium. I had been working with the trial versions of the CS3 programs, but now I have a fully legit version. This is quite a prize and I haven’t even competed yet. I’d like to give a big thanks to Adobe and Cut & Paste for this awesome software.

I’ve always placed a lot of value and time into my sketchbook. It probably comes from my dad, those of you who’ve had his class can surely relate. The sketchbook is an artists running encyclopedia of ideas, past, present and future. It can house anything from rough sketches to fully fleshed out designs and illustrations. A lot of my final pieces have been scanned directly from the pages of my Moleskine notebook. With the competition looming around the corner, my sketchbook has become my training ground. I’ll be using my book to generate strategies and ideas for the big night. It adds a new element when you no longer have hours to doodle away at your leisure. It’s some hardcore time based art when there’s only 15 minutes to construct the entire graphic. As a graphic designer though, deadlines are only fuel to our fire. 15 minutes should be more than enough time to get a solid concept across.

The contest orientation is this friday. We’ll be getting our 3 design themes and a chance to practice on the Wacom tablet displays. I’m looking forward to it. After that there’s only a week until the big night. In the meantime, here are some recent pages out of my sketchbook:

Hello Everyone, I’m Jake Hollomon, senior in the communication design department. I’m writing this blog as a lead-up to the Cut & Paste Digital Design Tournament in which I will be competing. It’s good to be back in school after a busy summer spent in front of the computer. I suppose it would be fitting, as a first entry, to tell how I got to this point.

It began on July 17th. I was working on some design stuff for the C4D studio. Jason Resch, Marketing & Branding instructor and C4D Strategic Director, sent everyone in the studio a link to the Cut & Paste sign-up. He urged us all to enter. The 17th was the registration deadline, I figured I should give it a shot. All that was required was an online portfolio. I’ve had my site (micronhero.com) online for over a year now, so I linked to that. After registering I was invited to audition. The auditions were held at the Art Institute campus in a large, mostly vacant room overlooking Whole Foods and Peets Coffee. The theme for the audition was “childhood.” To prepare I did some sketches in my book as well as some word association to get the brain working.

I tried to think back on what I used to love drawing as a kid. It wasn’t too hard to remember back, I’ve been drawing since I’ve known how to use my hands. For training, I made a 15-minute playlist for my iPod and used it to time myself. My power song for the playlist was DragonForce – Through the Fire and Flames. Check it out on YouTube. If they can play their metal that fast, there’s no reason I can’t design within a 15-minute time constraint. The audition went well. I practiced my design twice, pictured above is the 2nd run. I don’t have the final version I did for the audition, ended up saving it to their machines but forgot to save it to my thumb drive. The final version turned out better than the previous two practice runs.

Now the tournament is less than two weeks away. I’ve been busy as hell these past few months, but I figure any design or illustration work will serve as training for the event. I normally work with Wacom Tablet and mouse at the same time, so this contest is right up my alley. I look forward to representing PNCA in the tournament, I’ll give it my absolute best. I will be updating this blog daily, so keep checking. I’ll try not to be as wordy in the upcoming posts. Hopefully I can give everyone some insight into my work process. Wish me luck, I’m gonna need it.