Where have you been?

Well let me tell you! I wanted to end my Marketing Design posts with an uber cool video I did for a book called LoveTorn. I thought to myself, how awesome would this be? I could show my last hoorah of digital design and then plow right into what I think is super rad: my new job as a Art Department cover designer. Ah how young and naive we were back in November.

I'm such an awesome worker I finished that book trailer way before the book will pub, which should be coming out later this month. So I can't put the video up—all three of you readers would just ruin it for everyone by reposting to your own blogs and social media sites. So let's do a good old fashioned teaser shall we? What better way to say goodbye to marketing?

Whenever I start a new project (digital or print) I always like to pick out a theme of colors that will be great for the project and anything that might surround it in the future. How will these colors look on a screen that has moving images? How will they look printed? And what are the HEX/RGB equivalents— Will I burn someone's eyes out, and if so, would that be a bad thing?

In LoveTorn our heroine is from India and moves to LA for some reason or another that I'm a bit unsure of. But how fun is India? What a great potential color palette to explore:

Click me to enlarge.

Since this project will be moving images (fancy that, a moving picture show!) we get to story board. It'll be hard to believe I'm not a professional illustrator when you see this ever so logical and professional looking story board. 

Click me to enlarge.

This story board combined with our script, provided by one of the very apt and fun Marketing teams, becomes a book trailer. But just how that magic happens is for another post later. Have I hooked you? Didn't think so. But you have to trust me it's cool.

Catch it on up

Side note I have the I Dream of Genie song stuck in my head. And now you do too! Look at us making strides to keep connected.

Today I was working on yet another book trailer when I realized, it sure has been a while since I showed off. So for ya'lls viewing pleasure I present Carrier of the Mark.

Ok so maybe showing off isn't the right term. Because this trailer, while super cool, doesn't look as sharp as if done by a professional video editor. I have a lot of video editor friends and colleagues and I know they'd be able to see a lot of imperfections. But wait my friends! This is done in Flash and iMovie. Ah, yea now you see what I'm talking about. Total show off.

On my extremely long list of "To Learn" is Final Cut. But truthfully it's taking a bit of a backseat to HTML and EPUB. I mean I'd rather have the ability to show off this stuff online in portfolios and websites then anything else. That being said, what I've been fooling around with via interactive documents have greatly increased my Flash capabilities.

Case in point will come in a few months after this Lovetorn is approved and finalized. I just started it today and I have to admit it totally rocks. This video will be done in vectors only which gives me a ton of freedom. Oh and also since I don't know anything other then Flash and iMovie...well it's the only way to go with vectors, see learning!

The weirdest tech problems!

Today was the weirdest day for tech problems, both professionally and personally. Currently I'm fighting with a service that claims I'm allowed to upload photos. It's been a battle of me viciously clicking the "Upload Photos" icon and its button just a-sitting there. So here's a great blog break to complain about today's other unfortunate mishaps.


First up, iMovie. Now don't get me wrong, I passionately hate this product and anything related to it.* But we use it at work to make book trailers on the cheap. It's easy enough to use, but has crazy limitations. Fortunately for us designers, we're really good Googlers and can usually find tricks around it. Can't make a girl fly through the air with the greatest of ease? No worries, tween her coming in and out of frame in Flash, but export at 12 fps as a Quick time to avoid banding issues, then import into iMovie and speed up by 200%. Bam! Flying chick. Only today no dice.


iMovie will not accept changes to a file that you've already placed inside it. I have a picture called girl_1.png but she's too big. I must rename her something other then girl_1.png after I make her smaller. Today iMove said No way Jose! to girl_2.png. After a lot of iMovie bashing, aloud and physically, flying_girl1.png did the trick just fine. Yarg! Anyway, our lady of flight is safely ascending to places otherworldly. This will be a super great book trailer with a lot of sweet flying action. (youtube link TK)


Next up on my journey of "huh?" Indesign stopped allowing the use of the hand tool. This is beyond annoying! Does this happen to anyone else? I can sit there and press the 'A' button all I want, but I am not getting that white arrow. Jerks! Reset.


Now there were other problems today too, but I can't remember how I got my Twitter feed to finally publish to this blog. Now I just have to use Twitter for this small victory to even matter. For anyone who wonders, yes that is a celestial portrait of me done by my friend Becky in which I'm holding a roll of "Awesome Paper Towels" I found at the Red Hook Fairway. No tech problems there, just pure awesome sauce.


*For example, when I went to paste this link here, I noticed that the word "Firelight" within this booktrailer is no longer italicized. Why jerk iMovie, why!? I hope no one catches it—ha! a girl can dream. Ok inevitable more tech problems to explain / blame tomorrow. 

New Level of Weird

I'm a fan of my own work on Facebook. Not in a Sarah Palin kind of way. I didn't set up a separate account to 'like' myself. I want to make that clear. But I worked so hard on a particular campaign that when the campaign reached Facebook level, I really had no choice but to become a fan, right? Ok so when my company set up the Facebook page, they needed to secure the site and I was apart of that meeting. As so why I'm still a fan... pure egotistical narcissism.

Therefore, Dark Days of Supernatural books so up on my Facebook feed! This is weird on a level I believe we've touched on. Combining work and personal life is an issue I'm quickly fusing into one common denominator. For some reason I've allowed this Facebook page to show up and it doesn't bother me. I've become accustomed to seeing that logo and related badges sandwiched between friends updates and my mother's activities. But I think we hit a new level of weird when this evening I hit a two-fer.

A video I'd been working on for a book was embedded within the page I help created. Two levels of work combined into one. A double take of "Hey I know that, Hell I made that!.. Rather those."

The video is here, try not to freak out.