Yes, I am one of the thousands of Batman fans that can't wait to see "The Dark Knight" which opens in theaters on Friday. The most anticipated excitement is of course watching the late Heath Ledger's persona of The Joker. Which has been the buzz throughout Hollywood since the begining of filming. His tradgic death has brought even more attention to "The Dark Knight," regardless if Ledger were still alive I believe that his performance will still be memorable...
I started working on the design for the Batman page about a week ago. Here is preliminary sketch.
I then scanned my sketch and brought it into Adobe PhotoShop CS3. I created contrast using Levels. I then turned the Layer's opacity to multiply Doing this allows me to have an underlying layer where I add color.
Now onto laying out my page design. I don't usually sketch a design for my page layouts, I just start designing. I'm working in Adobe Illustrator CS3.

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This is a vector based illustration. Here are the steps that got me to the finished lamp.

Everyone seems amazed at the fact that I am able to draw on the computer and how do I do it. They also are under the impression that it must take a real long time to create something on the computer. Well, not exactly. In this first step I have draw only the left side of the lamp using the pen tool. Which took about 5-7 mins.

Now, for a shortcut. I use the reflect tool And what this tool does is make a duplicate copy. I will then use this copy of the left side image to make the right side and thus create the whole image

Using the gradient tool I'll add color and dimension to the lamp.

My lamp is not quite done. I want to add a light source inside my lamp. To do this, I first make a copy of the three greenish window panels of the lamp. Then I turn them into what's called a compound path. I then use the flare tool and create a flare. I then take my compound path and bring it in front of the flare and create a mask. The mask contains the flare effect and gives me my internal light source.

And again here is the end result.

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Here, is my final page design for “The Incredible Hulk”

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“The Incredible Hulk” opens in theaters Friday. In honor of his return I designed a news page inspired by the ‘Hulk’ and all things that are green. For instance, did you know there are 16 variations of green Crayola crayon colors?
http://www.crayola.com/colorcensus/history/current_120_colors.cfm
My favorite is ‘Inch Worm’ green.

Another fascinating and perplexing question that I had about the ‘Hulk’ was how is it that when Bruce Banner changes into the ‘Hulk’ his shirt completely rips off his body, but his pants just have a few rips in them?

Well, Chris, the sports editor sent me a link explaining this mysterious wardrobe malfunction. http://www.nypost.com/seven/06102008/entertainment/hulk_s_pants_at_a_glance_114827.htm

Here is the preliminary sketch I created.

I added some more details, sketching in a torn paper effect.

I then scanned my pencil sketch into Adobe Photoshop. I changed the pencil sketch layer's opacity to multiply. I then created a blank layer below it and, on this layer is where I added my color.

In this last image, I added another layer to give my art some texture to mimic paper.

Another detail in this last image is the size of the hands. I lassoed the hands and cut, then pasted them onto their own layer. This way I could resize them to make them bigger.
To see the final design, open tomorrow's York Daily Record/Sunday News paper.

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First, I must make it perfectly clear, I love my job here at the good old YDR.

But, have to say that I'm really frustrated with FLASH CS3. I was sooo frustrated today, that I actually back paddled and reopen FLASH 8.

My frustrations grew out of the fact that you can no longer directly add a behavior or action to a button. Which, you really shouldn't do, but I was creating very simple action scripts, so I thought I would throw caution to the wind and add a simple action to my button. HA! Can't be done! Well, it can be done, just not directly.

For example, you have a button sitting on your stage. Select it, give it an instance name, (in this example the instance name is myButton) in the Property inspector. Once you give the button an instance name ActionScript can now identify it from any other objects/symbols present. Next add some action scripting to a key frame that is on its own layer and type the following:

myButton.addEventListener(
MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP,
function(evt:MouseEvent):void {
trace("I've been clicked!");
}
);

Well, that's pretty much your crash course on adding action scripts to buttons? In short, direct attachment of code is a thing of the past. ActionScript 3.0 simply doesn’t support it. Also, to add the Behaviors panel is dimmed when a FLA’s Publish Settings are configured for AS3, because Behaviors rely on on() or onClipEvent(). Change your Publish Settings to AS2 or 1, they come back.

I am in no ways an expert at Flash, I'm still learning, and now with Flash CS3 re-learning.

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Ohh, I'm excited to see my Prom page. I think it will publish on the 11th in the Living section.

Here's the almost finished design. The finished page design has color.

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Here, are some more examples of vector art mimicking realism. I did these pieces of art about 10 years ago. They were entirely created in Illustrator version 7. No effects or filters were used. A combination of blends gradients, and masks were used to achieve highlights, shadows, and detailed reflections.

A table light that used to sit on my drawing desk when I was in college.

This was inspired by manga.

My first car that I truly owned.

I love bugs...

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My husband was watching Oprah today, and she had Simon Cowell from American Idol on. My husband tells me to guess what kind of car Simon drives. It's a Bugatti.

So, in turn I decide to create a Bugatti in Illustrator CS3.

This is not completed illustration. You'll have to tune in to see the final illustration...

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I'm addicted to the Swatches palette in Adobe Illustrator. The colors are preselected to compliment one another. The swatch group I'm loving at the moment is the Bright swatches.

Below is a Teen page design I am working on. The color scheme is the Bright palette. I have also used this same palette for my Dr. Seuss inspired FLIPSIDE Weekend page that runs tomorrow in the York Daily/Record.

Here, are some detail shots of the crab and seagull. Aren't they cute?

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My 4-year-old son was playing video games with his big sister tonight, so I took this opportunity to play around in Illustrator CS3.

This is the start of a cellphone illustration. Fig.1a is the preview mode and Fig. 1b is the outline view.
Fig.1a

Fig.1b

Fig.2a

Fig.2b

In Fig.2 I have added the keypad and numbers along with the top slider. All the shading that you see is with careful manipulations of the gradient slider palette.

And ta-da! The final illustration. Total creation time: Approximately 40 mins

I used one drop shadow effect, but otherwise the phone is completed made up of gradients.

Below is the outline mode of the illustration.

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