Skyline Sequence 4

Yeah, I know what you're saying. "It's only the second sequence he's posted, how can it be #4?" Just trust me. It's the fourth sequence I've made, that's what it's saved as on the computer, so to keep things simple that's what it's called here.

I did the math (and I still don't trust that I did it right), but this time-lapse amounts to about 25 minutes, compressed into 2. I had to go back and adjust the background image when I discovered some photomerge errors. But now that that's all squared away, I can get back to doing the actual work of illustrating the skyline. In the future I think I'll zoom in on that upper window so you can more clearly see how it's coming together. Stay tuned!

How It's Done

I thought it would be interesting to show a work in progress through a time-lapsed screen recording. I recently took a panorama of the Austin skyline with the intention of turning it into an illustration. I figure this will be a really good project to show in-progress, and it will be interesting to see the whole thing come together. It took a lot of googling to figure out how to record the screen shots exactly the way I wanted to. Hopefully you can see that in addition to the bottom window where I'm doing the actual work, I am keeping a top window open that will be a zoomed-out view of the whole illustration as it comes together. What you see in that window is really only half of the final panorama, which is so wide that it's more practical to do two illustrations and stitch them together later. So, this will definitely be a long-term project and I'll try to post the latest time-lapses regularly.

Also, much credit is due to Mr. Alex Soto for inspiring this idea and for his technical advice.

Hey, look at that! I won something!

A few weeks ago I came across a site called Create My Tattoo, which essentially crowd-sources tattoo designs. Normally, I'm very wary of crowd-sourcing sites like this, but one of the contests drew my eye. Someone wanted a family crest/coat-of-arms representing various aspects of his life. The iconography and design of heraldry has always piqued my interest, so I gave it a shot. Turns out I won! Here's the winning design:

crest tattoo vector

The Austonian

Austonian vector illustration

I've hung around photographers enough to know that the tops of parking garages (or buildings) are the best spots for getting cityscape angles. Downtown Austin has an abundance of good spots. When I found a spot where I could get an unobstructed shot of Austin's tallest building, The Austonian, I knew I had to do an illustration. Most of the illustrations that I've done in this series, however, have been relatively small. I was a little concerned that with such a tall building, I wouldn't be able to get a very detailed photograph. But using Photoshop's lens correction filter and photomerge functions, I was able to stitch together a really good reference photo that was detailed and undistorted. Took me a few weeks to complete this one. [Click to zoom.]

Cont'd...

The further refinement of my dry-erase masterpiece: