Week seven was a pretty eclectic week in terms of my independent work. I tried my hand at three different styles of design and I think all of them ended up squarely between "meh" and "ok, yeah, not bad."

First off, I spent a couple hours late one night making this short animation. I can only describe it in retrospect - because I no longer remember what I was going for - as a long red worm giving a misshapen gourd a big old wormy hug while... I dunno, I guess a light is rotating around it all from off screen? I think I just wanted to play with shape animations and depth. It was pretty late when I made it.

I've also been practicing adding color to my sketches in Photoshop. It feels like the next natural step from what I was doing back in late January. I was inspired by some phenomenal digital paintings I was using for a project at work. Sometimes I see beautiful art and I get filled with this inextinguishable energy to just go home and create it for myself. Invariably what I end up making looks pretty damn bad, especially when compared to what inspired me. but its a step in the right direction. This was one such case.

The third piece I'll share in this post is this illustration of a smiling kid that took an interesting turn. For some reason, when I started this one, I decided to add in the facial features using thick outlines instead of my typical style of shaded, filled shapes. I enjoyed this style, so I went with it. As I developed the illustration some more, I gave him different expressions and complimented them with colors I thought appropriate for each expression. I'm definitely developing this piece more as I don't think what I've made here taps into its full potential.