Illustration Friday: Monster

Created completely in Illustrator CS.

Your comments are appreciated.

Illustration Friday: Feet

Because I'm a sucker for bad puns.

Created completely in Illustrator CS2.

Illustration Friday: Tattoo

This piece was created completely in Illustrator CS2. I imported a pic of Tatu and did a Live Trace, playing with the settings until I got the look I wanted. Ditto with Tattoo's picture. The text and the Tai Chi symbol were created fresh for this piece.

This is the first piece completed on my new PowerBook G4. Yep, I gave up the PC laptop and joined the cult of the Mac. So far, it has been a Very Good Thing; I am amazed at how easy things work on the Mac (no needing to reset/renew IP configs to plug into the hotel broadband, a nice suite of tools and playthings in the form of iLife, and that Garage Band thing is just too cool). I should have done this years ago.

Of course, my first PC was an Apple //e, so that should count for something.

As always, your comments are appreciated.

Tony

Dick Cheney, the girls, and Google’s Adsense

Regular readers will recall that last week’s Illustration Friday entry was about roaches rising up and fighting the man; defending their freedom to infest; holding that they, while just roaches, still had dignity. Ok, technically, it was just a cartoon spoof of Braveheart, but all art has to have a deep serious meaning or thousands of art professors will be out of work.

Anyway, in the context of that ‘toon, I mentioned how roaches and lobsters were phylum cousins and questioned if their taste would be similar. I even mentioned Lobster Fest. Of course, as most of you commented the thought of eating lobster wasn’t as appealing after the roach relation was discovered. Google’s Adsense on the other hand, did not make such an association. Nope, when I logged in this morning every one of the ads at the top of this page had changed from the usual Adobe/Corel/Illustrator ads to four ads touting the tastiness of lobster. Apparently, context is not part of the algorithm for Adsense. It is actually funny until you think about the poor schmuck who is paying for those ads….

Sure is a good thing I didn’t mention anything about lesbians hunting for Dick Cheney, huh? No telling what type of ads that would generate.

Illustration Friday: Insect

Ok, I know that roaches don't natually live in colonies, but neither do they wear blue and red face paint so work with me on this.

However, I did learn (while researching the roaches in colonies question) that a roach may nibble on your ear if you are asleep or otherwise not moving around very much.

Perhaps more distressing than roach love bites is that a cockroach and a lobster are related by phylum. According to The Cockroach FAQ: "Beyond classification which should reflect the lobster and cockroach evolutionary relationship, the term 'roaches of the sea' reflects the behavior of lobsters as omnivorous scavengers. Cockroaches will eat almost anything organic and so will lobsters. They clean up the dead and dying plants and animals in their environment."

Kinda makes you rethink Lobster Fest, doesn't it. Of course, if roaches taste as good as lobsters....



Your comments are appreciated.

This was done completely in Flash Studio 8.